7 Secrets To Progress Your Career Quickly - Consistently Get Promoted

Today I'm taking you through 7 secrets to progress your career quickly. I started my career as a graduate trainee at EY and then 16 years later I got my first board director position turning around a staffing business with $150 million in sales. I was really lucky to learn how to play the game of getting or winning promotions. I learnt some of the lessons the hard way, making mistakes and learning from them. I want to share 7 important secrets I've learnt in how to progress your career quickly. I'll be going through. In each section I'm sharing tips and actions that you should use to progress your career faster. Understanding the promotions game and employing practical career advancement strategies makes a big difference to progressing your career quickly. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25 year management career in corporates and household names through to SMEs. And I've coached a number of managers in how to gain promotions. These individuals were doing a great job yet were being overlooked for promotion. Once you understand the promotions game, playing it well becomes a lot easier and the promotions come. If you're new to this channel, Enhance.Training shares business and people management expertise to help you improve your performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. The first secret to progress your career quickly is to understand that working hard is not enough. Working smart is needed. You're at school and as you start your career, I'm sure that you've heard or you've been told many times, work hard and you will get promoted. I certainly was told this a lot myself. I can still picture sitting with a number of junior managers when my manager asked us all, what does it take to be successful? Working hard was literally the first answer that came up. She then asked, while you and a lot of the people in your teams work hard, why are you ahead of them in your career? This got us all thinking. This is when I learned that hard work is simply not enough. There are loads of people that work really hard and do a great job, yet don't get promoted for many reasons. To progress your career, hard work is needed, yet alone it is not enough. To progress your career and to progress it quickly, you need to work smartly too. Working smart covers a lot. For example, choosing which skills to really focus on for your next step. Look at what your manager and their peers do well. Ask them about the skills and the knowledge they view as essential to do their role. Take an honest look in the mirror and work out where your gaps are. Work hard to close those gaps. The level of skill is as important as the range of skills. Always work on your people skills and relationship building skills, no matter what job you do, as they're always going to be essential. Each career path has a different mix of skills at each different level, so look ahead and start improving the essential skills you need today. Working hard is a starting point, an entry point. Work smart to get promoted. The second secret to progress your career quickly is to set yourself a career goal and create a plan. Goals create focus and a direction of travel. You can travel a further distance in a straight line than in a wiggly line in a given time frame. Having a career goal creates the same benefits and faster progress by taking a more direct route by concentrating your efforts in the areas that matter in reaching your goal. So create a career map which sets out all the different roles between where you are now and the role that is your ultimate goal. Work out which route to achieving that goal best suits your skills and interests. A further step is to create a skills map, comparing your current skills to the skills you need for each of the roles to reach your ultimate goal. Think about the level of the skill needed for each role as well as the range of skills and what experience you need to build those skills and how you're going to get that experience. Sit down with your manager and build a plan together. Proactively seek out the experience you need to build your skills so progressing your career is in your hands, not someone else's. And don't forget about any qualifications you need to acquire to progress your career. So set yourself a clear goal and then plan out the steps needed for you to move towards that goal on your chosen route. The third secret to progress your career quickly is doing a good job is the entry point. A crucial ingredient for progressing your career is that you're doing a good job. Doing an okay job or worse is rarely enough for you to be considered for promotion and to drive your career progress. Doing a good job or better is the entry point. Doing a good job on its own is not enough. You'll know plenty of people who work very hard, do a good job yet don't seem to get promoted. Doing a good job is not just about meeting or beating the objective set with your manager. How you reach your objectives is also an important factor which is a much more subjective measure. A classic example might be a high-performing salesperson who is all about themselves, not the team. The company likes the results they produce Work hard at being a team player and being perceived as a team player. Have a positive attitude and put the effort in to learn and improve. Put the company and the team before yourself, to a point of course. These types of behaviours are always viewed positively by managers. Work on how you deliver results and you have a much better chance of being able to progress your career quickly. Remember, doing a good job is the starting point to progressing your career. The fourth secret to progress your career quickly is that perception is reality. How you are perceived by your peers and those above you is a surprisingly important factor in being promoted and progressing your career. The desire and the need to belong to a group is hardwired into us. In our long distant past, membership of a group meant a lot higher chance of survival. The context may have changed a lot, yet the same behaviours are still very real today. If you are looking to progress your career, you are going to leave one group and then join another group. For instance, leaving the professional ranks and then joining the junior management ranks. Do you fit in? Does the group that you are aimed to join perceive you as one of them or an outsider? Your level of confidence, whether you are at ease building relationships with this group, your style of dress, how you talk, your attitude, how you treat others, your demeanour, your energy levels, your support of the group and the company, and a range of other factors build an image or a perception of you in the minds of others. Look at how the layer above you behaves, looks and acts. Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, do I easily fit in with this group? Think about what you should work on to improve how you fit in. The saying, dress for the job you want, not the job you have, is a very wise piece of advice. Don't dismiss the importance of perception. Changing perceptions can be done quicker than you think, if you work at it. If you want to progress your career, make sure the perception of you fits in with where you want to progress to. The fifth secret to progress your career quickly is knowing your manager is crucial. Your manager has a lot of power over your career progress. Your manager is in charge of organising who does what work, who gets which projects, which tasks and which responsibilities. All of these influence which skills you can build, the depth of those skills and what experience you accumulate. Know that your manager is very important to your career progression. Work hard to build a good relationship with them. Five key behaviours to do this include, firstly, don't let them down or fail to deliver against what has been agreed. Secondly, keep them informed and their expectations realistically managed. Third, support them so they can improve how they do their job. Fourth, proactively help them solve problems, the team and therefore they are dealing with. And fifth, help make them look as good as possible to their managers. And as a bonus, sixth, get to know them on a personal level as well as a professional level. You know, get them talking about themselves, their hobbies, their interests, etc. by asking questions about them and listening. It is in your interest to proactively build a good relationship with your manager. Don't leave building this important relationship to your manager. Take responsibility and be proactive. If you have a manager from hell or you're really struggling with the relationship between you and your manager, ask friends or others to help or get a coach or a mentor that can help you change how you're approaching working with your manager. The other obvious option is to move jobs and hope it is easier to build a better relationship with a new manager. Build a strong relationship with your manager and you will progress your career more quickly. Have a poor relationship and you will be lucky to progress your career at all. Your manager is critical to your career progression. The sixth secret to progress your career quickly is relationships matter. Build them. Your manager exerts a strong influence over a potential promotion but it is unlikely they will approve a promotion on their own. Their manager and their peers will be involved in a group decision on who to promote. I learnt this the hard way. I'd spotted an opportunity, proposed a project to take advantage of this opportunity and then executed the project with a colleague. We added around 20 million in cash to the company's bank account as a result. My promotion, supported by my manager, was blocked by other members of the management team who didn't know me that well. Great performance didn't help. A really painful lesson for me. Identify who is likely to be involved in approving your promotion and work at building relationships with them. Think about your manager's peers and their managers. Build these relationships on a personal level as well as a professional level. For example, do a project or create some analysis or insights that are relevant to them and ask to pop in for five minutes to discuss these with them. Bump into them at the water cooler and chat. Don't send an email, pop over to their office. Speak to their staff and find out what are their interests and ask them about these. Ask them what they are working on. Keep the conversation relevant and about them and their interests or problems. Build relationships with your manager's peers and their managers. The strength of these relationships matter to your career progress. The seventh secret to progressing your career quickly is to choose to play the game. Choosing to play the game becomes harder and harder as you progress your career. Let me explain. Progressing your career is about choices and trade-offs. The hardest part of progressing your career is making the sometimes tough choices with very personal impacts. Let me give you a classic example. You are good friends with several of your peer group, often going out for drinks with them. You are offered a promotion which will move your career forwards. Taking the promotion will mean managing some of your good friends. Going to the pub will not be the same again. You have a choice and a trade-off, maintaining the relationships with your friends versus career progress. You will continually meet these choices and trade-offs as you progress your career. There is no right or wrong answer, only a personal choice right for you. Progressing your career will keep requiring you to push yourself out of your comfort zone, to learn and to adapt. To keep choosing to put in the effort to learn and adapt requires a high level of drive, ambition and motivation. What are your motivations to move your career forward? What can you do to increase your motivation and drive? Being aware of these challenges is the first step to overcoming them. At some point, the benefits gained by the next step in your career progress may not outweigh what you have to give up. In my experience, each step up when advancing your career means more work, more pressure, more challenge and not the opposite. What I got in return was well worth it for me. Make sure that you're pursuing career progress for the right reasons for you. Keep choosing to play the game, to keep pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, to keep learning and adapting, all of which are vital to advancing your career. A final point, most of what I've been discussing with you relates to internal promotions. Many of the same factors are still required to progress your career by changing companies. You have the added challenge of demonstrating the right behaviours, the right results and the right perception to a group that does not know you. You have to demonstrate that you belong and fit in with a group that you will be joining to successfully win the job. Good luck whichever route you take to progressing your career. So in summary, I've taken you through seven secrets to progress your career quickly. Each is important to be aware of and work on. The effort needed to overcome the hurdles, to push yourself out of your comfort zone, to improve yourself and keep building skills is high. The rewards can be well worth all the effort needed. So as a quick recap, the seven secrets to progressing your career quickly are, firstly, working hard is not enough. Second, set yourself a career goal and create a plan. Third, doing a good job is the entry point. Fourth, perception is reality. Fifth, your manager is critical. Sixth, relationships matter, build them. And seventh, choose to play the game. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.