Most people appreciate the importance of honing skills, working well with one’s manager, finding mentors, setting strong goals and getting the right experience in order to advance one’s career. However, there are other things that are equally vital. Here are a couple of critical questions to help you reflect on how to increase your chances of personal and career success.
WHAT WILL YOU STOP TOLERATING?: Some typical things not to tolerate are sloppiness, tardiness, toxic people, time wasters and mediocrity (in yourself and in others). You teach people how to treat you so don’t do anything that will give others the excuse to disrespect or treat you badly. Be friendly with everyone but who do you want to be associated with? Avoid office cliques because they generally do not have a good reputation; but there should be nothing stopping you from having a network of high performing colleagues in your workplace to learn from.
WHAT BAD HABITS WILL YOU DROP?: It takes courage to do this especially if you’ve had these habits for a long time. But it comes down to a simple choice, carry on as is or take action and free yourself to become better and do better. Have a ‘stop doing list’ which should include all the time wasting activities; for example being on social media endlessly on company time, keeping company with the complainers and office gossips or even keeping up what may seem like a harmless habit like wanting everything you do to be perfect. Procrastination is also one to ditch!
HOW WILL YOU PRE-EMPT YOUR STAGNATION?: Doing well in one’s career isn’t just climbing the corporate ladder. Growing your career can also involve gaining diverse experiences even if it means making lateral moves to stretch yourself and become more competitive. You can do this by using your strengths more, improving your time management so you can be involved in more things. Purposely put yourself in challenging situations, try new things, seek more stretch assignments and look for opportunities to work in not so familiar situations. Identify new skills you want to develop, how you will go about developing the skills and how you will know you have gained such skills.
WHAT BOUNDARIES WILL YOU CREATE AND ENFORCE?: Establish boundaries that can keep out unhealthy influences, stresses and negativity. Avoid in particular those who always create conflict, complain or are plain hostile. Enforce boundaries that help you maintain your sanity and be more accountable and meet your commitments. Boundaries that enable you focus attention on what is crucial. Do what helps you keep your sanity and takes unnecessary pressure off you. If a colleague oversteps the boundaries, have a constructive discussion about why you have set those boundaries and that you’d appreciate others respecting them.
Honestly answering these questions and any additional ones of your own will help you remove a lot of the toxicity and pitfalls that can stall your career or at worst flat out kill it.
Now take action: What one action will you do to avoid professional stagnation?
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