Career Growth Secret – Part 1

Want to grow career-wise, but feel stuck without a strategy or tools that will help you progress?

If you want to advance in your present work, be noticed for other positions, or just feel more confident in your career, then I have to share with you what I discovered is a very little known career growth success secret that can help you accomplish all of these. I know from speaking with over 20,000 career-minded people over the last 20+ years that fewer than 5% know about this secret.

So, what is this secret that I’m talking about? Success stories! The ability to define your successes and apply them in effective ways towards your career goals.

You might be thinking, “Well, I don’t know if I really have any earth-shaking success stories that are worth sharing when applying for a job or talking with my manager in my performance review.”

I want to quell your fears around that. As long as it’s something that can be communicated as an effort that was completed with impressive skill or courage, it will fall into the category. Which kind of achievements should you use? Imagine that you’re looking through your career closet and trying to decide, “Which of my success stories are ones worth developing toward my career goal?”

There’s a very important filter that I want you to think about in terms of 1) Is a particular success story relevant, and 2) ideally, are they recent? The recent part doesn’t always work out, and that’s okay. I’ve had a number of clients who left a certain profession, went and did something different , and then wanted to get back to that original profession. We would pull success stories out of their career closets that were not necessarily recent, but they were relevant. So, I put relevant at the top, and recent second.

Where are your achievements hiding? Look in your career closet, a term I use to describe everything you’ve done career wise: school, volunteer, paid positions, practice projects—which could be things you might have done on own without pay, such as freelance work. Your success stories may also be hiding in performance reviews, in status report, or some other kind of record of your work somewhere, especially in this digital age. When I think about the record of my work, I can find that in our CRM, our customer resource management tool. I can go in there and look at what I’ve done over the last period of time. When you do that review, you’ll likely uncover success stories you’d forgotten about.

You can also look for successes in your track record. For example, maybe you’re in a customer-focused role where you haven’t missed work for two or three years straight.

If you’re having a hard time knowing what your success stories might be, ask someone who knows your work well and supports you. Ask them, “What do you see as a success story for me? What are some things that when you look at what I’ve done you would consider them to be impressive?”  And by the way, if you’re nervous about doing that, go into that conversation armed with what you perceive to be their success stories. “I see this in you. And now as I’m trying to grow career-wise, what do you see in me? What are some achievements that are particularly noteworthy?”

Next time we’ll discuss how to develop your success stories to help you grow!