If you work in a corporate setting and have about 10 years of experience you might be fulfilled (good for you), or you may be thinking about your professional growth (good for you as well).
So, it’s time to think about the steps to land a promotion. Spoiler alert. It does not include learning something new.
Intuitively, many employees contemplate learning or strengthening a new skill or, in general, add something to their resume. It makes sense, this is how you increase your value and stand out the crowd, right?
Not so fast.
If you’re reading this, you have 10 years of experience. You already know everything about time management, job effectiveness, project management, you already have your MBA, your PhD, scrum certification, PMP, Microsoft certification, Oracle. You are trained on negotiation. Networking. Leadership. You name it.
Learning is not gonna help
Especially if you are in a high tech, after 10 years or even less, you already know more than anybody else in your field. No one can teach you much more than what you already know. Now, tell me how many of you apply what you learn about of time management, program management. I lost somebody here. But those who stay, I hope those who realize you can apply this only to a certain extent. Learning is not gonna help anymore. It used to. Not anymore. As far as career growth.
Now you gotta put in practice what you learned. Many don’t do it. Let’s consider time management. If 30% of your team (to be conservative) has crappy idea of time, they’re gonna mess up yours. If your boss has different priorities, boss is boss. You know how it’s supposed to work, but you know it’s never gonna work. Too many variables in a workplace.
At this point, in order to gain visibility, you don’t need to learn new stuff, new best practices. It’s not about how good you do stuff. Everybody knows you’re good, at this point. It’s the way you show up. Show up it’s not something you do, a script you follow. People want to teach to you that to. It’s being respectful toward yourself.
I know there’s a lot of grey area in what I just said. But I don’t want this article to get too long. I’ll address it in my videos. So, stay tuned.
Suffice to say, it’s all thought process, that you can do by yourself, once you know what to look for. Because the way we think is unconscious, it’s a habit we have had for 20, engrained, it’s embedded. We don’t even realize we believe certain things, we give it for granted, as a truth, not a belief. The coach’s job is, in fact, to help to explore and identify these limiting beliefs and help you to address it.
Bottom line: don’t get stuck in learning. You’re curious and you’ll learn, I promise. People want to sell you knowledge, but you’re the expert in the subject matter. Instead, explore yourself, you’ll be surprised how many limits you will be able to remove. After that, growth will be a walk in the park, it will literally chase you.
