Accelerate Your Career
by Narayan Kamath
3 minutes read
If you are fortunate enough to be in a company that invests significantly in its leaders, you probably get prodded and pushed into assessments and psychometric evaluations on a regular basis. You are also likely to have a very structured Personal Development Plan and are encouraged to keep it updated. You are regularly sent for training and your organization offers unique opportunities to help you develop necessary skills on the job.
Alas, not all companies care deeply about developing leaders, and even the ones who do, usually can’t look beyond the top 2 - 5% (high potentials). If you are like most managers, you got where you are by working hard and proving yourself. You volunteered for the toughest of assignments, often ignoring personal inconvenience and hardship. You sought out people willing to mentor you and help you navigate the complexities of the corporate world. You quickly moved from being a talented individual performer to a first time manager - and your adaptability, willingness to learn and the humility to seek help from anyone and everyone allowed you to quickly close your competence gaps. In other words, you truly owned your own development and growth.
Alas, not all companies care deeply about developing leaders, and even the ones who do, usually can’t look beyond the top 2 - 5% (high potentials). If you are like most managers, you got where you are by working hard and proving yourself. You volunteered for the toughest of assignments, often ignoring personal inconvenience and hardship. You sought out people willing to mentor you and help you navigate the complexities of the corporate world. You quickly moved from being a talented individual performer to a first time manager - and your adaptability, willingness to learn and the humility to seek help from anyone and everyone allowed you to quickly close your competence gaps. In other words, you truly owned your own development and growth.And while most managers and aspiring leaders start strong and show a great degree of ownership for their personal development, it takes a great deal of commitment, planning and effort to continue to work on one’s development while delivering in one’s current role. Even when one is aware of what needs to be done (through assessments and evaluations)and is encouraged and supported by one’s organization - through training, coaching and opportunities to develop on the job.
So, you can only imagine how hard it is if the manager or aspiring leader has neither idea about what needs to be done or how to go about it - if the organization does not provide the necessary support. But it’s easy to blame organizational apathy. The real issue seems to be that managers become so focused on the urgent and now (which is what gets rewarded in the short-term) that they forget the important and strategic priority of continuing to keep themselves relevant. They ignore the need to manage their own development and growth, and over time they even lose the ability to do so.
Accelerate Your Career is a series that is designed to help you revisit and refresh your personal development plan and make it a living and empowering roadmap to create and implement a career strategy that is aligned with who you are, what you seek and what your employers want.
Over the next few weeks, this series will guide you through the 12 essential steps to create your Personal Development Plan and to implement it effectively to Accelerate Your Career. You will learn how to go about the Prepare, Plan, Implement and Review/Refresh stages of formulating and implementing your personal career strategy. You will learn detailed steps, and discover resources and best practices that will help you in completing the 12 Essential Steps to achieving your career goals. And if, besides reading the articles and downloading valuable resources, you build your commitment and start taking action, then there is no stopping you from unleashing your true potential and accelerating your career.
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Narayan Kamath
Narayan has over 26 years of functional and general management experience in small and large companies, leading small as well as large diverse teams. He has a rich and diverse experience of working and leading teams in a variety of functions including Business Development, Projects, Technology, Operations, HSE, Supply Chain and Engineering.