Key takeaways from the 4th Envision Career Discovery Conference

I attended the 4th Envision Career Discovery conference organized by Enlight at Toronto City Hall to support my friend Gwen Wang who was one of the organizers recently.

Some of the topics we discussed at the conference are worth mentioning:

Communication skills

Many new graduates or young professionals, especially those whose first language is not English asked me how to improve communication skills at work. Communication skills, in my opinion, not only means that we have to use the appropriate grammar when we speak or write, more importantly, it is the skill to be able to express ourselves and/or explain our opinions in a clear and concise manner that other people can understand. Ultimately, communication skills are critical to extend our influence horizontally (colleagues), vertically upward (your bosses), and vertically downwards (those who work for you). To this end, I recommend a book titled Influence without Authority by Allan R. Cohen and David L. Bradford that offers practical, common-sense advice to the new world of work.

Networking

Jeremy Choi, Managing Partner, Pixelcarve Inc. provided an interesting concept regarding networking - the 5:50 rule: get to know someone like the way you would want to know them for the next 50 years instead of the next 5 minutes. Utilize tools, like Google Contacts to manage all your contacts and record not only the phone number, email address, but also their hobbies, their family and anything that relates to the person. In this way, it is easier to follow up with your contact especially during special occasions like birthday, work anniversary and the first time we met .etc.  After all, people do business with people who care about them.

Work and life balance

The question of work and life balance is often asked whenever I attended this kind of conference. The answers that Beth and Michele provided are meaningful:

Beth A. Shaw, Managing Director, Equity Capital Markets & Operations at Desjardins Securities Inc.

"Different people have different definition about work and life balance. The tolerance level also varies. For example, to work 12 hours consecutively is fine for me, but it may be considered to be too much for other people."

This leads to another question: when you first choose your career, choose something that really interests you. If you find a work that naturally motivates you, you may never have to think about work and life balance.

Michele Goddard, Senior Vice-President and Managing Director, Client Strategy and Execution, BMO

"There is no specific boundary regarding work and life. We have to prioritize. For example, if you need to work on an ad-hoc report that will be due in a week, it is necessary to spend extra hours to make sure you can deliver it on time with quality. However, if you are suffering from the flu, you'd better spend more time on the bed in order to be effective for future assignments and life experiences."