8 Career Success Strategies

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to hear Sheila Wellington, the author of Be Your Own Mentor: Strategies from Top Women on the Secrets of Success, and the president of Catalyst, speak at an author speaking event.

I remember feeling very impressed by what she had to share. Hence I bought her book and stood on line to have her personally sign my copy. Wellington’s book is one of the career resources that I have held onto because I feel that it offers many valuable lessons.

Wellington shares how having a mentor is critical for achieving success at work and how the purpose of the book is to serve as a mentor for women (who are usually at a disadvantage in this arena vs. men) by providing guidance on many important aspects of success at work such as networking, creating opportunities to gain experience and visibility, time management, salary negotiation and more.

As Wellington states on page 45:

Yes, there’s still a glass ceiling, but that’s no reason to feel boxed in. To break through glass, all you need is determination, discipline, persistence, smarts, courage, and a winning strategy.

According to this book, there are the following 8 essential axioms (or basic truths) for advancement:

1. The best isn’t good enough – You need to “perform beyond expectations.” This holds true for both men and women, regardless of where you work or your specific industry.
2. Time (or planning) is of the essence – There will be times when you can focus exclusively on your job and other times when you’ll need to do more juggling of family and work activities. The advice is to take advantage of the periods in your life when you’re going to have the most flexibility to make your major career efforts.
3. If you don’t blow your horn, nobody else will. It’s important to keep your managers informed about your progress on a project so that they know what’s happening. Men do this all the time; women need to do it as well.
4. Expertise impresses. It’s to your advantage to develop knowledge in a unique, relevant specialty so that people will come to depend upon you and you become indispensable.
5. Nothing comes to she who waits – Taking the initiative is critical to getting ahead.
6. It’s not just corporations that need to diversify.  Diversifying one’s experience is important. If you’re seeking a high level position, it will be helpful to gain broad experience across different areas of managing a firm including bottom-line responsibility i.e., experience related to bringing in the business of the business.
7. Fortune favors the brave – demonstrate your readiness to take risks, to cultivate new abilities and show them off in “stretch” assignments (particularly challenging or difficult situations/assignments).
8. Money matters – figure out what salary you should receive and then start your job with that salary. Most bosses will try to pay you with as little as they can get away with; don’t let them.

This book offers many more additional important career advancement tips as well as illustrative stories.

Have you found these 8 axioms of advancement to be true in your work/career? Are there others that you feel should be added to the list?

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