Express your career advancement intent to your company

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity. Your career advancement is your personal responsibility because it will never be served to you on a plate. The impetus to advance your career ought to come from within you. Under no circumstances, you can allow yourself to keep your intent to yourself.

Everybody wants to get promoted at work and advance in his or her career. However, most people are not clear about what precisely they ought to be doing in this context nor do they sincerely introspect about it. And even if they ponder over the issue, the responses are either ambiguous or insincere. The foregoing notwithstanding, the issue always plagues the mind of every employed and aspiring individual in some form or the other. Hence, it should be at the pole front of every manager’s agenda too.

The question that therefore, comes up is, “What is the authentic way-out for those who are ardent to advance in their career?” Surrounded by the parameters of talent desirability, recruitment and advancement of a career, there are men and women who progress faster than others. The fact is that if you are too shy, you may not attain what you seek. You could be a novice or a middle-rung manager, no promotion will come your way unless you strive and demand it. Times when promotions were time-bound are things of the past. The writing on the wall is clear – you and you alone are responsible to hold and oversee your career and to expect that somebody else will, is like asking for the moon.

Eventually, career advancement entails acquitting yourself exceedingly well so that getting additional responsibilities is facilitated. You need to scout around to add usefulness to your routine charter of duties and portray an image of suitability to shoulder higher responsibilities. For this, you should be doing well in your present role. The crux of the matter is to back up your talk with action. How can you achieve this?

You should be on a constant lookout to add ‘worth plus’ to your present function. You must try to help out your seniors by sharing their work so that they can concentrate on still higher responsibilities. In addition, you should craft your own work, implying that you generate innovative tasks and deal with issues that bring about enduring betterment and change. When you discern problems and come up with solutions, your dynamism is brought to the fore and which manifests your creativity, perception and acumen in consonance with your company’s sine qua non.

It is relatively easy to identify anything that is fragmented or unproductive. There will be several people who would be doing so, but it is the lot of high achievers who take on the duty of cracking them. Though much would be contingent on prevalent company traditions, you should make it a point to deliberate on whatever you intend doing before actually embarking on it. It is not necessary that you obtain prior acquiescence, provided you are able to fulfil all your other work obligations. In other words, your principal charter should not suffer and concurrently you should be able to reinforce your manager’s or boss’ intents.  

Your work will become easy if you develop the responsibilities and abilities of your subordinates. If you are doing well in your present appointment, your seniors and management may be disinclined to permit any cavernous abyss by letting you go forward. Well, if that happens, you would have achieved your aim, much to their vexation. This phenomenon is what is known as a status quo bias, meaning that if things are working well, there will be a reluctance to change them. As an individual out to get a promotion, you thus need to have your own succession strategy ready. Work entrustment is an inescapable management function and you ought to be rehearsing it. If you have brought others to a stage where they can shoulder your role, you will have more time at your disposal to do so for your boss and thus acquire those pulls or add-ons. Conveniently, you will thus be vindicating the expected management caginess about your stepping out of your present position.

Eventually, it all boils down to successful communications. You will always be expected to manoeuvre the schema since there will be a reluctance to institute a change. Towards this, the management will simply take note of things and proceed appropriately, though it will not be a very digestible effort. However, all this will not be possible if you lack the necessary attributes that are in harmony with the remuneration being offered for an envisioned position. Any organisation that is smart and flexible will invariably dicker the disturbance in return for promoting good employees for higher functions, better output and devotion that is received in return. All this entails a certain amount of prompting and which has to come from you.

Every action has costs and risks attached to it. However, their intensity is far less than the long-term perils of inaction. You must make your career advancement intent known to your company.