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Business writing

Career Self-Sabotage: how to avoid it

Lee Hopkins, the passionate copywriting coach, on the secret Top 10 ways you can sabotage your career

G’day and welcome to my vidcast. Today I want to talk about career self-sabotage.

There are 10 common ways we can self-sabotage our career, and only one involves weaponry.

Walking the tightrope at work between individual professionalism and being a team-player (which every company says it wants but most don’t really value that highly) can be tricky. Here’s 10 areas of corporate life you may want to pay a bit of attention to:

1. Narcissism — wanting to be liked so much that you avoid necessary confrontations

2. Emotional Immaturity — always playing the office clown is a great example of this

3. Self-Defeat Messages — repeatedly making negative comments about yourself. Yes, there is a fine line between self-deprecation and modesty/humility

4. Revenge — attempting to ‘get even’ with your employer for reasons such as low salary or a poor performance review

5. Attention-Seeking — trying so hard to get noticed that, for example, you become over-critical of management

6. Procrastination — often develops into getting a reputation for being unreliable

7. Excessive absenteeism or lateness — you develop the reputation of being both unprofessional and uninterested in your career

8. Thrill seeking — like making unauthorised use of company equipment, just for kicks

9. Crossing swords — with those more powerful is a dangerous idea. VERY dangerous if done too often!

10. Unrealistic Expectations — you often fail and then naturally become discouraged and less likely to perform at your best.

Give yourself an occasional personal performance review on these 10 topics and help keep yourself both highly valuable and highly employable.

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Until next time, take care, and remember — communicate with passion!