Do you want to grow your career?
I suppose this is a silly question because who doesn’t want that? The problem is, when I talk to most people, they say they are feeling stuck. They explain that they are not sure how to advance and are looking for guidance.
Well, it’s simple if you just follow these three stages:
First, when you start your job your employer is going to pay you for what you do. We all have to start from this position. This is what gets things started.
Second, as you become more proficient in your job, you will get paid for what you know. This can be lucrative and may be enough for some people to want to stay in this stage. But if you really want to advance your career and be thought of as a true leader, you need to advance to the third step.
Stage three is being paid for who you are growing. When you are ready to move on to this level, it will be based on who you are training underneath you. It sounds easy, but ego usually gets in the way with this stage. We are addicted to doing things ourselves and we believe that by doing things on our own we will get rewarded. This certainly can be true.
But what happens when we let go and let those we have been training take over? We fear giving things up because we think we won’t be needed. But our job as a leader is to replace ourselves. Every time we replace ourselves and we teach someone else what we know, we multiply our value.
The best advice I got as a leader was to fire myself. And when I did, I finally allowed my team to grow into who they were meant to be. And this meant I was free to continue to grow into who I was meant to be.
If you think you are the only person in the room who can do your job, that’s a problem. And ultimately, it is probably why you are not advancing.
Do you want to grow your career? Start by firing yourself.
Until next time…I’m Marty, make every minute count.
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