Why Should You Make Career Advancement a Goal?

Career advancement isn’t for everyone. For many, trying to get promoted can be a frustrating experience. Unfortunately, work isn’t always fair and great employees don’t always get promoted. It can be difficult to understand what it takes to move up at work and achieve career success.

But advancing your career in the corporate world can also be very good for you – financially, professionally, and personally. There’s more within your reach than you may think.

Check out these links to learn why career advancement is a worthy pursuit: 

What Skill Sets Are Most Important for Career Advancement?

Depending on where you’re at in your career journey, beefing up your communication skills might be a good move.

Or, if you’re eyeing a jump into management, developing your soft skills and leadership skills might be even more important.

But regardless of whether you have years of experience, or are just starting out, there are some skills that are universally essential to climbing the career ladder. For example,

1. Ability to Produce Strong Results
2. Ability to Show-Up with Impact
3. Ability to Gain Advocacy and Support
4. Ability to Grow and Develop with Authenticity

What Are Common Challenges to Career Growth and Advancement?

Don’t let these 5 common mistakes and challenges hold you back from reaching the next level:

1. When You Over Rely On Your Boss 

Unfortunately, in the business world, leaders can’t always be counted on to do the right thing.  Even if your manager has the best of intentions to promote you, it doesn’t always work out as planned.

But here’s the good news: even if you have a less than supportive boss, with a little hard work, you can still advance your career and get promoted.

2. When You Get Too Comfortable

When is the last time you put yourself out there to develop new skills? Took a risk where you could fall flat? If you aren’t getting uncomfortable on a regular basis, you’re not learning and developing. You are stagnating, and that certainly doesn’t scream career advancement.

You can’t just rely on your current skills to move up at work. You must set goals and embrace career growth opportunities, especially the ones that push you outside your comfort zone.

If it makes you uneasy to lead a work discussion, ask your manager to give you a stretch assignment that puts you in a position to do exactly this. This conversation alone will speak volumes to your boss, as they recognize you have a desire to learn and grow—signs of a promotable employee!

3. When You Focus on the Wrong Work

When working to become more promotable, you’ll find some areas of development are more pliable than others. 

For example, it’s often easier to fine tune your personal style than modify your behavior. But be careful, don’t spend more time doing something because it’s easier. You’ve got to do the hard work too. 

Surface work won’t be enough to get promoted, you’ve got to dig deeper. Stop fixating over what to wear or say to project confidence. Instead, do something that scares you—and genuinely grow your confidence. 

4. When You Refuse to Embrace Change

There may be times when your path to get promoted seems insurmountable, or maybe even feels like you need to become someone you’re not to get ahead. You say things like, I’m not willing to do that to get ahead, or if that’s what it takes to get promoted, forget about it.

But these words are just an attempt to justify your inaction and will only lead to more disappointment and frustration.

By all means, stand by your convictions. But don’t use them as an excuse for why you’re not able to advance your career. Don’t assume the only way forward is to behave in a way that conflicts with your values.

There is always more than one way to achieve a goal. Take accountability, reframe your situation, and consider alternative actions.

5. When Your Beliefs About Work Don’t Serve You

What we believe about work drives our behavior. Beliefs form the basis of our assumptions and expectations about work. We likely don’t realize it in the moment, but our beliefs are busy working behind the scenes to direct our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors.

Often beliefs can be a source of ingenuity and resilience. For example, if you believe you learn more from failure than success, then it will be easier for you to bounce back from career disappointment.

But beliefs about work can also limit our choices and block us from doing what’s needed to advance our careers.

It’s important we have beliefs that support our aspirations for career advancement. And if they don’t, we need to reconsider them. Or expand our belief system with additional convictions.

How Can You Accelerate Your Career Advancement Journey?
 

Fast-track your next promotion by applying these career advancement accelerators:

1. Develop Resilience and Bounce Back from Career Setbacks

Look, everyone has career ups and downs—it just comes with working in business. No one gets through their work journey without a few scars, scrapes, and burns. 

It’s understandable to feel frustrated when your hard work isn’t acknowledged and rewarded. But over time, career setbacks can easily turn a top performer into a long-suffering employee who blames others for their misfortune.

What’s important is to take responsibility for your situation and do something about it, even when it doesn’t seem fair.

2. Get Recognized as a High-Potential Professional

While being a superstar in your current role is super important, it’s not the only ticket to career advancement. To move up, you need to complement your performance with a clear display of potential and readiness for new responsibilities of higher-level positions. This means adopting a growth mindset and embracing new challenges.

3. Be Open to Changing Companies to Get Ahead

4. Be Cautious Following Career Advice

5. Have a Plan for Your Career Path

What Can You Learn From Others’ Career Advancement Success?

Hear stories and follow lessons from those who have already experienced success getting promoted and advancing their careers.

Promotion story Q&A Interviews