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6 Critical Career Missteps

By Sara White posted 04-16-2017 09:41

  

Jo Miller in 6 Critical Missteps That Hurt Your Career Advancement offers the following advice.

  • Let’s face it: it isn’t easy to break out and establish yourself as an up-and-coming pharmacist/leader in today’s pharmacy world. In fact, some days you can feel like the best kept secret.
  • Be sure to avoid the following 6 Critical Missteps That Hurt Your Career Advancement:
    • Misstep #1: Waiting to be promoted
      • Your management might have said that if you “work hard” and “do a good job,” you’ll be recognized but if you’ve already tried that route, you’ll know that it can bring mixed results at best.
      • You can’t afford to delegate responsibility for your career advancement to your boss. Be the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of your career.
      • Instead of waiting for a promotion, take charge of your career trajectory by identifying the role you want next, and giving voice to your ambition.
      • Let it be known that you are throwing your hat in the ring for that role.
    • Misstep #2: Allowing others to define your reputation
      • Inevitably, the people you work with perceive you a certain way. They have formed opinions— judgments, even— about what you are good at and not good at.
      • You already have a “brand” or reputation, but it has taken place by default, not by design. Don’t wait for others to discover who you really are.
      • Instead, build your own brand. Identify what you want your name to be synonymous with, and create a short, succinct “brand statement” such as “the go-to person for strategy or the oncology clinical pharmacist” or “the bridge between pharmacy and critical care”. Make sure it describes something you are passionate about, skilled at, that your employer needs and values.
    • Misstep #3: Building a dead-end brand
      • It’s always important to do the job you’ve been hired for, but don’t let others assume you’ll be in the position forever as you want to stay challenged and satisfied during your whole (decades) career.
      • If people keep coming to you with requests and assignments that you’d have been excited to work on a few years ago (but now are bored by or, frankly, overqualified for) it’s a clear sign that your personal brand is holding you back.
      • Instead, make your brand scalable. Periodically review your “brand statement,” making sure that it describes your current – and future – potential and not just your (past) experience. It should encompass your higher-level skills, not the ones you’d rather leave behind. For example, a cardiology clinical pharmacist recently re-branded herself, scaling up her brand from “team player” to “little l leader ” and, in doing so, began attracting less “busy work” and more projects that required her to lead change.
    • Misstep #4: Working too hard
      • Believe it or not, working too hard can be a career misstep, especially if it’s work that’s neither valued – nor visible. If you are a hard worker and develop a reputation for hard work, guess what you’ll attract more of? More hard work! And not necessarily the visibility and recognition that is due to you for the work you do.
      • So don’t be the best kept secret in your organization. In other words, don’t spend 100% of your time at your desk or in your clinical practice, head down, doing your job.
      • Make a point of stepping away from your work on a weekly or even daily basis, to do activities that make your value visible, and promote your accomplishments as you achieve them, not necessarily after the fact. Remember marketing isn’t selling it is educating which is what you need to do for yourself.
    • Misstep #5: Accepting low-visibility assignments
      • Leaders never operate below the radar because they know that the more visible the assignment, the stronger their brand – and potential of being recognized.
      • There is a time and place for low visibility assignments, and they are typically at the entry level.
      • Seek out career-defining projects that place you at the epicenter of your organization’s and department’s strategy and most important goals, while showcasing your personal brand and leadership skills.
      • To devote to your time to high-impact, high priority assignments that showcase your leadership skills, delegate or even say “no” to busy work to free up time. Say “yes” to high profile projects that define your career, not limit it.
    • Misstep #6: Downplaying your accomplishments
      • Humility has its place – in church! If you want to be rewarded and recognized, you must find ways promote your achievements.
      • If this sounds too much like bragging, observe who gets rewarded in your team culture, and watch what they are doing to gain recognition. When self-promotion backfires, it’s often because it is done in a way that is inconsistent with a team’s culture.
      • Find a few methods that are consistent with your personal brand. For example, get on the agenda to present in a meeting and invite your leaders to attend or volunteer to represent pharmacy on a committee or handle projects.
      • Or when a someone sends an email thanking you for your great work, add “FYI” and forward it to your leader. Toot your own horn before somebody gets the wrong message – that you have nothing worth promoting.

Which one of these should you start working on now? Please share your thoughts.

 

 

 

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Dennis Tribble
04-28-2017 09:43

Sarah,
A truly thought-provoking list which stirred a number of thoughts.

1. Waiting to be promoted - I actually have two primary thoughts around this one:

(a) Throwing your hat in the ring for a role for which you have no experience or skill can be harmful to your brand. Engaging in supportive roles in projects that build up your experience and skill is necessary pre-work.

(b) Given that the pace of turnover in leadership positions can be glacial (especially with us oldsters working well past the age we were expected to retire), that next step in your career plan may be somewhere other than where you currently work, or even where you currently live. Indeed, part of what makes you increasingly valuable is that you have seen a number of environments, and have a consequently deeper pool of experience from which to draw.

2. Allowing others to define your reputation - I agree wholeheartedly with this. A corollary to this is that presenting your best self at work is key to buidling your brand. For me, this has often meant finding ways to manage that portion of my personality that does not present my best self.

3. Dead-end brand - I concur that people often unintentionally build themselves a niche within which it becomes comfortable both for them and for the organization. This can result in the organization becoming uncomfortable with removing them from the niche.

Having said that, it is my experience that this happens any time someone does a good job at anything. Indeed, I know people with appropriate and well-publicized growth aspirations whose promotion was stifled because their leadership feared having to replace their current role.

This means that one must start building succession planning for their current role so that the notion of advancing them does not create dread within the organizational leadership.

It also means that people who hoard knowledge or responsibility to themselves as a survival strategy create dead-end brands by definition.

4. Working too hard - this is one I struggle with constantly. The bald reality is that I love to work, and take great satisfaction in a job well done. Along the way, I have had mentors whose aphorisms helped me manage this. I will share two:

"A job not worth doing is certainly not worth doing well."

"If someone gives you a job you don't like, do it well enough that they don't complain, but not so well that they ask you to do it again."

5. Accepting low-visibility assignments - in my experience, any assignment can he high-visibility if it is properly executed. In general, this means involving others, and using the assignment to seek out both new information and new relationships. No matter how well accomplished, any job you do alone at your desk is low-visibility.

6. Down-playing your accomplishments - in my experience, the time to toot your personal horn is on your resume. Publicly acknowledging the accomplishments of a team and learning to shine through others builds your brand as effectively as tooting your own horn, which is often perceived negatively. Given that leadership is fundamentally accomplishing goals through others, promoting team accomplishment builds your brand as a team leader.