Being pro-active, one of the common soft skill many companies wants their employees to learn. Many a times it is very common feedback to the team members that "you need to be a bit more proactive", but I am not really sure about the difference between being proactive and being responsible for yourself.
I know you can look up the dictionary and say that they both are different, I will agree with you if we both sit with that dictionary, but what I am talking about is not just any responsibility but just the "responsibility of your own career". If you think you are "responsible for your own career" and you are the one who can make the maximum influence on the growth of your career, then the chances are that you are already proactive.
I have worked for both services industry as well as product industry and I happen to believe that no matter where you are working, you will always get windows of time where you don't know what you need to work on.
The window keeps on getting smaller and smaller as you grow in your profession. If you happen to just join the company the window which is "I don't know what I need to work on OR where is my career heading" will be the biggest and by the time you become a CEO of any company there is no such window. You are struggling to find time for yourself.
When you don't have anything specific assigned to you or you feel that I am not growing I have generally seen three responses.
1) Please give me some work I don't have anything to do.
2) I want to have a meeting, I don't think I am growing. I am doing the same thing for so many number of years, the company needs to utilize me more effectively, I don't want to continue doing the same thing.
3) I am planning to work on the following as I that is the area which I think I can grow to reach the next level. I have the plans which I want to share with you to make sure I am on the same track.
There might be few more responses, but over the period of time I have happened to see the above three response in majority of the employees.
Response one seems to be short and sweet, it is not that I would prefer that as I believe it lacks certain depth of clarity, after all we are talking about your career on which you might spend more then 35 years of your life.
Response two might indicate that you are frustrated and not really sure who is responsible for your growth, is it the company, is it the lead, is it the manager? but you are sure that you don't want to do the things you are doing else you are stuck.
So are we really happen to be so helpless that our growth only and only depends on the company? I am sure most of your might answer NO, and I would agree with you that you are not fully relying on the company for your career growth, but yes they are a percentage of it, but then how many percentage does the company plays role in your growth? Is it 20? 30? 50 or 80%?
I really don't know the answer and it might not be a single answer, but whatever the answer be, I am sure that it has to be less then 50%. Are you really helpless to have control and define the growth of your career? Think again? If not, be a bit more proactive, give it some thought, make some plan and share it with respective person you are working with and get aligned.
You are not as helpless as you think when it comes to your own career, please take charge of it and make plans for it and get it aligned to what you want to achieve in your life.
Rahul
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