Outer progress starts with inner work
What steps have you taken to advance your professional career? It's a question that frequently comes my way - people seeking advice about the most effective steps they can take to progress their career.
It’s common for us to seek external strategies, such as academic programs and refining clinical skills when seeking to advance professionally. Yet, career development is not solely about taking outward steps. It’s a delicate balance between inner work, like self-awareness and self-leadership and outward development of skills and expertise.
Career development is a balance of inner and outer work.
The inner work we do serves as the essential foundation on which we must build before venturing forth on our professional journeys. Regardless of whether your goals involve changing your career, advancing your career path, striving for that sought-after promotion, or simply enhancing your overall professional experience, building a strong inner foundation is crucial.
We must strengthen our inner foundation of self-leadership to cultivate fertile soil for our growth and development. We need to prepare and build our sense of self, self-belief, and self-trust to provide the groundwork for outer progress.
Key steps for building self-leadership capability
I have summarised some of the key steps I recommend below as they may be a helpful for you.
Enhancing Self-Awareness: Begin by understanding your skills, strengths, learning opportunities, potential, values, and passions. Self-awareness is the cornerstone of self-leadership. Reflect on your experiences to identify patterns and lessons that can guide your future decisions.
Becoming a Lifelong Learner: Develop a growth mindset through embracing challenges and setbacks as opportunities for learning and growth. A growth mindset fosters our commitment to lifelong learning.
Trusting Yourself: Deeply knowing who you are and what you can offer is key. We want others to trust us, but I have found that many of us lack trust in ourselves and struggle with self-doubt, imposter syndrome or feeling like a fraud.
Setting Clear Goals: Define your professional objectives. What do you want to achieve? What is meaningful to you? How do you want to achieve your goals? What values do you want to be your compass as you work towards your goals?
Managing Yourself: Efficiently manage your time by setting priorities and creating daily habits that support your goals. I love the work of James Clear in Atomic Habits as a guide for this.
Building relationships and seeking feedback: Cultivate meaningful professional relationships. Seek out constructive feedback from peers, mentors, and supervisors. Feedback helps you identify areas for improvement and refines your skills.
Supervision, Mentoring or Coaching: Consider seeking guidance from a supervisor who can support your learning and career journey and provide valuable insights and practice wisdom. They can help you navigate challenges and make informed decisions.
Remember that applying these steps and strengthening your inner foundation of self-leadership is an ongoing process that requires intention and self-reflection.
“Self-leadership is not just about achieving external success, but also about personal growth and fulfilment. As you build your sense of self and self-trust, you’ll not only excel in your career, but also lead a more meaningful and satisfying life.”
Grow your skillset
We have many programs and services that can support you in your professional journey:
Professional Supervision training and Leadership Development training can support you to strengthen your skills in people and organisational leadership and support the learning of your supervisees and workforce.
Self-Leadership and Thriving Professional Women specifically focus on building self-leadership in yourself and others, which powerfully strengthens your foundation and that of your colleagues.
Professional and Workplace Resilience strengthens our skills in self-care, personal and professional sustainability.
We also offer individual supervision through my practice for professionals keen to have a one-on-one experience to support their growth and development.
Packed with self-improvement strategies, Atomic Habits will teach you how to make the small changes that will transform your habits and deliver remarkable results.