Internal Career Development - how about a new job without changing company?

Imagine you've got a role in a dream company you’ve interviewed for – congratulations! Imagine you have since been with the organization for years, maybe even many years.

Now what?

Most of the available resources - articles, books, podcasts, videos, etc are focused on finding your next role outside of your current company. But what about internal career development??What about finding your next adventure in the company you truly enjoy being part of?

To me it seems somewhat even easier to put your best foot forward with another organization, meeting people you’ve never met before. There is no bias and you have an amazing opportunity to shape an image of yourself and present it in a best possible way during interviews.

Such a different scenario from an internal career development, where it is rarely a case of just few meetings! In my opinion, internal career development requires a constant, intentional effort - it is not just a matter of preparation for interviews, but rather daily mindful effort to build, develop and promote your personal and professional brand even when you’re not planning to change roles in any observable future.

Your dream opportunity may come when least expected, and not necessarily when you are 100% prepared. Equally you may lose you dream opportunity if you are not serious enough about your personal and professional brand.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way, that’s helped me on my continuous journey of fine tuning both personal and professional brand.

1.?????Learn to manage your narrative, or your narrative will manage you.

The intentionality behind it is absolutely critical! Be mindful about how you speak about yourself, which words you use to characterise and describe yourself, which phrases you use when you introduce yourself to a new team member or on a call with someone you haven’t met before. Your words, brand, and characterization follow you after you’ve left a room. In fact, in a lot of cases, people tend to repeat your own words when describing you!

So, talk good about yourself, highlight your skills, qualities, and characteristics you want to be known for, and be sure to repeat that regularly!

This is relevant not only for introduction speeches, but pretty much any daily interaction with your colleagues, peers, skip managers, direct managers, mentors, direct reports, and coaches.

Here are some of the occasions I can think of, in which you have the power to control your narrative:

-???????When you are doing introduction rounds on a first team meeting, for example in a new project or during cross-group collaboration activity, or pretty much on any meeting/call where you are introducing yourself to new people

-???????On your Linkedin profile (Summary)

-???????Every time you present something (“a few words about me…”)

-???????On your regular 1:1s with your manager

-???????On your regular meetings with a coach or a mentor

-???????On internal informationals (informational meetings with potential hiring managers, aimed to gather more information about team, potential role(s), expectations, plans, requirements etc)

-???????During interviews

-???????During your performance review

It is hard to change something unfavourable that has been said about you, these things tend to follow you around, and create a perception that can take time to break. Remember that having a label stuck to you may impact your further perception as people around may fall victims to a “confirmation bias” – the tendency to seek evidence and interpret information to confirm preconceived notions.

Leaders are known for choice of words.

Try avoiding these types of references when speaking about yourself:

-???????“Oh, I’m so bad with data!”

-???????“I may be too direct, but…”

-???????“Oh, I’d better do it myself than wait for others to complete their parts”

-???????“I never remember things”

-???????“Oh, you are an amazing team leader! I’d never be able to lead a team like you do!”

2.?????Speak about your career aspirations clearly, regularly, and with everyone.

Two things here:

-???????You need to make sure you tell people around you about your career goals and aspirations.

-???????And you need to make sure you are doing this regularly!

First off, every person around us in a workplace may have an impact on our career progression, independently of their role/position/even current company. Any person can become an opportunity champion for us, opportunity bottleneck, opportunity door-closer, our career sponsor, career progressor, creative thinking supporter etc etc. It is critical that you are communicating your aspirations, interests, passions clearly and regularly.

You may think – what if I will repeatedly say that I would like to develop as a professional in one certain area – does it mean that people would not think of me when other/different opportunities arise? For example, one may say they want to continually develop as a data scientist, but what happens when another opportunity arises, are people thinking about me? The answer is - most likely they don't. Be clear about your career aspirations but be mindful how you phrase it, so that it doesn't limit you.

Important to mention here – not saying is also saying. Remember those stretch assignments flying past you? Those team leadership roles, global projects? A lot of them are flying by just because you've never mentioned to anyone that you’d ever be interested in these types of opportunities!

Second off, it is never too often to remind about yourself and your career aspirations. If you believe that saying it once is enough to land, and most importantly - stay in your manager’s and stakeholders’ minds – you are wrong ??

It may feel appropriate and enough to talk about your next career aspirations during your annual review and assume this will be remembered by everyone several months after but trust me – this assumption is incorrect. Make sure to use every opportunity to repeat, bring back the topic, ask for support and guidance, share your career plan and discuss what is the next role you are working towards.

Your manager, and your coach or?mentor – cannot help you achieve your goals if they don’t know what those are!

3.?????Speak about your successes (and failures!) openly and regularly!

Your manager will hardly know everything about all your work and successes unless you tell them. Help your manager celebrate you, help your manager promote you, give your manager information that will support your development, your career progression. Do not assume that your manager knows every tiny detail, every success that you had – celebrate it and share with your manager and the team!

Speak about your failures as well. Those who share failures and learnings with wider team are invaluable! First of all, you normalize vulnerability, you share experience, you model behaviour, and turn your failure into a learning opportunity – not only for yourself but for a wider team! You cultivate curiosity, you open discussions in the team, you lead by example.

4.?????Your personal brand = your professional brand.

One of the learnings I’ve had is the importance of your human side in the workplace. A personal brand is an expectation of an experience. It helps potential hiring managers to understand what they will feel if they are working with or alongside you. Your personal brand tells people what they can expect from you. Personal branding is always about an emotional side of the equation.

Apart from your professional skills, competencies and abilities, your potential hiring managers and team leaders would want to know - what drives you, what motivates you, what are your interests and aspirations, what is your personality, your traits, what environment you thrive in? Who are you as a person?

Every business is a human business, and it is not only the “what” but also the “how” that is important. In a lot of (dare I say majority?) cases the “how” outweighs the “what”. You can be an excellent overperformer meeting all your KPIs and targets on paper, but in a long run it loses its value if the “how” is missed. Are you a top performer getting things done but being a pain in the ass in the meantime, demotivating the rest of the team? Are you the one that barely shares anything with your wider group of colleagues?

Human connection is critical, and people will always remember how you made them feel. Have you inspired those around you? Have you made them energized, empowered, excited? Have you made them feel strong? Have you facilitated great overall conversation? Have you asked questions to highlight someone’s expertise? Have you celebrated others’ successes? If yes – they will be seeking for more opportunities to collaborate with you again! They will create opportunities for that collaboration – and “they” include your potential hiring managers.

5.?????Your visibility.

Visibility is not exactly bragging about yourself on every corner, but it is informing people about how awesome you are ??

When people know who you are and what you can do, they're more likely to consider you for promotions or interesting assignments. Visibility is just about that – making sure that people know who you are, and what you can do.

-???????If you have contributed to a project, research, presentation – make sure your name is on that email, PPT, research paper. Maybe you can ask for an opportunity to co-present on that paper.

-???????If you have some learning to share, or an interesting article you’ve read that others may benefit from – share it in your corporate comms tool.

-???????If you have a question to ask – ask it and add other people who would benefit from the answer.

-???????If you have completed a difficult project – share it with wider community, celebrate success, celebrate your peers involved in the project.

-???????Publicly congratulate your colleagues on their achievements, team on completed projects etc.

-???????Make sure to support your colleagues, and your wider team. So many times, we are met with “that’s not my job” push back, and even if it is technically true sometimes – this is never inspiring and is never helpful. You are actually saying – I’m here for me, not you, and I can’t be bothered with the needs of wider team. While instead, when you are supportive of your colleagues, when you can connect them with someone who is a better advisor for whatever issue they are faced with – you cultivate collaboration, you show that you care.

Great help with your visibility is an opportunity to get involved in extra projects, stretch assignments. Your “move-ability” = your “promote-ability”.

This helps to gain diverse experience, but also demonstrate your learning agility, adaptability, ability to quickly adjust and collaborate. Try shifting your experience (refocus/widen/narrowing/deepening) occasionally, to ensure you gain needed diversity in knowledge, perspective and practice your collaboration skills while building your wider network.

Be careful, however, with potentially mistaking visibility with overenthusiasm. Do not pivot on everything – harness your focus and attention. Understand priorities rather than spread yourself across everything, trying to give 100% to all, risking running out of steam pretty soon. Tamper your enthusiasm - listen to understand and ask the right questions.

These are my top 5, hope you have found it useful! Do share your leanings, tips&tricks in comments here!

Special thanks to amazing Tolu Lola Adesina for support with editing this piece!