In the new year coming, you may be looking to take the next steps in your career but ambition is needed to succeed. If you’re ambitious you’ll constantly be trying to get promoted, increase your salary, uplevel your skills or education, or bigger profits.
But how do you get to where you really want to be, at the very top of your profession? Where you’re not just successful, but you’ve made it. The key is to realize your true potential. Here are three things you need to consider if you want to take control of your career and reach your true heights:
- Know yourself
If you want to take control of your career, you need to approach it like a project. You need to know all the variables, all the resources you can call on. And that means assessing your capabilities. What skills, experience, and knowledge do you have? What are your weaknesses? To be able to seize the right opportunities when they come along and adapt to an ever-changing environment, you need to be constantly assessing and recalibrating your success-preparedness.
But a self-assessment only gives you half the story. You will get powerful, and maybe, surprising intelligence by asking for feedback from your subordinates and people who are more senior in your organization. You can’t move forward if you don’t know where you’ve been, as the saying goes.
- Know what you want
To be successful, you need to know what you want from your career. Do you want to run your own business, do you want to lead a multinational? Maybe social justice is your passion, or creativity, or teaching. Is your current job or industry a good fit for your strengths and your passions? Take a step back and think about your career values and really what you want to do.
If you’re unsure or having doubts about your career path, one of the best ways is to research jobs and industries to see what a job involves, as well as what industries hire and the pay and benefits. You can look at job postings for a company, or find them online, to see how your capabilities relate and if you need to enhance any skills or education/certifications. Likewise, do your homework on companies who hire to determine their culture, pay/benefits, etc.
- Have a plan
You’ve done your research, and you know what you want. If you want to make it to the top, you need to excel, not just be good at your job. You need to be strategic, and you need a master plan. A master plan outlines your big vision and where you want to be in the long term. And you need short and medium-term plans that will lead you to your master goal.
A good career plan that is supercharged for success will keep your long-term vision front and center. It will be flexible; it will take your current skills into account and anticipate future skill needs.
Good strategic plans anticipate likely obstacles and are flexible enough to accommodate or avoid them. You should be able to plot your desired trajectory and build in actions and strategies to keep you focused on achieving your goal.
By knowing who you are and really what you want, you can realize your true potential and achieve whatever you want. Success is yours for the taking!
If you’d like help and support along your journey, reach out to get more information on how we can help. You don’t have to do this alone.