I regularly work with managers who are advancing up their career ladder though often not as quickly as they would like. The programs we work through are different because the challenges they face differ. There are, however, some similarities.
If you want to improve your career opportunities in your current, or future, company, here are 10 areas to pay attention to.
- Know your “strings and strengths.” Know those personal attributes which hold you back and be alert for what can stop your otherwise smart decisions. Also know your core strengths. There are 4-5 unique values which you can use in every aspect of your life.
- Develop your business savvy. Know the broad strokes of how the company you decided to work for makes money, what its internal and external constraints are, what its competitors are probably going to do next, and what the industry trend lines are,
- Be strategic. Always think of the bigger picture and how each event or action or decision affects the corporate strategy. Know what the company is to look like in the future and how you can help create that future.
- Dress, think, and act for the position you want.
- Maintain a “clinical separation” between you and your direct reports. Managing people is an emotional undertaking, from all sides. A good leader recognizes the emotional climate that direct reports are working in (personal and business) and does not get caught up it in.
- Ask the questions that you’re “not supposed to be asking.” Ask the questions which most others are wondering but don’t have the courage to ask. Ask them as steps to the business goals, not just to be different.
- Be unique and fearless. When everyone else thinks that a particular solution is the best way to proceed offer ideas which may suggest a more direct course or even a different view of the “problem.”
- Learn to see things from many different points of view. How do customers, vendors, employees in other departments, regulators, etc. see the same issue?
- Never bend the rules.
- Develop a resilient and strong ego. A strong ego is not knocked off balance easily, manages victory and defeat with equanimity, has the humility that comes from having strong core values and is ambitious in ways that benefit
the enterprise.