I met a very senior person sometime back who is out of job for last 6 months, we discussed lot of possibilities and I promised that I would try my level best to help him. We are working on it; however it was real painful to see such a senior and deserving person waiting for his next assignment.


So what went wrong in his case? Keeping other things aside I think the biggest problem was that this person was not in charge of his own career. He probably did not know some of the golden rules which is must in today's fast paced job environment:


Rule 1: Take Charge of your own development.

Often people come up with a complaint that their manager is not taking care of their development and career progression. ALAS !!! those days are long gone when "someone" would take care of your growth and development. It is "you" who is responsible for it and only you can initiate actions like identifying improvement areas and approach your manager with a plan of development , not the other way around.


Rule 2: Danger Signs.

Can you see danger signs, something like your boss talking about your salary rather than your work; you are fast becoming irrelevant for important meetings; your juniors not turning up to you for guidance, you are not given important assignments, you are not invited to organization level forums; and most important one is that you are not getting clues of what the new generation is talking about?

Beware of these signs, you are probably getting irrelevant faster than you might have imagined. It is the time to up-skill or re-skill.


Rule 3 : Follow the STAR

There are some top performing people in every organization at every level. Do you know them? If not then it is time to get introduced and see what they do differently? Follow their best practices and mix your own strength with those best practices.


Rule 4: Feedback

Are you shy of getting feedback from your boss or colleagues? Stay away from sycophants and try to get a genuine feedback. Work on these feedbacks.


Let us know if you feel that there are more golden rules which should be added here?