How To Have A Great Career The Frontier Group Patrick Lynch - President

About The Presenter Patrick Lynch is the President of The Frontier Group, an outplacement, career management, talent development firm with offices in Atlanta and Charlotte. Prior to The Frontier Group Patrick had senior marketing and sales positions with leading consumer product companies such as Georgia Pacific, Kao Brands, Kraft/General Foods and The HON Company. Patrick is also involved with several non-profits: he Co-Chairman with the SHRM 21 st Century Leaders program, an intern mentor with the non- profit Year Up and a Board Member for Special Pops, a non-profit that offers an adaptive tennis program specifically designed to share the lifetime sport of tennis with children and adults with intellectual disabilities.

What Defines A Great Career? Over ten years ago two well known executive recruiters - James Citrin and Richard Smith – wrote a great book “The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers”. In the book they list three elements common in great careers: 1.Playing to your strengths 2.Setting your passions free 3.Fitting comfortably with your workplace culture.

The 5 Patterns Of Extraordinary Careers From their research the authors then saw five common patterns for people who had great careers Five Patterns 1.Understanding The Value of You 2.Practice Benevolent Leadership 3.Overcome The Permission Paradox 4.Differentiate Using The 20/80 Principle 5.Find The Right Fit (strengths, passions and people)

Pattern 1: Understand The Value of You Successful professionals recognize that their total value goes beyond the monetary and includes the intellectual capital and experiences that they have gained over the years. They recognize that opportunities that will strengthen their experience represent long term and lasting value.

Pattern 2: Practice Benevolent Leadership Contrary to the belief that career success is a result of personal effort and doing better than your competitors in the organization, successful professionals gravitate to others that are talented and learn to share and collaborate. They put self-interest behind in order to promote the goals of the team. They are willing to overly share credit and take most of the blame

Pattern 3: Overcome the Permission Paradox The permission paradox is where “without experience, it is virtually impossible to get the desired job, but without the job, it is impossible to gain the requisite experience”. There are two types of permission – direct and implied. Direct permission is where you ask and are granted permission to do something. Implied permission is where you assume permission is granted because you have not been told that you cannot do something. Successful professionals learn to use the power of implied permission to redefine their job responsibilities and expand the scope. If the professional performs well in the expanded role the direct permission or promotion will follow

Pattern 4: Differentiate Using the 20/80 Principle The 20/80 rule dictates that 20% of the effort generates 80% of the results. It then stands to reason that you will want to focus on this area so that you can generate the greatest value. The challenge comes in finding ways to navigate how to deliver on the remaining 20% of results that are created by less strategic/mundane activity. Successful professionals learn how to best allocate their time so that they get the important things done and do not under deliver on the lower impact areas.

The last pattern is finding the right fit in terms of the responsibilities of the position, the culture of the company and doing things that will grow and excite you. This means that you look at your career progression as a series of experiences that you can grow from rather than a ladder where you gain more responsibility. By focusing on experiences that are built on their core values successful professionals create longer lasting and more fulfilling careers that are less likely to derail. Pattern 5 – Find the Right Fit

Summary Having a great career is more than being rich or famous. Great careers allow you to practice, develop and grow the set of skills and experiences to help you do what you want to do the most – whether it is a CEO or a teacher.

Questions or Comments? Thanks for sharing your time with me today. Here is my contact information if you have any questions or comments: Office: x 313 Cell: