How do you achieve what you want and succeed in your professional career?
Having projects, objectives, and goals is inherent in the human condition. That means that we all, to a lesser or greater extent, have projects and objectives to meet. What differs from one personality to the next, from one story to the next, is what we do to achieve the goal, not the goal itself. There are people who have an iron determination and who, against the tide, continue on the path towards their goals. On the other hand, others are disappointed with the first trip and give up.
But if you are one of those who do have a professional goal and it takes away their sleep not to achieve it, you can surely ask yourself: What is it that makes us sometimes not achieve what we want? I will give you my answer in a simplified version: lack of direction and lack of strategy
Allow me to present MY personal model for achieving professional goals—a step-by-step plan for achieving what you want and succeeding in your professional career. Each step is explained with an example so that you fully comprehend its significance. As it is a little long, I have divided it into two articles (so that you don’t get tired of reading). Follow him, and you will be successful in what you set out to do. There are no secrets or tricks.
This is my personal model for the achievement of professional goals:
What is your address?
I never tire of telling you (and writing to you) that it is very important to know what you want to achieve. If you don’t know where you’re going on vacation, how do you know if you can go by car or plane? But remember, you must define it thoroughly.
What do you specifically want to achieve? Include details. This will help you delve deeper and discover what you want behind what you say you want. How to achieve career success For example, one of my clients decided that her professional goal is to have a successful business of her own, one in which she could help working mothers reconcile their work life and the upbringing of children under the age of 10.
Do you see it? That’s specific. She is not looking for any successful businesses, nor is she going to look for help for moms who do not work or for workers who are not moms.
What is your purpose?
This is also very important. Why do you want to achieve this? In addition to being your motivator, it helps you detect inconsistencies. I give you an example: your goal, your direction, is to achieve a prestigious and well-paid regional management position in your company, and your purpose is to be able to give more to your family. Does it sound coherent to you? At first glance, “regional” seems to mean trips to different countries, right? (Well, some companies will be able to handle the virtual world in a spectacular way, but as far as I know, the planes are full of people who travel for work.) And “give more to your family” could be just money, or it could also be time, energy, or affection. something very difficult (I didn’t say impossible) to give at a distance.
What are your limits?
This is fundamental. Knowing what things you are not willing to do to achieve your professional goal is paramount. Why? because it determines which paths you can’t take. Or rather, you shouldn’t take it, because otherwise you would be crossing your limits, and in addition to feeling bad, you wouldn’t last long on that path. For example, one of my mentors has a small son and always says that she could earn much more money and be even more recognized if she did her workshops and face-to-face seminars in other parts of the world. But she knows that her limit is there. His priority is to raise and enjoy your child, and he will not cross that barrier. All your decisions and their strategies are within the field of action that is surrounded by your limits.
What options do you have?
Normally, there is not a single way to achieve what you want. Here, you have to use your creativity. The more options you evaluate, the better. Don’t leave them bubbling in your head. Put them on paper. Don’t dismiss them mentally. Write them on a piece of paper, then evaluate them and discard them. Many times an option does not seem very good to you, but when you see it written downHow to achieve career success , you then associate another idea and discover another option. Many times, the best options are combinations of various ideas.
For example, one of my clients wanted to have a technical mentor (she is a person who has the same profession as you and knows the job technically and has more experience in the field so that she can teach you). On the one hand, How to achieve career success there was her boss, which was very convenient because of their closeness, but she was not happy with her boss’s interpersonal skills and did not feel comfortable adopting him as a mentor. On the other hand, I had a teacher for a long time who met my client’s expectations, but she always had a lot of work and it was not possible for her to make the necessary meetings to mentor my client. Until he discovered that one possibility was to change companies and work with this person, How to achieve career success That way I would be her boss, I would have the closeness and opportunity to train her, and my client would achieve her goal.
What obstacles will stand in your way?
Thinking that everything will be perfect on the way to achieving your goals is as unreal as thinking that everything will go wrong. The extremes are not recommended. So a good technique is to know what obstacles can stand in your way and prepare for them. For example, when I left my job to give strength to my own business,How to achieve career success I knew that the first obstacle that was going to appear was income instability. We all need to pay the bills, and the fixed salary at the end of the month helps. But when you have your own business, nothing is fixed. Knowing that this was going to happen to me helped me prepare. I sharpened my financial planning for the home (I was always a fan of this planning, but I improved it even more) and did the same with the financial planning of my business. Preparing forHow to achieve career success “problems” helped me be more efficient with my accounts and to not let instability take me by surprise and make me abandon them.
With this part of the model, you are already in a position to define your professional goal and begin to explore the path to its achievement.
What do you need to achieve it?
In another article, I told you about “creative tension.” It’s the difference between what you want to achieve and what you have today. Making an analysis of what skills, abilities, or knowledge you need to achieve what you want puts you in a strong position of personal knowledge, which helps you prepare better (and usually with more time and less pressure) for your professional goal. For example, one of my clients is now head of a technical area in an important company. His professional goal is to have a managerial position in 3 or 4 years. When we did this exercise, he discovered that what he lacked was more political friction and more contact with managers. How to achieve career success Now that he has discovered it (and has three years to prepare), he seizes every opportunity to observe meetings where he can learn and even “practice” his new political skills without pressure or risk (because there are no expectations of this style about him). His preparation will probably help him achieve his goal in even less time than he expects.
How can you do it?
No one is born knowing, so it is quite common that you need to train and learn techniques and strategies to be able to achieve your goals. Unfortunately, most of the knowledge, skills, or talents you need to achieve your professional goals are not taught in formal education or at university. So you probably have to make a little more effort to acquire that knowledge and have that experience. My advice is to seek out a mentor who can guide you step by step, who will train you in the knowledge you lack while also accompanying you in the process of experiencing that knowledge.
For example, one of my clients started as an independent in a profession that she had “set” many years ago. Although his knowledge of the profession emerged immediately, he had no idea how to sell his services or how to handle those conversations. For that, she hired me to teach her several techniques and help her take her first steps. When he put his knowledge into practice and doubts arose, he brought them to the session, and together we were looking for a way to solve his problems. so until she became an expert at selling her services.
If you are not born knowing, you can’t demand that you do everything right without help.
What is the step-by-step scheme you will follow to achieve it?
The organization is fundamental to every professional objective. Having a step-by-step scheme is like having a cooking recipe or a formula for a medicine. If you’re making a cake, you probably won’t mix the water, eggs, and cherry decorations. It’s not the same if you put one egg, four eggs, or don’t put any. Step-by-step career planning entails determining what steps (or ingredients) are required to achieve your goals and when they must be completed. The “quantities” and the “order” are fundamental.
For example, a friend of mine asked for my opinion,
and we started designing her career plan. His professional goal was to have an area management position by the age of 5. We used a technique that I learned when I became certified as a coach and that I still use, which is very effective in not letting yourself be limited by your current situation or by your beliefs today and in putting together an action plan towards your long-term professional goal. We defined it step by step,How to achieve career success and he discovered that in order to reach that position, he needed to have his bachelor’s degree (which he already had, only that he lacked the thesis). And to finish that thesis, I was thinking of doing research and building a prototype of a modern technology that is very fashionable. And so he discovered that in his current work there was an opportunity to carry out a project with a client who wanted to buy a platform with that new and modern technology.
Do you see what it means to have your sequence of steps organized and schematized? A dream may seem very utopian, but when you design how to get there, it has already begun to become a reality.
What will your checkpoints be?
You won’t believe that things happen the way you plan them, will you? Most of the time, it’s not like that. That’s neither good nor bad; it’s just like that. The important thing is that you know how things happen and can evaluate them. Sometimes they happen better than you expect, so do you want to change your goal? Do you want to move it forward? Sometimes things go as planned. Well, you’re still the same. Sometimes things don’t go as planned. So, what should you do? Look for a new strategy, withdraw, and try again. Learning from your mistakes is essential.
But how do you change your strategy if you don’t measure your results?
If you don’t know that things happened one way or another, there’s nothing you can do. Therefore, you must have checkpoints in your action plan to verify if you are on the right path. and if not, be able to make changes.
For example, one of the project leaders I worked with years ago omitted this step. I had to complete a phase of the project by delivering 200 documents. He had planned them for 4 weeks, so his team had to do 50 per week. A week before closing, he did a review and found that they had done fewer than 100. In the remaining week, it was practically impossible to double the quota, and the goal itself was already quite ambitious. What could he have done if he had discovered it after the first week? He would have realized that it was not meetable under those conditions and would have generated other conditions: How to achieve career success incorporating other temporary resources to help, adding a few hours of work during the day or on the weekend on a rotating basis so that the whole team did not feel it, etc. Anticipation is an advantage.
When will you take the next step?
I can’t emphasize this point any more. If everything you have learned so far is not put into action, it didn’t really do much good. Implementing, taking action, and making the decision to take the next step are essential.Coaching helped me channel my four-and-a-half-year-old talents for helping people
I made an action plan and consulted a respected career counselor in my country.
I bought many books (I love reading and learning about my interests). Everything was very interesting and challenging. But it was left on paper.Last year, I found my old notes and realized that what I desired for my professional future was… I had already discovered it, and I had wanted it for years! A year later, I already have my own company consolidated, and I help others achieve their professional goals.
What changed? I made the decision and took action.You must take the initial move to manifest it.
I have shared with you my personal model for the achievement of professional goals. How to achieve career success What changed for you to have read this? When will you make the decision and take action to get going towards your professional goals?
