5 Quick Steps to Raising Your Profile at Work Straight Away
Looking to receive your long yearned promotion? Read these 5 steps below and do a self-assessment. Which of these points did you put into practice already? Which are still missing? What action steps will you create for yourself? Any other ideas that come to your head?
Step #1: Have a career plan. A quote from Alice in Wonderland from Lewis Carroll: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? asked Alice. That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. I don’t much care where, said Alice. Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.” Do YOU know where you want to get to? Only then you can choose the right way. Define your long-term career goals and then see what milestones you have to reach on mid-term that is leading to your ultimate goal, then break it down even further to short-term action steps. If you have difficulties with this, you can get some ideas from my free report “Coach Yourself to Career Wellness” or you can work through this with your Career Coach.
Step #2: Personal branding. What do you want to be for others? What do you want to be for your boss, your colleagues or your clients? What is the image that you want to give of yourself? Define who you want to be in order to get closer to your career goal above and create your personal branding around it. Whatever qualities you choose to highlight, be consistent. Success will not come overnight!
Step #3: Networking. Information is key. And how can you get to this key? By having a good enough network of information providers and supporters who can pave your way. Make sure that decision makers know your name and accomplishments and if this approach sounds far too aggressive for you, you forgot that all this works on a reciprocal basis. They help you and you help them.
Step #4: Be a solution provider. Let’s face it: we all have problems, in every area of our lives. So people don’t want to hear about problems, they want to hear about solutions. If you want to stand out from the others, talk about solutions. Give advice or help your colleagues and boss to find the solution themselves. Use your creative mind and recommend solutions to optimise processes and systems in place. It is not about the number of propositions that do go through, but about demonstrating your skill of striving for excellence.
Step #5: “I can” attitude. And once you are doing all the above, you have to truly believe in your capabilities to succeed. Keep up a positive “yes, I can” attitude, see what is great in every situation (even in challenges, yes, you heard it right), ask yourself what you learned and stand up and go. If you don’t believe you can achieve success, you won’t – it is so simple as that.