TRANSCRIPT

Melody Jennings Kruzic

Thank you so much for joining us for Capella University's presentation entitled "Credibility, Visibility, Possibility - Take Charge of Your Career Management." My name is Melody Jennings Kruzic and I will be presenting this Webinar. I am a Career Counselor at Capella and have been here for about six years. Prior to that, I worked in Corporate Human Resources and so I have got a fair amount of experience working both on the employer's side as well as the higher education side with students and alumni on effectively managing their career. Thank you so much for taking the time to view this Webinar.

To get started, we are going to go through with the learning outcomes at this session are. First of all, we want to help you understand your personal responsibility of internally managing your career. The focus of this session is going to be in particular on how you can manage your career within the current organization that you work. As a part of that, we are going to take you through the process of conducting a job analysis that will really encourage you to think about, "What do you want more of?" and "What do you want less of in your career?" As a result of that exercise, you will reflect further on your skills interest and values which will lead into identifying some development means. And then after that you will be putting together a plan for addressing your particular development means. And finally we will present some strategies for how you can address some of the common challenges that people seem to face in managing their internal career.

So first of all, we just want to set the stage for what effective internal career management is. Managing your career effectively is lifelong activity. Sometimes people think when you first get that degree and you get your first job, it is smooth sailing form there, and no need to sort of take the action of managing your career. That is not necessarily the case and most often not the case. To be successful even if you stay in the same job title, there are continuous things that you need to do. Such as, continuing education to stay abreast of the latest technology. And particularly, if you want to grow in your career, there are actions that you need to take, so why oftentimes, you see example of a doctor. When you go and see a doctor you want to know that she is staying abreast of the latest medical research so that she is best able to treat you.

Likewise for you to do your job effectively and to manage your career, you need to be continuously engaged in it. It really can enhance your life satisfaction. If you have ever had a job that you really did not like that much, you have seen probably first- hand about how it can negatively impact the rest of your life. And likewise, if you have a job that you really love, you can kind of sense the enthusiasm that goes through out your life beyond just hours that you are at your job. So, there are a lot of benefits to effectively managing your career but it does take some effort in planning. So, kudos to you for watching this Webinar because we are going to present some strategies that will help you with that plan.

Part of managing your career is asking yourself, "Where am I at now?" and "Where may I want to go?" You notice that I did not say, "Where do I want to go?" Because sometimes, you just want to explore other options. It might be that you know you want something different next but you are not exactly sure what that is. So through some exercises in this session, we will help you gain more clarity on what your career goals are. Ultimately, managing your career is your responsibility. As the quote indicates down at the bottom of this line, "No one cares about your career more than you do so make sure you act like it."

I think, also, what is really important to think about, "Who is really going to be the most invested in your career and no more a about what your individual careers goals are, interest are, your values and priorities at the time?" Chances are you know about that better than anyone else. And so you are going to be in the best position to manage your career effectively. Particularly, when you are looking at managing your career internally, it is really important that you know the business schools and strategies. After all, if you do not know what is important to your current employer, how are you going to know how you fit within that? So I encourage you to stop, perhaps you stop the Webinar now or write down this question for future reflection. Think about what you are looking for next. And that might be the next month or so. It might be the next few years.

But think about what you are looking for next. Are you looking for more challenge? Do you feel like, "Wow! I have been in this role for a long time and I feel like I am really good at it, but I just do not have that challenge and excitement that I did when I first started." Might you be looking to work for a different management or perhaps on a new environment? I made the transition from the corporate world, the higher education because the environment was an important consideration for me. Maybe you are looking for more money or perhaps less money because you have other priorities and you do not want to work three hours or do the amount of travel that you are currently doing. Are you looking for more meaning? Some people particularly those an encore careers will look at stepping back and thinking about, "How can I impact the rest of the world, maybe not just the immediate things that I have been looking at in my past career?"

So they might be looking to have "more meaning" in their job or organization or maybe just looking for less stress. So again, it gets back to the hours to travel. Maybe you are at a time where you really are looking to grow your career in advance, in terms of position titles, and you want more money, more responsibility et cetera. So, think about where you are now and what you are looking for next. If you are not really sure about what that is I encourage you to do this job analysis. You can write this out right now and have it for future reference or perhaps, pause the Webinar so you can reflect on it more thoroughly. I am going to explain a little bit about what this model is. So, you will see in the axis we have "like" and "do not like." And then horizontally, we have "do not do well" and "do well." So I am going to take you through each four of these quadrants.

First of all, on the top right-hand side we have "Heaven." So this could be your ideal, something that you really enjoy, it is something that you like and that you do really well. So something that a task that you are doing or a responsibility that you have or a skill that you are demonstrating where you just really feel like you are in the flow. Time goes by really quickly. And other people commend you for doing a really good job when you are doing that kind of work. And that really feeds you. I know when I get done doing presentations, I am just on a little heist(ph) sometimes because I enjoy it so much. So think about what that activity would be for you.

On the bottom right-hand side, think about what you do not like and that you do well. This is something that is dead end. So you are good at it but it is not something that you really want to do a lot of. So for example, for me, this would be "typing." I am a really, really fast typer and I do it well, accurately and quickly. And I use parts of it in my job that if I were to have a job where all I did was typing, like being a medical transcriptionist or something like that, it would not be something that really energize me because it is not something that I particularly like to do a lot of.

In the bottom left-quadrant, we see "Work that trains you." This is something that you do not like and you do not do well. So for example, for me, my very first job in HR was working in Union Relations. And part of that job was making sure that the union members abided by the collective bargaining agreement, so they were very strict to rules that they had to follow. When those rules were not followed, I had to do an investigation and sometimes I was disciplining people. And I was involved with the negotiation which was potential or could be a little bit adversarial at times. It is just that work that I really did not fell drawn to. I did not really enjoy it. And frankly, I do not think I did it very well and I really because I did not like it. I was not really interested in doing it better. So, I am grateful that that was only a six-month rotation and I got to move onto something else.

Chances are, there is either a job in the past where you had something that fell into this quadrant or perhaps there are activities that you are in your current job that fall within this category. And the top left is "Learning Needs." And this is something that you do not do well but you really like doing. When I first moved into Career Counseling, I love meeting with students individually and going to the Career Counseling process with them, reviewing their resumes et cetera, but because I was new at it, I just transitioned into HR. I do not feel like I did it very well. So that was seen as a learning opportunity for me and something that if I were to learn more about it, I would probably move it over into the far right column or the far right category of Heaven because I started to do it well.

So, a lot of times you might start out in a new job and have a lot more learning opportunities, and then as you get more experience in that job, things might move over to another category. So sometimes people will ask me, "Okay. What is the magic formula? How much is the percentage that I should have in Heaven category and how much do I not want in the forfeit?" The reality is there is not a magic number. It really needs to make sense for you. And a lot of times that can depend on your priorities in life. So say for example, I have a colleague who told me about a job that she was in for a few years while she was a single mother, caring for a young child and a lot of the job that she was in had duties that fell into the Dead End category. She did not like them but she did them really well. But the great thing about that job is it had very defined hours, she did not really feel pressured or stressed because she was very good at the job, and it did not really require a lot of her brain power or extra hours. So she did use that time to spend with her child.

So it really can depend on your particular situation. You were the only one that can answer for you, "What is the percentage within in each of these categories that makes the most sense?" But I encourage you to reflect on that. And after you have done so, do it for your current role, the current job that you are in that would be the most beneficial for you, as you were looking forward to the next step. And as you were looking for that, you really want to pay close attention to how your interest values and skills match up with the things that are in those categories. In a minute, I will talk with you a little bit more about what that means.

So think about where do your interests leads you? Perhaps you are doing a little bit of budgeting. Maybe that shows up in your category of Heaven, but you feel like, "Wow! This is really comprising, only five percent of my time and I really wish because I love it and I do it well that I can be in a job where it would be 50% of the activities that I did." So, think about based on that job analysis what you might like do to more of. "Where are your interests leading you?" And I encourage you to start jotting down some ideas as we are going through this Webinar, so you can come back to them and see how all of this fits into your plan.

The next is your values. A lot of times, this is really overlooked as people are examining their career. But I really encourage you to reflect on values because they are key part of your career and job satisfaction. So think about for right now and your core values are probably going to stay the same, unless there is some sort of dramatic life altering event. But your values are your priorities within those values might change.

So say for example, if you are new in your career, maybe you are willing to put in all of the hours that it takes, you are single, you do not have any children, and you want to focus a lot of time at work. Perhaps, after you might have more family or community, obligations, your priority shift a little bit. So I really encourage you to think about for now because a lot times this is something that we do not reflect on as regularly as we should. So think about for now, "Where do your values lead you? Are you looking for more or less work-life balance, looking for more or less money?" And you might laugh if I say, "Decreased income." People might not necessarily be looking for that. But as a result of the choices that you make, "Are you going to be okay with that?"

So say for example, when I moved from the corporate world to higher education, I took quite a hefty income cut or a salary cut, but that was okay with me because I was going to be working for an institution that really align closely with my values in terms of being so dedicated to higher education, and it was better work life balance for me as well. So, you need to see how all of these pieces fit together for you. Maybe you really love working on a team and you do not have the opportunity to do that as much. Maybe you are working on a team too much and you wish that you had less of it. Maybe you want to have more responsibility or authority or autonomy. Maybe it is wanting to live closer to your job, and so you have less of the commute or maybe you want to have more flexible hours that might include working remotely. Think about what your values are to you and that could influence the steps that you take next in your career.

So we have talked about Interest and Values. Next, we are going to talk about "Skills." And this look pretty familiar, right, to the interest that we just saw a couple slides back. It is really important to think about how your skills and interest fit together, so that is why we have a Venn diagram down here. Maybe you are really interested in something, but you are not quite very good at it. That is a learning opportunity for you. Maybe you are really solid at something, but you do not really love to do it. Chances are that might not be something you want to pursue in your career because it is really not a very strong interest area.

So think about not only your interest but also your skills and see what overlap might exist. And those that fall into their interest of yours, but not maybe skills, perhaps those are gaps that you can work on feeling. Or if you are really skilled at something but you are not really interested in doing that, perhaps start rebranding yourself and positioning yourself to gain the skills into look for jobs that are going to be more aligned with what your interest areas are.

So after you have done some careful analysis of this through the job analysis slide, I encourage you to look for other opportunities to gain feedback as well. And there is a variety of different ways that you can do that. Most of you are going to be involved with performance reviews within your organization, but a lot of times, if you are like me, "You get that, you get some great feedback, and you put the performance review aside." Get that back out of wherever it is at, electronically or filed it in a cabinet somewhere, and look at what are the things that I need to be working on to not only succeed in my job, but maybe what are some gaps that are keeping me from getting to my next career step?

Consider doing 360 Assessments. A lot of organizations have the opportunity for you to do a 360, whether it is a part of the performance review process or maybe part of a leadership or other professional development opportunity. Even if that is not the case, there are some 360 Assessments that you can purchase out online for a relatively minimum cost that have already been set up, or perhaps you even device your own 360 Assessment just using the SurveyMonkey or using SurveyMonkey to do your own assessment, and you include question in there that will help you gain information and insight that will help you in your career development.

So if you feel like you are kind of stuck and you do not fell like you were not getting to where you want to go, perhaps it would be helpful for you to start asking some people via one-on-one meetings with your manager or mentor meetings or via 360 Assessment that is going to be completely anonymous to get some great feedback to really identify what your strengths and development needs are.

"Informational Interviews" are something that we are going to talk about in a few more slides. So, I am not going to talk much about them then, but it is a really great opportunity within professional conversations to meet with people that are doing the kind of job, working in the kind of organization that you aspire to, to find out what skills it takes to be successful. After you have identified that you can do little bit of a skill gap analysis to figure out these are things that I have that I really want to highlight in resume, in my interview, in my performance reviews, and there are things that fall on the development needs side that you can start to put on your plan. So I really encourage you to be specific about what the things are that you are going to include that are strengths of yours and development needs.

As you think about developing needs means. A lot of times, people think, "Well, I just need to take class on it." I worked in the Training Department of a huge organization so I know that a lot of time managers will come and say, "You know, this person really needs to communicate better or be a better presenter or manage their team more effectively. What training class do you have to send them to?" And formal training can be really, really valuable. And a lot of times, it takes other sort of pieces or elements or strategies to put into that development model to really help things stick, and that also includes learning from others, learning form experience that you have, as well as the education and self-directed study. So you see here there is a learning model over here. It is the "70/20/10." This is a fairly common learning model. We received that 70% of the learning a lot of times happens on the job, 20% might be from more individual coaching, and 10% from formal training.

But this does not mean that training in and of itself is not valuable, it just means that after you learn something that you need to start using it on the job to really hone it, to really practice it, and get feedback from others on how you are doing. So we are going to take you through the step of how you can implement some strategies within each one of these development areas. The first is an informational interview and I alluded to this before that it is a conversation with a professional that is in a department, role, maybe a different business unit that you really want to learn about. So these are people that are doing what you want to do and they are great resources to find out what does it take to get there, and they can also be great referrals.

But this does not mean that training in and of itself is not valuable, it just means that after you learn something that you need to start using it on the job to really hone it, to really practice it, and get feedback from others on how you are doing. So we are going to take you through the step of how you can implement some strategies within each one of these development areas. The first is an informational interview and I alluded to this before that it is a conversation with a professional that is in a department, role, maybe a different business unit that you really want to learn about. So these are people that are doing what you want to do and they are great resources to find out what does it take to get there, and they can also be great referrals.

So, the benefits of that is to make a positive impression on colleagues and potential hiring managers. So, when I worked in the first organization that I did right after grad school, I had the opportunity to work on some cross corporation teams. And I got my second and third job within that corporation by just being involved on projects and interacting with people from other business units and other departments. And as a result, they saw my work they, I had conversations with them, and they were able to refer me for other positions.

And so it is really, really helpful to get sort of the inside of perspective from people, but also for them to get to see you, so you can be a known-quantity and then a better position to get that kind of role that you are looking for. The benefits, also, of having this conversation is that you can get information about skills, experience, and education to market yourself. So who knows better about what it takes to get into that role and to be successful than the people that are doing the job right then?

So say for example, you want to go from — I had a friend of mine when I was in HR that wanted to go from HR to finance. So, she started talking with people in the Finance Department to really understand, "Hey, what are the degrees? Is there a certain degree I would need to have? What is the knowledge I would need to have? What types of experiences would the hiring manager be looking for if they have a position like this open?"

So, it is really important to find out what the real skills, experience, and education are. Not everything is going to be listed on the job posting. And so that is why these conversations are really helpful. It is also a great way for you to stay up-to-date on the company's strategies and developments. If you are having conversations with people that are in these departments of interest, you are probably going to get some information that would be helpful on how this department plays in with the greater strategy at the organization. What might be some challenges they are facing? What might be some opportunities they have that is a really great place for you to insert yourself to talk about how you can add value to that department to help them reach the organization's greater goals?"

It is a really good way to identify where you want to go and what are some possible transition steps. So when you are having informational interviews asking people, "What can you tell me a little bit about your career path? What suggestions do you as I have looked to make transition into this field or into this role?" Perhaps, you are just looking and staying in the same functional area but you aspire to be manager. Have conversations with people who are managers in your particular department and gain information like this.

So prepare to explore inside your current organization or charts are in awesome place for you to find out this information. That is information that people that are looking for jobs externally at your company do not have acces to. Ask your manager, your HR rep, maybe your mentor if you have one, and I really encourage you to get one, if they might have people that they suggest you talk with that fall within your interest areas.

Be prepared also to speak to your qualifications and present yourself professionally. Within this conversation, not only are you asking questions of the person with whom you are conducting the informational interview, you are getting a chance to show who you are to demonstrate your brand as a professional as well. Be also prepared to lead the conversation through questions. So have a list of questions, type out before the informational interview that will guide the conversation. But be okay with going of tangents if that seems to be where the conversation is going. Inquire about recommendations for breaking into the department or area, as I mentioned before, and consider asking the question. "Would I be considered a viable candidate for this role?" Or if you want to ask it a little bit more indirectly, as I often do, "What suggestions might you have for me as I look to transition into this role?" And ask him for specifics. "Where are my gaps? What are the things that I can do to get myself qualified for that type of position?"

Always, always think the person for their time and make sure that you do anything that you said you were going to do. Again, you are demonstrating your professionalism. If you said, "I will follow up with that article that we talked about." or "I will take this class." or "I will seek out a mentor." Let them know that you have done that and thank them for the contributions that they have had to your career.

I think, a lot of times it is really, really, helpful to stay in touch with the person. And so, if invited or if they say, "It is okay that you do so." I do not know necessarily that they have to say, "Okay. You can follow up with me." But ask them if it is okay if you keep in touch with them, and you might just get a sense for your conversation if it is gone really positively that you can do that. So if you are taking classes, for example, at Capella, you could follow up on a quarterly basis just to tell them updates for your class. Or if you found out challenges that they are facing in their department, consider sending articles or something that are going to be really relevant that speak to the kinds of challenges that they are facing. So, not only is that a way for you to keep your name fresh in their mind, but also for you to demonstrate the potential contributions you could have to that department.

So, we mentioned learning from others, it is also really, really valuable to learn from experience. This is one of my absolute favorite books called "Working Identity" from Herminia Ibarra. And it goes through how you can make successful transitions into a variety of different professional fields. One of the things that she said is it is really valuable to test out your ideas. So as you are reflect back on what you wanted to do next, may be you think you want to be a manager or to have P and O responsibility or to have more patient or customer contact but you are not really sure, it is really, really helpful and valuable for you to test out those ideas before you make the commitment. Also, these are going to be experiences that you can put on your resume or experiences that you can have with people in your organization that can see the kind of work that you do. So, gaining experience and making new connections are also valuable and I will speak through each one of these.

As I mentioned before, it is really valuable to sort of experiment with some things that you might be interested in. Or if you really, really know that you are interested in it, then these experiments can be a really, really valuable way for you to get experience. If you are looking for another job, you should be doing one or more of these things. So, on the job, what can you do? Ask for stretch assignments, do not just wait for somebody to come to you. Remember we talk about career management being your responsibility? The onus is on you to speak and say, "Hey, I would be willing to do that." Or as departments, either the one that you are currently in or others of the organization are seeking volunteers to get involved with things, speak up and say that you would be interested in doing it.

Think about other projects that might be going on in your area or organization as well, lean projects, cross-functional projects and teams. I had a colleague that I was on a big like a spirit week committee at our organization, and she was really interested in events. So she had the opportunity, because she was on the event planning committee twice, to really try it out. She got to actually run some of these events and gain that experience. She ended up deciding after a while that that is not really the path that she wanted to take, but it was really helpful for her to get that experience because she could try it out. If she did decide to apply for an events type of position, she had experience that she could put on her resume to show that she had worked in events. She really knew very well the people that were on the events team who would probably serve as an advocate, or at minimum, a reference or referral for her.

So think about it, especially if you are looking at getting involved in other departments or moving into a new department in terms of the position, what are ways that you can get involved with projects or teams where you will be doing the kind of work or at least interacting with those departments.

Special initiatives teams. Consider doing a lateral move. Sometimes, people think that advancing their career or managing their career means moving up. It does not always mean that for people. Within my career, I have moved laterally just to get different experiences that better fit with where my interests really were. Sometimes people move laterally or even perhaps step down if they are making a big transition and if they want to grow in different areas. So say you are an HR manager right now and you really want to get into finance, you might not be able to go immediately into a fiance manager type of position, you might have to take a tiny step down, maybe a financial analyst or something and then grow back up into a financial manager role. So consider your openness to doing lateral moves or even maybe even moves that are a little bit further down in terms of salary or position to get you that ultimate goal.

Job shadowing is something a lot of students do; but it is really, really valuable for employees to do as well. I have had several people at Capella that think, "Oh, I think I might want to be a crew counselor. Can I just follow you around for a few days? Can I go to your meetings, watch your workshop, listen to your student calls to get a sense of what we areally do?" People can get a great sense of if the job is a fit for them based on that. Also, get involved externally, volunteer. Get involved with leadership board positions or professional associations. I am a huge advocate of all of these things, I think they are a great way to test to see if you are interested in something and to gain experience.

For example, I was on the board of an animal rescue, non-profit, in Minneapolis and we have somebody who served as the volunteer coordinator in that role. She did not have an interest in HR, but if she did, she would have been getting great experience doing HR-related tasks within that role. She recruited all the volunteers, she went to volunteer recruitment events, she put the application together, went through all the applications, did the training; manage volunteer issues, personal issues that inevitably came up. So it is a really great way to test out things and gain some experience that you can put on your resume as well.

If you are interested in doing leadership work, management work, strategy work and you do not really feel like you are getting the opportunity to do this on this job, get involved with some external, maybe community or professional associations. A lot of them, I have been on several boards through professional associations and non- profits, and they have a really hard time recruiting board members because it can be a hefty commitment. But it is a great experience to be at the table talking about strategy. And if that is something that you want to do in your job and you are not necessarily getting the experience at work because they are saying you need to have experience to do it, look externally for some ways to get involved.

Also, learning from education and self-directed study can be very valuable degree programs. I am in a masters degree program right now at Capella, and all that time, I am learning things that I am directly applying on my job. So, when I showed the development model earlier, you see; yes it is a degree program that I am taking, but there are things that I m doing on my job and getting coaching from others on that really stemmed from my degree program. Some positions might require that you have a masters degree on this or a bachelors degree on that, or even a PhD if you are looking at consulting your teaching opportunities, perhaps. So those are a great way to get experience that you need or knowledge that you need in a particular subject matter.

Maybe you do not just want to go through it for getting a degree a program, consider doing just taking some college courses or getting a certificate. If you think, "Yeah, I might be interested in HR but I am not really sure, I have done a little volunteer work in the HR area." Take an HR class to see if it is really interesting to you. Take a management class or a finance class if you think you want to have budgeting authority. Think about ways that you can test out to see if "I really like this," also, to get the knowledge so that you can prove that you have it when applying for these jobs. Community Ed courses are a great way particularly to learn different foreign languages or computer skills. Webinars such as those conducted through Capella, but also professional associations. I am the president of our Missouri Crew Development Association and we are having about four to six webinars this year that are just going to be on a very specific topic to the members that we serve. It is a really great way for people to get experience and to get knowledge in a free convenient way because it is done via webinar.

Online tutorials. If you are Capella learner, you have access to so many free tutorials out on iGuide. Lunch and learn sessions at your organization, or professional development opportunities as well in your community and in your work organization; really take out those, if you do not know what training what training is offered at your organization or what degree programs that Capella or another school that you are interested in might have available for you, I really encourage you to check them out.

So, we are getting to the point where we are talking about you really taking responsibility. So we have looked at you really stepping back and thinking, "What am I interested in my next career?" And trying to understand how does that fit with my current skills, interest and values; and then what can I do in terms of developing myself?

We are going to show you an example development plan in a few slides, but first of all, we just really want to encourage you to just accept responsibility to drive your career development and to take the responsibility and the ownership, and really saying, "Okay, what resources are available to me? What are my gaps? What are the things that I can do to get from where I am now to where I want to go?" A lot of organizations have fabulous mentors, training programs, managers, HR folks who are happy to help you, you just have to seek them out.

We really encourage you also to continue to build your professional network. A lot of times we just think of networking to get a job, but networking is also valuable as you are looking at making connections to do your current job better as well as when you are looking at future opportunities. Constantly evaluate your job and career path. So, that little analysis that I showed you at the beginning slides is not just sentence that you once and you never look at it again. Bring it back regularly, maybe once a year because a lot of things can change in a year, to see where you are.

You know, when I first started out my career, I thought I wanted to be a leader in HR or a full-time faculty member. And now, I do not want to do either of those. So, we are constantly changing our interest, our values or our priorities within our values, and our skills are changing base on aptitudes that we may not have realize we had, or interests that we want to be really good at. Appropriately ask for what you want and take action. I will talk a little bit about with that appropriately for what you want here in just a few slides.

So we just want you to do a reality check, after we have gone through this, to really evaluate your goal. So think about what are my short and long-term goals? I am not one who thinks you have to have everything planned out like five or 10 years from now. If you do really like it planned out, just know that it can change because a lot of times it does. We have no idea what our world is going to look like, what technology we will have available in five or 10 years. So it is really important to be a little bit flexible as you are planning your career. But do think about what your future interest might be and think about "What can I do now, and how might that align with my long-term goal? How is that going to help me position my self or learn if that long-term goal is really for me?"

I know that we cannot control everything, unfortunately. If you are looking at getting a promotion in your organization or moving into a different department, there is not always going to be positions available just when you decide that you have exactly what it takes and the desire to get there. So there are some things that we have to wait until certain opportunities present themselves. Initiate things, of course, but we are not able to control everything such as the economy, the growth of the organization, we can contribute to that but we do not necessarily know where it is going to go.

So think about stair stepping your plan. What are a few of these things that you can do, based on the conversations that we had today? What is the plan B, C, and D? Or maybe it is not even a plan, maybe it is some possibilities. How can you learn more about yourself and start taking some action, that is really key. One of the things that I want you to take a way from today is some sort of action for what you will do next.

So you might think, "Okay, Melody that is all well and good. But at my organization, things are in this way" or "I do not have any time for that!" So, I know that there are some challenges, I encourage you to write down what those are. Because chances are there might be something that you can do about those challenges, but just getting them down on papers so they are out of your head and you can see them in black and white is really helpful.

But I am going to talk about what two of the common challenges are that I hear, lack of engagement by the manager or lack of time or accountability. So, engaging your manager, there are going to be some managers that might just be less engaged, but there are some things that you can do to try to engage your manager. So if you are interested in having a conversation with your manager, which I really encourage you to do if you are thinking that you might want to do something different with your career, I think it is really valuable to have career conversations with your manager on a fairly regular basis, regardless. You need to do some work beforehand, because again, remember, it is your responsibility, your driving your career. You need to first of all identify who you are, what are your skills interest and values? If you did the activities earlier in the webinar, you have got this information written down; what do you have to offer and what are you seeking?

So you have a good sense of this before you go into the meeting. But it is not just about you, you also need to think about what in it for that company. So, how do the things that you are interested in align with the company's, your department's, the mission of the entire organization's goals? Clarify what you are seeking and what is your desired outcome. You might be seeking to transition into this department or to get a management job, but what are somethings that you were looking for right now? Are you looking for permission to join other projects or do you have a great idea that you want to implement? Do you want to attend a training or degree program? Think about this beforehand so when you go into that conversation, you know what you are going to be asking for. And ask your manager if they are willing and open to have this conversation. It could be 10 to 15 minutes in a one on one session, if you have those regularly, or an entire hour. Part of this depends on you and your manager, how much data do they want, how much do you think you are going to have to sell it. So ask your manager beforehand, say something like, "In our next one on one, could we please set aside 10 to 15 minutes to have a conversation regarding my career? And if not, when would be another time we could have this conversation."

So, you are not making the assumption that they do not care if they never had this kind of conversation before. Go to them and ask about the possibility of engaging. If they say no, consider taking a little bit of an approach where they can see the value for them in your organization. So you might say, "I am really interested in learning how can I develop myself for this role and others that might be a fit, and I really value your perspective and I would really appreciate your feedback." So again, stroke the ego a little bit; and also, you are showing them the potential value it could be for them as well. Some managers, when you talk about a career conversation, might be thinking, "Oh no, they are going to quit!" That may be the first thing that comes into their head because that is what the last person on their team did. So if you reframe it or at least find out what their challenges might be or the reasons that they may not want to have this conversation, you can address it or approach it a little bit differently.

Consider the preferred style of your manager. My manger really is introverted and really, really likes to process things on her own, and I like to process things out loud. So because I know what her style is, I would send her some information ahead of time and maybe after we have the conversation, I would give her a week to think about if she might be willing to support some of the things that I asked, instead of asking for it in the moment. So think about the preferred style of your manager and how you might best address the conversation. Come prepared and prepare them. So we have talked a little bit about the information that you should have going in, and you are going to let them know the type of conversation that you are hoping to have beforehand so you are not just springing it up on them.

My manager, when I first developed this PowerPoint told me, because I said, "Will just look through these slides and tell me what you think? Am I suggesting the right things for engaging your manager?" And she says, "Yes. And I would add that managers are not mind readers. And they cannot possibly know everything about every project that you have done." So, they might know that you are really interested in managing, that they might think you do not have experience. Perhaps that is because they do not realize all these other projects that you are working on; that you managed people in your last job, that you are managing a team in a community volunteer project. So it is a really good opportunity for you to get them up to speed on what you have been doing and to let them know what you are looking for, because you cannot expect that they know.

Here are some examples of how you are might ask for what you want. And it is really important to appropriately and professionally ask for what you want. You might say something like the second bullet, "I am really interested in having more interaction with our external customers. I noticed that we are talking about a project where a team member will be managing the relationship with them, I would be interested in being considered for this role." So you can see here that they have done their research, they know what is coming down the pipe in terms of business opportunities, and they are speaking up to say, "Hey, I would be really interested in this." They can open the door and then talk more about why they are qualified to take on a role like this.

Another example, is saying asking for specific feedback from somebody. Saying something like, "I know that answering tough client questions at the end of presentation is an important skill for a PM to have. This is something I have been working on and wondering if you could please observe my next presentation and give me feedback." So, you are asking — it could be your manager, it could be a mentor, it could be a team member to say, "Okay, this is something I am working on. Can you watch how I do this and then give me direct feedback?" And those are things that you can apply in your plan.

And the plan brings up a great point, the planning is important. It is really important that you plan, this will really help you fit it into your schedule. I know it is really, really hard to think, "I have a time for this." But it is important enough for you to get to that next step, then it needs to be important enough for you to fit into your schedule. And it is really important that you develop a plan and then keep yourself accountable for working to it.

So consider setting a goal for the end of the year and then working backward. "What is the thing that I need to have accomplished or want to have accomplished by this time next year?" Work backwards, and be very specific about the things that you will do to address that. Stretch yourself, but do not stretch yourself too much that you get unmotivated to not do it. Consider putting a hard task between two easy tasks; so if you think, "Wow, I really need to call this client and ask for a feedback on how I manage our last meeting, and I am really nervous about how he or she might respond." Okay, do two things that you feel are more favorable about you and you think are going to be easier before doing that.

Make a plan and set your accountability. This first one is a tip that I got from doing this presentation on site somewhere. Somebody said, "I have time blocked off in my calendar every week for an hour to work on my development plan, but I let other people schedule over it." It is like, "Okay, form now on, you hold that time sacred. That one hour is important, just as important as another meeting that you might have." So, if you schedule time in your calendar, make sure, unless there is a big emergency, you are keeping that time for you and your development. Log time spent for activity really to see, "What are the things that are getting me the best bang for the time that I am spending on things? Are there things that I am just doing to sort to be busy, that I am not really getting traction or really learning anything from or is really getting me anywhere?" And how can you address your plan to be much more active. So be active in terms of engaging with people, asking questions, taking stretch assignments, taking a class and actually applying the things that you have learned in your class so that you can show your employer what you have to offer them.

And consider selecting and accountability or career partner; which is basically just somebody that is going to help you, but you both are going to help each other reach your goals. Somebody that helps keep you accountable. So maybe you meet on a monthly basis and you have got goals that you have, they have goals that they have; and you meet just to make sure that you are both working towards those goals.

Here is an example of what your learning plan might look like. And as it was mentioned a few slides back, it matters less what the plan looks like, and that it is just something that you have that works for you and that you do. So the thing I like about this plan is that it shows how you can learn from others, experience, formal education and self-directed study. And then it has the "What I will do" and the "When I will do it." So, it is really following the smart criteria for having smart goals. I have a colleague that I have done this presentation with and she is much less structured than me and said, "Oh, I never do anything that was that structured and written in those types of columns." So she has her own way of coming up with a plan. Just have something there that is very specific about what you will do, how you will hold yourself accountable, and when you want to have it done by, and make sure that you continue to work toward that plan.

So, I really encourage you to take action. I said earlier that one of the most important things to do as a result of this webinar is to take action. So stop, go back to some of the slides that seems really important for you to reflect on, review the presentation again, go back to your notes and things that you wanted to reflect on, and just start taking some action. Whether it is doing the job analysis or you have already done that and now you are ready to take some action in some of the other areas by, say for example, a volunteering somewhere or signing up for a class. Write down here what are the things that you are going to do this week.

So in summary, we hope that as a result of this presentation that you gained an understanding of what career management is; and that you understand that it is ongoing, intentional, and your responsibility. We also walked you through the steps of conducting a job analysis and identifying your individual development means and gave you some resources for how you could actually take responsibility in addressing those development means; and proposed some strategies for preparing and engaging your manger and to make time for developing and working your plan.

We really appreciate the time that you have taken to review this webinar, we hope that you found it valuable. Thank you so much for joining me today.

We are going to show you an example development plan in a few slides, but first of all, we just really want to encourage you to just accept responsibility to drive your career development and to take the responsibility and the ownership, and really saying, "Okay, what resources are available to me? What are my gaps? What are the things that I can do to get from where I am now to where I want to go?" A lot of organizations have fabulous mentors, training programs, managers, HR folks who are happy to help you, you just have to seek them out.

We really encourage you also to continue to build your professional network. A lot of times we just think of networking to get a job, but networking is also valuable as you are looking at making connections to do your current job better as well as when you are looking at future opportunities. Constantly evaluate your job and career path. So, that little analysis that I showed you at the beginning slides is not just sentence that you once and you never look at it again. Bring it back regularly, maybe once a year because a lot of things can change in a year, to see where you are.

You know, when I first started out my career, I thought I wanted to be a leader in HR or a full-time faculty member. And now, I do not want to do either of those. So, we are constantly changing our interest, our values or our priorities within our values, and our skills are changing base on aptitudes that we may not have realize we had, or interests that we want to be really good at. Appropriately ask for what you want and take action. I will talk a little bit about with that appropriately for what you want here in just a few slides.

So we just want you to do a reality check, after we have gone through this, to really evaluate your goal. So think about what are my short and long-term goals? I am not one who thinks you have to have everything planned out like five or 10 years from now. If you do really like it planned out, just know that it can change because a lot of times it does. We have no idea what our world is going to look like, what technology we will have available in five or 10 years. So it is really important to be a little bit flexible as you are planning your career. But do think about what your future interest might be and think about "What can I do now, and how might that align with my long-term goal? How is that going to help me position my self or learn if that long-term goal is really for me?"

I know that we cannot control everything, unfortunately. If you are looking at getting a promotion in your organization or moving into a different department, there is not always going to be positions available just when you decide that you have exactly what it takes and the desire to get there. So there are some things that we have to wait until certain opportunities present themselves. Initiate things, of course, but we are not able to control everything such as the economy, the growth of the organization, we can contribute to that but we do not necessarily know where it is going to go.

So think about stair stepping your plan. What are a few of these things that you can do, based on the conversations that we had today? What is the plan B, C, and D? Or maybe it is not even a plan, maybe it is some possibilities. How can you learn more about yourself and start taking some action, that is really key. One of the things that I want you to take a way from today is some sort of action for what you will do next.

So you might think, "Okay, Melody that is all well and good. But at my organization, things are in this way" or "I do not have any time for that!" So, I know that there are some challenges, I encourage you to write down what those are. Because chances are there might be something that you can do about those challenges, but just getting them down on papers so they are out of your head and you can see them in black and white is really helpful.

But I am going to talk about what two of the common challenges are that I hear, lack of engagement by the manager or lack of time or accountability. So, engaging your manager, there are going to be some managers that might just be less engaged, but there are some things that you can do to try to engage your manager. So if you are interested in having a conversation with your manager, which I really encourage you to do if you are thinking that you might want to do something different with your career, I think it is really valuable to have career conversations with your manager on a fairly regular basis, regardless. You need to do some work beforehand, because again, remember, it is your responsibility, your driving your career. You need to first of all identify who you are, what are your skills interest and values? If you did the activities earlier in the webinar, you have got this information written down; what do you have to offer and what are you seeking?

So you have a good sense of this before you go into the meeting. But it is not just about you, you also need to think about what in it for that company. So, how do the things that you are interested in align with the company's, your department's, the mission of the entire organization's goals? Clarify what you are seeking and what is your desired outcome. You might be seeking to transition into this department or to get a management job, but what are somethings that you were looking for right now? Are you looking for permission to join other projects or do you have a great idea that you want to implement? Do you want to attend a training or degree program? Think about this beforehand so when you go into that conversation, you know what you are going to be asking for. And ask your manager if they are willing and open to have this conversation. It could be 10 to 15 minutes in a one on one session, if you have those regularly, or an entire hour. Part of this depends on you and your manager, how much data do they want, how much do you think you are going to have to sell it. So ask your manager beforehand, say something like, "In our next one on one, could we please set aside 10 to 15 minutes to have a conversation regarding my career? And if not, when would be another time we could have this conversation."