Career Advancement as Contest–Tournament: How to Win

If you work in an organization, you tacitly agreed to participate in a Workplace Tournament for advancement, according to (Olivia) Mandy O’Neill of Wharton and Charles O’Reilly of Stanford. They contend that careers are a series of tournaments in which employees with for promotion to higher organisational levels. The prevalence of implicit workplace contests was validated in […]

Women’s Career Development Model – Individual Action in Career Planning and the Contest and Sponsorship Pathways to Advancement – Part 1 of 2

Ines Wichart of Kenexa High Performance Institute (KHPI), a subsidiary of IBM, proposed a model of women’s career development that focuses on: The individual The immediate work environment The organizational context She identified four behaviors that individuals can execute to increase the likelihood of career advancement: Career planning  Opportunity-seeking, Negotiation Career-building networking; Mentoring-Sponsorship      Skillful […]

Four Career Trajectories: Linear, Expert, Spiral, Transitory

Successful careers can follow forms other than “up or out,” according to Decision Dynamics’ Kenneth Brousseau, Michael Driver of USC, with Lund University’s Kristina Eneroth, and Rikard Larsson. Their “pluralistic career concept framework” classified careers as: –Linear – Traditional upward movement, with variable job role tenure, and motivated by power and achievement. Behavioral competencies include leadership, […]

Do Women Advance in Careers More Slowly than Men?

Men received 15% more promotions than women, according to a Catalyst Benchmarking Survey. Similar numbers of “high potential” women and men were selected for lateral moves to other parts of the business. However, men but not women, received promotions after the career-developing lateral moves. Women’s developmental lateral moves were substitutes for actual career advancement, suggested INSEAD’s Hermina Ibarra […]

Three Approaches to Identifying a Career Path

-*What’s the best way to find your professional path? Career interventions have evolved over the past 70 years from individual differences assessment to occupational development to current emphasis on life planning. Vocational guidance was supplanted by “career education,” focused on fulfilling developmental tasks and adapting to occupational requirements. More recently, “career counseling” built on the preceding approaches by […]

Women’s Career Development Model – Individual Action in Negotiation, Networking-Mentoring-Sponsorship, Skillful Self-Promotion – Part 2 of 2

Part 1 of this post, Women’s Career Development Model – Individual Action in Career Planning and the Contest and Sponsorship Pathways to Advancement – Part 1 of 2,  highlighted Ines Wichart’s model of women’s career development with three levels and 11 components, based on her research as Kenexa High Performance Institute (KHPI), a subsidiary of […]

Reputation Affects Women’s Promotion, Earnings

Men gain greater reputation and job performance benefits from professional connections than women with equivalent or better education and job skills, according to INSEAD’s Lily Fang and Sterling Huang of Singapore Management University Fang and Huang examined U.S. equity analysts’ alumni connections with company senior officers and board members, using an approach pioneered by Harvard’s Lauren […]

Improving Visual Information Processing for Better Performance – Boston Subway Map and More

Transit maps are one example of graphic displays that require the viewer to rapidly process visual information to make quick decisions in often crowded and noisy conditions. Cognitive scientists have studied this type of challenging task load in human performance, but seem not to have been consulted when Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) sponsored […]

“Grit” Rivals IQ and EQ to Achieve Goals

Emotional intelligence has been demonstrated to be a better predictor of achievement and performance than measure of intelligence.  One important component of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is perseverance, the consistent, sustained and focused application of talent and effort over time, University of Pennsylvania’s Angela Duckworth.   She refers to this perseverance and passion for long-term goals […]

Interpersonal Envy in Competitive Organizations and the “Search Inside Yourself” (SIY) Antidote

Workplace envy is rarely discussed, although it is a logical outcome of competition for scarce resources:  Recognition, advancement, power, reputation, compensation in explicit or implicit organizational “tournaments.” National University of Singapore’s Jayanth Narayanan, Kenneth Tai, and Daniel McAllister broached the near-taboo of workplace envy as an inevitable outgrowth of social comparison and related “cognitive dissonance” […]