How To Race Ahead In
Your Career
As much as we
would like it to be, careers are not built on sand dunes. The key to career
management is to decipher how successful careers are built, figuring out how
far you want to go, analyzing what’s getting in your way, exposing yourself to
new tasks that build your skills and finally getting noticed favorably by the
top echelons of management.
Here are some
quick tips to get your career zooming.
What’s your degree of goodness?
How good you
could be? Are you underselling yourself? You may be too critical of yourself.
In order to get clarity on these building blocks, get yourself a validated and
confidential 360-degree review and thereafter sit down with an experienced
facilitator to get debriefed on your behavior. This would help you in building
a high degree of confidence and you will be prepared to accept negative
feedback whenever it comes.
Get a career board of directors
Since most of us
are not the best career advisers, seek out one or more people who could don
this mantle for you. Your advisor could be your boss, friend or a professional
colleague. Periodically bounce your thoughts, assumptions, concerns and
opportunities by them for an unbiased opinion and work on it.
Understand the building blocks of
career
Most of us
believe that career is all about getting ahead in the corporate race of fancy
titles and dollars. It’s easy to get cynical and believe that successful people
are political or sell out, suck up, stab people in the back, use their contacts
and so on. The facts are dramatically different from this; though some of these
may give an adrenaline boost to the career, in the long term these tactics pull
your down.
What keeps you
going is performing and problem solving on the current job, having a few
notable strengths and seeking new tasks, which you may not be adept at. It’s
about solving every problem with tenacity while looking for what you haven’t
done yet and getting your self-ready for it.
Getting noticed by the right people
Top managers are
aren’t as interested in glitz as many of us would like to believe, they are
interested in people who take care of problems, spot opportunities, ward of
disaster and have a board repertoire of skills. They are looking for bold
performers. To get noticed, volunteer for projects that will require interacting/presenting
to senior management. Stay focused on the activities that contribute to the
organizations growth. You can pick a big problem and work manically to solve
it, you need to be seen and heard, but on substance not fluff.
There are trade offs
Many people turn
down career opportunities based upon current life comforts only to regret it
later when the opportunity has passed by. Studies have indicated that the most
successful General Managers had unrelated career moves, which seemed
distasteful at that point of time. Most successful careers would require moving
around during the years that are most inconvenient and painful, when you have
kids at school or aging parents to take care off. Set your mind to it and
remember to grow you must move.
Visit us on: www.brios.co.in / www.hiringlink.in
Follow us on: http://briosconsultancy.blogspot.in/
Comments
Post a Comment