Last year I shared a blog post on my 2024 new year's resolutions which included the following exploration of typical career arcs, based on what my mentors at the time had been helping me with around my leadership development.
I've found that I've shared this advice quite a few times since then, so I'm resharing it here as a stand alone article.
Just to note - we’re all individuals and there is no right or wrong career path. That said we could summarise a “typical” career arc into 5 modes:
At the start of our career, we spend most of our time learning how to do things. As we get more experience we start to do more things, we are better at what we do and can start to do it independently.
Initially this doing is still part of that learning mode, but as we get more confident and experienced we are able to deliver work independently.
As we get more senior and more experienced, we start to manage the doing of work. We take more ownership of our own work and eventually will start to manage the work of others.
I’m currently learning how to be in the next stage of my career around leading. Specifically I’m finding leadership is less about managing tasks, telling people what to do and how to do it. I’m finding that leadership is more about inspiring others around the idea or the outcome that you’re trying to achieve, and then empowering managers to own a plan of how to deliver tasks that align with the delivery of that overall outcome.
The 5th mode of the career is around counselling others. I think the objective at this point is to have built up enough knowledge and wisdom that your counsel, your views and opinions, have value to others around you. In this final mode of the career it seems to be less about getting stuff done. I think it’s more about being a sage advisor sharing experience and thoughts.
A key point here is that these modes are not rigid but overlap entirely. Everyone should be learning. Most people, regardless of how wise they are, still have to get things done. Some of the best learning moments I’ve had have come from the counsel of junior colleagues through their observations and questions.
It seems useful to me to reflect on the balancing of how much of each mode we hold at different times in our career.
My current focus is on trying to be such a good leader that I am able to empower those leaders around me, creating a virtuous feedback loop. The leader matrix!
If you found this useful or interesting, the best compliment you could give me would be to share it with someone else!