Career Advice: Rick Smith August 31, 2009, 2:22PM EST

Take Your Career from Good to Great

Transform your unfulfilling career into something extraordinary using three strategies to overcome common assumptions that hold you back

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Do you ever find yourself asking, "Is this it?" Sure, you've had some successes in your career, made some money, received a promotion or two. Yet you can't help but wonder, "Is this what I am supposed to be doing with my life? Is this the limit of my contribution?"

These questions are familiar territory for me. At the age of 35, I was stuck in a career rut. Then, unexpectedly, my life turned in an extraordinary new direction. Over the course of the next 18 months, I wrote a best-selling book and then founded World 50, a company that brought me into close contact with some of the great leaders and thinkers of our time, including Bono, Jack Welch, Robert Redford, Alan Greenspan, and Lance Armstrong, among dozens of others. Despite no experience and few contacts, I was able to create a successful, influential senior executive networking company. And through it all I kept asking, "How could this have happened to of all people, me?"

My quest has led me to half a decade of intensive interviewing and research. I have discovered I am not alone: The world is full of ordinary people, everyday Joes and Janes, who have broken free from average performance and achieved extraordinary levels of impact and accomplishment.

These individuals all led unremarkable lives until something shifted inside them—transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. And I have concluded anyone can make the same leap.

What is holding us back? For many, it is simply that we believe the wrong things. Common misguided assumptions prevent us from imagining a new future for ourselves and then moving toward it. Three of these common myths are, "In order to make a leap in my performance: (1) I have to change who I am—fix my weaknesses, (2) I have to go it alone, and (3) I have to take big, scary risks."

These assumptions are all false. By applying the same three strategies used by myself and dozens of other people who have made the leap from good to great, you can turn an unremarkable performance (and an unfulfilling career) into something extraordinary. Where we may have stumbled upon these successful changes, you can be more deliberate. Here's how:

1. Discover Your "Primary Color"

In a study on professional career success, I found that on average, professionals believe that they would be 35% more productive if they were in a role that fully leveraged their strengths and passions. These intuitive assumptions turn out to be correct. Nearly every extraordinary leap I studied began with the individual finding their way to a job in which their unique strengths were consistently called on and their passions were fully engaged.

But according to my research, only about 5% of professionals say that they are currently in roles that leverage their strengths and passions every day. This represents an ocean of unfulfilled workers, and incredible amounts of untapped organizational potential.

Everyone has what I call a "Primary Color," that point on the spectrum that represents the intersection of your greatest strengths and passions. Few people ever find it or even know it's there. But it is, and aligning your daily activities with your strengths and passions is a critical first step to accelerating your impact and performance.

Identify where your strengths and passions intersect. This is where you acquire new skills and achieve new heights of performance the fastest. Next, think about the activities required by your current role. Is your role aligned with your strengths and passions, or far apart (and drifting further)? These questions lead to actionable insights that you can use to direct your activities and steer your career toward the path that is uniquely suited for you.

2. Focus on a Big, Selfless, and Simple Idea

In 2002, soft-spoken Silvia Lagnado, a recently appointed brand manager within the global conglomerate Unilever (UN), began floating a bold idea around the company—that the company's marketing should be focused on real beauty and not elusive "aspirational beauty."