Give yourself a Turbo Boost…..

Let me share with you a few simple steps that can accelerate your growth in your current role manifold. If you have been getting those elusive promotions only once in 3 years (or even less often), you can gift yourselves these careers lifts in at least half the time if you simply follow these steps. There are just 5 of them. Like the 5 gears of a racing car. Each can serve as the turbo rockets that can thrust you onto the victory laps instantly.

Step 1: Find at least 2 people in this planet who are doing your same role exceedingly well. They could be from other departments or even from different Organizations. But make sure that it is from the same industry and the organization has a similar scale of operation. If you are the head of software development at the neighborhood computer one stop shop, don’t have the name of the person adorning the same role in Microsoft in your list. All those who are working in learning and development, please feel free to put my name…Ha Ha

Got them down? Now contact them, follow them, haunt them, solicit and get an appointment. Nowadays Social networking sites are bringing down Governments, so reaching that role model shouldn’t be very tough. Hope you read the sarcasm in the sentence correctly. No excuses. Meet them.

After the pleasantries, ask him two straightforward questions.

Name three projects/incidents where you performed exceedingly well?
Name three projects/incidents where you failed?

For both these questions, get more details by probing further. Who were involved? Who said what? Who did what? Why did you do that? When? What results did you get? How did you know what to do?List them down religiously in a journal. Make sure that you drain them out.

Congratulate and thank them. Go make their day/week/whatever……..

Go back home and analyze the differences between the two sets of answers. What you now have is what we call Competencies. These are behaviors that empower star performers to get the results that make them successful.

Good Positive start. Let’s go ahead…

Post this list on your notice board.
Step 2:

Write down three or four of the major objectives that your Organization want you to deliver this year or in the coming two three years. If you don’t have them yet, contact your boss and demand them. Ideally these should have been cascaded down from Organizational and Departmental objectives.

Now break these objectives down to three of four major roles

If your objective is to Increase sales of product A by 30%, Roles could be

A: Finding new Organizations who would buy your product
B: Selling more of your product to existing customers
C: Enlisting new business partners

Now break these roles further into tasks. Don’t get bored and log off…. We are closer to the finish line now.

A1: Creating prospect list
A2: Locating and contacting the apt stakeholder
A3: Presenting your product
A4: Negotiating and procuring the contract

Break B and C into tasks along similar lines

Now that you have the list of tasks

Write down the list of Competencies (behaviors) that you need to achieve these objectives. Make sure that you have aspects of Knowledge, skills and Attitudes in your list. Examples could be….

Knowledge

Knowledge of products to explain benefits to customers
Knowledge of competing products to address objections and present benefits
Knowledge of market to reach potential customers

Skills

Presentation Skills to persuade the customer
Negotiation Skills to get your expectations
Proposal making skills to prepare influencing proposals

Attitudes

Self Confidence to make cold calls and meet stakeholders
Interpersonal Skills to develop rapport
Persistence to stay put even if customer says No

I don’t claim the above list to be perfect. It could vary from case to case. Now validate this list by referring to the ones that you got from the role models. Bring in Knowledge Skill and Attitude components that were on their list even if you don’t have any of these competencies currently.

What you have in front of you now, is your road map to success. If you score yourself high in each of these competencies, you will be a superhero in your organization… for having over achieved all objectives assigned to you, since Competency along with Commitment lead to success.

What to do next……. Steps 3, 4 and 5….

What are these steps, How to go about them………I will continue in the next post provided I get at least two replies from any of my favorite readers with the list of competencies that they have come up with.
Please send them to sangeethibrahim@yahoo.com

I am waiting……