Jack of All Trades, Master of None
What part of managing your career do you struggle with? Regardless of your career path, at times you will be required to perform a task outside of your comfort zone and skill set.
Being successful in most career paths will involve the following at one time or another: negotiation, conflict resolution, persuasive writing, presentation skills, diplomacy, salesmanship, and administrative tasks.
For most of us, one or more of those skills could be considered a weakness. For those of you that can perform all of those rolls with excellence, give me a call. I’d like to be your business partner.
Even this guy had help negotiating royalties on his comic strips.
Have Your People Call My People
There’s a reason why excellent agents, counselors, arbiters, copywriters, coaches, actors, salespeople, and executive assistants demand top dollar. The services they provide are important and require special talent.
For us to put on each of those hats as the situation demands can be stressful and our lack of ability can cause us to miss opportunities as well. Those professionals are often hired for that reason by entrepreneurs and workers in certain industries.
The Big Idea
Perhaps average people like you and me should make use of such specialists in our career rather than trying to do everything on our own.
For example, you might consider getting someone to help you with your salary negotiations. Maybe if you have a particularly important idea you went to sell internally, someone with a gift for sales can get the idea across more effectively and more powerfully than you could on your own.
It’s not a question of being able to afford those services. We have friends and family that could help us where our strengths are lacking in return for us helping them where they need it. For example, I have a friend who is helping me redesign this site in exchange for me doing some research for her.
The question is whether the idea would be accepted by employers and whether or not it really would be useful. It would require a major paradigm shift, but I think the thought deserves some serious consideration.
Much more to come on this subject later, but for now: What do you think?
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6 responses so far ↓
1 Ryan Paugh // Sep 5, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Hey Chuck:
You example of doing research for a friend in exchange for their web talent is a great example of bartering each other with our strengths.
It’s not always about money, “the you scratch my back, I scratch yours approach” is great. I use it all the time.
It’s the very best way to create a network of people with a variety of strengths.
2 Peggy // Sep 5, 2007 at 10:24 pm
If this were not such a “me” oriented society, the barter system would work out fantastic.
But there are so many people out there who are all about just helping themselves out and, in fact, they use any opportunity they can to point out the other guy’s weaknesses in order to shine the light on their strenghts….
But I do like the concept and actually employed that concept one time. I hated doing month end reports and the other person did not know how to produce the monthly newsletter that he had been tasked to do.
So, I told him of my skills in the newsletter area and he had no problems with month end reports…so we swapped . I don’t think anyone ever found out….
3 Hannah // Sep 6, 2007 at 9:52 am
What? You mean I can’t do it all myself? You mean I have to let go of control just a tiny little bit?
That’s tough for an overachiever like me…
4 Jason // Sep 6, 2007 at 10:13 am
The bartering system works very well sometimes. Similar to your idea of bartering for a website, a friend of mine with his own company is bartering to get his corporate website developed. Two of the co-owners are doing home renovations for a developer in return for what I think has turned out to be an absolutely stellar site.
I think it works better in some situations than in others. As far as negotiations, a lot of companies will not really want to deal with that. However, I see no reason you can’t deal with a friend to have them, say, do some copywriting for a personal ad or cover letter.
5 Fernie // Sep 10, 2007 at 3:16 pm
The idea of a negotiator coming in for you is probably one that won’t go down any time soon within a company at a job you already have - especially for something as plain jane as salary negotiations (which tend to be one-way these days).
One the other hand, it’s totally acceptable and you COULD do it if you were being handed a contract. You could hire a lawyer, and insure negotiation could be worked in.
The easiest method, if you know someone:
You could run through negotiation scenarios with someone you know that is very adept at that sorta thing- this is great if you’re a nervous type, and it prepares you for arguments against your case. Unfortunately, it doesn’t prepare you for dealing with a flat out “no”, or strong personalities.
As an aside, anyone watch 30 Rock? The negotiation episode - where Jack and the lawyer gear up for a good “negoshe” session?
6 Chuck Westbrook // Sep 14, 2007 at 3:21 pm
@Fernie– You’re probably right about negotiators being a bit of a stretch. Several people I know lack the assertiveness and the skills to really pull it off, though, so they wind up missing opportunities. There are other ways around that, but I thought it was a neat thing to ponder at least.
As you point out, it seems that it would be more plausible on the front end, when you first get handed the contract. Still not the norm, probably not the most politically savvy thing to do with a new employer, but I think a paradigm shift in that direction would be good for the average person.
I’ve not seen that episode, but 30 Rock has been growing on me. I’ll keep an eye out for that in the reruns…
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