Finding meaning in career

$231,000 a minute. That's how much Jeff Bezos earns. Let's put it this way: every minute, Bezos makes roughly 4x what the average millennial makes in a year. The Amazon founder and CEO - the world's richest man right now is on track to become the world's first trillionaire. 

Unless you are independently wealthy, most people spend many of their waking hours in an office, at home, or outdoors, doing work. 

Through the "trying twenties" all too often, we try this, then we try that - a mixture of hope and guesswork. Jobs and relationships become a series of learning experiences as life doesn't work out as we might have hoped or planned. If only we had known then what we know now...

There is no best career - only the best one for us at a given time of our life. There are both satisfied and dissatisfied people in medicine, plumbing, hairstyling, law, sales, teaching and every other line of work. Life is an experiment. 

In my own search for a career, I travelled a winding path. Fresh from graduation, I was a computer operator for two years, until I was offered a sales position. Professionally, it felt as if I was leading a charmed life - three times award-winning sales person - until I decided  to switch industry and sold insurance. I did that for two years and joined the hospitality industry. I worked at a combo of resorts, convention hotels and city hotels. It wasn't until 2005, at age forty, when I relocated to Singapore. Then my life changed considerably. I worked in large 1,200 rooms hotel and even spent four years doing turnaround projects and business development. Then seven years ago, I took up a leadership above-property role. At last, I had found my career and calling. 

They say it takes ten years to become an "overnight success." In my case it took twenty five years of experimentation and uncertainty. So what I share is not abstract theories. I've been in the trenches; I've done the soul-searching, experienced the disorientation and doubt. On the quest to find our career and calling, we're like driving in the dark - we can see only as far as our headlights illuminate.

There's nothing wrong with experimenting and trying different sorts of work, but why not pursue a career consistent with our innate talents and abilities? 

Some of us are stronger in sports or mathematics than in English  or art, or the opposite may be true. In every field there are those with abundant talent who have little interest in a given arena - and others who have great interest but little talent. Of the two, interest (or passion for) may be the more important factor.

Many high achievers have been pushed to the top of their professional ladder by social pressures or parental expectations, only to discover later that the ladder was "leaning against the wrong wall."

So consider carefully the kinds of areas or activities you genuinely enjoy which is why I advised my son, "Do what you love, then get someone to pay you for it."

Caring for others pays off

Americans use more than 500 million drinking straws daily, enough to fill 125 school buses. That figure has appeared in stories by USA Today, CNN, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and even The New York Times. You might have also read recent articles about Starbucks and Marriott banning plastic straws. 

It's deeply human to want to do good.

Want to hear something crazy? I have learned that there are better ways of selling than selling.

I learned from trial and error that if I treat my clients as transactions and not as relationships, I would get one sale, but not twenty. If, in contrast, I treated others the way I wanted to be treated, I learned that they actually wanted to do business with me more, they trusted me more, they were more loyal to me.

The basic question is this: would you prefer to do business with someone you like and trust or someone you don't like and don't trust?

I'll say this simply: long-term relationships based on genuine caring is the financial engine that makes cold, hard, cash. This is true for relationships with customers, coworkers, stakeholders and partners.

My COO met with the team recently. The first and only question he asked was "What can I do to help you?"This really floored everyone. When was the last time someone asked you what he or she could do for you, and meant it?

Caring for others. It means not just putting others first, but also thinking from their point of view - what they think, what they need and what they want.

After all those years in leadership, I came to realize that the only way I was going to succeed was by building long-term relationships through caring for others. Nothing works better in the short term than intimidating the hell out of people and coercing them to do exactly what you want. Of course, you can't be too concerned about your reputation, your brand, your future, your credibility or the loyalty of the people around you. This is the playbook of the bully boss. 

Over the long term, however, things are different. If you lead with caring for others, people will follow you forever, wherever - and you will be remembered as a person of greatness.

Working with women leads to great results

“You finally feel — I want to say, ‘equal!" one Saudi woman exclaimed. Another has her heart set on a car vanity plate reading, in Arabic, “Get out of the way.” Saudi Arabia ended its status as the last country on earth to prohibit women from driving. 

Women. Over half of the earth's population, and creators of life for the whole of it.

Wait a minute. Why is a 53-year old man penning an article about women? I assert GSO South East Asia's success is the direct result of our 70:30 female:male composition, which contributed to the "secret recipe." Bottomline: in my experience, when men and women work together as equals, great things happen.

As someone who surrounds himself with strong female friendships and colleagues, I can strongly say the women in my team have proven time and time again to be unparalleled problem solvers, visionaries and value creators. They have a much better EQ. So, not only do I think that women are pretty smart, but they have more EQ.

The women I worked with over these past seven years shape who I am and who I become. As much as people refuse to believe it, behaviour and beliefs are contagious: you easily "catch" the emotional state of your colleague; imitate their actions, and absorb their values as your own.

We live in a world where most everyone has come to expect instant this and instant that. The fast lane. One-click ordering. I have also come to expect fast results, to demand them. Working with the women in my team, I have come to learn that it's not slow - but steady - that wins the race. Doing things won't create your success; doing the right things will. And if you're doing the wrong things, doing more of them will only make you fail faster.

I love the women in my team. They are uniquely female and their abilities and drive to get things done are unparalleled. They work their butt off for the sake of the organization, they exude warmth and they're personable. With their refreshingly unique strengths as women, we are definitely better together.

Should we be givers or takers?

An artificial earthquake was triggered by Mexicans jumping in jubilation after their team scored a surprise victory over World Cup defending champion Germany recently. At least two of the sensors of the Institute for Geological and Atmospherical Investigations inside Mexico City detected a seismic movement during the World Cup match, "most likely produced by the massive celebration" according to the Institute's blog post.

Find ways to move people en masse. This is what inspirational, motivational leadership is all about. 

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns or relationship and the capacity to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, positions and titles.

The Harvard Grant Study makes it clear that it isn't just that people who are more connected are the happiest people. They are also the most successful at work. 

Here's a critical but often neglected thought: success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people. Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?

In personal relationships and friendships, we contribute whenever we can without keeping score. But in the workplace, few of us act purely like givers or takers. We become matchers, striving to preserve an equal balance of giving and taking. 

In fact research demonstrates that givers sink to the bottom of the success ladder. Across a wide range of important occupations, givers make others better off but sacrifice their own success in the process. Going out of their way to help others prevented them from getting their own work done.

So who's at the top - takers or matchers? 

Neither. It's the givers again. According to the research, the worst performers and the best performers are givers: takers and matchers are more likely to land in the middle. Some givers do become pushovers and doormats. But with the right strategies and choices, givers  can dominate the top of the success ladder.