Truth be told, I’ve made some CLMs (career-limiting moves) in my time.
There was the time I hit my CFO in the head with a pool cue after getting a little too excited. Or the time I spotted a senior leader who I thought looked like he needed an escape route from a conversation he was stuck in. I went up and casually said under my breath, ‘I’m here to save you from this conversation’ – and he then responded by introducing me to his wife.
Or that time I wrote an email with the subject header ‘Is the monster gone yet?’ with reference to my boss at the time. I then sent it to my boss. Gulp.
You may read these and have a little giggle. You may even have some of your own career limiting moves too. But none of the above mistakes were anywhere near as limiting as the career mistake I made and the subsequent lesson I learned while climbing up the management and leadership ranks.
I recall stepping into my first senior role within an organisation right when it underwent an incredible amount of change. I felt out of my depth and like a total imposter, and I went to work most days waiting for the tap on the shoulder from my boss telling me, ‘Thanks, Claire, but no thanks’. I lay awake at night often criticising myself for the things I’d said (or hadn’t said) that day, thinking that surely people would be judging, and questioning my credibility and competence.
To compensate for these insecurities, I worked more and more. I made myself so ‘busy’ because it was the best way I thought at the time that I could show my value. I was operating in an almost constant state of overwhelm.
I recall once spending days on a PowerPoint presentation to outline for my senior leadership team our department strategy for the year ahead. I’m talking days. It was beautiful – it looked sleek and had all the usual buzzwords a strategy document should include, such as ‘competitive advantage’, ‘leading and lagging indicators’, ‘scorecard’ and, of course, my favourite, ‘performance drivers’.
Can you guess what happened when I shared my presentation in that leadership team meeting? The first question I got was, ‘How are you going to implement all of that?’ The second was, ‘Why are these considered the priorities when we’ve got all these other changes happening?’
Dear world, please swallow me whole immediately.
I’d made two critical errors. Firstly, I’d spent far too long doing something that made me feel busy and accomplished, but wasn’t actually important to my core stakeholders.
Secondly, I hadn’t had the right relationship conversations or ‘read the room’ ahead of this meeting to know what was important to my stakeholders, and then communicated it to them in a way that ensured they felt seen, heard and involved.
I’d gotten so busy being busy as a way to ‘prove my value’ that I’d lost sight of what it actually meant to add value, or what impact I was even trying to make.
I now work with individuals and organisations all over the world, and I still see the same things happening.
We get busy in all the wrong ways and hope that our hustle will translate to the opportunities we want.
Years of outdated and conventional career advice around “just keep working hard” or “say yes to every opportunity” have also not helped, and have led to a portion of our workforce feeling exhausted, stressed and burning out, but often also feeling like they aren’t achieving outcomes.
If I can share any lesson with you for your own career growth (and fulfilment) it would be this:
Working harder and longer hours is not the answer.
Here’s what is:
Focus on building your career currency.
Career currency is a term popularised by Carla Harris in her now famous TED Talk. She speaks about the idea of career currency being made up of two parts – performance and relationships.
To have sustainable and successful careers, we need to be able to leverage both, strategically and consistently.
Relationship currency is determined by how you achieve outcomes through your relationships and the influence you hold in your company. Ask yourself these questions:
- Who do you know in your organisation?
- Who do you need to know you?
- How effective are your relationships with these people?
- What influence do you have?
Performance currency is determined by how you demonstrate what you know, and deliver on the things you’re accountable for. This is more than just doing your job tasks, though. This is about your ability to show your potential through things like navigating conflict, delivering and receiving feedback, demonstrating business acumen or commercial savviness, and communicating effectively what your efforts translate to.
When we hold the metric (consciously or unconsciously) of ‘busyness’ as a predictor of impact, effectiveness or value, we risk working really hard, but not actually getting to where we want to go.
A strong career currency that provides meaningful and fulfilling opportunities is absolutely achievable, but it does require us to do one thing:
Challenge our thinking around busy versus impact.
Claire Seeber is the author of Less Hustle, More Happy: How to be seen, valued and fulfilled at work without selling your soul.