Today’s post is drawn from Jay Parker’s Mentorforce University masterclass, “The Key Elements of Career Management.”
Oftentimes, successful business leaders can look back on their careers and point to one or two key decisions that made all the difference in their careers. Decisions that helped them find a passion, or helped them gain visibility, or caused them to accelerate faster than their peers. These were probably not “business decisions” related to revenue or profit or projects. But rather, career decisions. Specific moments that may have seemed trivial at the time, but in retrospect, made all the difference.
If your personal goal is to ascend the corporate ladder to some sort of senior leadership position, your aptitude for Career Management is critical. So many times, really skilled and hard-working people make curious calls that either slowed down, side-tracked or completely sabotaged their professional life. Or…alternatively, they simply failed to develop the nuanced organizational agility necessary for progression.
In this masterclass, Jay discusses:
Choosing the right roles, at the right time, to accelerate your learning.
Choosing the right role, at the right time, for the right reason has a huge impact on how fast you can grow your career. People often agonize over these decisions, and rightfully so. The wrong choice can literally set you back years. The right decision can provide an inflection point that accelerates your progression. Sometimes there is a little luck involved, but there are several critical considerations that can help create your own luck…good or bad.
The decisions on which roles to take are personal, and what constitutes a good or bad decision is dependent on your goals. Do you want to love what you do every day? Do you want to love the people you work with? Do you want to maximize your compensation in the short term? Only you can answer those questions. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that the TOP priority is scaling as quickly as possible to roles with broad scope and responsibility, and maximizing long-term compensation.
Building relationships with people who can support you and guide you
Relationships you build in the company are critical as you move from one level of leadership to the next. You need people that will coach you. Advocate for you. Pull you into new roles. Help you get projects done. Or simply say positive things in the background when you’re not even around. Every leader needs a support system across the organization, both formal and informal. Being a brilliant lone wolf may work in certain professions, but not in a corporate environment. Spend time cultivating these relationships, and build your network over time, so that you have allies helping you accomplish both your business goals and your personal goals.
Creating the best possible team so that your business can reach its highest potential.
If you are going to be your most successful self as a leader, you are going to need the best people on your team. No matter how talented or knowledgeable you are, having a team full of B players will diminish your business and personal results. If you are the manager of a small team, maybe 5-10 people, you may be able to get away with it. You can probably find the time to spend with each team member, hand-holding them through projects…correcting mistakes. You might be exhausted and frustrated, but you can fake your way through it.
The problem comes when you take on a larger team or responsibility. You have not learned to lead. You have learned to DO. But what if you have 20 people, or 100 people, or 1000 people. You can’t oversee everyone’s work at a detailed level. At some point, you won’t have the expertise to help them, even if you have the time. You are completely dependent on those team members to deliver a result. If you have great people, you’ll get a great outcome. Which will be great for the company, AND great for you. If you have modestly talented people, you’ll get a modest result…and probably stay right where you’re at…at best. Hiring great people, or letting go of bad ones…is probably obvious…something you’ve been told from the beginning. But I have found that it rarely actually happens. Because it takes diligence, courage, conviction…the willingness to be consistently uncomfortable. And the majority of managers are willing to accept the status quo.
It’s easy to rally around the idea of hiring the best person we can find. Usually, we try to cast a wide net to identify candidates, we interview them and get opinions from others, we do a little background research…and then we hire somebody and hope for the best. There are the instances where we decide to hire a friend or someone we know well…who might not be the MOST talented option. Or sometimes we are in a rush to fill a position, decide that speed is more important than skill…and hire a warm body to fill the gap. But with a little discipline, we can avoid those mistakes, and 99% of the time, do our best to bring on the best.
Finding, or creating, moments in time to make your mark and be recognized for your good work.
It’s not quite enough to be great at what you do. You can be exceptional at your job, and people closest to you might know it. But if you are toiling in obscurity as far as the broader organization is concerned…then you are not going to achieve your ultimate goals. To make it through the gauntlet of HR processes and promotion cycles during your journey, you are going to need a personal brand that speaks for you. Big moments in time that people remember, and that create positive associations in their mind.
It’s the same in every field. Take a political election…there might be a comment in a debate that gets played over and over again, creates momentum, and leads to winning the election. Or sports…a player makes an incredible play that makes every highlight and ultimately they win the MVP award. In business, there are similar instances and opportunities. For us, maybe its on a smaller scale and not as public, but its equally important in our careers. These moments help us stand out from the crowd. Makes people raise their heads up from the busyness of their every day work life, and take notice. Rarely do these moments come TO us. More often, we need to manufacture the moment. And make it stick in the minds of people that ultimately might hold sway over our career.
Dealing with office politics in a way that will keep your focus on the job at hand
The idea of Office Politics is cliche. We’ve heard it referenced long before we ever start our first job, even if we don’t quite understand the concept, and how it will effect us. We assume it’s a bad thing, because we always hear it spoken about in a negative context, usually as some sort of grievance. You might have heard it from your parents, or your friends, or your coworkers.
Anytime a group of people gets together, and there is any sort of reward on the line (money, power, popularity), there are going to be political behaviors. And it happens at all levels of the company, from entry-level to CEO. We are driven to want our fair share, or to do what we think is right for ourselves or our business.
Avoiding the really bad decisions that can sink your career immediately
It’s actually pretty hard to get fired. If you are moderately successful at your job, chances are you can hang on for years…maybe decades, just plugging along. You might not achieve your career dreams by being just fine, but you can probably have stable employment. If you are really good at what you do, chances are you will get promoted to bigger roles over time. And if you are really talented, hard-working, and skilled in the nuances of corporate life…you might make it to the top..or close. But whatever your goals and wherever your career journey takes you, there is one way to immediately get the boot in big business. By doing something stupid…like really stupid. Making the kind of idiotic decision that exposes a major character flaw, offends your co-workers, or puts your company at risk of a lawsuit.
To see what Jay has to say about career management and to learn more about building your leadership skills, visit Mentorforce University.