Career Success Tip: know and develop yourself

Posted by on March 27, 2018

Career Success Tip: know and develop yourself

My last post was about my lack of any kind of long-term plan. If you do have a career plan, that’s great! Just make sure it’s flexible, because most people will have 5 or more careers in a lifetime, and we want you to be able to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

For those of us without a plan, that doesn’t mean we don’t have to do anything with regards to our careers! We still have to take action to keep ourselves moving forward. In addition to my personal motto (“I show up”), I’ve also had a couple recent speaking gigs where I talked about four steps for career success – whether you have a plan or not.

The first step is to know and develop yourself. You are the leader of your life and career, which means you are in charge of your development. Self-awareness has been identified as key to your career success and has all sorts of benefits:

  • when you understand yourself, you can better understand others
  • when you understand others, your communications improve and conflicts decrease
  • when you know what’s important to you, you can make better decisions (and make decisions more easily)
  • when you know what you do well and what you want next and can articulate it, the people around you can help you move forward – and up!

So how do you want to develop next? What interests and excites you? Is it time for some new self-awareness? Do you need a mentor? Is there a gap in your skills that needs attention?

Know and develop yourself!

p.s. Your comments are most welcome on this post at https://www.facebook.com/jenfrankcoaching

p.p.s. A small career coaching group is starting in May in Memphis, and it’s all about personal and professional development (i.e., knowing and developing yourself). More details are here: https://jenfrankcoaching.com/career-group-may-2018/