Are you looking at your career growth the wrong way?
Progress doesn't always come in the form of a promotion
It’s easy to assume your career is only moving forward when you hit those obvious milestones like achieving a promotion, getting a pay rise or moving to a new organisation. They’re easy to spot, easy to explain and easy to compare. When someone asks how your career is going, those are often the first things that come to mind.
That works well enough if your career follows a fairly traditional path. But not every workplace does.
Experience is growth too, even if it doesn’t come with promotion
In smaller and purpose-driven organisations, especially, opportunities often look a little different. There might not be regular promotions, but you might find yourself leading a project you’d never expected to lead, representing your organisation at an important meeting or taking responsibility for work that sits well outside your original job description, or you might fill in for someone on leave and discover you’re capable of far more than you realised.
Your title may not change, but your day-to-day work often does.
That all builds your experience, and creates building blocks that help you develop further.
A different way to measure progress
If you’ve ever felt like your career has stalled because you haven’t been promoted recently, it might be worth asking a different set of questions.
Instead of focusing only on what’s changed on paper, consider:
What can I do now that I couldn’t do a year ago?
What responsibilities do people trust me with today?
What challenges no longer feel as daunting as they once did?
What have I learned that has changed the way I work?
The answers may not fit neatly into a job title, but they’re often a much better reflection of how your career is developing.
There’s no single way to build a career
Some people will move into leadership. Others will become specialists. Some will discover they’re happiest moving between organisations every few years, while others will build long careers in one place.
Looking at someone else’s path can make it surprisingly easy to overlook your own. Careers rarely unfold in exactly the same way, and they’re shaped by opportunities, timing, interests and circumstances that are different for everyone.
The next time you find yourself wondering whether your career is moving forward, don’t just look at your title. Look at what you’ve learned, the experience you’ve gained and the opportunities you’ve stepped up to along the way.