Sooner or later, most of us will want or need support from others to pursue our goals or bring about change. Maybe it’s asking your manager for a promotion, or talking to your partner about a career step that could significantly impact your time, finances, or location. Whatever your goal, it’s likely the stakes feel high and you want the conversation to go well. So, how can you maximise your chance of succeeding? Quite easily, in fact. And it all comes down to a little bit of planning and preparation (like oh so many things in life, it seems).

Without further ado, here are our top tips to help you nail your next important conversation.

1. Prepare for it, just like you would for an important meeting or presentation.
2. Stand in the shoes of the other. The better you can understand their point of view and perspective, the more you’ll be able to create the opportunity to influence. Ask yourself “what’s in it for them”? How might they benefit from helping or supporting you? Consider what you want them to (a) THINK, (b) FEEL, and (c) DO after speaking to you. Write it down.
3. Think about your intention for the conversation and the impact you want to have. Write it down.
4. If you believe nerves might be a factor, take time to prepare yourself mentally, emotionally and physically. Make sure you’ve slept, eaten, and breathed deeply … By all means pick a “good” day but don’t let this be an excuse to put the chat off entirely!
5. Break it up if you need to. A conversation doesn’t have to have its beginning, middle and end in one sitting. Better to pause and regroup, rather than go too far or off the rails in one sitting.  It’s very reasonable to say “let’s pause this for now, give us both a chance to think a bit more and revisit tomorrow/next week”.
6. Pick a suitable setting. Sitting in the park might be better than making a phone call while you’re on the bus. Going out for coffee might be better than sitting across a desk.
7. Listen actively to what the other person is saying. Make sure they feel heard, even if or particularly if you aren’t in agreement with them. Show that you are listening – build on their ideas, repeat back to check understanding, let them finish their sentences, keep eye contact, and be warm if appropriate.

Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix

It’s time to make time.

If you want to make changes to your career, you’re going to need to spend some time on it. Everyone is super busy, and for most of us free time doesn’t suddenly just land in our laps. So, you’ll need to carve out that time. And, just as importantly, you’ll need to protect and use it wisely.

Where to start? Well, some people look at their week ahead on a Monday morning and book time in with themselves. It might be 20 mins a day before work, during lunchtime, or in the evening. Others might opt for a longer chunk of time, perhaps even on the weekend. Booking time is usually the easy bit. Protecting that time and following through on using it for its intended purpose, that takes some discipline. Not the kind required to climb Mt Everest, but the more accessible kind of discipline that most of us probably already apply in other areas of our lives (especially health and well being).

Often, the key is to mentally prioritise the time you’ve set aside. If you don’t mentally prioritise it, it doesn’t really matter what mechanism you put in place. This is relevant not just for taking a career step but for any change. It’s about paying attention to what’s important, not just what’s urgent. And it’s about knowing what’s important to you rather than being at the mercy of everyone else’s urgent. While no one else is going to do it for you, there are some tools that’ll make things easier. An oldie but a goodie is Stephen Covey’s time management matrix, pictured above. So simple and yet so effective at weeding out time wasters, and – more importantly – helping you focus on more important activities, like career management, that contribute to your purpose, goals and values.

Actively managing your career – in other words, consciously choosing to take control and create and make the most of opportunities – involves five key skills: curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism and risk taking.  Let’s start by looking at the first skill – curiosity.  If you think you might score less than 5 out of 5 for curiosity, then read on.

Never before have we had so much available to us to feed our curiosity, but there is a difference between passively consuming information on Facebook, news feeds and forums, and being purposefully curious.  One of our clients said that their curiosity had dampened over the years as they had become stuck in a rut in their life and job.  On becoming aware of its importance for optimally managing their career, they started putting time aside to purposefully feed their curiosity.  Watching Ted Talks and reading blogs in their areas of interest had a knock on effect where the more they learnt the more they wanted to learn, the more they then wanted to do and an empowering and enriching cycle of being curious, growing and adaptable emerged.

What are you interested in and what time will you put aside to feed and build your curiosity?

In our next blog we’ll look at persistence.