Small Steps for Career Success

Who's in your inner circle?

Have you identified your professional inner circle?

A small group of people who can give you advice, support, perspective, a sounding board, a laugh, opportunities and friendship? And accept those things from you too.

We ALL need these people in our professional lives. They might not be close colleagues; in fact, it’s probably better if they aren’t. They may be external to your organisation or from a different department. They may be peers, more experienced than you or new to the industry.

The important thing is that there is a genuine relationship that’s grounded in mutual respect for one another.

Who can you add to your network? See if you can identify five and make a date to catch up for a chat with each of them over the next 6 months.

Working relationships

To do well in your career, you need people on your side. And, at the risk of stating the obvious, you cannot control other people.

But you CAN control what you’re like to work with. And use your strengths to develop better working relationships with the people who may be able to support you as you progress.

Start with you

Consider what you want from your working relationships and how you prefer to communicate and collaborate with others.

We all have blind spots though. Find yours. Talk to trusted colleagues and friends to interrogate what you are like as a manager and team member. And really think about what you can bring to the wider team.

Find mutual benefits

You can then consider how best to play to your strengths but also how best to help others. How can your input help others with their priorities as well as your own?

Getting relationships right at work is a massive part of being successful and can really help you take control of your career.

Start small

I still have an email from James Clear that pre-dates the publication of his bestselling book “Atomic Habits” and shares his failures from that year with his subscribers. Proof, should it be needed, that even the most continuous of improvers don’t always hit their big goals.

Everyone is human.

We are all busy at work and in life.

When it comes to achieving big things, the important thing is just to start. Whether it’s securing that massive promotion or just getting a better work-life balance, we can all start small.

This is particularly useful advice at this time of year when we get a lot of requests for career development training and coaching.

• Want that promotion? Write a list of areas to work on.

• Want better work-life balance? Shut down your computer ten minutes earlier this afternoon.

Don’t put off a big goal when you could take a baby step towards it today.

Make your map

Back in the day, if you were driving to a meeting, you’d have to get out your road atlas and plot the route. Now, thankfully, we have Google Maps (and most in-person meetings start on time!)

Unfortunately there is no Google Maps for your career. We are choosing which roads to drive down every day but often without any sense of direction. We may be working hard but not getting anywhere. We may be going round in circles. Or we may have reached a dead end.

If you want to make progress in your professional life you need to first decide on your destination.

I asked what success would look like for the people who attended the Big Fish Training webinar last week on “setting your career up for success in 2025”.

For one it was getting a first in their PR degree. Others talked about going for promotions or developing a more commercial approach. Better work/life balance came up a few times. And for one delegate it was deciding what they will do with the remaining 20 years of their working life.

What fantastic contributions! And they illustrate the point that wherever you are in your career, you’re still “en route”.

• Where are you headed this year?

• Where are you now?

• And how far have you already travelled?

These are three essential career planning questions.

For more in-depth career development advice, have a look at our Time Management and Creating work/life balance training courses.