People want new opportunities at their current company for many great reasons. At any moment in your career, you may want to grow your skills and competency, which allows you to make more money or have a more significant impact.
There are also times when you want to change how you spend time on your work – such as needing to travel less or having a different amount of presence in the office. Ideally, you should consider this from the moment you join a company, as this is part of the total reward the company provides. But there is always time to have this discussion, and inevitably plans and desires change.
Your posture in making any new assignment should always be a promise you intend to fulfill. This posture allows you to own the discussion’s timing, agenda, and expectations. Too often, people with an appetite to take on new assignments in a company act reactively. They wait until an opportunity arises in an annual review or they receive a job offer. This is fine and may happen. Yet, there is a way to ensure you proactively make your desires known.
Create a plan and ask for feedback on your career plan. Hoping for an opportunity is not a plan. Creating a real career plan that you take to your company is an organization’s dream.
In speaking with dozens of CEOs and CHROs over the last five years, we posed this question: “Would they like to have their talent challenge the leaders of the business with a plan of development and progress or keep the current method of reviews they use now?” 100% of the CEOs and CHROs enthusiastically noted that they wanted the talent to challenge their leaders with ideas and plans for their growth.
The current method of reviews and promotions internally is generic and poorly managed in almost every company.
So create a plan that provides your company with the best information and clarity regarding your purpose in your career. Imagine that you have built a career plan that includes your values, purpose, and vision of success. You have done thorough and detailed work to develop your professional inventories of wins and losses, technical and leadership skills, and established development goals for yourself to grow your technical and leadership skills.
You also have a handle on your Work Life Flow by highlighting what is essential in your personal inventory and goals for your financial rewards, use of your time for work and life, and presence at home, on the road, and in the office.
Call a meeting with your boss (or your CEO if you’re brave!), show her your full career plan in a 30-minute meeting, and ask for feedback on how the company can align with your plan. At that moment, you changed everything. Every CEO or excellent leader of people wants this. They may not have the immediate answer you’re looking for, but now you can hold each other accountable for your shared success.
Your plan is not a tactic to get a job, raise, or issue a threat. This conversation is an authentic exchange between “businesses” since your career is the business of your life. It is also a genuine exchange between humans. The feedback is everything. You may create some pressure, and the leader you speak with may need to digest what you’ve shown in your plan. You should ask for alignment, support, and how they will help you with your plan. You may get feedback to adjust your plan or timelines. You may get enthusiastic and immediate action of a new role. Regardless, the feedback will inform your ability to have a new opportunity at this company.
Can you imagine not doing this? You must take this risk, and you must own your career. Or somebody else, and their agenda will own you. Not having a plan and asking if you can have a new role or opportunity is a very thin discussion with no depth of why, what, and how? The fact you own your career, treat it as the business of your life, and have done the work on yourself shows a level of commitment worth investing in and giving many more opportunities no matter the company.