By Tony Frost
In today’s ultra-competitive and AI-charged world, the basic requirements for career success are no longer sufficient. In my experience as a leadership coach there are seven accelerants that will help anyone to have a competitive edge, to get ahead in their careers and to become leaders in their fields…
The basic requirements for career success include intelligence, integrity, skill, competence and diligence. But in today’s ultra-competitive and AI-charged world, these are no longer sufficient. In my experience as a leadership coach, and having regard to evidence-based research in recent years, there are seven accelerants that will help anyone to have a competitive edge, to get ahead in their careers and to become leaders in their fields:
- Planning: create and periodically update a personal, professional and business development plan and ask one or more people to hold you accountable. Your plan should include: your values, principles and purpose; your professional and business development goals for the year ahead; your priorities and plans to work on the other six Accelerants and accountability mechanisms.
- Feedback/advice: actively seek feedback/advice from others, with a non-defensive mindset, and act on that feedback as appropriate. When you are relatively junior, you will typically be on the receiving end of feedback, and as you become more senior you will provide it to others. You will give and receive feedback in your private life, probably every day. So the sooner you know how to seek and receive feedback in an effective way, as well as provide it to others, the better.
- Deliberate practice: undertake career-long ‘deliberate practice’ and development of your key professional capabilities. Let’s assume you are talented at a particular (non-work) pursuit such as a sport or playing a musical instrument. How did you achieve your level of skill? Even if you were a natural, it’s because you practised. A lot. You may or may not have had lessons or formal coaching, but you spent many hours practicing and building your skills. But when it comes to professional careers, many people don’t apply the same logic, principles and degree of rigour to the development of their capabilities and skills. Don’t make that mistake. Plan to practice and build your capability toolkit at work in a strategic and carefully thought through manner.
- Mentors: always have mentors and become a mentor yourself to others in due course. Ideally you will have at least two mentors at any given time, one inside your organisation and one outside. Not only will this give you a broader perspective, but your external mentor should be more objective when it comes to helping you assess whether your current organisation and role are the right fit for you. Perhaps your organisation offers a mandatory or optional mentoring program. If not, take the initiative and approach your preferred senior professional and ask them to mentor you on an agreed basis. Most will be pleased to be asked. A rule of thumb is that an internal mentor should not be your boss, or a senior professional you work with closely on a day-to-day basis.
- Emotional intelligence: actively work on your emotional intelligence. Like technical competence, it’s a skill you’ll never cease to work on. The core attribute of emotional intelligence if self-awareness. Research suggests that people who know how others see them are more empathic and make better leaders. The only way to really get a handle on your self-awareness is to ask good questions of others who know you reasonably well. You can do this through a workplace feedback questionnaire put together by your organisation or a third party and completed anonymously online by your colleagues.
- Executive presence: work on building this highly prized if somewhat nebulous quality from the start of your career. Executive presence, sometimes known as the ‘it factor’ or the ‘X-factor’, is a very loose concept that can mean different things to different people. Properly understood, it is much more than gravitas, charisma, the ‘wow’ factor or the ability to hold a room. Rather, it is your ability to confidently engage with and inspire other people to act in an agreed manner. For starters, ask your mentors and some more senior people in your organisation, who you know and trust, for some frank feedback on your current level of executive presence and any tips and suggestions they might have for you. Although we tend to be pretty good at assessing it in others, we are generally less aware of our own abilities in this regard.
- Personal brand: begin curating your professional personal brand at the start of your working life. You always have a personal brand — good, bad or indifferent. It is not what you think it is. It is how other people assess it and you. Imagine you are a fly on the wall listening to a group of people who know you well and are speaking about you from a personal and a professional perspective. What do they say about how you present yourself, your character, your strengths and weaknesses, your special traits and attributes, what differentiates you from others, and your reputation? The summary of their response is your personal brand. As with executive presence, start by asking mentors and senior trusted colleagues for feedback on your personal brand before developing a brand enhancement strategy.
You may be thinking, I’m a busy person with limited time and there are seven of these damned things. Where do I start? Start with Planning, because it will require you to figure out which of the other six Accelerants to focus on and when. Applied methodically, the Seven Accelerants will set you up for supercharged career progression.
Tony Frost
