Core Principles for Achieving Professional Success

You do not have to be the smartest person in the room to be a top performer. Here is the recipe for success: 🥘 I’ve become a top performer in every professional environment I’ve worked in, and it’s not from raw intellect. It is down to 12 essential behaviors - here’s how you can show them: 1/ Get Things Done ↳ Focus on your most important 1-2 tasks each day. ↳ At the end of each day, look at your output. Ask yourself, how much did you get done? Repeat. 2/ Listen Before Speaking ↳ After someone speaks, check you understand what they meant before responding. ↳ People will like you more for it and there will be less miscommunication. 3/ Take Accountability ↳ When you make a mistake, own it. “That was my mistake, I’m sorry” ↳ Then discuss what you learnt from it and what you’ll do differently next time. 4/ Build Relationships with your Colleagues ↳ You will annoy your colleagues at times. Build up goodwill with them by taking an interest in their personal lives. ↳ Make them laugh. Grab coffee. You’re spending more than 50% of your life with these people. 5/ Be Solution Oriented ↳ Don't come to your manager with problems. ↳ Come with your proposed solution and let them react (it makes their life easier). 6/ Think Team Before “Me” ↳ Put the team's goals first. You'll get credit for it. ↳ Help your colleagues. Mentor others. 7/ Manage Upwards ↳ If you are busy, your manager should know. The key is to communicate without sounding complainy. 8/ Show High Integrity ↳ Set the standard for behavior among your colleagues. You will stand out as a leader before you are one. 9/ Be Open Minded ↳ Be willing to change your mind with new information. 10/ Show Humility ↳ Give credit generously to others. ↳ Be willing to be wrong, change your mind, and take feedback. 11/ Love Upskilling ↳ Learn new skills (e.g. using AI) to make you better at your job. ↳ Take online courses to improve your strengths and mitigate weaknesses. 12/ Communicate with Radical Candor ↳ Don't shy away from difficult conversations. ↳ Ask for and give feedback regularly. Be direct and kind. Focus feedback on actions and the consequences. Use these simple behavioral changes to become a world-class performer and level up your career. --- ♻️ Repost this to help your network become top performers. 📌 Want a high-resolution PDF of this? 1. Just follow me Will McTighe 2. Sign up for my free Level Up Community at https://lnkd.in/gKzZUq-b

Success isn't built on shortcuts. It's built on undervalued skills no one teaches. Talent gets attention. But these skills build trust, momentum, and long-term wins. Here are 8 skills top performers practice daily (but rarely talk about): 1. Collaborating without ego → Making it easy for others to work with you is a skill, not a personality trait 2. Speaking the hard truth kindly → Delivering honesty with respect builds real trust 3. Asking great questions → Curiosity moves projects forward faster than pretending to know everything 4. Following through without reminders → Execution is a skill. So is not needing to be micromanaged 5. Keeping conversations solution-focused → Drama kills momentum. The best people skip it 6. Showing up consistently, not occasionally → Reliability is rare. It’s also what builds reputations 7. Running clean, efficient meetings → Protecting everyone’s time is a leadership skill, whether you have the title or not 8. Staying humble, even when you’re great at what you do → No one wants to work with someone who’s always proving they’re the smartest in the room Want to turn these skills into muscle memory? Meet the Quiet Power Protocol. A 4-step process to build trust, credibility, and results. 1️⃣ Cultivate Interpersonal Ease → Listen more than you talk → Make others feel smarter, not smaller 💡 Teams with psychological safety perform 37% better (Google) 2️⃣ Demonstrate Radical Honesty & Integrity → Say hard things early → Own your mistakes without flinching 💡 High-trust teams are 50% more productive (Deloitte) 3️⃣ Adopt a Growth Mindset → “I don’t know” becomes “I don’t know yet” → Use feedback as fuel, not friction 💡 Growth-minded leaders deliver 40% better outcomes (Stanford) 4️⃣ Be Consistently Reliable & Focused → Master the boring stuff → Choose progress over perfection 💡 Consistency predicts long-term success 3x better than talent (HBR) Underrated skills become unfair advantages. If you're willing to put in the reps. ♻️ Repost to share this with someone who makes every team better. 🔔 Follow Nick Lalonde, CFP® for daily frameworks that work.

Friends, I've frequently been posed a fascinating question about careers recently. To benefit everyone, I'd like to share my perspective The recurring query goes something like this: "Amir, what do you believe is the cornerstone of a successful career, something you might not have been aware of at the outset?" In my academic years – high school, college, and graduate school – I believed success pivoted on top grades, class rankings, or even intra-class networking. Wrong In the nascent stages of my career, I was under the impression that success equated to sheer hard work. Incorrect again Mid-career, I leaned towards factors like presentation skills, professional prowess, and a tendency to claim credit for achievements. Still off the mark Later, I surmised it was about forging numerous professional relationships and mastering workplace networking. Again, not the essence While the above elements have their merits, they're often necessary but not sufficient Reflecting on my life experiences, the business literature I've delved into, my formal education, and observations of varied career trajectories, I discerned a pattern among the truly successful. These individuals: *Efficiently pinpoint a few advocates (1-3) in each organization *Ensure these advocates will ardently support their work *Persuade these champions to back them consistently *Identify and align with individuals known for their extensive networking prowess and influential career reach and willingness to use it for others *Distinguish between genuine supporters and talkers, not wasting professional time (social time is different) on those relationships *Persistently replicate this across different organizations and departments Usually, the success of many can be traced back to a handful of people – mentors, advisors, or managers – who fervently vouched for them. Those advocated for might not necessarily represent the most talented or affable, but successful individuals master the art of building and nurturing these relationships nonetheless It's imperative to discern genuine supporters from fair-weather allies. Many seemingly promising relationships end up as fleeting encounters with little long-term value. The art of this discernment blends judgment, emotional intelligence, adaptability, and an unwavering commitment to one's authentic self Lastly, the capacity for repeated relationship-building is crucial. As many professional connections reset over time, it becomes essential to continuously win over a few influential allies at every phase. Over the span of a career, these few pivotal relationships can provide an unshakable foundation, acting like a resilient spider web that multiplies in strength and reach People who seem to float from opportunity to opportunity are often seen as being very lucky or fortunate. They are for having that fate. But mastery of the starred points above, supported by other traits and a lot of effort, is what really makes such people appear lucky