Eidolon Alternative Lifestyle Career Blog

Use Work Groups to Achieve Your Big-picture Goals

If you work in a corporate-type of environment, you’ll probably find yourself being asked by your boss to serve on a “volunteer” workgroup or committee. There are pros and cons to this. Some of the pros are your opportunities to learn new skills and meet new people and network, especially when the committee extends beyond your immediate office. My point is that if you join one of these types of workgroups, don’t get yourself into the hole of taking meeting minutes and scheduling rooms. Make sure that the role you take on the team and those duties or projects you volunteer for align with your future goals.

If you want to shift from your Admin Assistant role to Information Technology, volunteer to maintain the intranet website or volunteer to do something IT related. Be more deliberate about what you volunteer for and the projects you lead when the choice is yours. Don’t be on an extra work group just because management will give you a cookie. Leverage your membership in as many ways as possible. Target what committees you volunteer for and the duties you complete to your big-picture goal so you’ll be more competitive when you’re ready to take on your big-picture goal.

Just Because You're Necessary Doesn't Mean You're Important

Have you ever received career advice along the lines of "Make yourself invaluable so you can get a promotion or be too valuable to ever get fired!" or "distinguish yourself as an outstanding employee your company can't do without!"

Well, this is all fine and dandy. It's a good concept if implemented strategically. Just to 'shoot off the hip' and implement this common advice at face value could actually put you in a rut. As you manage your talent - be proactive about keeping potentially self-sabotaging decisions to a minimum.

If you follow this common advice without keeping tabs on yourself - you can make yourself so invaluable you'll be too valuable to not just get fired, but to valuable to get promoted, reassigned, or otherwise be afforded the opportunity for career building assignments. Case-in-point: In the August issue of Talent Management author Kate DCamp, a senior executive adviser at Cisco wrote an article in which she confessed:

I was very guilty of this career-limiting thinking for some 15 years early in my career. I loved the work. Like many others, I became protective of it, believing it was always faster and better to do work myself than to let others in. Only after I lost the opportunity for an international assignment because I was too necessary in my then-current role, did I realize the trap I had set for myself."

Ask yourself: Are you setting a trap for yourself or building the foundation for future opportunities? Are you 'letting others in'?

So go ahead and be invaluable, but don't lose sight of your importance. Or, as DESPAIR, INC., (developers of "soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators" designed to skip delusions and be realistic) tell us, Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.

Food for thought, eh?

~ Ebony