I'm good with numbers. That's not me boasting (you'll see in just a short bit how aware of my limitations I am), just a statement of fact. Always have been.
So when I started a career in banking, career progression for the first five years came quickly. I was accurate, and quick, and it was easy to stand out.
I was then promoted because of those skills which made me look good at the job, and ended up having to supervise and manage others.
And I can say that in this respect, I wasn't so good. Actually, that's a positive way to look at it. In reality, I had simply been promoted to a position beyond my capabilities.
I was a great example of
the Peter Principle, which states that ""managers rise to a level of respective incompetence" (often put as "rising to the level of their incompetence"). In other words, they are promoted according to how good they are in their current job, and only stop when they reach a job they can't do. You see it everywhere – it's the result of people not upskilling for the next level. So you need to think ahead.
In my case, my star was no longer shining, and advancements did not just slow down, they came to a halt. It seemed that I had reached a ceiling in my banking career.
Now, that happens to quite a lot of people. You get promoted to a point at which you are either beyond your current abilities, or at their limits, and for a lot of people, that's where their career progression ends.
But it doesn't have to be!
And I can tell you how to make sure that it isn't.
If you'd like to know how to boost your people skills and reap big rewards, why not take a look at how we can help?
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Three Ways You Can Change
People start to look for ways to change, improve or enhance their career when they are frustrated. It's rare to meet anybody who is 100% happy in their job yet still thinks that they should change something. That's because frustration creates the desire to change. So inevitably, people look at what they can do to improve things.
a) One way to change is to
blame problems on your environment. You love the job that you do, just not where you do it, so you look for the same job somewhere else.
b) The second way is when you are certain that
you need to move UP. Moving UP usually means more money, so whether it's at your current place of employment or elsewhere, you need a promotion.
c) And the third way is the most drastic of all,
changing your career. For whatever reasons, you think that changing everything is what's required.
So you need to upskill. But it depends on which of the three options you are considering that determines how you do this.
You can upskill in one of two ways, or a combination of them.
The Two Types of Training or Upskilling Yourself
1. Specific Job Skills
To illustrate this, let's start with the third option: changing your career.
In my case, I went from being a banker to wanting to become a computer programmer. Now, I knew nothing about computers or programming, so I needed to not only learn about it, but to prepare for an interview.
So as a first step, I did a four month computer programming course. The second part was easier than the first, but just as important! So I looked around for help on platforms that teach you how to present your knowledge of theÂ
job skills a programmer requires. For the record, it worked!
2. Personal Skills
In addition to those specific job skills, my skills lay in numbers, and that's why I had been involved in banking and then trained as a programmer. But if I had wanted to become a doctor instead, I would be interacting with patients, and would need a good bedside manner. That means that I would need to improve my personal skills, or if you want to, call them soft skills or business skills, as well as the specific job skills.
For anyone wanting to simply change companies, but stay in the same role, or those wanting to move UP, the focus moves to the soft skills side. Moving up will probably require you to be managing others, so do you have the interpersonal skills to manage, lead, and inspire those around you? Do you have the positivity, confidence and assertiveness that will to make a good impact on others? Do you present well? Do you interview well? These are all personal skills you'll need.
Let's come back to my own example. I was frustrated at the bank, and went for a radical change in career. Banking to programming. I had done the specific job skills part of the training, but was then really struggling to find work as a programmer. I was still missing those personal skills. So I ended up working abroad, trying to raise some capital, and was fortunate that the company that I worked for did invest in its staff. I learnt things like crowd control, presentation skills and more, and upon returning to South Africa, found it much easier to now find employment.
I therefore needed to improve in both areas if I was to really become marketable as an employee. Particularly in areas of management and supervision.
If you want to break through a career ceiling, these are the three quick steps that will enable you to do this.
1. Decide what you want to do. Which of the three career options are you thinking of, from simple moving, to looking up, or complete change?
2. Decide on the job specific skills you may need. These could be skills that will either give you an advantage over any competition, or simply provide parity; either way, you need to look at both.
3.
Decide on which personal skills you can improve. In other words, how to best demonstrate the job specific skills you have.
Once you have decided on these three steps, it now becomes possible to start considering other things.
What resources do you require? For example, you may need both monetary resources and the time needed to do the training. These resources will determine what kind of training you can get, and in what kind of time frame.
Can they be done simultaneously, or would that be biting off more than you can chew?
These decisions can only get looked at once you have really decided on the main three.
When you have completed your training, I can guarantee that you will not have the same ceilings that hold back your career anymore. Your skills will mean that if you stay within the same industry, your ceiling will certainly have been raised, and if you changed career entirely, you may not have a ceiling at all... so when you look up, the sky is your limit!
If you'd like to know how to boost your people skills and reap big rewards, why not take a look at how we can help?
Get your social skills in order for a more successful life with our online course!
RRP from $49 – limited time offer just $11.99
