If you are dissatisfied with your career, don’t immediately seek to change companies. If you leave your current organization without raising your self-awareness or enhancing your interpersonal and leadership skills, there’s a high probability that you’ll experience similar frustrations in a new organization.
Take an unflinchingly objective look at yourself: what are your strengths and developmental areas? How much do you trust, respect, and endorse your immediate boss – greatly or needs shoring up? What would your boss say about your attitude and performance? By the way – being honest with yourself does not mean that you have to be hyper-critical – just realistic.
View yourself, in your current role and organization, as being in an executive learning laboratory. Consider yourself in a unique environment in which you have the opportunity to fine tune and enhance your skills, core beliefs, and behaviors needed to be a world class leader and contributor.
- Build Your Brand: Simply put, you are your brand. Objectively assess your personal traits, talents, and successes in light of the vision you have for your career. How aligned is your self-perception with others’ perception of you?
- Solicit Straightforward, Constructive Feedback: It’s been said that feedback is the breakfast of champions. World class athletes want their coaches to tell them the unvarnished truth about how they might improve.
- Close the Gaps: Look closely at the gap between your unintended impact and your strengths, developmental needs, and career goals. Identify the roadblocks and accelerants to your success. What specifically will you enhance to achieve your current and future career goals?
- Experiment and Practice, Practice, Practice: Push beyond the outer edges of your comfort zone and embrace “failure” en route to mastery.
QUESTION TO BLOG READERS – What have you done to successfully turn around your relationship with your immediate boss that enabled you to stay in your organization?
