Personal deficits that stunt your career growth

Success is not simply all about having money, authority or status. You can enjoy all of them and yet feel that you have not been able to attain what you actually wished for in life. It is also possible that you have none of them and still feel contented in life.  There are certain qualities that stand you in good stead all through your career journey. And there are some attributes that are a sure shot recipe for your failure. The latter are generally overlooked by people as a result they make a botched job of their careers.

There are five so called chinks in your armour that can prove to be disastrous for your career, irrespective of your age, position achieved and experience. These are:

· Dearth of enterprise & dynamism: It never rains flowers; if you want flowers in your garden, you have to plant them. You have to take initiative, display enterprise and be dynamic. It may be difficult doing so if you do not happen to be vested with adequate authority or if you do not have much experience to your credit to be able to figure out what needs to be done. You cannot pass on responsibilities to others and work on the premise that you need not display. They say that people who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for any more than they do. You should not regard new initiatives as a load and thus refrain from undertaking them for fear of being exhausted or routed.

· Closed mind & rigidity of approach: Your suppositions and beliefs are your windows on the world, but you need to frequently cleanse them off otherwise no light will come in. You need to be flexible and welcome new ideas, particularly those suggested by others. All of us are born with inestimable intelligence and astuteness; it is necessary that you move towards every difference, argument, and different views of your central ideas with an anticipation that you stand good chance of being proved wrong. In this fast-moving world of today, you need to enable change, overcome hostility to it and be resilient in the face of altered environments. That is how opportunities will flow to you. Remember that your wisdom is the handmaiden of your plasticity and change. 

· Inability to treat mistakes as learning experience: Learning occurs through recognition of error. Failure to learn from your mistakes will invariably lead you to commit more mistakes. It is through retrospection that you develop prudence and farsightedness. You must ruminate and swot over them to acquire awareness for future use. Setbacks suffered by you should be viewed as opportunities for improvement; you should avoid cloaking your mistakes and moping about them. The fact is that your capability for committing random bloopers is attached to your capability to attain your objectives. And hence, the difference between excellence and mediocrity, success and failure lies in how you perceive a mistake and take action to ensure it does not happen again.

· Reluctance to be answerable & chargeable: They say that the price of success and greatness is responsibility and responsibility implies accountability. You can move away from your responsibilities, but you cannot move away from the outcomes of moving away from your responsibilities. When things go wrong, it is pointless condemning situations or denunciating other people. You may not have contributed to negative fallouts, but if you carry out a sincere appraisal of the contributory factors, you will realise the abundance of opportunities to do things in a different way. You may not be able to preclude negative outcomes, yet if they happen, you are responsible for them. It is how you respond to them that will define your character and your quality of life.

· Deficiency of life skills to communicate & interact: Interpersonal skills are the most important skills you need for success in your job and career alike. Sans them, you are likely to experience conflicts with your colleagues, seniors and juniors alike. Your ability to use effective interpersonal skills facilitate building and fostering better relationships; you thus enjoy working with others. Irrespective of what your profession is, you have to communicate with and be receptive to others. If you give a boost to your interpersonal fortes, you will be able to bring about more cooperation, mutual trust and camaraderie in your organisation. If you are distrustful, ill-disposed and haughty, you will find these unpleasant qualities reverberating around you because the people with whom you work radiate your own outlook. You need to display your best comportment to bring out the best in the people with whom you work.

All the above insufficiencies are preventable. Remember that each one of them affords new prospects for continual professional advancement and long-lasting career success. If you put to rights your deficiencies, your abilities will take care of themselves. Since you are principally who you make yourself to be and all that transpires in your life is the outcome of your own creation, you will need to change yourself.