My personal goal in my professional life

One of my professional goals is to be a tiny dot on the radar for my manager. Meaning–I don’t want him to constantly think about what I’m doing and require reports from me. If this is required, then I haven’t proved that I’m a great employee who excels at independent work. I want to be the self-sufficient person my manager never has to worry about. I think I’ve developed this nicely because at my former job, we underwent several major changes and I had to report to someone for a time who was my boss’ boss. I didn’t want her to have to worry about me at all (she had enough on her plate as it was!), so I used my coworkers as resources and navigated a lot of issues on my own. Anything that had to be elevated I did, of course, but I made sure I could get through my day-to-day work without having to involve this upper manager. It went really well!

I’ve been slammed this past week with several projects that will linger into the end of September, which means that I’m having to buckle down and really organize myself in order to get everything done well, correctly, and on time. My manager emailed me for an informal status report and I laid out all of my plans for the upcoming weeks; he was so kind and offered me any help that I needed. I also have a colleague who offered her help for one of my journals which she used to work on before me. I’m very lucky to work in such a supportive environment.

I consider it a success when I can speak with my manager or send him emails about my work and how it’s all going and ask him for help when and if I need it, but otherwise remain the employee that he knows will do a great job. I never want to have him or any one else in upper management worry about me! I think I’m doing alright in that area :).

How about you, readers–do you have a more hands-off, helpful manager or someone who prefers to be in the loop about everything? Please let me know!

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Setting career goals? How do I do that??

Last week, I had a meeting with my manager to set my job objective for the year ahead. Each year, all employees in my company create a two to three sentence objective stating which specific skill(s) they would like to work on and how they will do that in the coming months. When I read the e-mail letting everyone know that we would be meeting with our managers shortly to discuss this, I became a bit nervous. Though, after going through the process of creating my own personal objective, I felt that the whole procedure was really worth it in the end.

First, I read through the Objectives for my specific position at my company and decided which ones I wanted to improve upon first. This was easy since I have already been here for about 9 months and have become familiar with the areas I need to improve upon. After that, I considered what is coming in the year ahead: I know that I am going to be assigned a second journal soon and I thought about how that meshes with the skills that I would like to improve. I finally melded the two together to come up with a comprehensive statement that listed my goals for the year and how I am going to achieve them.

I have never worked for a company that required their employees to work on objectives or meet with their managers to discuss their professional development, and I appreciate that I have this opportunity now. Previously, though I did give some abstract thought to my career trajectory and what I want to be doing in the future, this made me think about it more concretely. What do I want to continue to accomplish in my field? Where can I go with my career? Will I want to continue doing this for the next 5 years? 10 years?

Even if you are in school, in the beginning of your career, or a seasoned pro at your job, it doesn’t hurt to sit down and consider what you want to do and how you plan to do it. I’m the type of person who, once I have a set “list” of things I need to accomplish, can do them with more ease than if I had a vague notion of what I want to do. Hold yourself accountable in your career!

 

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