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Career Development advices and discussions for working professionals
Many of you would have had your performance review 1-1 recently, and most likely you are disappointed about how it went. There are many reasons why you would be disappointed right now, I talked about it in my post last year about this - Performance Review - The Day After. If you want to … Continue reading What do you focus on – activities or results?
In the last post on Career Stages, I described a few key attributes for evaluating career progression that organizations and/or individuals need to take care of if they want to effectively manage the career, esp. of their senior employees. Low engagement level, 'through others' contribution mode, and # of real working hours are key points … Continue reading Why do we work – when organizations care about careers
I have been talking to many working professionals over past few weeks about their need to work and what they seek from work. This post (and the next one) summarizes my observations and theory around what I hear. From a career and motivation perspective, there are 4 levels of employees in an organization: Entry Level … Continue reading Why do we work – Career vs. Needs Hierarchy
You were a management understudy and had a report (or 2) to test your management abilities. Now your manager thinks you are now ready to be a manager and you now have 5 reports. Congratulations! Once celebrations are over, you start thinking: is this going to be any different than before? Do my strategies for … Continue reading New Managers: moving from 1 report to 5 reports effectively
When I received my first performance review in as an individual contributor last month, after having been a manager for 7 years before that, it was revealing, to say the least. This prompted me to talk to a few other individual contributors I knew in the company, these discussions were very insightful. I also reviewed … Continue reading Career Paths for engineers – Being a Phase 2 IC
This post is the last of the series of posts I am doing on Being Effective at workplace. Prioritization is about working on things that are most important (and not merely most urgent) for the organization and for self. Judgment is about making decisions at the right time, in the right way, for the right … Continue reading Being effective – Prioritization and Judgment
This post is a part of the series of posts I am doing on Being Effective at workplace. Collaboration is the act of working with others, usually without having formal authority over them, to produce a result. Collaborating is an act of free will, which means people cannot be forced to collaborate. This also means … Continue reading Being Effective at Workplace – Collaboration
This post is a part of the series of posts I am doing on Being Effective at workplace. Taking initiative is about picking up organizational challenges to solve without being asked and delivering results. Taking initiative is a well-known way to achieve stardom at workplace. A FastCompany article has this to say from the book … Continue reading Being Effective at workplace – Taking Initiatives
This post is a part of the series of posts I am doing on Being Effective at workplace. Active Learning is the most important attribute of an effective person. Learning in workplace could be a tricky thing though. Learning while working requires reflecting on the work, the results and the process, but we tend to … Continue reading Being Effective at workplace – Active learning
Effective 1-1 is the cornerstone of a successful management career, and acquiring necessary competencies in order to have a great 1-1 with your reports is a great career enhancement technique. I have referred to this topic many times in my posts and have couple of posts devoted to this topic (see Managing 1-1s and Effective … Continue reading Effective 1-1s – Fostering trust and creating no-harm zone
Career Bloom 