When you upgrade professionally, what are your continued expectations about the impact of your achievements?
During the past few years, many of you upgraded professionally. The convenience of earning online certifications, without all the hassle and expense of travel and living costs to attend in person, was appealing. Many of you took the plunge. In fact, some of you became professional certification over-achievers, taking great pride in announcing your accomplishments nearly daily on LinkedIn.
Aside from garnering lots of likes on social media, what is the translational and transformational impact of your accomplishments on your workplace colleagues? Cultural transformation is not accomplished in a vacuum. Do you encourage others to see the value in taking the steps to upgrade themselves, as well? Or are you hording your knowledge in your own career silo?
Translating the relevance and value to upgrade professionally focuses on “all about us,” rather than “all about me.” First, you may not have learned that skill set in those certification courses. Next, sharing your learning may grate against your competitive nature. Plus, some colleagues may resent your achievements, rather than laud them. Finally, the real challenge becomes translating the relevance and value of professional upgrades across traditional barriers: existing job titles, pay grades, levels of education, generations, for starters.
When you upgrade professionally, focus on walking your talk through your values, mindset, and actions.
Maybe the success gap between your professional upgrades and the impact you make to colleagues and clients is about reassessing your own professional expectations. What is new, next, and continuously changing: for you as well as for the colleagues, clients, and patients you serve? Getting to where you really need to go incorporates identifying the smallest, one millimeter steps you can take together, which have the biggest impact on creating relevant, valuable and enduring outcomes for everyone you serve.
Catalyzing you to be ahead of what is new, next, and continuously changing. | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Complex Problem Solving | Speaker, Consultant, Mentor |
How do you become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable throughout your career trajectory as the problems you solve become more complex? Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset ™ speaking, consulting, and mentoring programs catalyze people who solve problems differently to collaborate more innovatively as they create and implement innovative and robust business outcomes together. Regardless of whether you are a traditional thinker or a more creative one, use her 3 Core Questions, 4 Change Agreements, and 5 Professional Whys so everyone gets to where they really need to go, together.
Babette walks her talk so you can walk yours. A speaker and consultant, Babette leverages her own professional, cross-functional experience in new product development and market research to become your concierge mentor. Babette is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked Problem Solver, Duke Corporate Education licensed Strategic Agility practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). She is a member of SHRM, PMI, the National Speakers Association (NSA). Delivered virtually or in-person. Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available in soft cover and digital formats on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here. Image source: Adobe Stock.
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