3 Contributions to Invest into your career today
Originally posted on RKK.com in 2019. Updated March 2024
Are you in control of your career? Or are you looking to someone else to carry that weight for you?
Early in my career, I realized there was a difference between looking for guidance from my manager and looking to them to handhold me through my career. The perspective shift through the lessons I will share below unlocked a new level of perspective I needed to travel my career path and make my resources work for the direction I am headed.
Throughout my career, I have been intentional about figuring out what worked for me. I’ve tried everything my managers and mentors suggested, including reading books, building relationships, attending conferences, getting a mentor, taking on other projects, etc. I will admit that they all have enhanced my career path tremendously and still do, but it wasn’t enough.
At the end of trying their suggestions, I still found myself looking to my manager to tell me which way to go in my career because something was missing. Through trial and error, I realized the missing piece was my contribution to my own career path and a game plan to keep me accountable. From that moment, I opened my mind up to receive lessons I needed to learn from others, identify my strengths and come up with a method to improve this process. I also created this free career game plan to track all of the suggestions I’ve gained over the last 10+ years. You can download it here.
Use these 3 perspectives to navigate your career
I have compiled three major lessons that motivated me to increase my own contribution to take responsibility for my career journey.
1. Understand the Value you bring to every team.
I was introduced to this reality in a previous position. This lesson wasn’t directed at me personally, but I added it to my career toolkit anyways. To this day, it’s the best career advice I use over and over. I was in a meeting where we were on a project with a VERY tight deadline, everyone was operating at their max capacity and anxiety was high. A colleague of mine was struggling with providing her honest feedback to our manager. My manager sensed the struggle, paused the meeting and asked my colleague to get her struggle off of her chest. What my manager went on to say changed my perspective forever. The question asked was “What value do you bring to the team and on the project?” As my colleague choked on the question, my manager explained to my colleague that she asked the question because my colleague needed to be able to answer that question for herself and that her career is her responsibility.
Lesson Learned: In that moment I realized that my colleague was traveling heavy with her expectations and light on her communication and it needed to be the other way around. My manager made it clear that she was not going to carry my colleagues' weight and my colleague needed to gather herself so we can proceed with productivity to finish out the project.
2. Master Clear Communication to use across Multiple Audiences
I use this skill the most in my personal and professional life. I learned this concept at my first job in high school when I was a supervisor. I was tasked with communicating to our customers, my staff and team members to keep business running efficiently. In the beginning I ran into challenges because I thought communicating meant saying the same thing to everyone and that they would get it. I quickly learned that the way to keep the daily functions running smoothly was to translate the major points in a way my audience understood. For example, my leadership wanted high level details on the function of the processes and how much money was being made. They needed to know whether or not to keep the stand open or close. My team wanted to know what they had to do to get to the end of the shift and the customers wanted the quality experience that they were paying for. As the manager it was my job to communicate the important parts to the audience to keep the operations moving for all parties.
Lesson Learned: When you understand what each category of your audience desires from you, match the language to connect with them. This keeps everything flowing properly for the operation. You’ll also know how to use your time and resources appropriately.
3. Document Your Progress
I would strongly encourage you to document the stage you are in your career from here on out – if you do not currently do it. You can track things like the projects you worked on or more specific measures like characteristics that need to be developed to be promoted. The main reasons why I track my own career path is to reflect on my progress, be able to communicate my value, create content and to have tangible documentation to present during reviews and salary negotiations. It’s a way for me to stay relevant and growing in my career no matter what the market or my company is doing.
Lesson Learned: Pivoting is a part of learning and growing. Tracking what is working and what is not helps you pivot easier and use your resources to your benefit.
Download my free career game plan to follow the same process I use and put my clients through.
As you travel in your own career, I invite you to open your mind to pay attention to the lessons that you can learn from others in your environment. Stay curious on how you can be responsible for your growth and track what’s working or not so you can get rid of it quickly.
I wish you all of the success you act on.
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