Career aspect: Opportunities to excel - Restless patience in career journeys series

Building upon the article I published in January 2022 titled Be restlessly patient & take control of your career journey, and based on the feedback and interest I received on the topic, I've initiated a series of follow-on articles to extend details on the different career aspects I've introduced in the first article. The aim is to make the career aspects as clear as possible; providing pointers and examples where applicable, in order to make them actionable, allowing you to plan and track the different activities against them easily going forward.

In this article I'll introduce the Opportunities to excel career aspect. In my first article titled Be restlessly patient & take control of your career journey, I've briefly introduced this career aspect as follows:

The activities you are engaged in, on day to day basis, providing you the opportunity to excel further in the career direction you have defined for yourself. This is important to always keep in mind, because often we could be too consumed with our day-to-day that we are blinded from recognizing if it is actually helping us grow, or not.

To further clarify what this aspect is all about; it basically serves as a constant reminder for you to ask yourself: Am I being engaged in the right opportunities that help me progress on my charted career path? It is one aspect you should think about all the time, every day if you can. Put your day-to-day activities under scrutiny to determine if they are really helping you grow or are you wasting time and diverging or distracting yourself with them. This mode of thinking will allow you to not lose much time and seek change if it is deemed crucial, or alternatively, seek to continue and push through, having recognized the value of what you are doing now and its importance for your career progression.

Moving next into how to engage in the Opportunities to excel career aspect.?

• If you've been lucky enough to have landed an assignment or opportunity that is core to, and directly supporting, your career progression, then do your absolute best with it. Attempt to be well recognized and demonstrate your value, skills and experience wherever possible. Proactively seek ways to increase your scope of work/responsibilities and your visibility among your colleagues and leaders. This in turn will allow you to grow faster and be considered for even better opportunities to come.
• ?A mentor of mine once gave me this advice that on first hearing it I thought it was counter-intuitive, but having reflected on it, I realized it was solid gold. Seek troubled projects and assignments, with lots of heat and pressure, because those are often the ones with the highest visibility and highest opportunity to learn and grow, and if you are able to make them turn to the better, your profile elevates and shines through faster and quite noticeably.
• Similarly, seek first-of-a-kind (FOAK) assignments. They often have a high risk of failure, as others haven't ventured them before, but when you take part in making them successful, it's an amazing career booster. You'd be recognized for the subject matter expertise among the different circles and higher ranks, and you are able to capitalize on them for weighted give-back activities.
• Make use of your connections to locate the best opportunity for you to excel. Reach out to your mentors, sponsors, colleagues, managers, social networking circles, communities, etc.. As you keep relationships active and healthy, you are more likely to be present in people's minds when the right opportunities arise.
• When you locate a career-making opportunity, don't hesitate to apply for it even if you don't think you fully meet the requirements. Seldom are we the best judges on our own selves (we're often harder than anyone else would). You never know how you compare to others considered, and, there isn't much to lose, but lots to gain, you just have to try and put yourself out there.

A few additional tips for the Opportunities to excel career aspect:

• This aspect is particularly important to always keep in mind, as noted, because it is very easy to drift, and find yourself months or years later, with no added value from the activities you've been doing, and are unable to capitalize on them to help you with where you are heading.
• Think objectively when evaluating your Opportunities to excel, that is, don't just label activities or assignments as not worth pursuing or continuing with them for the wrong reasons. Make sure when you evaluate it fairly; you think of all the pros and cons collectively, and weigh things accordingly. I know it's not as easy as it is writing it, but since it's a very personal and circumstantial topic, the best advice is to make you aware of this as a potential bias.
• That said, this is not to say that you need to keep up with negative circumstances or toxic environments even if the opportunities are amazing for your career progression. For example, if it comes to it, nothing compares to, or is worth the implications on, your mental or physical health or your personal life, neither short of long term.
• Don't let the fear of change stop you from pursuing the opportunity that would help you excel. It's not easy getting outside of one's comfort zone, but it's a whole new world outside that zone, one you wont be able to envision or foresee, unless you step out of the comfort zone, and right into it. This point is harder to some than others I know, just keep it in the back of your mind, and talk to others you trust about it, even if only to bounce ideas or get other opinions before taking a step.

As to why it's important and how it links to other career aspects. First of all, Opportunities to excel bidirectionally underscore your Domain of expertise; the opportunities you get, help you assert your expertise, and your expertise helps you land the best opportunities to excel. Additionally, as you get the right opportunities, this increases your Networking & visibility, and can help you locate Mentors & Sponsors more easily. Finally, the right opportunities can serve as awesome avenues for Give-back and IP, IC, publications, as you can reap and harvest from the work you do on them, to give back to the community, and, it all circularly feeds back into your Domain of expertise and Networking & visibility.

With that, it should be clearer now what the Opportunities to excel career aspect is all about, how you can engage in it, and why it's important for your career.

This concludes the eight article in the Restless patience in career journeys series - more to come as I unfurl the rest of the aspects, so stay tuned.