Do you feel you are stagnant with your career? You used to know what you wanted and fought hard to get to where you are today. But now, you seem to have lost the boldness and forgot how to get to next level. You may feel comfortable with where you are now, this is where your expertise is, people around you seem to respect and trust you. Your team member seems to rely on you to solve all the difficult situation. But you know something’s missing!
What is it? Is being good at your job equal to your career? Is what you have still what you want and are you happy with being stagnant? You saw people around you being promoted, you are always publicly recognized, but every time, your name would not show up on the promotion list. People have gotten used to you, your status quo.
What get you here won’t help you to get there. Emma recently had mid-year review, she leads a team of 2. During the review, she told her boss that one of her team member didn’t seem to have 100% committed to the job. Guess what, few weeks later, her boss told her that she had applied additional merit increase for that team member as she feels he’s below average of his level. Emma felt very happy for her team member. But that also makes her started to think of herself.
She has been on the same position for over 8 years. She has a solid record of performance history. Everybody in the team trusts her, her boss also likes her and appreciates her efforts. But other than regular annual merit increase, she remains stagnant for years. She had thought that her devotion and hard work would be automatically recognized, but looks like this is not happening. She also thought that in order to be promoted, she would have to take on additional responsibilities, but promotion of other colleagues didn’t seem to validate it. Some of them were promoted with no additional responsibilities.
She made a big mistake that many professional women make. ie., not vocal about what she wants. She didn’t let her boss know her frustration, she was hoping that her boss would have had thought about it for her. This just isn’t the case. You have to fight for your career, job is different from career. You need to think about what you really want, being good at job won’t always lead you to the career you want. Sometimes, being on the same job for too long can actually prevent you from moving forward, especially when you are not taking the lead yourself. Nobody owns your career other than you. Don’t be shy, and go get what you want!