What is ‘career growth’?

Let’s understand what career growth really means and see if we are on the same page. How about a

short quiz to start with?

Which one of these is real career growth?

1. You just got promoted with a fancier title and 20% more money with no change to your role

2. You got paid the highest possible variable pay / bonus for the last year

3. Your designation has changed twice in the past 3 years with barely anything changing in your

role

4. You recently changed jobs and moved to a different company with a bigger title and a 25% pay

hike but on your first month of work you figure you are going to do more or less the same tasks

5. You seem to be doing a lot more variety of tasks and quantity of deliverable than you did last

year but still carry the same title and a meager increase in your compensation

Ready? Picked your option? Read on…

It definitely is not getting paid more for performing the same role; it is not a change of title with very

little change in your role and responsibilities. It does not mean working for a different company with a

different role or different title or different compensation, however fancy they sound or the amount is.

Career growth means you take up more responsibilities today than you did yesterday and continue to do that at regular intervals.

In my definition the necessary condition for growth is performing well in your current role but often is

not a sufficient condition to grow beyond. The virtuous cycle in career growth is:

While the way to growth may be to get that additional responsibility, getting it is typically harder than

you would think. Here are some things for you to consider:

1. Volunteer more – when there is a new ‘task’ that the team has been asked to do and your

manager is looking for someone to help him/her, offer up yourself as a volunteer. If not anything,

you would have had a break from the monotony of your regular tasks and done something new

resulting in learning that would otherwise not have come. For example – there is a client visit

coming up and your team needs to showcase its work and someone needs to put together a

script and get everyone ready for it.

2. Suggest new things that the team could do – put yourself in your manager’s shoes and see what

all you would do differently if you had his/her role. Go ahead and suggest those as things that

your team should do in a very non-threatening way in a one on one set-up. Don’t worry if he/she

ends up taking the credit for the idea. While everyone thinks it is the manager’s idea, your

manager knows where it came from

3. Get to understand the ‘why’ – You, of course, are good at the ‘how’ of a task and probably know

‘what’ you are building but often people forget the most important ‘why’ question behind the

output they are asked to create or operate in a certain way. Once you understand the ‘why’ a lot

of things start to make sense.

As you get that opportunity to do that extra bit in your current role, make sure you make the most of

that opportunity and fulfill that responsibility well. Only then do you build confidence for more such

opportunities in the future and eventually you get the role and the privileges that go with the role.

If you are the type that does not feel confident to take on more for the fear of failure or lack of

confidence watch out my next post on what it takes to get past that hurdle….