To advance your career, would you take a job you don't want?
To advance your career, would you take a job you don't want? For you, this could be an easy or a difficult question. My answer to 'would you take a job you don't want', is... 'it depends'.
I appreciate that is fence-sitting so let me explain...
I talk a lot about finding what you really want. Finding your zone of genius. Doing something you love. And I stand by that - prioritise being happy.
But I do accept that sometimes there's a stepping stone role in order to reach the role you're more excited about.
I'll bring this to life with one of my own career stories.
When I said I wanted a bigger leadership role in Banking, I was advised I needed operational risk experience. To be honest, working in Risk wasn't high on my agenda at the time. I was doing a leadership role running a design team responsible for customer journeys - on the leading edge of transforming business.
I thought my team was great and I liked my stakeholders, so why leave? Plus I'd only been in the role for a year and felt like I had more to do.
But my boss at the time persuaded me to give up this role for a stepping stone.- there was a prime opportunity to get customer-facing Risk experience. And if I did that, I'd open lots of different leadership doors.
I had a pretty stereotypical view of Risk at the time. Isn't it a bit dull? All about historic data reporting?
Nope.
I got a lot out of that job. It was another great team of people, it was predominantly forward looking to create a great risk culture and I learned a lot. It was a lot like consulting, with different people in the business coming to me for Risk advice on various projects.
A few career moves later, I was heading the London & SE team of leadership coaches at the Bank. So was the stepping stone worth it - absolutely.
It's a bit of a rambling story, but my key points are:
- is there a role you really want in the future? If you can identify a future role, find out which roles you need to do first in order to get there
- decide if you're willing to push outside your comfort zone to take one of these stepping roles. Something you know will be useful and you can handle in the short term. It's ok if that's a big fat NO - you're allowed to stay in your role and be happy.
- find what you love about the step role - I can list lots of things I enjoyed in that Risk role. Your mindset is crucial if you're going to learn and enjoy it. Don't fizzle out your energy or you'll miss the role you were aiming for!
I was speaking to Mark, a change programme consultant and reader of this blog, on Friday. Mark also mentors business professionals and has lots of great career advice. He inspired this blog by talking to me about 'want' versus 'need' in his career. I agree that sometimes you need to take a particular role in the short term to get to the role you want. Thank you Mark!
I love hearing from you, so any career related topics and stories are always welcome.
How do you feel about these stepping stone roles? Interested to hear your views.
Wishing you all the best
