May Busch* says a steady career progression involves assessing what you have done to reach your current level and whether it is still fit for purpose in the next step.
When your career feels like it’s going slower than you’d like, it’s tempting to blame others.
It is the boss who doesn’t get how valuable you are, the bad economy, or a host of other external challenges.
While these kinds of thoughts are normal and you may even be right, focusing on what’s outside your control is not helpful.
It’s far more energising and effective to look at the things that are in your control, including how you may be unintentionally standing in your own way.
When it comes to your career success, sticking to what’s worked for you in the past might be keeping you from where you want to go in the future.
If you want to accelerate your progress, it’s time to assess where you need to make some changes.
Here are four essential areas to focus on: Relationships, activities, thinking, and personal brand. Consider these as essentials for stepping up to the next level.
Today, let’s focus on your relationships. As you assess whether you have the right relationships, here are three areas to consider.
Who are you learning from?
Think about the people who you’ve turned to as your mentors, advisors, role models, coaches and guides.
Whether they’ve helped you with technical, job-related skills or tricky people issues, take a moment to appreciate them. They’ve helped you get this far.
The question is, are they still the right people for you to learn from going forward?
For some, the answer will be a wholehearted “yes”. Others will be a “maybe” or even a “no”.
Maybe you feel they’ve taught you everything they know already. Perhaps you’ve taken their advice and have now risen to a level beyond their experience base
Make sure you’ve got the right team of advisors and role models who will help you get to the next level of your career.
Make sure you include in the group at least one or two people you find inspiring.
When I was coming up the ranks, there were few women at senior levels and certainly no one who looked like me.
In fact, some of the women were examples of how I didn’t want to be. Like trying to be like the men and not quite pulling it off.
In the absence of an overall role model for my career, I improvised and found different role models for specific aspects of my career.
For example, one boss became my role model for how to walk into a room; the head of another section was my role model for how to conduct myself in meetings.
Who are you relying on?
To get to more senior levels your career, it’s no longer about simply accomplishing tasks and getting things done.
You also need to carve out time to think and act differently at a more strategic level. That means you need a team of people you can rely on for support.
People who give you leverage because they have the skills, motivation and desire to take on more so you can do the same.
So, who’s on your support team? Are they the right people and do you have access to enough of them?
Your support team can include juniors in another section who contribute to specific projects and even peers you collaborate closely with.
This is about having people who you can trust to do their part.
What circles do you travel in?
When you’re looking to advance to more senior levels, it’s important to travel in the right circles.
Having a network of connections who can give you insight into the way people at the next level think, and spending time with people who can provide access to opportunities.
Almost by definition, you’ll need to develop your network every time you’re ready to move to the level beyond the one you’re on right now.
Don’t worry if you look around and realise that you aren’t traveling in the right circles … yet. It’s normal, but you do have to take action.
Let’s take my coaching client, Cynthia for example.
Cynthia had recently been promoted to lead a small client relationship team and wanted to position herself to lead a bigger region in the future.
To succeed, she needed to elevate her relationships beyond the chief executive level to cover the chairperson level of her clients.
This seemed insurmountable at first. Cynthia wondered why a chairperson with decades more experience would want to meet her as she was still a junior partner at her firm.
How could she get those meetings without upsetting her existing contacts?
We put together a plan that involved building up her team to step up and cover more senior people, leveraging her existing relationships to create connections
Now she’s well on her way to traveling in those more senior circles.
To rise to the next level from wherever you sit right now, it’s essential to expand your network to include the aspirational people and relationships that will help you get there and thrive once you do.
Successful careers are built on relationships, but don’t think you have to invest huge amounts of time cultivating them.
You don’t need to become close personal friends with everyone. It’s about making a genuine connection and finding an easy way to stay in touch.
So don’t set the bar too high on the depth or quality of every single interaction.
Take a moment to identify which relationships you need to work on to ensure you are surrounded by the right people to learn from and rely on, and that you’re traveling in the right circles to help you reach your goals.
*May Busch works with smart entrepreneurs and top managements to build their businesses. She can be contacted at [email protected].
This article first appeared at maybusch.com.
