Board of Advisors // Keys to Success
Similar to other nominated CareerTruth advisors, you likely enjoy serving as a mentor and making an impact on the lives of others. However, we know that it can be challenging to find the time. For many of us, the desire to give comes with challenges regarding to how many people, and how often.
With CareerTruth, you don’t have to choose. You can serve as a meaningful part of the lives of whom you advise and further your reach by engaging with them in an organized, on-demand fashion. That means less logistical planning and more time mentoring.
What is CareerTruth?
- CareerTruth is a first-of-its-kind career planning and management platform. It serves as one centralized location to capture, document, and reflect on one’s career to date while focusing on do-able action steps to move dreams and goals forward.
What is a Board of Advisor?
- When people refer to “checking in with my Board of Advisors”, they’re thinking of a select few people in their professional life that they can turn to in order to run ideas by and receive advice and support.
- Similar to how a company would have a Board of Directors used for strategic guidance and sponsorship, CareerTruth has included a Board of Advisor (BoA) feature that allows for easy sharing of goals and priorities from those you advise and a streamlined way to provide support and accountability from the Advisor. This makes it easy for an individual to run their career – the business of their life – more like an actual business.
- The BoA feature in CareerTruth can turn a relationship that might look like breakfast-together-a-few-times-a-year to one step deeper, with sharing priorities and specific goals someone you advise would like help with and an easy way to facilitate relational support around this.
- This is engaging and energizing for both parties; those you advise get to add fuel onto their goals, and an Advisor gets to maximize and scale their influence and impact.
What goes into being on someone’s “Board of Advisors”?
- As an Advisor in CareerTruth, you can be asked to help with two (maximum) goals for each person you advise. You would be “assigned” a specific goal to help drive support for them attaining it.
What does supporting a goal of someone you advise entail?
- Accountability: Accountability simply means asking about their progress on the goal, and offering any support or help with achieving it (sharing resources, making an introduction, brainstorming ideas, overcoming mental blocks, etc.)
- Encouragement and Support: Sometimes all someone needs is someone they trust and admire to tell them they’re going to be okay. As an Advisor, you can call out their natural giftings, areas they’ve clearly grown in, what you admire about their work and effort, and validate how they are balancing their priorities.
How much time is expected of me as an Advisor?
- The relationship you develop with someone you advise is what you make of it. Interactions can range from a few minutes a month using the chat feature in CareerTruth to meeting quarterly to intentionally exchange ideas. The chat function within CareerTruth makes it easy to keep a streamlined conversation going with those you advise and the platform allows for one view of their current professional priorities. This enables richer, more meaningful conversations and insights as well as efficient ways to support. You can stay engaged in someone’s career without having to “do coffee” all the time.
Keys to Success for Working with Someone You Advise in CareerTruth
Learn Their Top Values
- Insight into these Values will show you what they deem important, their intrinsic motivators, and what they view as success. If they are living by their Values, they are living an aligned life.
- Don’t be afraid to suggest any other Values you see as true for them (e.g., their resume has several nonprofits and causes listed, so “Meaning” might be motivating to them). They might not have the word or descriptor for their truths yet, or they are choosing values they *think* they should be choosing. (“These would be values that a Marketing Director would live by…right?”)
Explore Their Purpose; Orient Towards Others
- In CareerTruth, Purpose = your gifts in service. Your talents, skills, effort, labor, in service of another. Within CareerTruth individuals will write a Purpose Statement that is expected to evolve as they gain insights into their giftings. Feel free to explore with them.
Support Their Growth Through Their Goals
- When goals are tied to Values and Purpose, they are more likely to be accomplished.
- Individuals are asked to define two personal and two professional goals for themselves. When you are “assigned” a goal from someone you advise (that they are specifically choosing you to support them with), consider an appropriate cadence to check in and set a reminder to do so.
Drive Accountability by Providing Support
- Initial support can look like offering ideas, introductions, resources, and/or examples. It also can look like validation and encouragement.
- Ongoing support can be as simple as, “Checking in… how’s this going? Let me know what I can do to support – I admire your commitment to this!” A check in of any kind will act as accountability.
- Being assigned a goal is not meant to add work to your plate, or to imply you have to hold the hand of someone you advise every step of the way. The objective is always for someone you advise to take ownership of their own growth and progress.
- By inviting you to support them in the goal, they know your eyes on it will alone drive accountability for them. You “accepting” the goal to support alone increases their ability to achieve it simply because you are aware of it.