Mindset & Qualities for professional growth

As discussed in previous weeks, in a professional environment, you are being measured through Result orientation and Relationship only. On recognizing this truth, growth-oriented people develop a growth mindset towards the profession, and they display in their work as given in the following ways.

Relook at your mindset and your behaviors in the workplace for accelerating your professional growth!

How to accelerate your career growth?

Generally, in our country, we are associating our identity based on our profession. You might have come across retired people also cherish and claim their status based on past professional accolades or achievements only. Even we introduce ourselves to others by quoting what we do. That is inherently we perceive job is essential for self-identity (saints or philosophers are exceptions!) 

Also, except a few who born into a wealthy family, for most of the people, survival, wealth creation, positional status, respect in the family and society comes from the profession only. The profession could be either working self (business)or working for some as an employee. In any way, we get our happiness, wealth, status, lifestyle, practical knowledge, wisdom from work only. Unlike the western style of theory, we can not separate work and life separately. Both are interrelated.

If you take the average life expectancy of a person is 68 years, then likely 50 % of the life time, we are spending our experience with a career and its related activities. When we give 50 % of our lifetime to our profession and all materialistic and personal development occured through the profession, how can we accelerate the professional growth in a right, ethical manner so that growth will help you and others?

Many types of research are going on professional or career growth. However, would like to discuss some perspectives on the science of growth in a professional environment 

Generally, the pace of professional growth differs according to one’s educational qualification, exposure to a different learning environment, industry served. However, given the potential, there are TWO FACTORS  as demonstrated by you determines your consistent growth. 

1.Focusing & Producing Results
                AND
2.Building Relationship with others  

You must notice that both factors are equally required for long-term, consistent growth. It is not either or condition but both.

You may relate to your known/senior colleagues who have grown consistently or the person who has not grown in line with their potential.
In case of a slow growth-oriented person, you may realize that either one of the factors was lacking w.r.t reference to their position. Either they might be competent in their functional domain but lacks on soft skills or they are good in dealing with others, but lack of competency or in delivering a result.
In case of consistent growth-oriented persons, you may realize that they had balanced both factors during their career path.

Balancing of what you deliver and how you deliver are equally important when others consider you for next level growth.

For example, if you are a manager, it is expected to produce results as expected at your level and also to behave in a  certain maturity at this positional level. When you lack to produce either result or lack to display some level of relationship maturity, your growth to the next level, say senior manager in a typical case, delays or stops at the manager level only.
The point is you need to balance both and demonstrate what is expected at your existing position decides your next level growth.

Now, the action is to look at your career graph, given your qualification, age, years of experience, are you growing consistently? If you answer is "yes", you are balancing both w.r.t to your position and strengthen it further. If your answer is “No,” try to understand where you need to improve either in RESULT or in RELATIONSHIP instead of pointing others.

Let us understand further on the definition of RESULT and RELATIONSHIP and their drivers.

As discussed, one of the factors for accelerating career growth is consistency in result w.r.t to the position. Let us understand the “ expectation on result and enablers of result orientation.”

    One of my known friends was exceptionally done well at a managerial position, and his boss impressed with his performance and elevated to General Manager level. The boss expectation was to develop the business to the next level using the person’s capability. Here the expectation is to deliver business results. After some time, the boss became unhappy with his performance since my friend still behaved and delivered the result as a functional manager. When I observed and interacted with him, I realized, he was not equipping himself for the new set of deliverables.

      Here the issue is conflicting between the expectation vs. reality and no development efforts to improve the performance w.r.t new role. The approach must be the friend must enhance his knowledge, skills, and attitude towards business development and deliver result than being complacent with legacy or functional delivery alone.

      The fact is the RESULT is a  function of your knowledge about your industry, business, customer,  domain expertise, skills and more importantly your attitude in line with your position. When you are growing in your career ladder, you need to equip yourself on knowledge which is required for the job and your perspective. Also, your skills like problem-solving capabilities, communication, decision making also need to be in line with the expectation of the position. To sum up, your COMPETENCY has to be enhanced to deliver RESULTS w.r.t your position. When you are not developing your competency, your growth stops.

Hence, enhance your competency to deliver the result as this is the only shortcut for accelerating growth. 

Let us discuss “ Relationship “ factor and the enablers.

As discussed, the other factor for accelerating career growth is “ Building relationship with others”.

When we say a building relationship with others in a professional environment, it is all about how you are relating with others. Equally, how others feel when they approach you,interact and work with you in a professional setup.

Enablers of building a relationship from your end :

Respect others as such and their time  &  privacy
Giving your undivided time  to others when they need (approachability)
Helping others with your presence  or with your competency

How can you develop your relationship quality with others?

1.    Knowing more about yourself

2.    Developing your emotional intelligence

3.    Improving your communication skill as a lifelong exercise

Building a relationship is not a one-time effort. This calls for consistency.

When you are growing in your career ladder, your soft skill in handling people matters a lot along with Performance.

The action is to identify your weak spot in developing a relationship and work on that to accelerate our career growth!  

Accelerate your career by balancing result and relationship!  
 

How to quickly overcome when you feel low?

The difference between a person, who is happy and someone is unhappy, is not about how often they feel low or depressed. It is how they deal with “low mood” situation.

For example, most of us, when we feel bored, sad or feeling low, what we use to do? Immediately we switch over to browse WhatsApp, Facebook or changing the channels on TV. The strange thing is even after completing all the outlets; again we feel sad or depressed. The reason is that we are not accepting the reality of the state and allow our mind to undergo the feeling of low .Instead we switch to others.

Just experiment this when you feel low. Be open and accept that you are feeling sad, and go through the moment of sadness for a few minutes. You will surprise that you come up with the positive mood in a moment. Instead, if you look for some outlet, you are suppressing the reality, and again you start feeling low.

As I observed a few highly effective people when they feel low or hear bad news, they accept that moment and use to be calm for a few moments. Then they recover back quickly to their routine.

Hence accept – undergo – get back. This requires your awareness of your intention when you feel bad and overcome it positively!

How environment triggers your behavior and action?

when I asked the following question  in my management seminar, the response would be as follows"Imagine you are in an airport. You eat the chocolate and search a dustbin to put the wrapper. However, you do not find a dustbin in a nearby area and also you hear the announcement for boarding into flight. What will you do with the chocolate wrapper when you are in airport 1 & 2 ?"

In almost the session, to my surprise, people responded  instantly as follows

In case of  AIRPORT1, I will through  the wrapper in the corner and move on, even though it is embarrassed me,

Whereas in case of AIRPORT 2, I will keep the wrapper in my pant pocket to find a dustbin later and dispose of it.What does this behavior or response indicate? 

As a human being, we create a perception about the place based on its environment ( how it is organized & cleaned, lighting, visuals, and visibility). When the environment is more appealing, it triggers positive behavior on the people and action also positive.

Alternatively, when the environment is not conducive, it triggers negative behavior and action.

It holds good for the home & organizational environment as well. When the internal organization is organized neatly, it triggers positive behavior in the people, and it would get demonstrated with timely communication, care for the people, product, and equipment,. When the workplace is not organized correctly, people working in that environment also behave negatively as not caring anything and adding further chaos in the system.

As you are the leader of your system, create a positive environment as much as possible for conducive communication, relationship, and growth. That is a responsibility of everyone who leads.

Change Environment ----Change perception ----Trigger Positive behavior

Why do we respect some people most?

We do come across many people in our lives as friends, colleagues, teacher, mentor, boss, and relatives. Generally, we like all of them. However, we respect a few people with high regard. (Scan through your phone contacts list, you may easily count a few as highly respected people).Irrespective of age, positional or materialistic status, why do we respect some people most from the rest of the network?

The reason could be on two broad factors.
1. Their professional competency – technical/managerial knowledge and skill
2. Their character –friendliness, helping tendency, boldness or any other admiring qualities

Using the above factors, they might be consistently inspired others through their professional contribution or helped others towards growth or the way they came up in life. Because of their inspired action, we respect them highly. In fact, the respect is not given to them; they earned it from us through their consistent competency and character-building efforts.
 
Likewise, if you want to be regarded as a highly respected person in your life, you have to work on consistent character and competency building. Earning true respect is a long-term process.

Each one of us has rights and be deserved to be respected. Only, you need to commit to consistent capability and character building!
 

Being proactive and cool

In personal and professional life, everyone has some primary responsibilities which can be done only by self. When we do not execute the primary responsibility on time; the consequence may be more stress or pain. Also by nature, any delayed response will consume more time and energy.For example, 

As an individual, if you are not spending time proactively on taking care of your health, any way you need to spend time when you get sick.

As a business head, If you are not spending time proactively on planning your customer orders delivery at the beginning of the month, any way you have to spend at the end of the month in firefighting mode which more stressful.

As a leader, If you are not spending time with your team on developing, mentoring and teaching the skills, any way you need to spend time when they make costly mistakes in their execution.

As a parent, If you are not spending time with your kids during  childhood on values development, any way you need to spend time in future when they slip on the life values which is more pain

The point is that proactiveness is required at least on your prime responsibilities. Else, any reactive time spending would affect the quality of life. Hence, be aware of your prime responsibility and be proactive!

Thinking of Possibilities

The first and foremost requisite for transformation either personal or business is the thinking of possibilities. That is the possibilities of change from existing level or chances of success. When we think of possibilities, then this thought process reinforces further and becomes a belief. The belief will drive your actions towards the achievement.

         For example, consider any successful people from business, sports, media, politics, etc. During early part of their life, their background was ordinary. They became successful because they believed in themselves. Before believing themselves, they think the possibilities of becoming successful or achieving something great. They believed in the possibilities of changing their destiny better than they were. That thought process only brought all the opportunities, environment to them.

           The point is to enhance your thinking towards new possibilities as a starting point for any achievement in personal and business. Possibility thinking reinforces your beliefs; in turn, drives you to take right actions!