In the increasingly competitive world of work, UO alumnus and award winning journalist, Kare Anderson urges an inner focus on first finding your top talent. In mid-April, Kare visited the George S. Turnbull Portland Center in the UO’s School of Journalism and Communication to present the first in a new career development series entitled “Crafting Your Career: Strategies and Tactics for Journalists and Communicators.”
After receiving her bachelor’s in journalism from the UO, Kare created and re-created a highly successful career from an Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal and NBC journalist and Forbes columnist and to a speaker, strategist, coach, and consultant. She now lives and works in the Bay area. In April Kare helped journalism professionals and pre-professionals in the Portland area examine ways to leverage personal strengths in a competitive work environment. Her words struck a reflective tone and challenged attendees to engage in intentional self-evaluation and personal development.
Kare began by giving a framework for success in any career or pursuit:
1. Identify: your top talent. Get specific and be concrete. Think to yourself “How do I add value?”
2. Connect: with people who have different talents and temperaments. In a hybrid world you should befriend people who are opposites. Find ways to collaborate and connect with people who are different than you. Frustrate each other and stick with it. Deliberately choose who you spend your time with. The best way to find opposites is to simply observe.
3. Collaborate: by finding a sweet spot of mutual benefit sooner rather than later. Make sure that relationships you pursue have a reciprocal nature and the people you associate with make and keep agreements. Don’t support people who won’t support you. Not only is it bad for us, it’s bad for us to support this kind of behavior. Seek clarity in your relationships and agreements with people.
She shared tips for journalism and communications professionals:
– Have a hook that others can add to, agree with, disagree with and add value.
– The specific proves the general, the general makes people go to sleep. Be specific in one area.
– Figure out where you are going to be daring. The way to stand out as a journalist is based on the behavior that you admire and shine a light on. Be deliberate.
– Find two unlikely things and bring them together and show common ground.
– Look at your judicial use of social media. Use Twitter to make short lists of your passions and interests.
And at the end of her talk she submitted that the leaders of the future will be connective leaders. “They are glue in a group,” those who recognize the talents of others and connect others to accomplish MORE together. She cautioned that we live in a connected world where both bad and good can happen much faster and ventured expectantly that more than countries or companies, self-organized groups will have a high impact in the future.
From her favorites, Kare left us with a long reading list:
- Give and Take by Adam Grant
- The Medici Effect and The Click Moment by Frans Johansson
- Contagious by Jonah Berger
- Tell to Win by Peter Guber
- The Human Face of Big Data by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt
She identified Oregon and the Portland region as a region that lives her Me to We principles – a region that brings people together with different talents and temperaments presenting a community and environment that is open to ideas and adapting change.
Read another synopsis of Kare’s talk on Mac’s List.
More about Kare Anderson:
Kare Anderson received her bachelor’s in journalism at the UO in 1971. She is a Forbes columnist and Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal and NBC journalist. She speaks and consults on becoming more frequently quoted and connected. She’s co-founder of the Say it Better Center (www.sayitbetter.com/) and the author of several books – Moving From Me to We, Walk Your Talk, Getting What You Want, and Resolving Conflict Sooner. Her book, Moving From Me to We, focuses on successful collaborations and personal branding. She has consulted with companies, sports teams, startups, government leaders and non-profits as diverse as Google, the Skoll Foundation, the London School of Economics, Nordstrom, Siemens, Deloitte, and Novartis.
About the J-School Turnbull Center:
The George S. Turnbull Center is an incubator for innovative ideas about the future of journalism and communications. The Turnbull Center offers degree programs, internships, speaker series, and public events. The Center offers top-flight master’s programs in multimedia journalism or strategic communication. To learn more visit turnbull.uoregon.edu.