How to Maximize Your Career Potential

The work of carving out a career doesn’t end with an offer letter – that’s where it builds intensity. The problem is that there isn’t one guidebook or set of rules for how to grow in your profession. You got the job – now what?

Andrew LaCivita is an executive recruiter, career coach and author of The Zebra Code: A Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Career Skills That Make You a Standout Professional, which will be published in August. Andy brings together over three decades of expertise in navigating the complexities of professional advancement into the pages of his book. He joins LinkedIn News Editor Andrew Seaman to share his methodology for developing the core skills every professional needs to succeed in their career. He also shares strategies for building confidence, boosting creativity and remaining competitive in the job market.

A transcript of the conversation is available below. You can listen to the episode above or on Apple Podcasts by clicking here.

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TRANSCRIPT: How to Maximize Your Career Potential

Andrew Seaman: If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably in the process of looking for your next job. Now, let's say you landed one, you made it to the finish line, congratulations. But the work of carving out a career doesn't end with an offer letter, that's where it begins. The problem is there isn't one guidebook or set of rules for how to grow in your career. You got the job, now what? That's the question we'll be answering on today's show.

From LinkedIn News, this is Get Hired, a podcast for the ups and downs and the ever-changing landscape of our professional lives. I'm Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn Senior Managing Editor for Jobs and Career Development, bringing new conversations with experts who, like me, want to see you succeed at work, at home, and everywhere in between. Andy LaCivita is an executive recruiter, career coach and author of The Zebra Code: A Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Career Skills That Make You a Standout Professional. He spent the past 35 years developing a methodology for career growth and professional fulfillment. Today he's sharing that method so that no matter where you are in your career trajectory right now, you'll be set up for success in the future. Here's, Andy.

Andy LaCivita: I've been working for 36 years, so I've had a lengthy career. And when I came out of school, I was an electrical engineering undergraduate and I went into consulting and I did a lot of IT consulting for about 18 years. And about 18 years ago, so half the career ago, I became an executive recruiter, I'm now a career coach, and one of the things that has been apparent and prevalent, not just for me, but for anybody, is that once we're in this post-academic world, which all of us professionals are, there really is no way to navigate your skill development. We went to college, we always had a syllabus of sorts. You had some faith that the person who was teaching you was knowledgeable on the subject matter, but once you get out of school, all bets are off.

I talk about this in the book that colleges, universities, schooling in its formal education, it teaches us how to become something like an accountant, an engineer, but it doesn't teach us how to actually be an engineer or an accountant and all the other skills that go along with it, like your productivity, your organizational skills, your ability to concentrate, focus, having empathy, these career skills, these essential skills that really make the best professionals the best professionals. So my inspiration was, if I could rewind the clock and I could go back to being 22 again and go through a career of any kind, what skills would I want to learn? What order would I want to learn them? And how would I learn them, how would I practice them, and how would I grow them? That's really what inspired me to do this.

Andrew: Early in the book, you introduced the concept of being a zebra in the corporate world. What is that and how did you come up with that?

Andy: I do a lot of job interview coaching, and I do a lot of career development coaching, high-performance coaching. And what I'm always trying to get them to be is unique, meaning can you stand out? One day I was doing a live show and during the show somebody had asked me about how do I stand out, how do I become a bit more unique? And I told this story about how I live not out in the country, but almost country-like, and I do a lot of running. So when I go out in the front door and down the street, I say, there's the goats on the one side, there's the horses on the others, and I say, "When I'm running and when I hear the hoofbeats, I can't technically rule out the fact that it's a zebra, but I'm thinking horses."

And so I started telling this story about how when you get in a job interview, much of the time when an interviewer is looking at you, they're thinking, "I've heard this before. I've seen this before. This sounds like everybody else. And so there's certain things that you need to do to kind of stand out and be that zebra. And this is a few years back, so when I was thinking about titling the book, it was really about being unique. And so that's where that came from.

Andrew:That's great. And you sort of suggest a structured approach to your career development. And I think a lot of people don't necessarily think of their career that way, even though it seems like an intuitive, "Hey, you should." So can you tell us why and how people can start viewing their careers like that and apply this idea?

Andy: People think of their careers often, and by the way, there's no right or wrong way to think about your career. I want you to do something you enjoy. I want you to love it as much as you can. Some of us work to generate money to put food on the table, and I completely respect that. Other people are looking to do something that they really enjoy. Irrespective of your goal or what you decide from a vocational standpoint, what I call the trade specific skills. So you are a chief editor of careers and you have certain skills that you require in order for you to do this effectively, accountants, same kind of thing, salespeople, doctors, lawyers, and so on. There's very, very specific working knowledge of what they do. But when I think about being the best and enjoying the most of what you do, there are a lot of these foundational traits or essential skills or what I call career skills in the book that make the best whatever you are the best.

So as an example, the best project managers all irrespective of what types of projects they're managing are organized, they're probably pretty good communicators. They're probably managing some people, or at a minimum they're managing a plan. So they've got organizational skills and things of that nature. So when you think about your career, get in the lane and get on a trajectory that you think you'll like, because as you get into it, you'll know more. But think about the capabilities you're going to need, these career skills and focus on building those. And it's not just, think about, well, what makes a great project manager, a great project manager? But there's a sequence in which you should build those skills because certain ones are not only harder to build, they take longer, require more nurturing, and can get perishable a lot quicker, but once you develop them, you'll be able to develop the higher level skills that will then carry you forward in your career.

And I guess one last point on this, for those people that are out there who are thinking about this, the thing that really hampers them is not paying themselves first in their calendar with time to actually learn the skills. It's kind of like saving, I use that analogy, you get your paycheck, you save first, you spend after, it's the same kind of thing with developing skills.

Andrew:Yeah, I really like the idea of paying yourself first with time. Something else that I think comes up is obviously there are a lot of new developments in the career space, there's always new skills coming up, AI is here, but for people, how do they keep their eye on the ball and not get distracted, but also know what they have to sort of add into their skill set?

Andy: So it's interesting, you didn't use these exact words, but I get this a lot, "Andy, what's next? What's going to happen next?" But the one thing, Andrew, that people never ask me is, "Andy, what's not going to change?" And your question around, how do you not get distracted, I taught a lesson about this not too long ago. I say I build my business, I build whatever it is I'm going to build, my team or whatever, around what's not going to change.

So what's not going to change? I use this little story, I have a number of dogs, one of them was ailing last year. It was on a holiday, and because it was a holiday, I had to go to an emergency hospital. And I call up the hospital, I say, "Yeah, I know you don't take appointments," it's a walk-in, "I don't want to sit there for hours, is there a way to make an appointment? How does this work?" And the woman says to me, she said, "You do just walk in, but if you'd like, you could go on our website, you can select a time slot and we will let you know when you should get the dog, pack up the car and drive to us based on traffic and where you are that way you don't have to wait too long." So my wife and I get there, I go and I check in, and the first thing that I said to my wife is, "I need to figure out what company makes that scheduling software and enables them to do that."

Now, that's probably a new piece of software that's relatively recent, probably came about in the COVID days. And I'm thinking to myself, the software will change, AI will change things and other things will evolve, but the one thing that will never change is I will value my time. I will always want faster and better customer service. So when I think about what I want to build and I think about what I want to focus on, I wouldn't think about what's the latest and greatest and hottest thing, because to your point, that's how we get distracted. So the way not to get distracted is, is what I'm looking at and trying to get interested in, is it part of who I am, why I want to do things, and will the problem never go away? That's how you can see around corners. You could better predict what's here to stay.

Andrew: We'll be right back with Andy LaCivita. 

Andrew: And we're back with Andy LaCivita, author of The Zebra Code. Something else that comes with careers is confidence. You could either have a lack of it, you could have too much of it. How can people build confidence in their careers? Because I speak to so many people who, they're genuinely good at what they do, but they don't see it or they don't believe it, so it keeps them from actually moving forward.

Andy: I coach people every day. I coach groups and I coach individuals. And I often say to them, I probably say this dozens of times every day, "I wish you could see you the way I see you," because I'm looking at them, I obviously don't know all the inner workings of what's going on up here and all the things that they're dealing with that creates this lack of confidence. But generally speaking, the first thing that I noticed that usually creates a lack of confidence is, let's just say all things are equal. So I don't want to minimize the environment you grew up in, the support that's around you, the boss you have, all of that's going to contribute, because even the most confident person, if they constantly hear you're no good, or this isn't good, or it's not perfect, your confidence is going to wane a little.

But all things being equal, if we all walk into the same situation, usually a lack of confidence comes from a few different things. One of the reasons people generally lack confidence is not being able to see all the how, all the steps. Another thing is they're a little reluctant with the activity itself, "I don't want to call and sell. The cold calling makes me nervous." Or they just don't feel like they have enough evidence or a track record that they can do it. People generally get more confident after they've visualized themselves or seen themselves do something.

So if we're looking for ways to get more confident, we have to isolate, well, what's the actual issue? If you are dealing with something where, that cold calling example I was using, this is a common issue, and it doesn't have to be cold calling, but everybody has their kind of cold calling issue that they're a little reluctant to do because it's scary, they're worried people are going to bite them. I say in those cases, you got to over quota it. So if your sheet says, make 10 calls a day, make 20, make 50, make as many as you can because the more reps you put in, the easier it's going to become.

So I have this thing that's called a job search challenge where I teach my job searching folks to kind of do three repetitions a day of this certain type of cold reach out, and inevitably after a few or three days, people email me and they say, "Andy, this is great. I don't know why I was so scared," because you hadn't tried it yet. You hadn't given it a run. So there's a number of different ways you can do this, but those are a few common ways you can get over them.

Andrew: That's such a good example. Also, a great segue to the next thing, which is, networking strategies. What would you say is the best way to approach networking?

Andy:Well, there's concepts to networking. You want to do it all the time. You want to give first. You want to give more than you, make deposits before you make withdrawals. You want to do it systematically. And there's different goals for networking. We might be networking because we're trying to make a sale. We might be networking because we want guidance on opening up a business, maybe we need a job. But the reason that most people don't do it effectively is they only do it when they need something, which is the exact opposite of what we want you to do.

And so if you're concerned or you're reluctant to network, think about it this way. So if I'm somebody who wants to be in the publishing industry, who are the right people to get connected with so that I can learn from them so that I might have some better understanding of how the industry works, maybe more access way into the big publishers, is there somebody in the industry you want to meet? So I'm all about networking for education. I'm all about networking for value. And then yes, there's going to come a time when you're going to need to make a withdrawal. Maybe you need a job, maybe something of that nature. Well, if you've got all these chits laying around town, it's a lot easier. So those to me, are some key principles. And I think it all starts with getting off on the wrong foot, only doing it when I need something and then you feel bad asking for help.

Andrew:Yeah. And how do you bring all of this together to really move forward? Because I know your book also talks about inspiring others and becoming basically a leader. How do you bring this all together to do that? How do you put the rubber to the road?

Andy:So the first thing I tell people is don't think about labeling yourself, don't think about needing to be at a certain place at a certain time. I'm not talking about not showing up eight to five, I'm talking about, "Well, I should be at this level by now." That puts a lot of undue pressure. I teach people how to get on the right trajectory. How you are moving at any moment in time is to me more important than where you are at any moment in time. So even though we might not know exactly where we're going to be, how long it's going to take us, I always say, think in terms of a lane. Where do you want to be? Do you want to be the bestseller of digital products? Do you want to be the best marketer, accountant, or whatever?

So you get in a lane. You look out into the future however far you want, it could be 10 minutes, it could be 10 years, the longer, the better. And you think about, all right, if I want to get to attain that level of a career where I am a subject matter expert, maybe I'm speaking in engagements, I'm managing teams, I'm doing these kinds of things, whatever it is, think about what are the skill sets that I need to be building. What the book does is it gives you the entire methodology of, if I was starting over, but it doesn't matter where you are in your career, there are skills that make you an effective producer, a manager of oneself.

There are skills that make you an effective communicator. How do I communicate with somebody like you from a relationship building standpoint? Not only do I have to be an effective communicator, writer, all of those good things, but there's persuasive skills, not in a manipulative way, but in a positive, influential way. And then there's the developer of people, how do I make them even better? And then there's the creation or the visionary.

And so you use your long-term aspirations and you lean on your short-term deliverables to package up the skillsets that you should be focusing on at any moment in time. And what the book does is it gives you all the steps to do that, literally, not just how to identify it, but I show you here, take this template, drop in your major deliverables, use those as your guide to push you so that you're building a skill right now that you could use immediately, and you're practicing it with real live targets. It's a presentation you have to give. It's a pitch you need to make. It's a sale, it's a whatever. It's long-term goals facilitated by short-term needs so that you can at least stay on the same trajectory, and to me, it's an every year, it's an every quarter, it's an every week kind of thing.

Andrew:That actually leads to my next question, which is, as you progress, so as you put that into place and you say, okay, I'm getting places, you do have to think big. And you have in the book, and I'm going to probably butcher the terms, ex nihilo and ex aliquo. Can you tell me what those are and how you put those into practice?

Andy: Ex nihilo, these are Latin terms, and ex aliquo, and I'm always looking for little formulas. And I don't have a creative bone in my body, I'm not joking. I'm just not a creative guy. I'm an engineer. I'm a mechanic by nature. And so what I always tell people is being creative isn't about being artsy or whipping up cool designs, creating ideas and having brilliant ones is about having repetition, swings at the plate. The more ideas you think up, the better the chance you have that great ideas will hit. So I tell people, don't worry, if you don't have creative skills, we can all be creative.

And so there's two ways I go about creating ideas. So ex nihilo means out of nothing. So what I do is I created five questions that I ask myself each morning, you could make analogous questions for yourself, but there are things like, what could I do to better serve my customers? What could I better do to market my services? What could I do to better streamline my systems? These kinds of things. And I literally write down what comes to my mind. And this is you having an understanding of what you do professionally and giving yourself some prompters. The other way is ex aliquo, out of something.

So I don't know that I've ever created an original thought. We're continually modifying things that have been around for hundreds and thousands of years, the things that we do, it's a copycat world. So if I'm reading something, for example, and I have an opinion, I look at three different prompters for that. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly, so that's true. And I would add this, that's true, except I think something slightly different, that creates a new idea, or no, I don't agree with that and here's why, my rationale and what I think.

So anytime I'm just reading, even for leisure, I've always got a pad and a pen with me, and I'll make a note because that might spark something. So these two techniques are just ways that I come up with ideas. And it's really at the top tier, the visionary tier where you're the most creative, except that if you're 25 years old, you've been working for three years, you could do this. It's about frequency. It isn't about you being a genius, it's about you thinking about it, creating the time in your calendar to do this. Business owners should do this, managers should do this. People in sales and marketing and creative roles should do this, but everybody should do this.

Andrew: Well, and also it goes back to that idea of paying yourself first with time, because you might have a eureka moment here or there, but it does help to sort of set aside time to actually be creative.

Andy:That's exactly right. People are way more creative than they think. It's just they don't feel creative because they don't take the time to be creative. And even if they wanted to take the time, they might not know, "Well, how should I get started?" And that's what those techniques do is they say, "You could just run right off that."

Andrew: That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Andy.

Andy: I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Andrew: That was Andy LaCivita, author of The Zebra Code: A Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Career Skills That Make You a Standout Professional. If you're leaving today's conversation with a new learning to apply to your job search or career, I'd like to invite you to write about it in a review on Apple Podcast. Our team really enjoys reading what you've learned from our shows, plus it helps other people discover our community.

Speaking of community, remember that we're always here backing you up and cheering you on. Connect with me, Andrew Seaman and the Get Hired community on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. In fact, subscribe to my weekly newsletter that's called, you guessed it, Get Hired to get even more information delivered to you every week. You can find those links in the show notes. And of course, don't forget to clip the follow or subscribe button to get our podcast delivered to you every Wednesday because we'll be continuing these conversations on the next episode right here, wherever you like to listen. 

Get Hired is a production of LinkedIn News. This episode was produced by Alexis Ramdaou, Grace Rubin is our associate producer, Assaf Gidron engineered our show, Joe DiGiorgi mixed our show, Dave Pond is head of news production, Enrique Montalvo is our executive producer, Courtney Coupe is the head of original programming for LinkedIn, Dan Roth is the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn, and I'm Andrew Seaman. 

Until next time, stay well, and best of luck.