Career Lessons from the lives of King David and Prime Minister Joseph

Back in the days, technology was very far behind that what we refer to today as CurriculumVitae barely existed. As things progressed, CVs came into being to the point where they were considered as Sacred documents, meant only for those who had the POWER to change your life. Today, people take great pride in brandishing their CVs for all to see to the point where imaginary achievements are created and ordinary things stretched to make them look like accomplishments. In this piece, I look at career lessons in the lives of some prominent individuals David Joseph who had no ‘CVs’ but landed some of the most prominent jobs in the land and how they did it.

Audition for the job while it is yet to come.

In the Bible, David never applied to be a King’s musician or a Giant Killer in the midst of war. He prepared himself for this (unconsciously) without ever knowing when the opportunity would come or better still by doing ordinary things with passion and commitment.

Joseph went from prison to Prime Minister simply by interpreting a dream because he had mastered the art of dreaming and interpreting dreams. He never hesitated sharing his dreams with his family despite the envy and hatred it brought him from his family, finally landing him in slavery and then prison from where he would emerged as the most senior official in the land after the king.

What will cause you standout in your career is a mixture of the right skills and character. Skills alone won’t take you far, neither would character on its own; though a good character would make you get noticed for all the right reasons.

David honed his skills tending to animals with all humility, never complaining. He never questioned why he as the youngest was being sent to look after sheep while he had elder brothers with more physical strength to probably stand-up to animals and resist the stress of the work. He did it with humility and built a wonderful resume for himself for the future.

We all find ourselves in the position of David or Joseph every now and then in life…either in the family or as a junior or newest colleague in the office. What attitude we put on will determine how much we can learn and who/what would be said of us in our absence, in the boardrooms where important decisions are taken. Remember most decisions/consultations about your career are seldom taken with your knowledge.

While David attended to sheep, he learned how to play the harp in his idle time in the fields, a skill which will later cause his name to be mentioned to the King. He equally learned precision aiming when he had to fend off wild animals attacking his flock with the use of a sling …same skill that would enable him take a sling with surgical precision at Goliath (that’s Excellence: the quality of being extremely good beyond ordinary standards). Tackle your challenges with excellence. (Excellence is not an act but a habit…habits are what we do repeatedly. So to achieve excellence, be repetitive in what you do. Repeatedly gain knowledge, display humility, learn new ways of doing things, innovate…)

You might find yourself as a junior colleague with very little to do (especially when senior colleagues are not collaborative and stingy with knowledge or reduce you to running errands for them)…use that time to learn more about the job, the organization, its history, its mission, culture processes, strategy, position, challenges, competition, new skills to make you succeed or prepare you for the future. Develop skills relevant to the organization and your career vision.

Do this with all humility and before long, you will be discussing strategy with MDs, providing calm in board rooms (just as David played the harp to calm the King, or opted to face Goliath during a military conclave), carrying out key missions on which the survival on the company might depend (David vs Goliath). Learn in humility and move around like a submarine on a deadly mission, surface when your mission is done, when you must have torpedoed the efforts of a non-collaborative boss or colleagues to starve you of knowledge or keep you in the shadows.

Your ability to execute with excellence coupled with an outstanding character would lead to you being discussed for all the good reasons in important places. Gone are the days when CVs used to be viewed as secret documents, meant only for potential employers. Nowadays, you don’t even need to submit a CV to land certain jobs. If a CV is a record of what you’ve done or achieved over the years and how you did it, then except you did all of that in another planet, people don’t need to look too far for your CV. It is evident in the things they have seen you do or heard about you. People take note of what you do, how you do it. In fact, some people have records of your achievements more that you can remember (remember the report given about David to the king or have you ever been reminded of some things you routinely do that seem to go unnoticed?

It can be as simple as your passion in what you do and you are surprised when your manager mentions ‘I love the way you always handle this so I want to increase your responsibilities, enrich your job, promote you…and you are like wow…but these are little things I do every now and then without noticing the impact it creates.’ The fact that you do them when no one would care to do, when you are not obliged to do, when you are not being paid directly for that prepares you for greater things. Why? Because performing with excellence has become a habit and almost everything you do is beyond ordinary standards to the ordinary man because you do it with Excellence.

You must not trample on others in order to progress. David had multiple opportunities to kill Saul but didn’t take any because he saw the bigger picture.

Selflessness is ultimate. In selflessly sharing his dream interpretation skills, Joseph rose to a position where he would ultimately save Egypt and his family from certain death through starvation and hunger.