Getting ahead in your career takes work – that’s the secret. You can’t coast your way to success. Your focus varies throughout your life or career. Career growth depends on the intensity and commitment you have to your personal and professional development.

The types of development experiences you engage in influence your personal and professional growth.

Intensity of Career Development

For our purposes, think of personal and professional development being assessed at three intensity anchor points:

• Passive
• Active
• Transformative

Passive experiences require little action on your part and the rate of development acceleration is low.

Development through action requires demonstration of experience, skill and knowledge through specific assignments.

Transformative development promotes or tests skill and knowledge application in unfamiliar assignments or situations.

As you may surmise, the higher the level of intensity, your development is more impactful.

It can be difficult to pinpoint where specific experiences fall on the continuum. Factors such as timing, personal tolerances and receptivity impact individual development.

Take a moment and think about the experiences that made an impact in your career. Write them down. Where would you place those experiences along the continuum? Think about these questions if you are getting stuck:

• What experiences were pivotal – where you had the Ah-Ha moment?
• List the experiences did that represented smaller directional steps in your career.
• What assignments stretched your capabilities? Why did they stretch you?
• Have you volunteered for new assignments or jobs?
• Have you changed careers or employers by choice?
• Did you have significant increase in responsibilities within your current role?
• Do you invest in educational development through local colleges, certification or training programs?
• How do you view life learning experiences? Are you traveling to new places to experience new cultures and customs?
• Have you relocated within your company or to another new company where you knew no one?
• What was the toughest project or assignment you were given – why was it so difficult?
• Have you ever failed?

Now that you have your list of experiences, are you happy with how your career is progressing? If not, think about what you can do to change it. Having a good career takes work.

Should I approach my manager if I have applied for another job? It is a question that you may face sometime in your career. There is no one right answer. Let’s discuss what you should be thinking about before telling your manager that you want to transfer to another part of the company or you want to change companies.

The New Position is inside your Company

If the new position you want is within your current company, then talking to your boss may be a good decision. However, there are organizational cultures where initiating career movement is not welcome. Here’s an example:

A few years ago, a career coaching client came to me because he wanted to make move from the Engineering organization into a business role. When he approached his manager about supporting his career change, the manager could not believe he wanted to leave the Engineering organization! The engineer languished in the department for a few years until he was finally able to make the career move. If his manager was supportive, the career move would have been much quicker.

There are managers who support upward mobility within an organization or company. The conversation you have is just as important and should be carefully thought through before you approach them.

Many companies have formal Human Resources policies about inter-company moves. Review what the proper procedure is in your organization. Let’s say your company has a job posting system where employees are free to apply to internal jobs. In this case, you will want to discuss your career goals with your manager and ask for their support in the process. The reason I suggest this approach is that your manager may be informed by Human Resources about your application activity and it is better that they hear it from you first.

Applying to a Position outside your Company

Perhaps your boss is blocking your promotion or you believe there are no other career opportunities in your current organization. When you want to leave a company for a new position, carefully consider if you should discuss it with your manager. As soon as you tip your manager off that you may leave, expect your manager will treat you differently.

Managers reward company loyalty and when you are actively looking for a new job, they will question your loyalty. Your manager will tell their boss that you are actively searching for a new job and that’s when your credibility and power in the organization deteriorates.

If you think your boss is one of those rare managers who will not treat you differently, it’s time to reflect on why you believe their loyalty is with you and not the company.  There are managers – albeit very few – that have your interests at heart more than the company’s.

“I need my Manager’s Reference” is not a Good Reason

Are you thinking you need to talk to your manager because you think you need a reference? Most companies who try to recruit you from another company realize that asking for a reference within your current organization is not practical. Think of other people who can serve as a reference that have left the company and do not put your current employment situation at risk.

In general, I don’t recommend you talk to your manager about leaving until you have a job offer when you are leaving your organization.

This article will discuss why executive coaching is a better alternative to traditional training for executive and organizational development. It may be challenging for senior leadership to support executive coaching because organizations focus on the cost of the professional development instead of the return on investment (ROI).

As organizations look for ways to cut costs, they turn to online or large traditional classroom training which can be effective in specific situations. Typically, traditional training methodologies are effective when imparting hard skill development.

Why does traditional training not work well? Professionals and executives develop personal skills, abilities and competencies through active development vs. passive training methodologies. Active professional and executive development is a core ingredient in executive coaching.

By design, executive coaching provides action learning through discussion, interactive exercises and role-playing. Targeted homework encourages discovery, new approaches and reinforces learning objectives. Through regular meetings, the professional or executive is able to formulate their unique approach and modify their decision-making, problem-solving and interpersonal communication styles.

Many of the challenges that professionals or executives face are personally embarrassing to reveal to their organization, peers or boss. They may fear reprisal so working with an external executive coach is a smart alternative. By working together, the professional or executive is able examine their behaviors, skills and competencies without judgment. Through expert questioning the executive coaching process encourages deeper introspection, self-evaluation and commitment to change.

Think about traditional training methodologies, how effective would this approach be? Would professionals or executives be forthcoming about their shortcomings to a large group? Does the group process encourage action plans? What would be the incentive to follow through? Generally, once the course is over employees revert back to their comfort zone and operate the way they were doing it before the training session.

Here’s my experience – organizations see positive ROI when executives change their behavior. An executive’s success is not dependent on acquiring skills or knowledge that helped them get to their position but on their ability to manage people, people, systems, communities, and customers. When executives make changes on how they execute, ROI permeates throughout the organization.

Question: Last summer, I got a job in the service industry working as a shift coach in a 24 hour operation. It was a new business and after my first training, I was put on graveyard shift. Management knows that I want to work either days or nights. I am a team player so I helped out while they were hiring new coaches and that they would move me to a better shift. They said I will make the move in March.

I recently got my results an evaluation from the people I supervise and I was blown away. They scored me very high and my manager told me that is one of the highest scores he has ever seen for a shift coach.

My manager recently gave me my six month performance review. He told me and the other coaches that everyone was getting an average performance score. Part of me says be a team player, the other part of me says, is this really fair? – Donna in Ohio

Answer:

To be honest, no it is not fair. Managers are paid to evaluate their employees and give candid and constructive feedback. Not every employee is going to be average and it sounds like your manager was taking the easy way out.

You’ve received a stellar evaluation from the people who work for you and yet your manager fails to take that in consideration despite acknowledging it.

Employees do not have to be perfect to receive an above average score. There will be things you have to work on to become better at being a coach.

Your manager should be comparing your contribution to the other coach’s contributions and decide who is above and below average otherwise the above average coaches will begin to distrust his judgment.  The message the non-performers receive is that they don’t have to improve or work hard to get by.

The tough part is how to discuss your opinion with your manager without causing a problem for yourself. In some organizations, you won’t be able to do it because the culture does not support open communication (so perhaps this article lands on their desk!). Let’s suppose your manager is open to discussing their decision. Here are two articles that might be helpful:

• How to have a difficult conversation with someone
• How, when and why to have a performance and career discussion with your boss

An assertive approach would be initiating a self-review of performance and meet with your manager to discuss it. You can outline why you believe your rating is above average. meet with your manager to discuss it. You can outline why you believe your rating is above average. You can ask that yourself evaluation be included in your employment documents.

In this approach, your manager may tell you where he agrees and disagrees with your self-evaluation. That’s a great starting point. You can now ask and define what it will take to move your rating from average to above average. Follow up the meeting with an email outlining what was discussed and communicated.

Or you can play the wait and see game for the yearly review to see how your manager handles rating his employees. If the manager says everyone is once again getting an average review, then it’s time to have a discussion with Human Resources about the performance review and ratings systems.