Be The Boss Of Your Career

John Nielsen is Executive Coach, Leadership Trainer and founder of The Nielsen & Co. Coaching. Former global leader at Microsoft Corp.

Have you ever asked yourself who is in charge of your career? Is it a coincidence? Is it driven by a company's strategies or external factors? Or is it your manager who is deciding? 

I am very grateful for the environment and company cultures I was part of during my career. It provided me with a few lessons that for me were priceless — and worth sharing.

Most successful companies have exceptional managers, HR and L&D teams providing support, tools and infrastructure to support and facilitate career planning. Despite the excellent infrastructure and learning platforms, there are another few questions to answer: How much time do managers spend on the career development of their people, and how seriously do they take it? What types of conversation do they have, and who is talking most?

I too often hear and learn about situations where the career conversations are more a “paper,” or all planned and standard, procedure.

I spent 95% of my career fully in charge of my career and necessary development activities. Yes, I was the “boss” of my career. I was inspired to come prepared with thoughts on where I wanted to be in one to two years, with a list of learning activities (on the job, projects, training, mentoring, etc.) supporting that direction. Having excellent managers who made me think and dream helped me become a people leader who had in-depth development conversations with my directs, understanding their aspirations (and the reasons behind them), motivations and learning styles. Most importantly, my directs felt empowered and, at the same time, accountable for their suggested development activities. 

Some of the questions I used during my very regular career and development conversations were focused on understanding employees aspirations, motivations and plans:

• Where do you want to be one year from now? And why?

• If you could apply for any job in our company/organization, which role would you pick, and why?

• What is needed to stay relevant 12 months from now, and how can I support that?

• What did you learn in the last six months to ensure you would be the preferred candidate if you had to re-apply for your current role?

And the list goes on. There are no $1 million questions; you should prepare questions to help your employees reflect, think and dream: open, non-leading questions. Create a space and time where both the employee and you as the leader will learn something new to help build the most impactful development and career plan for your employee.

Encourage your people to think about transferrable skills: skills that will support them no matter which direction they go. I have personally always been working on communication, stakeholder engagement and becoming a great listener. Sometimes, I also was unclear about the next big career step, but I knew there were roles ahead that would help me to grow and learn. And I always looked for roles bigger than I thought I could cope with; they all helped me to grow and not stand still. What I learned on my path was:

• Never stop learning.

• Never stop dreaming.

• Think outside the box.

What I realized early in my career is that working with people and leading people is my “thing.” I love to push people to think outside the box, inspire and ignite the hidden energy in people, think big and support them in the most challenging moments.

The image I have in mind is like a plant. You need to care about it and nurture and water your plant to make it grow and become beautiful and individual. Every plant is different and grows in different directions. What we know is, if we don’t care about the plant, it will fade and disappear over time and have a hard time surviving.

Let your career be like your most important plant: Take care of it. Own it. Care about it.

Another critical success factor when it comes to career planning is self-reflection. I want to encourage all people leaders reading this article to look back at the last 12 months and ask themselves:

• Did I do my very best to create the space for regular development conversations to understand my directs' progress, motivations and career dreams?

• Did I do regular check-ins throughout the year?

• Do I know where all of my directs want to be a year from now, and why?

• Did I provide the needed support and help to connect my people with other teams to introduce additional learning and career opportunities?

Sometimes, the best development opportunities are outside the immediate team. For me, the best way to keep great talent in the organization is to understand where they are heading and do my very best to support them, even if it means it has to happen outside my direct team. Do it regularly and invest the time to prepare for great conversations. It is a win for the organization, the company and the clients.

In a nutshell, no matter if you are a people manager or individual contributor, I strongly encourage you to take the lead and own your career, including the development needed. And for all the people managers out there, my single-most important advice: Help your people to become fantastic and reach their career goals; let them grow like a beautiful and unique plant. A win for everyone! Be the boss of your career.

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