It is often said that patience is a virtue. At work, waiting for opportunities, especially ones that feel like you're advancing in your career, can be torture. Counting the months until your next performance review, only to be disappointed if it doesn't come with a raise or title, is emotionally draining and likely one of the reasons the median time spent with a shrinking employer.
I spent a few years in corporate America before launching my first startup, and one of the most important lessons I learned is that if you sit and wait for you are being offered a chance to put yourself in the spotlight, you are going to be waiting a long time. That's because top performers don't wait for opportunities to come their way – they create theirs.
Instead of waiting for your boss to bring a new challenge to the table, or worse, waiting for your next performance review to talk about how you met last year's goals, here are some concrete steps you can take right now to prove that you're a natural leader who's ready to climb the corporate ladder.
Related: 4 Steps to Successful Career Mapping
Cultivating Opportunity
1. Specialize.
Each field has its standards. You can't be a journalist without learning the Associated Press style. Good luck getting a software engineering gig without a good understanding of JavaScript. But once you've mastered the basics, look for a lesser-known but still necessary skill or skill at your desk.
Say you've just graduated from a college degree program. You've probably learned the ropes of sales, marketing, accounting and more. Pat yourself on the back, but realize that these are relatively common skills. Why not pursue a certification in advanced financial modeling? If you have a thing for marketing, why not take HubSpot's content, SEO, or inbound marketing courses? Very quickly, you will become known as the expert in your field. That's how my speaking career started:I developed a reputation as a go-to source for people who wanted to talk about superfans, and pretty soon I got so many requests that I started talking full time.
2. Embrace conflict.
Conflict in the workplace may not seem like a way to make friends, but it doesn't have to be destructive. Matt Levy, founder of Credera, recalls in a series of blog posts how he got on the wrong foot with Rob Borrego – whom he had just invited to become CEO of the company. By respectfully discussing their differences and deliberately building trust, Levy and Borrego are now close friends. The strength of their partnership lies in this initial conflict.
Don't create unnecessary conflict with your colleagues, but don't run away from it either. Think of it as an opportunity to better understand someone you'll be spending 40 hours a week with. Chances are the other person will react the same way. Goodwill is taken for granted less often than you might think.
3. Ask for help.
At first, asking for help may seem like the opposite of creating your own opportunities. But consider the Ben Franklin effect:by asking someone for a small favor, you attract them to yourself. The reason is that when you help someone, your brain rationalizes your actions assuming that you must love that person.
The root of opportunity is personal relationships. The Ben Franklin Effect isn't enough to create a trusted one overnight, but it can be the seed. To make it sprout, nurture it the same way you would a friendship. Between 70-85% of jobs are found through networking – in other words, building relationships. I've helped over a dozen friends find jobs over the years, and the majority of people I've hired for various positions have been referred by a friend or acquaintance.
4. Share factory workarounds.
In every business, how management thinks things are done and how they really getting done are two different things. But while managers often have good reasons to push certain processes or products, they sometimes haven't thought of the most effective method. In healthy corporate cultures, at least, leaders don't punish people for these discoveries; leaders reward them.
Although it took consumer products company 3M a while to bring this idea to fruition, its Post-it Notes were actually an employee alternative to bulletin boards reusable. When the worker kept losing church hymns from his church songbook, he didn't buy a bulletin board; he added reusable tape to the back of his hymns. Fast forward to today and post-its are one of 3M's most valuable product lines.
5. Be a mentor.
While mentoring benefits the mentee, it can also be a professional boost for the mentor. Mentoring others develops leadership and communication skills:Identifying strengths and weaknesses, explaining things diplomatically and giving supportive advice are essential in mentoring as well as management roles.
But mentoring does more than honing leadership skills and attracting the attention of leaders. When this mentee comes of age, guess who they go to when they need a co-founder, advisor, or investor? Guess who other employees will turn to when they have a new project or opportunity in mind? It can be hard to predict how, but mentoring inevitably pays off for both parties.
Opportunities can't be created by following a how-to manual, but that's their beauty. If opportunities didn't require hard work and utility, they would all be taken by people who hadn't earned them. And is this really the kind of environment each of us would want to work in?
