Tell Your Boss About Your Five-Year Plan.
Work is not just work for many people – we want to be realized, and often we want to work for a greater good or some measure of personal growth.
If you are not growing and moving up the career ladder the way you would like, it may seem counterintuitive to talk to your boss about how you are feeling – you do not want them to think that you are unhappy or ungrateful. You. But if your boss cares about his employees, then sitting next to her and explaining what you want to be in five years will actually help her help you get back on track. Plus, your employer will likely want to see that you are ambitious and committed to your goal.
It will take some introspection and planning, but the exchange shouldn’t be intimidating or awkward. Here are some tips.
Find out what you want
Before you go to your boss, you need to know your plan yourself and prepare what you want to say. To understand this, Amy Gallo describes the next steps in the Harvard Business Review . While these are suggestions for answering the interview question “how do you see yourself in five years,” I think they are helpful here too:
- Be Introspective: To understand which career path is right for you, you need to be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses, what you value, and how you want to spend your time. Ask yourself: What are my values? What are my goals What do I want to do to achieve this? Consider doing a life audit to get a clear idea of what you want to achieve.
- Admit it if you don’t know: it’s okay if you don’t already know what you want. But if you don’t, you’ll want to work on it before making an appointment with your employer.
- Focus on learning and development: you never finish learning. What skills would you like to acquire or in what areas could you become an expert to improve yourself, your employer, or your field?
- Rephrase the question: Five years is a long time, especially in ever-changing industries like technology and media. In five years, there will likely be exciting new jobs that you never knew existed. So rephrase the question from what you want to achieve in five years, two or three years. What needs to be done to achieve this step?
This blog from Boyer Management Group, a human resources company, offers many more good preparation tips, including listing the steps you’ve already taken to achieve your goals and analyzing whether what you want is “realistic with taking into account your skills [and] abilities. ” Moreover,
- List the questions you want to ask your supervisor – what do you want to know as a result of meeting him or her?
- Explore the tools your employer offers to help you in your career, such as a training offer or a tuition fee grant.
- Determine what you would like to do in your current job that would stretch you.
- Provide an agenda (a list of issues that you want to discuss with your supervisor). An agenda allows you and your manager to think about the topic ahead of time.
Once you’re ready, you can confidently go to your boss or manager and talk to them about how you want to progress and how they can help you.
Tell your boss
Career growth is a key way to keep employees engaged and satisfied. A quality manager wants his employees to progress, ideally the way the employee wants to be successful. The only way they will know what it means to you is if you tell them.
“[E] Discuss your overall career goals with your manager at least once a year,” writes Sabina Nawaz, a career coach, to Harvard Business Review . “Communicate your plan clearly to your manager so that he knows your strategy.”
This is especially important if you are ambitious and want to get promoted or try a different song than the one you are currently playing. “Tell us about the vast experience you want to gain so that decision-makers can consider you for a wider range of challenges,” says Nawaz. “This may include providing them with information about your flexibility regarding geographic location or other logistics.”
This does not necessarily mean that you are asking for something during this chat, but it can make you ask what you want in the future, and when you do, it will not come as a surprise to your boss because she will already know. what you need.
It also doesn’t have to be serious. Here’s what Muse has to offer:
Start small by mentioning what you end up seeing yourself as: “I wish I could move up to a leadership position someday.” If it is received positively, move on to the specific question of how you can achieve these goals, even if it ultimately requires a move to another department or company.
It is also an opportunity to get the opinion of the boss. Here are four questions that Forbes suggests asking during the meeting:
- Are my goals reasonable?
- Would you recommend another route?
- What do I need to do to qualify for future positions?
- Are there any special opportunities for development next year?
You don’t need to take what they say to heart, but getting a different opinion from someone else is helpful, especially if you have a good working relationship and trust their opinion.
The best time to tell your boss how you want to progress might be during your annual review, or it might even be during lunch or a coffee session that you initiate. Don’t forget a notebook so you can jot down the highlights and alert them that the meeting will focus on your progress so they also know to prepare.
Hopefully speaking with your boss about your career goals will show them that you will be grateful for their support and guidance in the future. They can recommend programs inside or outside the company that can help you better or improve your skills in a specific area, or suggest other ways to improve.
What’s more, it can help build trust between you and your boss. You will feel like you are getting the support you need to grow your career, and your boss will reap the rewards as the motivated employee improves their skills. Everybody wins.