Growing in your Career
Recently I have been working with team members and co-workers looking for “growth.” Often in anyone’s career a point is reached where you feel like you have gained the needed experience and expertise to move to the next role. I know, I have been there, ready for the next step, ambitious for monetary growth, knowledge growth, ability to create change, etc. Fast forward to now, working with others, seeing the larger business side, knowing that no job can be fully mastered, what is the answer?
I am continuing to think through and revamp this process, and we will talk through some activities that have helped not just myself [and yes I do practice what I preach here] but before we go there, lets talk about what “growth” really can mean.
Growth in your career can look different for everyone.
Positional Growth. This is the one most people seem to mean. They want a higher position with higher pay. This is a wonderful goal. It drives you, it gives you potential action items to reach, it is a great talking point with mentors and leaders. However, this isn’t always an immediate option for either yourself or the business. Two things must be true for promotions: 1. You, the employee, needs to be ready for that next role, 2. The business need has to be there.
Exposure Growth. This is a MASSIVELY helpful tool especially in large companies with varieties of teams or service area or levels of expertise. It does fly under the radar for “growth” though as it is often a lateral move but this fills in a KEY component for Positional Growth, making sure you are ready for the next role. This allows the user to apply either proficient skills to new people and/or learn new skills from new teammates.
Knowledge Growth. Learning is necessary for any sort of growth. This does however need to be somewhat self-driven. We as employees are responsible for bettering our skills if Positional Growth is the goal.
So, now that we have laid out the types of growth, what does this mean in terms of actions?
Have a game plan. I have been known to preach looking to the next-next-job. This is intentional to make sure each step is intentionally filling in steps or knowledge gaps for your goals. If your current role isn’t preparing you for your goal position are there Level Ups you can apply to your current role OR is there an intermediate role that will actively grow those key skills.
Task assessment. Every job can be broken down into tasks. Often I believe we look at this a bit higher level than really is needed. For example, having someone say they love the strategic part of media planning. What does that mean? It could mean they love the ability to make the recommendation, or that they enjoy collaborating with a sales partner, or they enjoy the marketing deep dive, or they enjoy the technical research sometimes needed, etc. So as a leader, I push to break it down further.
Once you have broken down the tasks, you can bucket them into one of 4 places
Understand your knowledge gaps. As you work through your work days, collaborate with team members, see trainings, etc, make a list. Keeping a list and sharing with your manager can empower you both to lean into the knowledge growth.
Identifying behavior. Looking to those holding the roles you are striving for is a great window into what you might need to learn. Take the time after your next meeting or interaction with a key leader to write down the things they did you want to be able to do. Is it how they speak, it is how they prepare, is it how they manage their days? Now break that down…. how can you learn to grow those skills.
This is a topic I love to share thoughts on. Throughout my career, I have had leaders that empowered me to growth and others that very much didn’t. While the former helped immensely, I found ways to apply skills and learn on my own as well.
Do you have other actions or thoughts on Growing in your Career?