Managing A Career

This week, we take a break from looking at career advancement and we focus on the "life" side of the work/life balance equation. While everyone has a different idea of what their non-work life should look like, ensuring that you have adequate time to spend on it will actually help your career. If work consumes all of your waking hours, no matter how much you enjoy it, you'll eventually face exhaus...

As I covered in last week's episode on the Corporate Ladder - Episode 017 , you may eventually reach a point in your career where the next rung has a limited number of opportunities to progress. In Episode 13 - A Little Bit of Luck , I talked about how luck is when preparation meets opportunity and that sometimes you have to make your own luck. When the advancement will involve competition with ot...

For the majority of people, their career is going to last somewhere in the ballpark of forty years depending on when they start and when they decide to retire. While there are no hard and fast rules about how your career should or will progress, there are some generalized trends and milestones that you can expect to hit. Just note that each company is different and that these levels may not equate...

When your career begins, your key responsibilities are to do your tasks and to grow your skills. With enough time, this is often sufficient to justify a promotion. However, as you reach higher career levels, there comes with it, the expectation that you are not just producing results, but also leading others on your team. Even without the title and responsibility of being a manager, leadership is...

The other day, I was reading a series of articles by Jean Hsu on Substack (link to part one ). These articles outline how ask-culture and guess-culture can clash at work and how to navigate the differences. Ask Culture is when members of the group are inclined to ask for something even when the chance of receiving a "yes" are low. Their belief is that people will say no unless they really want to...

As with any career, it's important to periodically check your progress. Since this podcast started you should have held at least two career development discussions with your leader. Hopefully you're making the most of these session and have worked with your leader to put together an action plan. Recent episodes should have given you some things to talk about with your leader. Episode 008 covered r...

The Roman philosopher Seneca has a quote about how luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. When it comes to your career, this is so very true. If you spend your time waiting for an advancement to fall into your lap, you'll often be disappointed. No matter how many stories you hear about someone who is promoted frequently, there are just as many stories of people who have languished in the...

I was inspired to cover this topic by a post that I saw on LinkedIn by Jackie Simon of Jackie Simon Coaching . In that post, she listed 20 Great Questions to ask in a One-on-One meeting . This was a good follow-up to my previous episode on how to structure your one-on-one. One topic in that structure was focused on feedback, so this week, I'm diving in a little deeper on how to get good feedback w...

An important aspect of managing your career is having regular conversations with your manager about your career goals and performance. What does a GOOD career development one-on-one look like? First, when discussing timing, I think that a good cadence for career development conversations is once every four to six weeks. Any more frequently, and there hasn't been enough time to act on any of the fe...

If you imagine a medieval battlefield there were four main groups involved in the fighting. There were the mele fighters who were the front lines -- the men carrying swords and spears or other similar weapons. There was also the calvary -- men mounted on horse or later riding in chariots. The next group fought with ranged weapons -- bows and crossbows and eventually siege engines such as catapults...

So, the answer on how to choose a future career path is…..it depends. It depends on you and your desires and it depends on the company you work for. So, obviously, "it depends" isn't a very useful answer. So let's dive in to some of the factors that I would use in making that decisions. First, keep in mind that depending on the size of the company you work for, a position may wear many hats. Someo...

So, the company I work for has an annual employee survey and my results recently came out. In most areas, I score well, over 90% positive. But one question that I have consistently scored between 80 and 85% favorable (for multiple years) is around how achievements are celebrated and valued. In my organization, we've implemented a few recognition programs, but they do not seem to have moved the nee...

In episode one - Higher Level Tasks , I talked about how you should be looking for opportunities to increase the scope and impact of the work that you perform. Delegating and automating process driven tasks and soliciting for work that involves more discretion and judgement. In episode two - Individual Development Plan , I walked you through the process of creating an IDP and initiating a conversa...

Based on the lead quote, Stephen Covey popularized the concept of the "Eisenhower Decisions Matrix" in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The basic premise is that you should rank the things you need to do based on two axes - Is it Important? and Is it Urgent? Anything that is both important and urgent should be your primary focus. Things that are important but not urgent should be...

One of the things that I often tell my team is "if you're the only one who can, you're the one who always will". What I mean by that is that if you're a single point of knowledge, as a manager, I can't assign those tasks to anyone else and you'll always be expected to perform it. For some, that will seem like job security, but when you are looking to advance in your career, it can be career limiti...

In the corporate world, being scared leads to self-doubt and inaction. If your goal is to advance your career, those are two attributes that you CAN'T let take over. So, when you find yourself feeling fear, what then? The strongest tools against fear are knowledge, confidence, and action. If the fear is based in change and the unknown, knowledge is power. When you encounter this fear, educate your...

Whether official policy or not, in many companies in order to be promoted, you have to have already begun doing the work of the next level. When that next level is a position of leadership, it isn't always easy to have that work line up with your daily duties but mentoring is a one way you can exhibit those leadership skills. Some mentoring relationships are focused on expertise; what you know abo...

An individual development plan is a document that YOU create and YOU own that documents how you'd like your career to progress. It's main purpose is to facilitate communication with your leaders on your career goals - both short term and long term - and the progress you are making on those goals. Once created, plan on reviewing its contents at least once per quarter in a one-on-one with you manage...

If we look at your day to day activities, some of your tasks are process driven. They are driven by standard operating procedures (SOPs) that dictate what needs to be done. There may be associated flowcharts and decision trees which direct your thoughts on the task at hand. These tasks are necessary to the job. Other than "do or do not", there really isn't much control that you have. When you are...

Welcome to Managing a Career, I'm Layne Robinson. This podcast is aimed to help you navigate the path to professional success. Whether you're a recent graduate still searching for your place or a seasoned professional with years of experience, the knowledge and insights I will be sharing can show you how you can position yourself for growth and career advancement. I've been a software developer fo...