The 10 Habits for Effective Career Management

By Dilip Saraf on 19 Jul 2011

During the past 10 years, as a career coach, I have worked with over 5,000 professionals globally. Many of those clients have stayed with me over time and have come back now and then to keep their careers growing and to share their successes. With enough such data points I have now codified the success pattern of these individuals, and this blog is about the most common behaviors—habits, actually—I see in those who have done well in their careers. Here is a list of those 10 most common behaviors, which became their habits:

1. Be Clear: The most common success element in those who have achieved good career momentum is developing clarity of what they wanted. This also means de-cluttering your mind with what you also do not want. Before developing this clarity some were conflicted about the path they should take. For example, some individual contributors were not sure about whether they should take the management route or pursue the technical ladder. Dispelling some misperceptions about each path helped them develop the clarity they needed, which increased their focus to pursue what was important.

2. Have a Plan: Even with the clarity of purpose having a detailed career roadmap helps develop an action plan that can be developed for accelerated growth. Most professionals work in the state of “unconscious incompetence,” working in the trial-and-error mode. This is wasteful, and the lost time in such experimentation can never be recovered. Knowing key waypoints in your career growth and what resources are needed at each step of that growth plan to go to the next level are important elements for staying on track.

3. Be Curious: In my Client Intake Questionnaire one of the items they respond to is to write down percentage breakdown on three items, which define how they work: Order taker, Influencer, or Following their Vision. I am often surprised by how many senior executives put their work as mostly (> 50%) “ Order taking,” which is disheartening. This shows that even at senior levels these people have little control over how their work gets defined. Being curious forces you to look for things that your company must do to stay ahead of your competition. This, in turn, provides you an opportunity to take on tasks that are “outside” the scope of your role. This is a great way to grow and to put a shine on your résumé.

4. Foreordain Your Résumé: I find that successful professionals write their résumé bullets even before they embark on their tasks. If they want to move up in a certain direction they look for the job descriptions for that position and start taking on assignments that will give them the bullets they need on their résumé that allow them to claim accomplishments as if they are already functioning at that level. Yet another behavior I see in successful professionals is that when they run into obstacles they do not run away from them, but learn how to deal with them.

5. Start Networking: Build your professional network, not just to reflect your current interests, but those that are on your career growth plan. For example, if you want to move in a certain direction three years from now, start bringing thought leaders from that area of work into your LinkedIn (or other) network. This habit will force you to constantly seek out those professionals, who can help you in the direction you want to move.

6. Have a Champion: Develop a relationship (or two) with someone well placed within your company to guide you on an ongoing basis, not just in troubled times. Companies are fraught with political intrigue. Don’t just assume that if you do good work that you will be rewarded. You must work this angle into your overall plan and understand how to work within the system that will help you go where you need to go.

7. Acknowledge Others: When someone does something great, make a point of acknowledging their success in a public way. You could be an individual contributor, and still you can send out an email to those that matter about someone’s (who can be at a higher level than where you are) accomplishment in an open way. This simple (and free) act makes you get noticed, and you can become an influencer if you do this judiciously.

8. Market Yourself: Constantly update your LinkedIn Profile and keep yourself marketable. Keep your résumé up-to-date with your latest accomplishments, even with some foreordained bullets I mentioned above.

9. Learn a New Skill: Even if you are at the top of your field—and you must learn how to do that—always look at the skills you must acquire to grow and to keep yourself marketable. Many clients often come to me asking if they should pursue an MBA to get on the management track. There is never a clear answer for this, but some simple inquiries can allow you to answer this question to develop the clarity you need. Anyone who is on a constant learning path never becomes irrelevant.

10. Mentor Someone: This is yet another habit of successful professionals. No matter what their station is in life, they find some way to mentor by empowering themselves. We all have the power to listen to others and to guide them in their pursuits by asking them the right questions. You do not need specialized expertise to mentor someone, but just a good listening ear and an ability to ask the right questions. Most clients tell me that this simple act of mentoring others has helped them in their own growth!

When I look at those who take their career seriously, I am often reminded of a billboard I once saw many years ago on one of the highways in the Silicon Valley: “There are those that make if happen; there are those that watch it happen; and then there are those that wonder what happened!” Then it went on with a plea to join the company that put up that billboard inviting prospective employees to join its employee ranks who “make it happen.”

Now, no matter where you’re working, Make it happen!