Harmonics

Career ceilings happen; there are only so many seats at the top table. But, if you feel you have hit a career ceiling where you work, it’s important to firstly ask yourself, could I have done any more here? I would caution before you assume and blame others or the organisation. Start with holding the mirror up and go from there, but change starts from within.

As an Executive Coach, I worked with Rachael (not her real name) recently.  She worked diligently hard in her role and went beyond the call of duty to deliver big projects and get stuff done. When she came to me, she needed urgent interview preparation for an upcoming promotion. Unfortunately for her, she had left it too late. She had fallen foul to being busy in her job but not on her career. She said she was frustrated with an old boys’ club in her organisation. She ignored it and assumed her hard work would be rewarded in time. Surely, they couldn’t overlook her outstanding work achievements? Yes, they did. She was, in effect, considered too good in her current role to promote. More truthfully, she was doing such a great job, she hadn’t considered taking time to develop a suitable successor. She had made herself irreplaceable for now; but had also fenced herself into a role with no career development plan. Rachael had also never sought to influence across the organisation, she believed this was not her place. She relied on her work to speak for itself. When I challenged her more, she admitted she feared exposing herself in projects outside of her expertise. She preferred to stay within her own area of expertise, her comfort zone as she later conceded as she reflected more.

5 GREAT QUESTIONS

Hitting the ceiling happens for different reasons, here are 5 great questions to ask yourself. The answers will help you navigate the next best career move for you to advance your career.

Context – Is it them or is it me? Before you blame the culture, be honest with yourself. Have you worked hard to build a career brand that demonstrates you always wanted this next step up. Are you seen as a High Risk of leaving to the business if you leave? Why? Is this a culture you want to be part of in your future career? What is their track record for internal promotions here? Who gets promoted and why? Have you asked others, how they got their promotion?

Stepping Out – Do you need to step out before you step up? Stepping out is about becoming more visible, influential and known by others outside of your day job. Stepping up is what happens when you have stepped out often enough. Stepping out of your comfort zone is scary, but this is where there is high challenge and high skills development. Stop being busy in your day job and start creating opportunities to influence across and above in your organisation.

Executive Connections – How influential is your network? Stepping out across the business demonstrates your capability. The key leverage for breaking the ceiling is building Executive Connections. These are the influencers. Create ways to be in their company, target them at meetings or informal gatherings. Your job is to get to know them and become interested in their world and they in yours. Find out what their pain points are and what is keeping them up at night. Reflect on how you could be a solution. These influencers must know what you want to do next and why. The interview is often a charade, yes it may scupper chances if you don’t perform on the day, but most important is your relationship with key influencers before internal interviews.

Do you want to stay here anyway – Have you overstayed your welcome? Sometimes not getting promoted can be the great career alarm clock. Is it time to get up and go? Have you realised through this interview process the promotion was not for you anyway? Maybe you may have stayed too long and, if you stay longer, it is likely you will end up plateauing. If you can’t afford to leave because you have too much to lose financially, start making plans to do so. This starts with investing in yourself and your external network to become more employable and marketable outside your employer and your sector.

Peter Principle – Are you up to what the job requires right now? Beware you may be evaluating your performance in your current role rather than what is expected when you get promoted. Seek honest feedback, not just from the interviewers but others who know you and will challenge you. I have given frank feedback to many people in sessions and some have taken offence. “No one has ever been that direct with me before!”, one person said to me. I nodded my head and agreed, but then I asked “What have I to gain from telling you lies? You didn’t hire me to be your friend; you hired me to be your coach to improve your future performance!”

In Rachel’s case, she accepted the feedback and described one of our sessions as a “great awakening” and the day she woke up to the reality of what is required to overcome her career ceiling. The alarm clock went off for her.

If you have hit a career ceiling, do any of the above questions resonate? Be honest with yourself and act. Rachel has undertaken an external development programme and is exposing herself to a new network outside her own organization. We have assigned her a Communications Coach to build her influence and brand internally while she now spends time to mentor her future successor. She is serious about stepping out and stepping up and her CEO knows it, she has told him what she wants and why. She is now working smart and not just working hard! Time is ticking, and she is making herself ready for internal or external moves. She now sees the day she didn’t get promotion as the day the alarm clock went off and woke her up!

“Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling” Bill Belichick

If you are interested in finding out how you or one of your team can overcome the career ceiling, you can speak with one of our Coaching team https://www.harmonics.ie/meet-the-team/ by contacting Harmonics on 01 8942616, 061 336136 or 021 7319604 or email info@harmonics.ie

John Fitzgerald is the Founder of the Harmonics Group. Harmonics specialises in helping organisations plan for change, manage change and support their people through change.

Creating Work Environments Where People Can Learn, Experiment, and Thrive

Have you ever looked on in wonder at a young child totally immersed on their mobile device playing their computers games. They immediately go into their own world. This is a world of simulation, a repeating process of trial and error. Here the real learning happens; they must through exploration find the best way to gain a higher score in their computer game. They are continually trying new ways, raising their own skills and awareness. They are in competition with their peer community and they know who has attained the highest score. They are eager to climb the rankings to more challenging levels. To be competitive in this environment, they know they need to learn from their mistakes, and start again at zero if they fail. They accept failure as just a part of the game. They have autonomy to be creative and competitive in their chosen field without anyone telling them they look or sound stupid or giving negative feedback when they make a mistake. They know when they played bad, they don’t need telling; they just dust themselves down and go again. When they make a mistake they almost instantly know where they went wrong and how to make it right next time.

But at work they are warned to ensure they get it right first time. If they don’t, it will have big consequences. The boss, line manager or colleague shows them up in public and tells them and everyone else just how wrong they got it. Taking risks, trying new ways, being innovative are all espoused as something organisations want more of, but they better get it right first time! This leads the adventurous gamer who takes risks in their personal life to play safe and within the rules, fearful of doing something wrong at work. At home, this gamer tries, fails, tries again and fails, each time learning, adapting and raising their own performance standards even further. The difference? They have freedom within the framework of the game and are committed to learning and being the best they can be.

We are asked by HR departments for interventions to help shake their people up, to motivate them. When we delve into the problem we’re told their people are often on autopilot, working hard, but fearing they will get it wrong.  It’s understandable. A person’s standard rarely improves once a task is learned. At work, we become ‘lifelong doers’ instead of ‘lifelong learners’. Performance reviews don’t help much either, it’s a tick the box exercise for both parties. It’s no surprise that virtually every sector has seen their productivity flatline since around 07/08. The Global Gallup study shows employee engagement pretty much stagnant at 33%, year after year.

HR chases too many Fads’ – I see too many fad HR initiatives being rolled out in response to poor career development scores in employee engagement surveys. Fads don’t work but they tick the box that the organisation was seen to offer something to address the issue. Let’s do a motivational talk or a talk on managing stress and everyone will know then what to do when they are stressed. No, they won’t because the work environment will not change the day after the inspirational talk. These initiatives are all targeted at helping the person to change behaviour. We have seen from our kids playing computer games that if you create the right environment we will thrive to be better. It’s the environment that needs to change; this is a much bigger prize for HR to go after. This will bring the Big Win longer term. This is how HR will become more strategic and influential.

Stop going for the low hanging fruit HR with health and well-being talks, gyms on site and short-term fad’s. These won’t work if people are still working 60-hour weeks. These won’t work if you report into a boss that is known to be a bully and has poor relationship skills but is never challenged on their behaviour. Things won’t change if you are rewarding managers and employees to stay in roles too long. Start taking some risks – challenge your senior leadership team to create environments that enable talent to thrive, not plateau or leave.

I had a conversation recently with an organisation that has 97% retention. They wanted to increase movement around the organisation to build new skills, but found it hard to do this. The problem is a mud layer of managers at a certain level in the organisation, who have stayed too long and have no intention of leaving. It is their comfort zone and the organisation has facilitated this mud layer. They also found that new graduates are not staying. Why would they? They have nowhere to go. They can see no career prospects while the mud layer of management stay where they are. The organisation had a problem but didn’t know how to change it and create a high-performance culture. With our support, this was a goal worth pursuing which won’t just tick the box. We are transforming their culture and helping drive commitment, performance and productivity.

“Engaged employees are in the game for the sake of the game; they believe in the cause of the organization.” –Paul Marciano, PhD.