What is the Power of Social Support?

Lifting others means lending a bit of ourselves. This might imply providing access to our perspective, experience, opportunities, or simply our time.

By giving support you help to ensure the success of others. Their success enables them to provide support to others in turn.

So, by lending support you produce social support, whereby your efforts are compounded by fresh efforts of those you help.

How can you provide support? Reach out to that person in your inbox who has asked for your advice, re-share someone’s LinkedIn post about seeking an opportunity, or connect two people who you think might mutually benefit. You can make real impact in someone’s life today.

Virtuous Professional Cycle

The Virtuous Professional Cycle illustrates the activities that, when pursued in concert, serve to produce, and boost your whole work self. It captures those core pieces that make work fulfilling, interesting, and impactful, and can reinforce one another.

That’s why I chose a cycle – whether it is clear or not, everything we do is connected. The Virtuous Professional Cycle activity offers the opportunity to identify and reflect on those connections. The cycle can also be used to map out who we hope to become!

I posted the cycle template(s) to LinkedIn. Use the button below to download.

You can use the template(s) to identify the core activities that produce your own Virtuous Professional Cycle. Use it again to create an aspirational Virtuous Professional Cycle by including future activities you hope to pursue.

Due to space limitations, I have included fillable templates with up to six activities in the cycle, but I encourage you to extend beyond and think about all the things that produce your Virtuous Professional Cycle. On page two I share my own Virtuous Professional Cycle as an example. I hope the tool provides you much insight. Feel free to share with others!

Learn Out of Pure Interest

Once you try it, there is no going back!

Before I became a management consultant, I spent eight years in academia – from community college to four-year and four-year to graduate school. I learned a LOT.

I ended up with five associates degrees, a bachelors, two master’s, and a PhD. How did I accomplish this is eight years? I learned out of pure interest. 

I only took the courses that interested me, sought out experiences that drove me, and engaged in research that inspired and challenged me. By learning out of pure interest, academics was less of a chore – something I had to do so I could get a job – and more of a delight.

Learning out of pure interest gave me the energy to succeed and my subsequent success and qualifications are a happy byproduct.

I bring this same philosophy with me to the work I do today. Learning out of our interest allows me to show up, listen, understand, and help solve true challenges – those that may not be apparent at first glance.

I encourage you to follow the path that keeps your interest. By doing so, you will bring a unique perspective rooted in genuine curiosity, a combination that I have found can produce powerful results.