Are Your Years of Experience Just Another Groundhog Year?

If you think your decades of experience automatically make you an expert, you’re in for a rude awakening. Andy Hargadon, a business professor at the University of California at Davis, sounds the alarm, "Many people who think they have 20 years of experience really don't — they just have one year of experience repeated 20 times."

Hurts, doesn’t it? But...what's the point?

Many (most?) people give no serious persistent cognitions on how to position themselves strategically and how to gain the skills to enable that positioning, being a member of a disadvantaged group or not. In fact, the disadvantaged ought to invest even more in strategic thinking and skills than others.

If you "go through the motions" without actively seeking feedback, learning, and growth, your years of experience may be as useful as a broomstick as a form of transport. Like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day, you’re probably just endlessly repeating your ways, both good and bad.

Symptoms of Repeating Experience

You likely already feel it and know it. But look for these telltale signs of being stuck:

• You do the same tasks without an increase in responsibility or difficulty.
• You fail to apply your existing skills in new and innovative ways.
• You don’t gain and apply new skills to expand your expertise.
• You get defensive to constructive feedback or too vulnerable to unconstructive feedback.
• You repeat the same interpersonal problems with your boss or coworkers or clients job after job.
• Your gentleperson is constantly frustrated by (inevitable) office politics.
• You keep yapping instead of solving problems.

Soft Skills and Strategic Orientation (Non-Technical Skills)

The first three issues are specific job-related ('technical') problems. Perhaps those are not easy to fix, but are relatively straightforward – you likely got an idea of what you must do or whose help to ask to overcome the challenge.? But the last four?

These stem from idiotic aspects of your upbringing that you never or only partially questioned. Result? Your juvenile soft skills and an attitude of utter disregard for any strategic and tactical orientation. And those are neither easy nor straightforward.

To address these deeper issues, start with disciplined self-reflection after every important conversation, event, or situation. Write down what you did well, what you could have done better, and what you will do differently next time.

This simple-looking exercise can - over time - boost your self- and other-awareness by improving your:

• Understanding why others behave the way they do (especially your boss!)
• Ability to anticipate how others may react in forthcoming important events
• Comprehension of office politics and how to position yourself effectively
• Relationship with your manager
• Conflict tolerance and overall communication confidence

However, guidance from a coach may be necessary as you probably never thought about devising and employing strategy at work that requires soft skills you almost certainly lack. You likely also have deeply ingrained self-sabotaging irrational attitudes that make you hot-headed enough to get nothing from the exercise. For more insights, click here .

Conclusion

Your years of experience may not be a reliable indicator of your expertise. To become an expert or powerful, you must go back to the drawing board, over and over again! Proactively seeking feedback, learning and applying new skills, building alliances, mitigating people issues, etc. The choice is yours: Self-reflect and address soft skill or strategic orientation issues to break the cycle of repeating the same limited, boring experiences you hate anyway.

Don’t settle for another Groundhog Year – take control of your growth and success!

I invite you to practice this self-reflecting exercise by sending me a message on what symptoms listed here you have and what you're going to do about it.

--- Oh, and join me on LinkedIn

About the Author

Gordan Dzadzic, the coach who’ll guide your ambitious mindset from emotional imbalance to strategic focus and success. With a top-to-bottom resume and transformative expertise (like REBT , NLP , TA , and more), he'll shatter your self-sabotages and refine your influence and impact. No babysitting, just results-driven personal and professional leadership development. Contact him for a free consultation.

?2024 Gordan Dzadzic, Coach and Management Consultant, All Rights Reserved

REFERENCES

• Hargadon, Andrew, “How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth about how Companies Innovate,” 2003.
• Pfeffer, Jeffrey, "Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don’t," 2010.