The era of a servant and master relationship in the workplace is
gone. Employees need to take control of their own careers and stop waiting on
management and HR to deliver it to them. In any case, even if as an employee
you are sitting and waiting for the career growth you keep referring to, do you
even know what that really means for you? It’s almost as if there is this
desire to get to “the promised land”, and yet people have not even defined what
that “promised land” looks like. Do those people have a plan they are executing
to get there?
With a promising career at age 24, Zukeka had been at her current
job for two years. She joined the organisation as part of their graduate
recruitment programme, and had therefore not experienced working in any other
organisation. Zukeka was no longer enjoying what she was doing, as she felt she
wanted growth. She felt that by being a specialist her growth would be limited
and in her mind, she had seen other colleagues whom she had started with moving
into different positions. They were getting promoted, while she wasn’t!
Zukeka spoke to her manager about feeling stifled and wanted to be
promoted so she could grow. She was being given more responsibilities and
projects that were tough to crack, but that was not what she wanted. She was
not getting the outcome she wanted, which was the promotion. Her morale started to sink, her performance
followed suit. Her attitude changed for the worse and so did her reliability in
terms of delivery. Soon she found herself not even being given the responsibilities
she used to carry. She felt ostracised and her external job interviews were
also not resulting in any offers, never mind salary offers within the pay grade
she wanted.
You might have seen this scenario play out before. It happens so
easily and so quickly that someone loses their mojo. So often, an obsession
with what you don’t have, can take away your ability to see and appreciate what
you do have. If you see and appreciate what you do have, your energy is high
and you’re inclined to take on more. If you have that positive frame of mind
and energy, people are attracted to wanting to work with you, rather than
feeling drained by your presence.
Dropping the standards of what you are currently responsible for,
or not meeting the standards expected can really trip up any form of
opportunity you could get elsewhere. Even if you know you are actively looking
to change jobs, do your current job well. Perception is reality and if people
see you doing badly in a job you are not happy with, there will be nothing that
would make them think that you will do well with any job that they give you.
Your work is a reflection of you and therefore adds value or destroys the value
of your brand.
So next time your job performance stops becoming unimportant to you,
think about who else out there might actually care!
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