Employees often assume (wrongly) that their hard work and results will be enough when managers make decisions about their future growth and promotion opportunities. Make no mistake, performance is critical for advancing your career, but it is far from the only reason employees get promoted. A narrow view of how and why people receive job opportunities can leave high-performing employees feeling mistreated and frustrated when decisions about promotions are made.
The unfortunate truth is the decisions that leaders make about promotions and performance are clouded by human bias and the complexity of not being able to delineate individual performance from team performance. Employees can become so focused on completing tasks and achieving results that they ignore the other equally important aspects for advancing their careers.
4 Ways To Advance Your Career
1) Develop A Strong Relationship With Your Manager
A lot is written about how critical it is for managers to build strong relationships with their employees but building a solid professional relationship with your manager is not a one-way street. The employees' responsibility in developing a strong and supportive relationship with their manager is often overlooked. A first step in establishing a solid relationship with your manager is to clearly communicate that you desire guidance, feedback, and coaching to improve your performance and development. Making explicit agreements about how you and your manager will focus on your ongoing performance and career growth is critical for getting your manager to be an advocate for your career advancement.
If you and your manager do not have ongoing conversations about your career, then you are responsible for initiating these conversations. Ask your manager if you can set up quarterly meetings to focus on conversations about your ongoing development. First, create a draft of development goals for your manager to review and give feedback. Show up prepared to engage with them about your performance, future development, and career aspirations.
2) Seek Feedback Regularly
The benefits of receiving feedback include increased self-awareness and improved performance. Unfortunately, giving feedback to peers and employees is risky because of the potential for defensiveness and relationship damage. To help minimize these risks, employees should:
Be Specific With Feedback Request - Employees need to be specific with their feedback requests. If you ask general questions like "How am I doing?" or "What can I do better?" it makes it very difficult for people to understand what type of feedback is wanted and okay to provide. It can be helpful, to begin with, a statement that you desire to improve in a specific area. Below are a couple of examples of specific feedback requests:
- I want to improve how I show up during our weekly team meetings. What can I do to be more collaborative and effective?
- My goal is ______. What am I doing that is getting in the way of achieving this goal?
Ask For Feedback Often – Employees should frequently ask others for feedback about how they can improve their performance. As this becomes part of your routine, people will feel safe about providing upward feedback.
Avoid Defensiveness – The quickest way to ensure you will not receive constructive feedback is to react defensively. If you respond defensively, you send a message that you do not want or value constructive feedback. Even if you disagree or feel the feedback is unfair, thank the person for their willingness to share their perspectives.
3) Build Strong Work Relationships
Developing and demonstrating social skills have become essential for a person to thrive in today's workforce. The work environment has fundamentally changed how employees must perform. These shifts include:
- Colleagues, employees, and stakeholders that work across multiple time zones, cultures, and customer segments
- Increase in matrixed reporting complicating roles, authorities, and workflow
- An abundance of information that requires multiple perspectives and expertise for effective decision making
- Work that requires more collaboration from experts, stakeholders, and teams
In today's work environment, companies need their employees to be effective at their tasks, contribute to others' performance, and use others' contributions to improve their performance. This requires employees to build strong relationships across the organization and beyond.
4) Find A Senior-Level Mentor
A senior-level mentor can help advance your career in ways your manager may not be able to support. A senior-level mentor can have a broader view of potential future opportunities, introduce you to their peers, and advocate for development opportunities outside your manager's scope of influence. Some of the improved career outcomes associated with having a mentor include higher compensation levels and a greater number of promotions.
If you aren't in an organization that provides opportunities to senior mentors or haven't been included in your company's formal mentoring program, don't give up on finding and building a mentor relationship. The truth is that most effective mentor-mentee relationships are built outside of traditional programs. Asking someone to be your mentor might seem a little awkward, but it doesn't have to be. Most people are flattered by being asked to provide guidance or expertise to help someone else travel a road they may have already traveled. Experts in their fields usually have a passion for it and get excited about other people who share that same passion.
Invest In Yourself Drawn on White Brick Wall. 3D
Being strategic about navigating your career is not manipulative or inauthentic. If you expect someone else to care about your career more than you do, you will always be disappointed. Being an advocate for your career is essential to achieving your professional aspirations. Research shows that employees who find meaning and purpose in their work are happier, healthier, and more productive. Focusing on these 4 Ways To Advance Your Career will help you achieve your desired career goals.
