When I worked as an executive search consultant for over thirty years, I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting thousands of outstanding business leaders, including also many talented young people in the early stages of their careers, the future top-level business leaders.
At the beginning of the executive search process, the main focus was on finding candidates, then generating interest and then, when they were sitting in my room, assessing the person concerned. When I started my career as a search consultant and still had little experience in the field, I perhaps paid more attention to the person’s achievements and track record, i.e. their CV, when considering the factors behind their skills and success. And, of course, this is something one should pay attention to. These are very important things. However, there are also other factors contributing to their success that you should pay attention to.
After getting more experience and having met many different business leaders over the years, with this experience and perspective, I was able to look at and analyse things more deeply and in a more multidimensional way. I realised that for virtually all successful business leaders, their attitude, ambition and motivation had been essential success factors, if not the most important success factors in their careers. Of course, you need a lot more to be successful, but if these three success factors are wrong, the rest probably is not of so much use anymore. I even began to think that without the right attitude, ambition and motivation, their careers and CVs that now look great might never even have seen the light of day. Together, these three factors are the very foundation of success in work and career, from which everything else springs.
If you only knew how to look, one could see that this was also very evident in the talented young executive wannabees who were still in the early stages of their careers. Whenever I met someone who was still without any significant work experience but where it was almost immediately evident that this person was a potential future top business leader, their attitude, ambition and motivation for the job and career they were pursuing was very evident. They could clearly explain what they wanted and why. Without exception, they were all very friendly, polite, well-behaving, and businesslike, with a healthy degree of self-confidence but simultaneously standing firmly on the ground. No one had any over-ambitious, unrealistic career ambitions. It was as if you could see that this guy had everything just right. During my long career, I had the pleasure of watching closely how many of these young talents developed over the years and, step by step, rose to the very top of the corporate world.
Attitude, ambition and motivation are, in my mind, the three most important success factors you can bring to the table in a career change situation. In practice, they impact everything in life, but they impact work life particularly. In fact, I feel that these three factors together are the very foundation for one’s success in work life, but if I had to choose one success factor above the others, it would be attitude. I think the right attitude is like a master key that will help you open the doors you want to open in the work life and then get in. Anything missing or wrong here, and there may be problems ahead.
When entering a career change situation concerning a new job position, the candidate always presents an evidence-based CV, their track record to the hiring party. A rightly so. This is what one should do. However, no CV alone can compensate for the candidate demonstrating the right attitude, ambition and motivation towards the new job in question and work life in general. These three factors should be visible in everything you do: in your speech, in your presentations, in the core message you want to convey about yourself, in your body language, in your eye contact, in your smile, in everything you do. If you fail in this respect, particularly in the job interview, this will be a showstopper. Your CV will likely not save you.
Because a CV, no matter how good, no matter how full of achievements, is still history, about what has happened in the past. Attitude, ambition and motivation again predict the candidate’s behaviour, ambition, goals, desires, motivation, and actions in the future. Having the right attitude, ambition, and motivation may, in fact, in some situations, even compensate for experience and skills. Not all of us are yet experienced executives. Some are still young wannabes on their way upward and who do not yet have an extensive CV and track record or skill set to show. Here, demonstrating the right attitude, ambition, and motivation makes all the difference and can, at best, make potential compensate for experience and skills. This possibility can, of course, in some situations, concern anyone, experienced or inexperienced.
Attitude
Attitude refers to a person’s mindset and how they look at work life and life in general. Your attitude determines how you deal with and approach things, people, situations, your job, challenges, successes and disappointments. It impacts your behaviour, decision-making and actions. If we look at the extremes, we can have a positive or a negative attitude. Simply put, people with a positive attitude tend to be more motivated and open to new ideas and learning and have, as a general starting point, a positive approach towards work, people and life in general. A person with a negative attitude tends to see things negatively and in black or white. When something goes wrong, the starting point is black. A positive attitude has the potential to deal with anything. A negative attitude may stop you before you even get a chance to start.
Ambition
When having a desire to make a career, your ambition is the factor or feeling that drives you forward and makes you set goals and strive for success. Your ambition is the very driving force behind your wish to improve and grow, to become better professionally, to seek new opportunities and to advance in your career. However, ambition does not always have to mean a must-have desire to advance ever higher in one’s career. It can also be e.g. about you striving to do your job as well as possible and with high integrity.
Motivation
To be able to achieve success, you must be motivated by the job you have. Motivation, most simply put, is about how and why you like, enjoy, and feel motivated by your job and what you are doing as opposed to disliking what you do. A strong positive motivation has the potential to enable people to surpass themselves in their work. A continuous demotivation impacts job performance negatively, and eventually also the career opportunities if this feeling follows you from job to job.
The hiring party will want to know where you stand on these three factors and how they correspond to the new job, its tasks, goals, challenges and the team and company in question. They are the most decisive factors when deciding who will become the winning candidate.