Most of us spend more time honing our written resume than our invisible one. Yet the latter has far more influence on career prospects. When prospective employers call your references, they are trying to get a read on your "invisible resume." So are the decision-makers who might be considering you for a promotion.

Your invisible resume consists of the opinions that other people harbor about you as a leader and colleague. As people add to it and share their views with others, your invisible C.V. becomes as visible as your written resume &#8212 to everyone but you.

Finding out what's on it can be eye-opening. The vice president of sales for a major technology company delivered the numbers quarter after quarter. Relentlessly pushing for higher sales, he thought of himself as passionate about the business. During a 360º feedback exercise, he discovered that his colleagues saw him as "unreasonably demanding" and "a slave driver."

Worse, a relatively straightforward shortcoming can turn into something far more serious. The co-founder of a highly successful online company had difficulty delegating responsibility. He would assure people that he would get to the work that went into his office, but somehow he never did. As a result, his colleagues regarded him as untrustworthy, and people began to question his integrity.

To take charge of the storyline, you should:

Find out what's on your invisible resume. Seek 360º feedback; ask a trusted peer for a candid assessment; ask members of your team what one thing you could start or stop doing to make you more effective.

Ask your manager for substantive feedback beyond perfunctory annual performance reviews. What development experiences do you need? How does the manager assess your performance? What do colleagues actually say about you? Find out where you stand in the company's overall talent review process, either by going directly to HR or by asking your manager. If you aren't on the list of high-potentials, ask specifically what you have to do to get on it.

Begin to rewrite the story. This requires courage and effort. In one-on-one meetings and then with his entire team, the hard-driving technology VP confessed that he now understood the destructive effects of his incessant pushing. He also faced a dilemma: how to deliver results while abandoning the means that he believed had made him successful. A carefully structured leadership development plan helped him to alter his style and to induce his colleagues to want to become a high-performance team.

It's important, too, to address the real problem. The co-founder of the online company didn't need to be more truthful; he needed to deliver on his commitments, which required improved processes and delegation. Reliable performance increased trust in him.

Establish channels for ongoing feedback. Regular 360º feedback can be augmented with more frequent feedback from a trusted peer. Mentoring, which provides feedback from someone more experienced, can be helpful too — if the mentor is candid and committed to your success.

Periodic self-assessment can also be valuable. List the key competencies you need, your attributes in relation to each, and your assessment of the fit between them. People who have regular experience with the other forms of feedback can become increasingly proficient at self-assessment.

Above all, you have to be hungry for feedback and demonstrate that you value it. Otherwise you will be met with silence, which, in the case of your invisible resume, can be deadly.

Dr. Vicky Gordon is CEO of the Gordon Group, a Chicago-based leadership and organizational development consulting firm.

A single question haunts me as I write this:

Will you forward this post to someone you respect?

Every day, people I like and respect — and quite a few I don't — take a quick moment of their digital time to forward me an article, a blog post, a link, a chart, a URL, a review, a YouTube Q&A that they think I will find of interest. I confess I'm frequently astonished — both pleasantly and not — by who sends me what. When more than two people send me the same thing, I know to pay attention. And furthermore, at least twice a week, these "forwards" trigger something that I will pursue or even change my schedule in order to do. "Forwards" are that useful. I'm happy to get them and I remember who sent them.

I send them too, and whenever browsing online, I always make the effort to find and forward at least a couple of compelling clips and links to colleagues and clients. I want them to know that, not only am I thinking of them but, I'm also constructively acting on those thoughts. I want them to be pleased, grateful, and impressed. An immediate call or exclamatory "Thanks!" in response is a clear "win." People should feel confident that I'm literally and figuratively looking out for them. That feeling should be core to my "brand."

Yes, I know that Facebook and other social networking platforms change the posting paradigm and render practices like forwarding a digital anachronism. Perhaps. The real issue here is not the act of forwarding or receiving forwards but the challenge of creative customization. To the extent that posting something on a Wall or a stream or a blog is undifferentiated "broadcasting" rather than a one-to-one exchange, something important is missing. As much as I admire the socialnets, there's something about the personal quality of the forward — the set-up, the introduction, the annotation, etc. — that makes me feel special when I get one and makes me feel clever when I send one.

I like those feelings, sure; but it's also good business practice.

Managing communities of colleagues and clients via digital media will come to further dominate our workplace efforts, and smart managers will hone their "forwarding quotient"—their FQ. Unlike mass tweeting, this one-to-one "customized" communication strikes me as a superior business and personal practice. It forces me to be empathetic, anticipatory, and aware. It makes me more sensitive to individual perceptions and needs. And I get feedback telling me how aware and helpful I really am. I even create virtual histories of "forwards" that I can audit, review, and rethink. Imagine if more managers developed these skills.

There's no simpler, faster or easier way to appear professionally smart and personally attentive than being forward-oriented. Between BlackBerries, iPhones, Google, and Bing, finding and forwarding the goods has gone from technical nuisance to self-disciplined choice. Folks with high FQs are people clever enough to send links and text that make their recipients eagerly look forward to them. Senders build their brands as individuals exquisitely attuned both to the growing wealth of useful information and what their clients/customers/colleagues might need to know. If there's a quicker or more cost-effective way to make yourself look thoughtfully relevant to people or prospects who matter, I've yet to come across it. (Though it can also make you look painfully self-indulgent. Who doesn't have an idiot colleague or acquaintance who can't resist forwarding jokes, YouTube videos of kittens, or bilious political commentary? That's interpersonal brand-building of a different sort.)

As I review my sent mail over the last two years, I estimate I've forwarded an average of five items a business day — or roughly 100 a month. When I examine who they were (largely) sent to and the relationships we have, I'd have to say that &#8212 on a value-per-unit-time basis — "forwarding" ranks as one of my most productive behaviors either online or off.

You might consider conducting a similar "traffic analysis" and "content review" of your own mailboxes. Do you know your FQ? What's the FQ of the top five folks forwarding to you? Wouldn't it be great to have a metric that tracked which of your forwards were forwarded?

And most of all, I'm dying to know: Will you forward this post to someone you respect?

A researcher at MIT Sloan School's Center for Digital Business and a visiting fellow at the Imperial College Business School, Michael Schrage is the author of Serious Play and the forthcoming Getting Beyond Ideas. His research focuses on the behavioral economics of innovation through models, prototypes, simulations and experiments.

The Hurt Locker is a gripping movie — enthusiastically and universally acclaimed — about an elite team of American soldiers in Iraq "who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat." Time after time we watch the team's new leader, Staff Sergeant William James, arrive at a bomb site and, with gut-wrenching intensity and focus, attempt to untangle and defuse an I.E.D. (improvised explosive device). Totally consumed by his mission, he exposes his two subordinates, Sanborn and Eldridge, to unnecessary dangers and risks, "as if he's indifferent to death."

Chief among the film's many virtues is the deeply compassionate display of a man's struggle to be true to his dangerous, heroic obsession, though doing so leaves him in the most existentially harrowing place imaginable — "the hurt locker." The expression, of course, is figurative, meant to describe a mental and emotional state of pain, where human warmth and intimacy are forsaken. The riveting portrayal of James and his comrades compels the viewer to feel acute tension all the way through. You'll be emotionally spent by the end of the movie.

The Hurt Locker also raises a question about work that's relevant for professionals the world over: Where do I draw the line between passionate commitment and destructive fixation? The adrenaline rush that comes with living on the edge of life and death in the service of one's country is counterpoised against the desire for connection with family and other loved ones. What are the consequences when the former wins and the latter loses?

For country, you might think, the outcome is desirable; a rare talent is being applied to meet an urgent performance demand with direct positive impact on military achievement. But at what cost to the soldier and the people closest to him? You feel the pain of the young sergeant's heart-wrenching farewell to his only son as James prepares to return to the field of battle. He's a professional is driven by his mission, relentlessly pursuing the cause he believes in — at almost any cost.

Should we fault him for his preference? Why not fully support the complete immersion of a great talent into work that must be done very well, even if the personal cost of such a choice is dear? When the stakes are life, death, and defending the country, we're more inclined to encourage obsessive involvement in the task despite the costs. But what about business professionals who've crossed over from passionate commitment to destructive fixation? Are the costs worth it in that context?

Everyone has their own individual value systems, and I try to refrain from judging or imposing upon the personal values others hold. But one piece of more general advice would seem to hold true: You need to know your own core values and continually align them with your actions by experimenting with how you get things done. And when there are costs, to those around you and to yourself, at the very least you need to be sensitive to this, and honest in dealing with the consequences. Most people want to have some measure of engagement in all four aspects of their lives—work, home, community and the private self (mind, body, and spirit). But there are those, like Sergeant James, for whom work is all. And why not?

I urge you to see this movie. But whether or not you do, I'm eager to hear your stories — your own or those about people you know — who have wrestled successfully with this dilemma: Is it possible to live a rich life that is solely focused on achievement in work, to the exclusion of all else?

Go to the car dealership of a top luxury brand - or at least go to the car configurator tool on its website - and you'll see that buyers are given a stunning number of choices.  They might be able to pick between 18 grades of leather for the seats, 36 types of wood for the trim, and 128 exterior paint colors, for example.  And this kind of participatory experience can be a real key to success.

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