9 Steps to Guarantee Your Career Progression

(Read time 5 minutes)

Robert W. W. Attracting and retaining Millennial professionals (2017)

In a recent survey by Robert Walters in their white paper "Attracting and Retaining Millennial Professionals " 

91 % of millennials said they were looking for rapid career progression and 69% said this is what keeps them engaged at work . 

Given that this a priority for soo many of you in todays newsletter I'm going to share with you how to climb the career ladder with a 9 step process. 

This will result in you acquiring the tools that will help you make progress in your career.

 It all starts with a solid foundation

Don't be one of the sheep - if you haven't identified who you are, you will forever feel as if you haven't achieved what you set out to do - that you didn't achieve your true potential.

It's about acknowledging that you are a unique individual and capitalizing on your own personal strengths and looking at your weaknesses and finding out how you can address those.

Join our Movement

It's also about being realistic about what can be achieved in what period of time. I know that it has been said the Millennial Generation is known for having unrealistic dreams but I believe it more about wanting something to happen in crazy timelines that is the actual issue. Always keep the following in mind:

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.

- Bill Gates

Getting real with yourself

Again this comes down to you, your skills and what you should be focusing on. Only you can determine if you have the drive to succeed and have an attitude of doing whatever it takes to achieve your goals.

Here are the first 5 steps of the 9 Steps to Guarantee Your Career Progression:

#1 Create clear intentions for what you want to achieve in your life

It's about developing the long view and seeing beyond the immediate setbacks, failures and successes. When you develop a long-view of your dreams, failure becomes a slight detour in the road, not a massive mud slide that sweeps you away.

It's not about chasing your dreams - it's about growing them. You may not see an immediate result from the sowing, but you need to keep planting more to ensure a rich harvest in time.

#2 Leveraging the best of who you are – Belief in yourself

Steven Pressfield wrote in the "War of Art"

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Ask yourself the question - When you rent a property are you going to put in the time, effort and money to make it dramatically better?

Answer: Why should you?

But if you own your own home, you are always putting in extra time effort and money to make it look better and to increase its value.

The same applies for you - you should not be renting the best of who you are - you should be owning it and finding ways to make you - better.

Self awareness is an underrated skill - no one can do what you do or be who you are.

#3 Find a mentor and be mentored –

You should continually be learning to learn and learning to teach. Getting information from a collection of age ranges with different backgrounds and experiences can open your life view up dramatically. However, most people don't seek out mentors and expect them to come and find you.

Don't be afraid to approach somebody you admire that you know can add value to your learning and life and learn as much as you can from them. This alone will put you ahead of your peers in so many ways.

#4 Invest your time with purpose

This is one of the areas where you have the greatest potential to set yourself apart from your peers.

Homework is no longer an issue (or it may not be for very much longer) and you may not yet have a home, spouse and children that take up your free time. How are you spending that time? Will you invest your time in things that build or things that destroy? Will you rather spend your time in things that will produce value or will you waste it on non-profitable actions? How you leverage your time now - will be the keys to your success later...

Always remember - once the time is gone - you cannot get it back. Invest it wisely

#5 Learn how to fail well

Growing up you received awards, gold stars and immediate feedback on how you were performing. In the big world out there, the immediate feedback is non-existent and it's something that is a fact of life that you need to get used to.

Accepting that sometimes things are not going to go the way you planned and having to accept that "failure" and moving on, going forward, getting better; is going to be what sets you apart from your peers.

Learn this lesson well and you will thrive, unlike your peers, who will most likely buckle under the weight of the perceived "failures".

Download the Worksheet

In next weeks newsletter I will share with you the last 4 steps in this process which will help guarantee your career progression and help you achieve your #Careergreatness 

To make sure you don't miss out on this join our movement

Join our Movement