So we’re going to dive into how to prepare, excel, and optimize yourself, your performance, and your overall way in your current job. These are extremely important elements if you want to obtain promotion opportunities. It’s also a great way to understand how to lead in your career. Leadership is definitely a skill we can learn at any career level. 

Let’s think about this: sometimes, we already love where we are at and we want to just strive and continue to achieve more, and honestly, I applaud that I think that is AMAZING. Just don’t forget with growth there is a strategy that’s needed to go along with it, this is why my New Hire Success Planning Sessions are so popular because this gets you set up for success so you can obtain growth opportunities and promotions. 

Let’s now dive into some ways you can develop yourself:

Creating innovative ideas

Take an educated well thought out risk and bring the ideas to the table. You want to show employers that you care for the company, the role itself and you will partake in the company's growth.

So think about the problems the company has or maybe what problems you currently have in your role at this time and just like any business think about its pain points all of these together should really help you brainstorm ideas, suggestions, and thoughts to bring to the table during company meetings or just meetings with your own boss.

Never be afraid to share your thoughts and input, this will only help make you a better employee with skills ( communication, leadership, etc) by speaking about it. Even if it’s something that can’t work right now it doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future.

Be Willing To Learn

This is honestly so important. An employer wants to see that an employee wants to grow, is interested in developing themselves, and overall has an interest in the company. To become better at your role in this learning process you can always ask to have a mentor from someone that is currently in your role or has been in your role that you can just learn knowledge from, observe others that have qualities that are liked or that you would aspire to become.  

Outside knowledge is great too, you can get certifications, attend programs, webinars, etc. If the company provides them, that's great! don't ignore- attend!! But if they don't, find some that may be in your budget or free that you can get some value and even potentially make connections from those that are also in your position.

In a sense, you have to be willing to learn and have that reflected in your employer because they want to see that you are coachable to management- meaning you are able to meet their standards and business needs.

Understand the Business and the Role

In order to be successful, you need to know how the company operates. As a leader and someone who wants to perform their job better and potentially grow, you need to know what the business is about. 

It is important to understand your role to its fullest and the employee’s roles in all departments as well. Know what makes an impact on the business. As a leader, understanding the business and its employees is a key factor that will also help in your developmental and growth process.

Being invested in the company along with its mission brings you to shine as an employee that is of course truly committed. The understanding you obtain and knowledge you receive from knowing about the business can also help with how we discussed providing insights and ideas along with how the department should be operating. 

Develop and Find Solutions to Problems

So just like creating innovative ideas, you also want to develop or find solutions to problems. Sharing your knowledge and sharing thoughts, is extremely important because you don't want to keep your knowledge to yourself only (i used to think this way) it is so much better to have a department, management, and overall team that learns from you as a leader (as this is helping you grow) but you then are trusted. So if you have a solution whether it works or not share it. Let others know. Create alike, know and trust factors for yourself.

Self Evaluation

Yes, you can evaluate yourself, someone does not have to do that for you and you DON'T have to wait for the end of the year. Every month, what I recommend works, is to have an excel document that represents different aspects of your current role for your own evaluation.

 So this could be your performance towards overall tasks or even specific tasks, what your goals are and whether you have achieved them, What did you improve from last month to this month? What did not improve? 

Gather as much as possible to really understand what areas you can then target a focus on to continue to improve- you can even get those weak areas assessed by someone within your department or management for their input on how you can improve that weak point. So for instance, I could say: “Hi Jane, I have noticed that this month I didn't perform to my optimal best in customer engagement, I am setting a goal to improve this for the following month, would you mind sitting with me to provide myself a better outlook on how I may tackle this differently and really make an improvement?”

So remember, we have to create ideas, be willing to learn, understand the business and the role, develop and find solutions to problems AND MOST IMPORTANT self evaluate monthly in order to continue to excel and grow.

A lot of the time, this can be fearful. I get it, you are stepping out of your shell. I’ve been there before so I can completely understand you. You have the desire, but you have to have the guidance to get there, let me help you. If you don't make the action if you don’t take the risk, how do you expect to really get the promotion, perform better at your job or develop and grow?

Stop making excuses & let’s get you growing in your career!