On the fast track

If you are going to progress in your career, ensuring that you develop your abilities is essential. And taking responsibility for your personal development is an important principle – you cannot rely on other people to do it for you. So even if your organisation has an excellent training programme and your boss is really supportive and an excellent example to follow, you should still be thinking about what skill areas you need to improve, and think creatively about different ways in which you can do this.

Learning doesn’t have to be done at work. Doing activities in your free time – community work, for instance, or something that challenges you such as mountain climbing – can give you a different perspective on life that you can transfer to your work.

Another option is to think about finding a mentor. Formal mentoring programmes can be beneficial without a doubt, but they cost money, and aren’t guaranteed to be successful. The key is to find someone with whom you have a rapport. You must be able to trust them implicitly to give you sound advice; not to judge you when you reveal your innermost fears; and to respect your confidences. Mentors don’t even have to work in the same business – it can be refreshing to find someone not in housing.

A good mentor will challenge you to think out of your comfort zone, to test your assumptions about where your career is going, and help you to understand the way you like to work better.

All good stuff when thinking about future career moves, what will suit your style and how you “sell” yourself. And you don’t always have to look far to find a mentor – it could be a colleague at work, a friend, or maybe someone you have met in a different walk of life. My best mentor was someone I met at a conference a few years ago, who works in the private sector and has a completely different spin on the world.

I would highly recommend it!