Not getting parked: How to praise your past and future self

One of the things I got really wrong at the beginning of my career was not fully owning my personal development. I grew up in a culture that was very explicitly telling me not to talk about one’s achievements. „Good job praises itself“ was a common saying. Meaning, that one does not go around and boasts about their success. Instead, wait until somebody comes by, notices the good work, and rewards you for that.

Only the cat can lift its own tail

The truth is that it does not happen in the real world. People who you would expect to go around, notice what you have done, and reward you simply do not have time and – sometimes ability – to do it. Many great things are not very visible: it is hard to notice superb project management as for an outsider it appears that things just „fall into place“ by themselves. It is much easier to see the lack of good project management when things simply do not work, budgets grow, everything is delayed and the team is crying in the corner not knowing what to do. But it is only an experienced eye that notices when all stakeholders are handled professionally, the plan is well executed and adjusted where needed, risks are correctly identified and mitigated and the team is motivated using balanced approaches, astronomical levels of patience, and emotional strength.

The same goes for many other jobs. Change management. Complex sales. Communication. Strategy definition. Process management. Legal. Back-end programming. Infrastructure. Disaster recovery. The list is close to endless. These jobs are difficult to master and require a lot of skill and hard work but to understand that you need to get into their shoes and try them out. We humans are very good at reducing the complexity in our minds when we look at something we have not tried before. Taking a nice photo? Easy! Until you try it and find out how much you have to work with the light, the right angle, the right lens, and post-processing. Making a presentation? Cannot be that hard.

Nobody owns it like you

Until you have to present it and the audience is somewhere between disinterested and confused. It is hard for us to appreciate excellence until we either experience what it is like to strive for it ourselves or hear the whole story of getting there (including the hard parts).

Telling these stories to the relevant people around us is an important part of (nearly) everyone‘s job. Tell them about what you have done. Tell them about what you want to do. Because if you do not, you will not be in the driver‘s seat for your own career. Somebody else will be. Needless to say, they will not have the interest and motivation to take you on a nice journey. Most likely, they will park the car in the nearest, most convenient (for them) parking spot and keep it there.

No leader will try to push and pull somebody who is not very motivated to go ahead. Some people are fine where they are at the moment. If you push them, they will get to a place that might not be as good for them. Good leaders know that and instead wait for an initiative from their employees.

Moreover, career trajectories are no longer straight lines. Today, it is possible to go from specialist to leader, from leader to a different specialist, from sales to a technical role, and then perhaps something that is not even well defined as a role and made entirely for you personally from different tasks, projects, initiatives, and ideas. To understand what you can and want to do, your leader or potential leader needs to be told. Explicitly. Multiple times.

How to tell what you have achieved

It might be hard to talk about your achievements, especially if you were never taught how to do that. I was not. Instead, I was taught not to do it, to wait, and be very humble. This strategy worked very well while I was in school. It started crumbling when I started studying at the university, then completely fell apart when I started working. It was time to unlearn, re-learn and embrace something I (and still am) not comfortable about.

When I find something uncomfortable, I like having a structure in place. I suggest taking the following steps to professionally, yet visibly talk about what you have done:

1. Keep an overview for yourself. My guess is that you already have some kind of targets, ambitions, and longer-term visions set. Keep a list of these (both formal and informal, e.g. those that were just briefly discussed as possibly to be added as a target in the future) and update it continuously with the progress. Every step and milestone counts. Additionally, add ideas of what ELSE could be done, either to get to the goal faster, achieve even more or mitigate risks. It could look something like that:

Target/goal/ambition	To be achieved by	List of achievements/ milestones	Additional ideas	Risks	Mitigation
Example: XX% cost saving on external costs in the department	Q4 2022	Q2 2022 Analysis of cost streams done Identified largest cost reduction potential areas	Compare to similar cost reduction initiatives in other departments Benchmark against the industry cost picture	Negative employee reaction/ fear of reorganization	Address proactively by 1-1 and department communication.

2. Add regular reflection time to your calendar to go through these targets and add to each of them, what have you done to get closer? It does not need to be something extensive. 10-15 min every two weeks is perfectly fine. The point is to get into a habit of noting what was done as well as capturing new ideas.
3. Create a communication plan where, how and to whom you share these achievements. It could be some of the following (by no means the full list):

• 1-to-1 meetings with your leader, mentor, or peer
• Annual/mid year reviews
• Leadership team meetings
• Department meetings
• Newsletters
• Team chat/news sharing channels, like Teams, Slack, etc.
• Intranet articles or other formal internal channels
• Social media (for public information), like LinkedIn post

For each of these channels, the communication form needs to be carefully considered. The same sentence in 1-1 meeting and the LinkedIn post will sound very different. Simple copy/pasting from the personal list of achievements will just not do. On other hand, it is worth investing time. Well formed message has many times more impact and engagement than one that is not adapted to the right channel and audience.

How to tell what you want to achieve

Part of making something happen is selling the ideas. Not just of new projects and improvements, but a vision of a better, more value-adding you. This is more commonly known as a Personal Development Plan, which is practiced – even enforced – in some organizations. I do not like that approach. In many cases, it is a rigid template filled with some superficial ideas added on demand last minute before the deadline, just to get a checkmark. It is sad and does not lead to real development.

I suggest a bit different approach:

1. Create a personal roadmap: what do you want to BE when? It is useful to imagine it as a 3-6 month journey plan with key steps marked. Do not think about activities (e.g. complete X course), but what you want to BE. Perhaps a good storyteller? Maybe somebody others come to talk about solving infrastructure problems? Try to create an overview similar to the following:

What do I want to be?	By when?	How will I understand I have achieved this?	Where am I now?	How do I get from the current place to the one I want to be?	What help do I need?
Example: Become a go-to person for questions/advice on agile ways of working	End of 2022	Feel confident in talking about agile principles, values, artifacts, etc. Proactively solve at least one agile way of working related challenge in the coming 3 months	Have a basic understanding of agile Avoid questions about agile ways of working	Study theory – complete basic training and read at least one article a week Brand myself as passionate about agile. Proactively address and participate in discussions about agile ways of working	Talk to the internal agile coach Discuss with my leader how to improve our ways of working and how I can contribute to it

2. Consider the last part: what help will you need along the way? Not only what you need – but also what can be helpful in boosting your development. Just because you can achieve something alone, does not mean you have to. This analysis will be your starting point in building the communication plan: how to present the roadmap to your leader, mentor, coach, or anybody else who can help you along the way.
3. Additionally, reflect on how you build your personal brand around what you want to be. Advertise it before you achieve it. If you are learning coaching skills, start writing about coaching on social media. Commit to talking about a certain topic for a large audience before you have mastered it. That is how you get the motivation to master it!  
4. Review your roadmap every 3-6 months. Update your roadmap, and reflect on your progress and the feedback you get from the communication and personal branding activities.

Doesn’t this take a lot of time?

Every time I talk about this to employees, mentees, coaching clients, etc., they get a little bit shocked. All of this seems to take a lot of time. A lot of time away from the actual work. Shouldn‘t they instead do code, meetings, procedures, and whatever else way are meant to do?

The truth is that these two types of stories ARE part of everyone‘s actual work. Are you a back-end developer? Fine, if you do not present what you have done or would like to do, in the end, you will have a lot of code that nobody uses because they do not know what it can or should be used. Or somebody else will do exactly the same. Or change the process, so that your features are no longer relevant. Communication is a key part of your work. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Let it help you become better than you ever thought you could be.