The six key success factors for managing your brilliant career

Right now it's a hot job market, which, perhaps counter-intuitively, makes managing your career even more important. One (more) of the challenges of the increased pace and amount of work that mystifyingly continues post-COVID is finding the time to plan and manage your career.

There may be plenty of career opportunities and choices available now - will you make the right one both for today and for the future of your career?

As organisations seek to stem the tide of the #GreatResignation, take the time to dig beneath the surface to satisfy yourself that your choices will result in career progress rather than setbacks. The grass may seem enticingly greener on the other side of the fence: confirming that it is real grass, and that it is so because it is well-nourished, should be your priority.

In this newsletter I'm turning my attention to career management. I'm building on FlexAbility: How high achievers beat burnout and find freedom in an overworked world with its focus on why and how you work, to help you to find the right work, roles and organisations that enable you to pursue your career well-aligned with your purpose and aspiration.

As a younger leader I was always interested in hearing the career journeys of senior leaders: to what did they attribute their success, and how had they managed their careers. I was struck by how many said that they didn't really manage their career, that many of their moves had been opportunistic.

At times this felt a little disingenuous to me, and it also gives the impression that all it takes is talent to succeed. Just what does it take to manage a career?

You can, and should manage your career, although you can't predict it.

Managing your career means managing across ambiguity and uncertainty. If you can navigate a series of paradoxes, you'll be well-placed. These are the paradoxes:

1. Opportunity and planning - it's about both, and the clearer you are about what you want, the easier it is to make the most of the opportunities that may come your way.
2. Ambition and talent - they are not the same thing, although they are often treated as if they were. One of the biggest mistakes organisations make when identifying emerging talent and hiring is to choose ambition over talent. Ambition, and affinity bias, often helps people to stand out, meaning more opportunities come their way. Talent may sit quietly in the corner and be taken for granted or ignored. I'd love to see organisations paying more attention to talent and less to ambition.
3. Identity and reputation - how you see yourself is not necessarily how others see you. The two perspectives need to be aligned if you are to achieve the career progression you hope for. Accurate and realistic self-assessment of your talent will help, and letting people know about it will overcome, to some extent, the issues associated with prioritising ambition over talent.
4. Activity and reflection - when people think of their career they often think of the next course to do. While undertaking learning activities is indeed critical, activity should be balanced with deep reflection. Developing a regular reflection practice, such as journalling, will bolster your learning, as well as keep your career management intentions front of mind.
5. Jobs and achievements - a career isn't just about job titles, although we often default to thinking it is. Not everyone wants to be CEO of a large listed company, but most people do want to feel a sense of fulfilment and achievement. Focusing on important achievements is a more flexible and fulfilling way to think about future career goals.
6. Ladder and lattice - most organisations now operate with relatively flat structures and the metaphor of a career as a ladder is pretty outdated. Even in its heyday, I think the ladder was something available to a select few. The idea of a career lattice seems to make more sense. Not everyone wants to get to the top, and that's good, because there isn't the room for it! Broadening out your skills and experiences is important for both future success at level, as well as contributing to success at more senior levels. And that's why at times your best career move might mean staying right where you are, but taking advantage of opportunities to grow and excel.
7. Accountability and ownership - leaders have accountability for helping their people to progress their careers. I heard just recently of a manager who refused to release one of their team members to fill a promotional role in another part of their organisation. So shortsighted - this is just one of the reasons why people might join organisations but they leave leaders. You have ownership of your own career - no matter the support you do get from your organisation and manager, only you will act in your very best interests.

A framework for managing your career

Given these paradoxes, how do you navigate through them?

Clarify and confirm your Foundations: this includes your professional training, the skills and capabilities that you already have. Belonging to your progressional association and taking on leadership roles in it will give you a great insight into how people in your profession develop their careers.

Transferable skills like self-awareness, learning agility, critical thinking, time management, influencing, teamwork, project management and digital awareness make career transitions more likely, and smoother.

Your career Aspiration is your highest goal for achievement. I write more about this, along with purpose and values, in Chapter 2 of FlexAbility. You don't need to name a specific role, such as Prime Minister of Australia (unless a specific role is important to you), you can identify the achievements and successes you aspire to.

Goals are the rational steps you take to bring your aspiration into clearer focus for immediate and medium term action.

Opportunities are less rational, more political, and frankly at times unfair, but important - noticing them and taking them will help you make progress.

These dimensions map into four more specific areas of focus: Development, Support, Achievement and Planning, shown in the model below. At the heart of the model is that nexus between your own identity, which needs to adapt and respond as you grow and develop in your career, as well as the reputation you have and manage across your career.

Development is based on a high level of self-awareness of what your capabilities are, as well as a good understanding of both the technical and the transferable skills that set you up for future roles.

Feedback is an essential for development. You can't really accurately assess yourself if you're not getting regular feedback.

And don't rely on courses as being key to your development: learning on the job, with the right level of guidance and support will accelerate your skills more rapidly.

We rightly think that our boss ought to be our biggest career supporter, although sadly, that's often not the case. Having regular career conversations should be a highlight of your working relationship.

One of the best suggestions for how to get the right Support to build your career is to assemble your personal board of advisors. Having a range of people providing different kinds of support means that you'll always have someone in your corner providing a helping hand.

How do you talk about what makes you special, what your particular Achievements are, why anyone should hire you? Having the data is the first step. How you notice, remember and talk about your achievements matters. Keep all your records in one place, make sure you're adding to successes, feedback, and achievements over time.

I mentioned above the paradox between your identity and your reputation, and there's no question for me that you need to both grow your sense of identity over your career, and you need to devote attention to your reputation too.

You need to let others know who you are, tell them about your achievements, reach out to them, so that the way they think of you is aligned with the way you think of yourself.

Crafting stories of challenges, support, learnings and successes, and sharing them, will help you to grow your personal brand. It's not self-promotion, it's self-expression.

Make a Plan, and keep it up to date. Identify your goals and development priorities for the next year or two. Use your performance review system as best you can: be proactive in performance and career discussion with your manager - be prepared for them and be prepared to ask for help.

The Six Key Success Factors

There are paradoxes that make career management a little more fluid that we might prefer.

To make it easier to navigate, use the framework to consider both your foundations and aspirations, and to set goals yet stay open to opportunities. Develop yourself, find the right support, map your achievements and keep planning.

The 6 Key Success Factors are:

1. Devote time to managing your career. Have a monthly meeting with yourself to work through and update the framework.
2. Realistically self-assess your capability and your potential. Get feedback to help you do so.
3. Aspire and plan. Be clear about what you seek to achieve.
4. Prioritise the development of your learning agility and make sure you learn from setbacks. Setbacks suck, so best to take something useful from them.
5. Surround yourself with the right range of supporters.
6. Take and make every opportunity to have constructive career conversations with your boss.

Good luck!

You can find out more about FlexAbility here: www.karenmorley.com.au/flexAbility.