Beginning with the mass redundancies of the 1990s employers began to lose their belief that they were responsible for their employee’s development and begun to encourage their employees to take responsibility in their own career. Fast forward to the ‘noughties’ and it is now imperative that employees plan and control their own career movement and do not rely on their employers to do so for them.

Considering your career plan

Strategic overview

Firstly you are never too late to start! When you are commencing your planning you need to decide what your strategic plan is for your career. For example, where do you want to be in the next 5 years? Will you be a generalist or a specialist in your chosen profession? What are the trends in your marketplace/industry? What skills do you have and what skills do you need? Do you wish to stay employed or start your own business?

Looking at your career

First of all you should analyse whether you are in the correct career path for you or whether you wish to change Industries. To make this assessment it is important to do as much research as possible. Will the job that you are looking for pay you the salary that you wish and support the lifestyle that you want? Does it play to your strengths and your competencies? For example if you are creative by nature than a role that requires strict adherence to rules may not suit you.

The type of person that you are will have a major impact in career choice and progression as well. Extroverts will be drawn to different roles than introverts and will also have a different game plan. Assessing whether your career is progressing the way that you wish is also useful especially if you take into account whether your own behaviours have hindered or helped you. Often people are disappointed that their career hasn’t developed in the way that they would have liked and it is because they are considered by their managers as bad promotional prospects.

By assessing past performance reviews you will be able to see whether there are any consistent trends or key development needs that you need to address before making your next move. This applies whether your next move is promotional, lateral, within or external to the company. You will also need to decide to treat your career as something which you need to manage as ultimately the only one affected by the success or otherwise of your good career management is you!

If you consider yourself as the manager of your career, what are the things that need to happen to ensure that you achieve your goals? Your assessment of your work performance would have raised a few questions including those listed below:

• How competent are you?

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?

• What are your interests?

• What are the company’s goals for you?

• Are you suited to what you are currently doing?

• What are your skill gaps?

By linking the answers to these and other relevant questions with your assessment of your chosen marketplace it will be easier to plan your next steps. If your most dominant need is training or qualifications then your first port of call will be your employer. Perhaps they can sponsor you in developing your professional competence, or by providing you with the opportunity to attend relevant training courses. Your employer may arrange for you to be coached or mentored by external experts or may ask you to participate in ‘job shadowing’. If you can identify an employee that you admire and consider to be good at their job you may approach them directly and ask them to be your informal mentor. This can be very beneficial as it can severely reduce your learning curve.

If your employer will not help then do consider funding your own education and development.

You may have identified your need as more experience or behavioural. If your employer is unable to provide you with more experience then look at the competencies required for the role that you desire and see if you can develop them externally to your current role. This could be from clubs, voluntary work or hobbies. An internal mentor or coach may help with any behaviour deficiencies you may have.

Another thing to consider when planning your career is how you will network to achieve your goals. Many opportunities for development as well as new jobs can be uncovered via networking with the right people. A significant proportion of job hunters for example, use the international website LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) to register their CV and job profile. They also use LinkedIn to connect to individuals from other industries and companies – it is also being used substantially by recruitment agencies to find the right candidates for the vacancies they are sourcing.

There are many online networks and places to connect with socially – be aware however that many employers are using the information to make employment decisions. There have unfortunately, been a few cases where undesirable behaviour on sites like Facebook has led to disciplinaries or decisions not to recruit.

There has never been a better time to take control and be responsible for your own career progression, providing you put a plan in place to help you navigate the path to success. And with the plethora of tools available to aid you in your journey, the future is certainly a bright one. Good luck!

Further to news that a number of City law firms are offering trainees up to £10,000 to defer their training, Dynamic Transitions’ MD Judith Germain believes that many firms will be using the opportunity to see which graduates have stronger leadership tendencies by observing how productively they spend their free time.

“Many graduates may be drawn into seeing this as a free ticket to a year of ‘loafing’ before they start their training, but in reality they need to realise that they are also being tested to see how self-motivated they can be when left to their own devices. Law firms are making the decision to defer start dates because they feel they need to in the current climate. This doesn’t mean they will not be watching to see how their trainees use their time,” says Germain.

Despite claims by some firms that there is no stipulation on how trainees spend the time or money, Germain urges trainees not to take this at face value, or be too complacent about their job prospects next year.

“The fact that some firms have gone as far as telling trainees that they need to do ‘something useful’ in the year, suggests that there is likely to be consequences for those that don’t. I predict that this time will be used to assess from a distance how these individuals use their time and those who don’t take it seriously may end up finding their places withdrawn next year, which may actually hurt their future career prospects.”
“Graduates should use the time to ‘round off’ their experience by doing relevant work or by enrolling in further education. Employers will be more impressed with those that use their time well,” says Germain.

Judith Germain is Founder and Lead Consultant of Dynamic Transitions Ltd, a leadership company specialising in working with Troublesome Talent® and improving the leadership performance within organisations. They provide strategic mentoring for senior executives and business leaders/owners and delivers innovative leadership programmes, training, coaching and consultancy to corporate clients. For more information visit www.developing-leadership.com or email jude@dynamic-transitions.co.uk

Performance Improvement can be defined in many ways. For example, the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (2003) defines it as the process of designing or selecting interventions which may include training directed toward a change in behaviour, typically on the job.

I believe that performance improvement is any positive change that can be measured after you have actively decided to make a change in your current circumstances. This is why defining the improvement requirement and measurement method is so critical.

If we assume therefore, that a key success factor in business is to improve performance, where would you start? A logical approach would be to decide which area of performance needs improving and look for experts in this field to enable you to achieve the appropriate improvement. For example, you may need to improve your sales so you engage a marketing consultant to enable you to achieve this.

In reality, the first step towards performance improvement is defining your goal. Following a goal setting process will ensure that performance enhancement is made.

Goal Setting Process

There are seven steps to setting the goals that will achieve your objectives and improve your performance. Using the above example of improving sales to explain the goal setting process, the seven steps are as follows:

1. Define what you wish to achieve

To begin the process, consider what it is that you broadly want to achieve. For example, you wish to improve your performance by increasing sales.

2. Make sure that your goal is specific and time bound

Once you have determined the broad area of improvement you will need to define your goal more specifically. What is it that you wish to achieve and how will you measure the change? What is the appropriate timeframe for the improvement? These are the first questions that you need to ask yourself. If you are not specific in your goals then it will be difficult to achieve it, especially if you have not set a timeframe for achievement. Many of us work best when we have deadlines to work towards. Setting realistic timeframes and measurements enables us to assess our progress.

3. State your goals appropriately

It is very easy to sabotage yourself when you are setting yourself improvement targets. You may consciously wish to improve your sales but subconsciously believe that improving your sales will increase your profits. Increasing your profits may make you believe that you will be wealthy and wealthy people are never happy. You therefore sabotage your attempts to improve your sales. The annoying thing is you may have set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound) objectives perfectly, but are not able to achieve them because you are unknowingly working against your core values. For example – I want to be happy and being wealthy means I will not be happy.

To ensure that you achieve your goals you need to understand fully why you wish to achieve them and what has been stopping you from achieving them. It can take time to discover your subconscious motivations and realities but once this has been achieved you will be able to achieve your goals because you are not working against yourself. You are now ready to state your goals in a positive fashion. Goals should never be stated negatively, for example, ‘I will not fail to improve my sales’.

The reason for this is because the subconscious mind cannot process negativity. It will look for the command in the statements that it ‘hears’. So in the above statement it ‘hears’ the command ‘I will fail to improve my sales, not’. This is another example of you sabotaging your ability to achieve. Your goal could be stated ‘I will improve my sales by 10% within 3 months’. To support this goal you could also assert the statement ‘I have improved my sales in July’. By believing that change is possible enables you to draw towards yourself opportunities to exploit positively.

4. Record your goal and have leverage

To ensure that you become fully committed to your goal you should record it. This will give the subconscious mind a detailed set of instructions to work on. The more information you give it, the more clarity the final outcome has. Once you have recorded the goal you will need to write down the factors that will motivate you to achieve the goal. It helps to know whether you are motivated towards or away from things. For example, if you improve sales you will be able to retire early (positive motivation), if you improve sales you will not be bankrupt (negative motivation). If you are aware of how you are motivated you will be able to record a number of reasons why you must achieve the goal based on your motivation bias. You will have established leverage on yourself and make performance improvement more likely.

5. Check your priorities and resources

If you have more than one goal, you will need to prioritise them to ensure that they do not conflict with each other in terms of deadlines and values. For example, ‘I will improve my sales by 10% in 3 months’, and I will reduce production costs by 1 month’ when you have already decided that the only way to reduce production costs is by increasing sales. The increase in sales would take 3 months. Only set the number of goals that you can fully focus on. If that is not possible, then I recommend that you revisit the goal definition stage. This will ensure that you only tackle the key things that will improve performance in the timescale that you believe is appropriate. You must ensure that you have the right resources available to achieve your goal. Without this vital check you will not be able to realise your desired outcome.

6. Chunk your goals and make yourself accountable

It can be difficult to improve performance when you have provided yourself with a stretch target. Sometimes the sheer size of a goal can make it unachievable. In circumstances like this you need to chunk your goals into small more obtainable ones. For example, the goal to improve sales by 10% in 3 months can seem difficult to achieve. To achieve this goal you can chunk it down to smaller goals (ie increase the number of sales conversions. This can be done by increasing the number of targeted cold calls by 15%). This process will enable you to set manageable smaller goals that work towards the larger goal. Make yourself accountable, by telling someone of your goals. This will help focus you on achievement. You are more likely to achieve your goal if you have to explain to a third party why you have not completed your goal. If you feel that you cannot, find a third person who will be objective in this process, like a mentor or coach, then write your goal in a place where you will see it regularly.

7. Check and review progress

This is the final step. It is important to ensure that everything that you do is working towards the performance improvement. By checking and reviewing progress you will be able to adjust your performance accordingly.