Your Career Development Is In Your Hands

People have supervisors/managers and they have their managers.   Lot of us have learnt over many years that a manager is responsible for individual's development.   "Development" here is a buzzword which is often mis-understood or less understood.  It means many things from learning to career progression.   As humans, we feel motivated when we achieve something new, however small it is because there is a feeling of joy and learning.  While our managers can show the direction and "probably" guide us by giving inputs on ways to achieve it, it is in our hands to go that extra mile to conquer the territory.  Career progression is one such example.   

Career progression is a territory to be conquered.  It could be a hard terrain to climb.  There could be multiple hurdles stopping us from moving forward.  It is our responsibility to cross those hurdles and move forward without looking back.  Our managers are not going to solve it for us.  Bad managers can make our journey very difficult by creating more hurdles.  Good managers either clear them or show an alternate smooth path to achieve the same goal.  Often we fail to distinguish between a bad manager and a good manager, especially when we are very early in our career.  

If you encounter somone who creates hurdles and makes your tasks even more difficult, it is your respnsibility to clear those hurdles.  If the hurdle creater is your manager, it is still your responsibility to conquer them, because ultimately the goal that you have set for yourself is your goal, not your manager's goal.  

Let us take an example of a scenario when someone is denied a promotion.  "Denial Of Promotion" (DOP) creates a bottleneck and slows down your career progression goal.  It is a hurdle which I talked before.  You have to measure the bottleneck and see how genuine the DOP is.  Because, your manager will be bound by organizational policies and practices and will have only limited sphere of influence.  So, a DOP is not necessarily your manager's fault.  However, as a manager, he/she has a duty to communicate to you in a "friendly and kind" manner about why you were denied promotion and what is that you should do to improve.  Many times this dialog is often regarded as "fullfilling of ones' task" by the supervisor.  There may not be any credibility in this dialog.  A DOP would put you back by few years.   Multiple DOPs can seriously injure your career progression.  DgOP could be a traumatic expereince.  It could impact you both personally and professionally.  

So, what do you do when you are denied promotion which was must awaited for years?   How would you react?   How would you control stress and mental agony?  Here are some tips that could help you overcome this situation

1.  "Thinking about your family - those smiling faces waiting for you".   Do not build stress and agony because it would harm your health.

2   Talk to a trusted partner about everything that is in your mind bothering you.   Because, it is better to vent out your frustrations.   Your trusted partner could be your spouse or a good friend of yours but not your manager even if your manager is a good friend. 

3.  Depending upon what time of the day you were told about the DOP, as soon as you get to know about it, call it a day and go home and relax yourself.   Because the first thing to do is to relax your mind and the best place to do that is your home.

4.  Indulge yourself in some healthy and friendly activities like playing with your children, talking to your spouse, seeing a movie, going out for a dinner etc.   

5.  Go to bed early and have a sound 8-hr sleep.

6.  Next day, get back to regular work and keep your mind busy with work.   Take up something that would be interesting to work on which would motivate you.   This is the time you need motivation.

7.  Do not discuss about DOP with anyone.  If you are inadvertently/advertently pulled into one such discussion, please mention that you are not interested in taking part in such a discussion and move forward.

8. Chart out a plan in your mind as to how to move forward towards your career progression goal.  It could be looking out too, but keep it yourself and do not reveal anything.  Work on it in background.

9.  You can have further discussions about DOP with your manager as appropriate, but never ever vent out your frustrations on your manager.  Do not give a clue that you are least interested in this job and you would be looking out (even if you are planning to do so).    

10.  A healthy dialog with your manager is to ask for a development plan because a development plan is something that would still be useful in some sense irrespective of your decision ot stay or quit.

Whatever is the case.   Understand this philosophy.....

WORK IS WORSHIP AND THE ORGANIZATION IS A TEMPLE.   It should be always "Business as usual" for you.  So, do not give it up, carry on your normal job and you will get over it very soon.   Do not let your ambitions down by reacting.  The world is there for you with other opportunities if not this organization.