Just who is managing your career?

You have done an excellent job, met all your deliverables, and your staff love you, but at review time you are told that you are not ready for a promotion, or worse still, a peer gets promoted ahead of you. Are you so busy doing your job so well that the only time you consider managing your career is when a head hunter calls?

You have done an excellent job, met all your deliverables, and your staff love you, but at review time you are told that you are not ready for a promotion, or worse still, a peer gets promoted ahead of you. Are you so busy doing your job so well that the only time you consider managing your career is when a head hunter calls?

Many busy executives in financial services and other industries don’t take time out to consider: who they are; where they are going, and what is the best way of getting there. The more senior you become, the concept of just minding your own business and doing your job well does not always result in a promotion.

Financial services organisations are increasingly pushing the responsibility for personal development towards line management or to the individual. Flatter organisation structures and seemingly endless company restructuring have resulted in the virtual death of the traditional career path within many large companies. Individuals who want to succeed need to take control of managing their own careers.

So how does an individual go about managing their own career? Are people jumping ships too fast and missing out on internal opportunities? Just how long should you stay with one organisation? When does frequent job changing become a problem, particularly within the same industry?

For younger people, this knowledge often comes from talking with peers, friends and relatives, or their boss, who act as mentors and guides. But as you get more senior, the management of a career becomes more complex. Executives generally have less time to focus on their career, and fewer people they trust and respect to talk to about it.

Managing your career has many aspects and while it does not necessarily mean changing jobs, it does require taking time and planning. Career management helps you identify your personal values and goals. It’s about gaining an understanding of what your real career/work interests and motivations are and determining if you can expect to get them satisfied from your job, or from other areas of your life.

Managing your career means looking creatively at what your actual experience has been and what skills you have developed to date that will groom you for your next move. It also means identifying areas that you may be highly skilled at but are tired of doing. These are the potential burn-out areas. This may result in sculpting your current job to include more of what is really of interest to you.

For example, you may discover that you are actually a builder - a person who likes to create a project from scratch. You are best to hand the built project to someone else for on-going management, and then move onto the next task. This may be a better way of positioning yourself within your own organisation, and means that a resume with lots of short stints with companies is more acceptable. If company circumstances change so that your role becomes one of downsizing, then you may be in the wrong role. Clearly understanding this helps both the individual and the organisation.

For others, career management means challenging the view that a successful career means moving into general management, when they do not have the people skills or the deeply held interest in people required of such a position. In this case, the person would be more satisfied by staying as a functional or technical specialist. So often, people are driven by societal views on what a successful career looks like, ending up in roles that actually make them personally unhappy, because they have never questioned this belief.

An executive coaching program can be individually structured for career management purposes. The regular face to face meetings ensures that managers take the time out needed to manage their own careers. Having a clear understanding of your own goals and values also provides a means of evaluating where a job change will benefit you, rather than being overly influenced by the ego-boost that a call from a head hunter generates.

Career management also benefits the company and increasingly organisations are providing executives coaching in this area. It assists in succession planning and aligning employee needs and skills with the current and future needs of the organisation. This results in a more committed and productive workforce, and ultimately in enhanced profitability.

Elizabeth Foley is principal of Elizabeth Foley & Associates, which specialises in executive coaching. Any feedback can be sent to [email protected].