Steps to Getting Ahead in Your Career

1. Find a Mentor

A good mentor is that special someone who will take the trouble to see things from your point of view, take your side and guide you in the right direction. The best professional mentors are people with experience in your own industry who can give sound professional advice, help you brainstorm and solve problems, put matters in perspective and sometimes open doors for you. Mentors however need not be from your own industry. An old college professor, an entrepreneur friend of the family, a family banker with a good overall business sense or even someone in a completely unrelated field whose integrity, judgement and intuition you trust, can all serve as allies and sounding boards as you progress up the career ladder. Try to find that someone you can learn from and who can help you through the uncertain patches in your job and overall career.

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2. Effective Time Management

Effective time management boils down to setting specific goals and meeting them. Plan ahead both in macro terms and micro terms. Set deadlines for projects and then break the projects up into individual milestones with separate deadlines which you can tick off as you accomplish them. Delegate along the way. Dina in graphics for example may be better equipped to draw those Excel charts and make them visually appealing than you, so allocate that particular microtask to her. Make your deadlines reasonable and aim to overdeliver rather than overpromise. It is always better to have some slack time at the end of a project to check for detail and presentation rather than have to rush the next item on your agenda.

You will find that this kind of planning is so attractive that it will spill over into your personal life. Little Johnny's life will be so much fuller when you see how many activities you can schedule for him on paper and when you can allocate that half hour between your lunch break and that meeting to paying him a surprise icecream visit at school. You will also find yourself scheduling more 'fun' and 'relaxing' activities for yourself when you take control of your time by planning ahead.

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3. Manage Your Boss

Bosses have lives, career roadblocks, deadlines and worries of their own and a smart employee will learn how to ingratiate themselves to their boss amidst all the noise and create an ongoing professional dialogue that achieves both parties' objectives. Proactivity is the key to a successful employee/ employer relationship. Take control of your career and communicate your goals, aspirations, ideas and concerns to your boss on an ongoing basis rather than hoping he will make plans that suit you and notice all the work you get done. Effective communication in the right tone at the right time is a very important component of this relationship as is full transparency, making it easier for your boss to see and appreciate your work and efforts and promote you.

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4. Negotiate for What You're Worth

There's nothing like feeling underpaid and undervalued to put a damper on your career aspirations and stifle your motivation and productivity. Take control of the situation and try to negotiate a compensation package that is more in line with what you feel you're worth.

Remember, there are specific rules to successful negotiation. First of all, make sure what you are about to negotiate for is realistic. Arm yourself with some knowledge of what your peers in the industry and in the company are making and a sound judgement regarding how much you feel your boss really values you.

Secondly, target a win-win scenario. Aim to show your job how much better off he will be having a better paid employee who will then exert more effort, take more initiative and live up to the yet untapped potential everyone knows she has. The message essentially is "employee is unhappy, unhappy employee is unmotivated, employee sees no fairness in situation, let's make company more profitable and boss look much better by paying employee to be more motivated and produce more and better work."

Thirdly, make sure the tone is right and that you are flexible so you can win in a number of different scenarios. Listen carefully to your boss's point of view and anticipate his concerns. Be prepared to offer different means for him to meet your justified aspirations. For instance, if after a respectful and well argued dialogue, your boss is unable to meet your demands for a cash raise, ask for a guaranteed bonus, or a raise 3 or 6 months down the road providing you meet specific milestones, or non-cash compensation hikes such as medical insurance, children's schooling or stock options. It may be that you will be happy just with a new title which will more adequately reflect your position and responsibilities. Plan several ways you can proceed towards the compensation package you find satisfactory and aim to leave the meeting having advanced in one of these directions.

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5. Delegate

This is not about passing the buck. It's about freeing yourself to do what you do best and achieving maximum efficiency all around. It's not entirely optimal for a consultant with a PHD in Stochastics to spend 3 hours perfecting the pastel shades on his powerpoint presentation when he could have used that time to execute strategy for another client. Effective delegation can spread the workload amongst people so that each is challenged in their own domain and so that others can learn new skills and improve old ones. The whole outfit benefits when everyone is doing what they do best.

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6. Take Ownership

Whether it's that filing cabinet you're responsible for keeping in chronological order and safe from natural disasters and epidemics, or a team of 6 bankers that you are in charge of, taking ownership of your work is the first step toward personal and professional satisfaction. If you think of yourself as 'owning' your little domain - sometimes as part of a team - you will take special pride in your output and results. That feeling of 'ownership' will boost your creativity as you look for new ways to indulge and improve your professional terrain and the attitude will almost always communicate itself to your boss and peers. Think of every professional task, no matter how small, as a project worthy of your signature and make sure the quality of the work you produce lives up to your name!

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