Career Strategies

"TIPS FOR SUCCESS"
by Rhonda Adams Medina*

In order to move forward in your career, some of the following strategies should be considered.

Determine What Success Looks Like to You. In order to meet this challenge, you have to really know yourself and you have to be willing to accept the notion that traditional indicators of success may, in the end, hold very little relevance to you. Understand that your definition of success will most likely change as your phases in life change. Trust me, what "success" meant to me as a single woman is very different from what it means to me as a wife and mother of four. If my ideas had not changed, I might not have found such incredible professional happiness in my current position. This professional happiness is almost completely formed by the flexibility it affords me as a mommy. The key is to be open and flexible to change.

Be Your Own Advocate. You can collect mentors like some folks collect debt, but never cede your professional future to anybody. Your boss is not your mother and even the kindest of supervisors have about fifty things at any given moment that are more important to them than how to further your career. You have to prepare, campaign, advertise and sell your way into the assignments you need to reach the position that you desire. Human Resources won't do it, your mentor won't do it, and your boss sure won't do it. You are a lawyer - advocate for yourself!.

Don't Let Your Ego Get In the Way of Your Success. Being your own advocate does not mean being unwilling to do the unglamorous work; it just means that you know your market value and you won't settle for less indefinitely. As an example, after I graduated from law school, I spent a few months working for a boss in the development department of a motion picture production company who, for some inexplicable reason, asked me to get her coffee everyday. I always ran to the diner and ran back, making sure the coffee was exactly as she liked it. Little by little I started getting more interesting (and appropriate) work to do. I was reading and commenting on scripts and collaborating with some of the most dynamic creators in the industry. One day, after I was preparing to leave the company, I confronted her. Had she just been hazing me or was there a method to her humiliating madness? She told me that it was all a test--if she couldn't trust me to get her coffee properly, how could she trust me to do more important tasks? Sadistic? Probably. But the words have stayed with me throughout my career. Before you try to be a Big Wilhelmina, learn how to make even the most mundane tasks sparkle.

In the end, you will find that you will move closer to obtaining the right balance between your professional and personal goals for achievement.

*Rhonda Adams Medina is Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Nickelodeon in New York City.