Unsticking Yourself from Sticky Floors

Sticky career floors can be so frustrating. People find themselves getting stuck more often than you might think. It is tough when, like Dethany in the above On the Fastrack comic strip, people define your position as non-career (aka dead-end). It is even tougher when people put you inside a box and want to keep you there.

So how do you “claw your way outside of the box” when you have developed new skill sets and want to grow professionally, but your manager is set on keeping you firmly in your place? Your first step should be to determine:

• What you want to do and the next step that will help you move your career forward.
  1. Can these goals be reached staying with your current employer?
  2. Do you need to start exploring opportunities outside of your current employer?
  3. Do you need to change your career area or industry?
• What is stopping you from achieving your next steps?
  1. What can you do to help yourself?
     1. Check your attitude
     2. Check your appearance

• Do you need additional types of experience?

1. Do you need additional education or professional credentials?

1. Do you have a mentor or peer who will provide you honest reflection and feedback?

• Expand your network – the more people to whom you can reach out, the more opportunities you will find.
  1. Larger companies often have sports teams and interests groups – join one
  2. Look for after-work sports leagues (volleyball is great fun) or trivia teams

• Join the local chapter of your professional association and volunteer on a committee. Working as part of a team let’s people get to know you and recommend you.

• Make a commitment to yourself and develop a plan to help you get started and stay on track.

Create a career track plan that is comprehensible and open to new opportunities. Above all, maintain a positive can-do attitude. Don’t let a black career cloud create a negative karma. It will pass. Everyone has walked in your shoes at one time or another. You may have the worst job and the worst boss; take the negative lessons learned and move forward. People want to learn what makes you special and unique. You never know if the person you meet at the break room coffee pot or a professional meeting will be the link to your next career opportunity.

Leading with Purpose – Leading So Your Team Can Follow

 

Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director was asked to define “leadership.” Her response to the reporter’s question was fairly brief, “It’s about enabling them [people] to achieve what they can achieve – and to do that with a purpose.”

Within an organization, there are three types of oversight functional roles: supervisors, managers, and leaders. Each of these roles is important for an organization to function. Many times people – even if they are not the officially designated leader– will find themselves performing each of these roles at different times:

• The supervisory function provides specific direction regarding how and when to perform an assigned function.
• The managerial function delegates responsibility and assures time, budget, and quality requirements are met.
• The leadership function sets a team’s core values, demonstrates operational norms, and shares the mission passion.

This last one can be very difficult to learn because emerging leaders may not have the best role models. All too often leaders fall into an ego trap where they focus on their own personal needs vs. the needs of the team.

Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologies and leadership consultant for CEOs, provides advice in his book, Boundaries for Leaders. He suggests guidelines to help leaders create a culture that encourages growth, inspiration, and empowerment. As a quick summary he promotes the following core values and operational norms as a means to build high performing teams:

1. Help people focus and prioritize what is important.
2. Inhibit task actions which are not important or toxic.
3. Build strong communications among team members so that everyone maintains a common focus and works together toward an established goal.
4. Help people creatively gain control of what they can control and establish norms to manage situations which they cannot control.

So whether you are formally designated as a group leader or unofficially “step up” to the role, being a leader means helping people to achieve the group’s goals which can be assuring the completion a single, rote task, coordinating multiple tasks and teams, or maintaining the strategic vision of the project. In all of these instances, your actions as a supervisor, manager, or leader can have a positive effect on employee morale and productivity. Even people who may currently hold relatively junior positions have opportunities to step up and gain practice performing leadership-based activities.