I came across this very inspiring read on career change. ‘You shouldn’t remain chained to what you think your career path has to be.’ It is so true. It is never too late to change jobs, roles, departments even industries. It is never too late to learn new things, expand our skill set, develop our potential, explore new sectors.

We don’t have to be stuck in a career we don’t feel is right for us any more. The studies you chose or your parents chose for you, don’t have to dictate what you should be doing now or your whole life.

The world changes and we change along with it. Our encounters, our successes, our failures, our personal and professional experiences change us, change what we expect of ourselves, our goals, our ambitions, our dreams.

Where we are now might be different from where you thought you’d be. But nothing is impossible and any change is still possible should you decide it. As we get older, we realise one crucial thing : that time is running out …As the most precious asset, let’s not waste it on the wrong career, doing the wrong job instead let’s chase that dream job and be truly fulfilled!

The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question, “How do you leverage a non-traditional background in a new role?” is written by Jeremy Roche, president and CEO of FinancialForce.

So many of us enter the working world with a single-pane view of what is expected of us after we get that coveted diploma. You studied medicine, so you must be a doctor. You went to law school, so you must be a lawyer. But it’s never too late or too early to try something new, whether in your own field or elsewhere.

In the span of my 25-plus year career, curiosity and an open mind have given me the opportunity to hold a variety of roles across different industries and departments. I was a systems engineer early on, a sales executive, a CTO, and am now a CEO. I have a background in law, so for a time I even served as FinancialForce’s legal counsel, while also managing IT.

Because this is the path I have taken, I have a soft spot for my own employees who want to take a risk and move to a new role. Despite the degree you earn (or don’t), you can always find a way to pivot your career and the kinds of roles you take on. Follow your instincts. You don’t need to remain chained to what you think your career path has to be.

I’ll be honest, though: Moving into a new role with a non-traditional background isn’t easy. But if you’re ambitious and curious, it can be both personally and professionally rewarding. The twists and turns, the challenges, and the people who helped me along the way has made it worthwhile. Who knows what the next 25 years will bring, but in the meantime, here are a few things I’ve learned that’ll help you take your career in a new direction without losing momentum:

Learn everything you can about the new role

If you’re thinking about accepting a new role in a department or industry that’s foreign to you, it’s time to learn everything you possibly can. Look for books, blogs, and conferences that cover the new role or industry that can inform you about the market landscape and its terminology. Learn by doing: Shadow someone in a similar role. Mirror their every move, ask questions, and soak up their knowledge.

Identify transferrable skills

Just because you’re transitioning roles doesn’t mean you’re starting from scratch. You likely already have a base of skills you’ve learned in previous roles to draw from. I went from CTO to CEO — executive positions that have very different responsibilities and skill sets — but I was able to transfer the knowledge I had about how to deal with technology and pain points and apply that to other departments within the organization.

Ask yourself what hard or soft skills you currently have that could apply to this new role. What experiences from your last job could be spun to help you succeed today? This will not only help you thrive in your role, but if you’re in the interviewing process, it may help make a case to get buy-in at your company — or from a hiring manager — on why you’d be a good fit.

Be willing to go back basics

I can’t express enough how important it is to throw your ego out the door. When you jump into a new career or position, there is a 100% chance you will make mistakes. No matter how much experience you have and how high up the ranks you were, when you start a new job, you will have to prove yourself all over again.

And while that might sound daunting, you have to stay positive. Embrace the unknown and be willing to go back to the basics of learning new skills. This experience can build empathy, truly enhancing your leadership skills in the long run.

Seek out advocates and mentors

Changing careers can be much easier if you have an advocate and a mentor who can help you. I’ve been lucky enough to have bosses and colleagues in the industry that I owe much of my professional growth to. Seek out guidance from someone you want to learn from, such as a manager who can refer you for a new job, or a colleague who can help you transition more easily to a new role. It’s much easier to make the switch inside an organization if you have the referral of someone who’s respected at the company. A mentor with experience in this new role — or maybe even someone who’s made the same — can help develop the skills you need to succeed.

Be patient

If your goal is to change roles at your current company, you may need to be patient while they find someone who can fill your previous role. You may even need to be involved in finding this person and training them.

Once you do kick off in your new role, make sure you manage your own expectations. It will take awhile before you feel like you’re truly succeeding in your new position. There will be unforeseen challenges and learning curves you didn’t anticipate. But remember your very first job: It wasn’t a walk in the park right off the bat, was it? A successful career transition takes time. If it’s a move you believe in, it will be well worth the work you put into it.

Both the individual employee and the company stand to benefit from embracing career flexibility. For employers, providing flexibility in roles and letting people try different parts of the business prevents them from leaving because they get to learn something new. For employees, realizing you work at a company at which you can take control of your own career may be the best motivation you could ever hope for. If you stay curious, you could end up somewhere completely different than you imagined, but completely fulfilling.

Source : https://insiders.fortune.com/5-tips-for-landing-a-job-you-didnt-go-to-school-for-951ee1e100a0?xid=soc_socialflow_linkedin_FORTUNE#.pb90q7zde

My wife and I just got back from a week-long getaway to Antigua. It was our first vacation together that we didn’t bring our son, Logan, with us (thank goodness for in-laws). It was an awesome trip, which entailed doing a whole lot of nothing. Our days consisted mostly of lying on the beach, hanging out at the cocktail bar, kayaking in the Atlantic and playing beach volleyball. It was perfect (we stayed at the St. James Resort, and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a relaxing, beach vacation). I came back from this vacation recharged and more motivated than ever to get to work…

For obvious reasons, I love vacations. Who doesn’t? Exploring new lands, eating great food and sleeping in are all perks of vacations. But for more than just those reasons, vacations provide tremendous value for my businesses, and I strongly believe that annual getaways should be mandatory for entrepreneurs.

As an entrepreneur you should never regard a vacation as an expense. You should consider a vacation as a vital investment in yourself, and your business.

Here’s why:

You Deserve It

Being an entrepreneur, never mind just dealing with everything life throws your way, is taxing. I love being an entrepreneur, don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t want it any other way, but it can be exhausting. Putting in 60 to 70 hours per week is normal for entrepreneurs, and it needs to be rewarded, otherwise what the hell is the point of working so hard?

If you don’t invest in a vacation every year, you’re certain to burn out, which can lead to potential health problems, and at the very least, it will negatively impact your earnings.

Step away from your venture for at least one week per year to go on vacation. Stepping away for a long weekend simply isn’t ‘long’ enough. It takes about three days for most people to settle in to vacation mode and truly start to relax, so a week must be the minimum duration of your vacation.

Vacations are about relaxing and enjoying things you love. For me, golf is one of my favorite past times. Enjoying a round at the exceptional, Riviera Maya Golf Club in Mexico.

Vacations help clear your mind; they allow you to catch up on sleep, and recharge your battery so that when you return from your getaway you are fired up, and hit the ground running again.

Going on a vacation allows to you to enjoy the fruits of your labor, and that, my friends, is paramount.

 

Disconnect

One major reason to get away for a week is to go offline, so to speak. As entrepreneurs we are way too connected in our day-to-day. Whether it be receiving hundreds of emails, phone calls, processing orders online or texting back and forth with employees, always staying connected to one glowing box or another is not good for us.

Now, I know it is vital for us to be connected in this day and age, but you must shut it down, or at least put a limit on it, when on vacation.

If you’re like me, and conduct most of your business online, set a reasonable limit of ‘connected time’ while on vacation. My limit (largely imposed by my wife), is 20 minutes per day. That allows me to make sure the shop isn’t burning down back home, and get back to enjoying my vacation. Don’t use this 20 minutes to email your employees and clients, just use it to make sure everything is okay so you can rest comfortably on the beach with mojito in hand.

 

Your Mind is Clear and Creative When Relaxed

 

It’s a fact; when you are relaxed, your mind thinks clearly and creatively. Many of the best and more profitable ideas/innovations I’ve conjured for my businesses came to me while on vacation, in moments of complete relaxation, when I wasn’t distracted by the everyday hustle and bustle.

 

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”

— Alan Alda

 

 

Make Great Connections

On this last vacation I met a fellow entrepreneur while playing beach volleyball. Once I learn of someone else being an entrepreneur, I immediately want to find out more about their story, and how they got started. I noticed he had a wedding ring on, but didn’t see his family anywhere, so I asked him what brought him to Antigua. He told me it was a regular spot he and his family went on vacation, and on his last visit to the island he had met a local businessman who was looking to start a rental car company.

This guy owned his own venture capital firm back in Toronto, and funded startups his entire entrepreneurial career. Anyway, from what I gathered, he and this local businessman had hit it off and he was now in Antigua to launch their new rental car business, which would be the only rental car company on the island that provided GPS for free (that is a big deal considering the island had very few street lights and virtually no street signs). He had been the financier of the startup, while the local businessman would be running the operations.

This fellow entrepreneur was in Antigua for the week meeting with some big airliners such as British Airways and Virgin to try and work out marketing deals and travel packages. He and I ended up hanging out quite a bit, and by the end of his trip he had closed a deal with a major airliner. Furthermore, he and I may be working together on a separate venture as it appears we have synergies between two of our businesses.

This example just goes to show that if you keep an open mind, have an eye for opportunity and enjoy meeting new people, vacations can even end up making you a lot of money.

 

Time to Read

One of my favorite things about beach vacations is that it gives me ample amounts of time to read. I absolutely love to read. It triggers my creativity, and I believe being an avid reader is essential for entrepreneurs. It keeps you up to date with what’s happening in the world, improves your marketing tactics, provides great entertainment, allows you to reflect on what’s important in life, and opens your mind to how other people think (all important for entrepreneurs to improve their businesses).

I work in the publication business. And in order to be a great writer, one must be a great reader. On this last vacation, I finished three books, two of which I highly recommend.

 

 

The Health Benefits

Stress can have profound negative effects on our bodies, especially on men. One of the methods doctors use to test healthy testosterone levels in men is in relation to their cortisol levels. If cortisol is high, testosterone can’t be.

Why does this matter?

High natural levels of testosterone have been shown to reduce the risk of cancer in men, as well as disease – like heart disease – while also lowering the likelihood of depression. In short, if you’re stressed, your body isn’t working like it should, and all other areas of your life will be negatively effected, including your ability to focus and work, as a result.

As for women, cortisol also wreaks havoc on their bodies from a hormonal standpoint, as well as their energy. For both sexes, cortisol – a hormone released when we experience stress – needs to be kept in check, and one of the best ways to do this is by taking a vacation, unplugging, and removing yourself from those things that make stress your constant companion.

 

As entrepreneurs, we tend to throw everything we have at our businesses. It’s just our nature, and it’s not always a bad thing. However, this can negatively impact our personal life and self-improvement. We need to constantly seek balance in our lives. Vacations give us the opportunity to reflect on what’s important, spend time with our loved ones, recharge so that we can be better entrepreneurs, and live a life of fulfillment, not desire. Vacations are a vitally important investment entrepreneurs need to make every year.

 

Source : http://capitalistcreations.com/why-every-entrepreneur-needs-an-annual-vacation/

 

I have recently started learning Italian. It has always been a dream. French is my mother tongue and I studied both English and German at school. I have to admit my German is now rotten and I will need a proper immersion to be able to speak the way I used to back in high school ! Though Italian is not part of the 6 top languages for global – minded CEOs as per the article below, I am very keen on mastering that language.

Learning a new language from scratch teaches you 3 amazing things.

1 – Humility. You are a beginner again in something and you sound at times quite dumb when you mispronounce words and confuse some expressions. But you keep going because the more you learn, the better you become, the more confident you are and eventually you will get there.

2- Persistence. It teaches you not to give up and keep going. As I said the more you learn, the better you become. It is as simple as that.Hard work and personal belief get you wherever you want.

3 – Cultural awareness. Learning a new language opens a door to invaluable knowledge of a particular country, customs, ways of thinking and seeing the world. So what are you waiting for to take up  a foreign language class?

The 6 Top Languages Global-Minded CEOs Should Know

During a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session earlier this year, Microsoft founder and prolific philanthropist Bill Gates said his biggest regret in life is that he speaks only English.

Not exactly what one would expect to hear from the billionaire founder of one of the largest tech corporations in the world.

Gates’s insightful admission comes on the heels of Mark Zuckerberg’s impressive demonstration of semi-fluent Chinese during a Q&A with Tsinghua University students in Beijing last October. By learning Chinese, Zuckerberg clearly demonstrated that mastering a local language is a key step toward developing deeper business relationships and winning the hearts and minds of target markets — and he’s right.

Here, the languages global-minded CEOs should be learning.

Related: The 3 Essentials of Expanding Into Other Countries
1. Spanish

Of all the languages in the world, Spanish is the language our online translation agency works with the most, reflecting an enormous market the world over. Aside from the huge potential of almost all of South and Central America with emerging economic powerhouses such as Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela — not to mention the significant market in Spain itself — learning Spanish is worth it if only to reach the Hispanic speaking community in the U.S., whose purchasing power is already more than a trillion dollars and growing.

As opposed to its spoken dialects, Spanish written forms are more uniform than other languages which makes them simpler to learn. As a Romance language, with the same letters and roots as English, you’ll probably twist your tongue a lot less than when learning Chinese.
2. Portuguese

Portuguese has already become the fourth most-translated language at our company, reflecting an exponential rise in recent years. It’s obviously not Portugal we’ve got our eyes on here, but rather Brazil, which is quickly transforming from emerging market to one of the world’s richest nations. With a huge population, tons of natural resources and a growing tech community, learning Portuguese will go a long way to penetrating the intricacies of the local business culture. Plus, imagine the fun speaking the local tongue come Carnival time.
3. Chinese

There are dozens of different languages and dialects spoken in China, and while Mandarin is by far the most widely spoken — in fact, it’s the most prevalent language in the world with 1.1 billion native speakers — other Chinese dialects are spoken by hundreds of millions of people.

Wu, for example, used in the financial hub of Shanghai, is spoken by more than 80 million people — that’s a potential market the size of Germany! Depending on what area of China you’re targeting and the fact that written dialects in the country are basically uniform, learning Wu, Jin, Min or Yue will certainly be worth the effort.
4. Russian

Russia has a market nearly 150 million strong, seemingly endless natural resources and a burgeoning IT sector. Plus, the language is also spoken to varying degrees in post-Soviet states (for almost 300 million speakers in all) — many important emerging economies themselves — making it number nine on our most-translated list. Knowing Russian will go a long way toward winning the trust of local business leaders. And you can read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky in the original.
5. Arabic

Hundreds of millions of people around the world speak Arabic — the fifth most-spoken language in the world — so it comes as no surprise that Arabic is number 10 on our list. The Arab world, with a growing online culture, doesn’t have its own Amazon or Alibaba, making it a market with huge potential, not to mention the deep petro-economies of the region. Executives who speak their language are going to have a leg up in this cross-continental market. The drawback? With dozens of distinct varieties of spoken Arabic, choosing the right one will be a daunting process.
6. German

German is the second most-translated language at our agency, reflecting the country’s status as Europe’s largest economy and one of strongest economies in the world. Enough said.

Learning a foreign language may be a major investment of time and energy, but speaking even a rudimentary level of a country’s native tongue goes a long way to breaking down walls.

Source : https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244233

Here’s a great article from Harvard Business Review that makes the distinction between a mere manager and a leader.

Peter Drucker once said ‘ Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things’.

Vineet Nayar’s own definition is quite spot on too.

A young manager accosted me the other day. “I’ve been reading all about leadership, have implemented several ideas, and think I’m doing a good job at leading my team. How will I know when I’ve crossed over from being a manager to a leader?” he wanted to know.

I didn’t have a ready answer and it’s a complicated issue, so we decided to talk the next day. I thought long and hard, and came up with three tests that will help you decide if you’ve made the shift from managing people to leading them.

Counting value vs Creating value. You’re probably counting value, not adding it, if you’re managing people. Only managers count value; some even reduce value by disabling those who add value. If a diamond cutter is asked to report every 15 minutes how many stones he has cut, by distracting him, his boss is subtracting value.

By contrast, leaders focuses on creating value, saying: “I’d like you to handle A while I deal with B.” He or she generates value over and above that which the team creates, and is as much a value-creator as his or her followers are. Leading by example and leading by enabling people are the hallmarks of action-based leadership.

Circles of influence vs Circles of power. Just as managers have subordinates and leaders have followers, managers create circles of power while leaders create circles of influence.

The quickest way to figure out which of the two you’re doing is to count the number of people outside your reporting hierarchy who come to you for advice. The more that do, the more likely it is that you are perceived to be a leader.

Leading people vs Managing work. Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. Leadership refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control.

In India, M.K. Gandhi inspired millions of people to fight for their rights, and he walked shoulder to shoulder with them so India could achieve independence in 1947. His vision became everyone’s dream and ensured that the country’s push for independence was unstoppable. The world needs leaders like him who can think beyond problems, have a vision, and inspire people to convert challenges into opportunities, a step at a time.

I encouraged my colleague to put this theory to the test by inviting his team-mates for chats. When they stop discussing the tasks at hand — and talk about vision, purpose, and aspirations instead, that’s when you will know you have become a leader.

Vineet Nayar is the founder of the Sampark Foundation based in Delhi, and the former CEO of HCL Technologies. He is the author of Employees First, Customers Second. Follow Vineet at twitter.com/vineetnayar.

Source : https://hbr.org/2013/08/tests-of-a-leadership-transiti