I have had the chance to work with many leaders in senior positions throughout my career. A key skill I have developed is being able to adapt to their personal leadership and management styles.

Understanding the ways they prefer to work is extremely useful when it comes to your own career development. I quickly learnt that even those leaders who do want to help you develop your career, may not have the time to sit with you to consider potential pathways and opportunities.

In my experience I had to be proactive about my own development. If I wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have gotten many of the opportunities I was fortunate enough to undertake.

I’d like to share some of my insights from what has worked well for me. These don’t work with every leader you work with so it is just a matter of trial and error to figure out what works in your working-style with your boss.

Tip 1: Lay the foundation

The most essential step to take when working with senior leaders yet still developing your own career. Start by demonstrating you can handle any task and do a great job, no matter how big or small. Become reliable and trusted. You need to establish yourself before you can go on to the next steps of asking for opportunities for career progression.

Show you can handle what you’ve already been given to do first. Once you have established your foundation, you will be able to go on to the next steps of career growth.

Tip 2: Do your research and clearly articulate what you want

If you are interested in a career path, investigate it further. There are a number of things you could do. Start by engaging with the people in your network. Find out what qualifications and experience you need. Attend industry events and ask people in your network to introduce you to someone who is in a role you might want to be in one day. Do your research. Be clear on what you want from the next steps in your career. Note – from all that research you might find its not actually what you want to be doing!

You might find you have to take this approach if you don’t have the chance to have these conversations with your boss, but your boss is very keen to help you grown in your career. In my experience I was lucky enough to have several bosses who were supportive in helping me progress. They were willing to help me create opportunities, I just had to let them know what it was that I wanted.

Tip 3: Take initiative your boss’s key deliverables

You might be in a situation where you aren’t sure of what you want to do in your career at the moment, but you want to keep moving forward. I recommend understanding your boss’s key priorities. What do they need to deliver on? What are the priorities they are working toward? Is there a new way of working they might be introducing across the organisation? Offer to be involved/lead something in that space.

For example, years ago, a boss of mine wanted to introduce agile ways of working for all his teams. He then had big plans to expand more broadly across the organisation. I offered to work with a lead contractor he brought in to help roll this out. I put up my hand to do anything and everything and did it well. Responsibility came slowly but surely.. I was able to not only develop a great understanding of this new methodology. I also ended up leading projects in a new unit that was established and found a new passion!

Tip 4: Get involved in meetings

Ask to attend meetings you see in your boss’s diary. I was fortunate enough to have a boss who took the approach of “If you see anything in my diary you are interested in, just come along”. This was gold to me and definitely one of the best perks to working with a senior leader.

I went to so many interesting meetings with many different internal and external stakeholders. It gave me an excellent opportunity to shadow my boss and understand how to run their portfolio. I also started offering to take on tasks to do that came out of these meetings which turned into projects I was able to lead. I appreciated every opportunity!

Tip 5: Find a time that works

I still recommend trying to find a time that works for a chat with your boss. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity to receive guidance from a senior leader. I would figure out what time would work best for each boss I had. For instance, sometimes I met my boss very early in the mornings for a coffee, before the working day began.

Other times we would meet after work following our last meeting, or when my boss was working from home I’d give them a call via video-conference. Find what time works well for them and take that opportunity to have a chat. There is a wealth of experience you could learn from a senior leader.

Tip 6: Take a step back and reflect

At the end of each week or fortnight, write down the things you have achieved. When working with senior leaders, it is so easy to get caught up in the high work load that you may not get a chance to be fully aware of and appreciate your own achievements! Take the time to sit down and write out what you achieved during that period of time. I am sure that you will be pleasantly surprised by what you come up with.

Wishing you the best of luck with your career progression!

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I annoyingly find I do this when something in my career isn’t quite the way I want it to be at that moment in time. I start comparing myself to others my age and where they might be, what project they are working on, what roles they are moving into, their past experience, the list could really be endless!

And it can become quite the downwards spiral if I let it! So I don’t.

These are the things that help me mind my own business when times get a little down:

• Doing something else that helps upgrade my skills – I have started to engage with others in my industry and have begun using my network to start working for myself. Its scary but very satisfying. It is something I am doing on my own with my own terms and the only people I have available to compare myself are to the ones I look up to so I can see how I too can be successful in my new venture.
• Having patience – putting things into perspective, understanding where I am at a particular point in my career and re-evaluating where I want to be are the first steps in this point. I then recognise that it can’t instantly happen e.g. I can’t magically understand and be a master in a new project management methodology within the next week no matter how much I want it! It will take time and of course effort to make it happen.
• Take action and then take some time off – however long you are able to take off, even if its just a day, take it. With that time off, use it to do something to take you a step closer to what it is you want to be doing and where you want to be. Reach out to a mentor and meet them for a coffee, sign up to that course, launch that website, apply for another job. Whatever will make you feel like you have accomplished something with your time. Then, do something fun. I recommend something that you might not do too often. I enjoy going to symphonies at the Opera House. It reminds me that there is a much bigger world out there!
• Keep going – it’s ok to feel down for a little bit and its perfectly normal, don’t worry about that at all. Once you feel what you need to feel, pick yourself up and keep going. There will always be ups and downs so you can be guaranteed, an ‘up’ is coming around to you soon enough.

Bigger steps I have taken have included changing my job and industry altogether. For example, I was part of a cohort of about 20 graduates. We were hired for a two year program within an industry that most people continued working in for years after. It was the type of industry where many people spent their entire careers. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with this, just in this case the culture tended to be quite toxic and not very innovative in many areas. When we came to the end of the program we all had to find jobs, presumably within the industry, on our own.

At a catchup following our graduation ceremony the week before, the first questions being asked around the table as we were sipping our drinks were about what role we had scored and what level it was at. This continued for years that followed and it was generally just annoying and a little stressful to being constantly compared to everyone else in the group. So this (but among a few other major reasons) I decided I wanted to move out of the industry. I took a risk and found somewhere else to work and I flourished in my new work world. It was fantastic.

It allowed me the freedom to not have certain people and situations around me that reminded me of where I might need to be at a particular point in my career. My mind was free to soak up my new environment and eagerly learn new things. Basically, I was allowed to mind my own business and excel!

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