By Scott Messenger
In the decade that I worked at a commercial greenhouse, I advanced through the ranks at a respectable pace. After a few summers of selling potted plants, I moved to supervising sales. Two years later I began growing plants. By the next season I was overseeing that. It was good work, full of sunshine, exercise and, of course, fresh flowers. At least this is how I remember it on summer days when a deadline has me shackled to my desk. But that’s the trouble with nostalgia: it tends to leave out stuff that’s best not forgotten. So ponder what coulda-been at your peril.
I pondered anyway. A year after quitting, I returned to Hole’s Greenhouses in St. Albert for a long overdue performance evaluation from my old bosses, personnel manager Dave Grice and co-owner Jim Hole, the son of Alberta’s late lieutenant-governor, Lois Hole. Sure, I’d left to write, but I’d also concluded that the higher rungs of the company’s org-chart were too crowded for one more hourly wage earner hoping for the stability of a salary. Not so, it turned out. But, as my ex-bosses explained a little too enthusiastically, I wasn’t on the fast-track to agri-biz stardom, anyway. “You had your comfort zone,” said Hole, “and you didn’t want to step outside of that.”
Hole and Grice agreed that I worked smart and hard and got along with co-workers – stuff that would really only impress my mom and dad. (Or Hole’s mom, who acknowledged my efforts over the years with a couple of her famous hugs.) “You had to be a top-notch grower,” said Grice, “and you were definitely on your way to being that.” That is, I got the job done, but I never relieved my managers of the thing they tend to dislike most: managing.
Workers striving for upper management must act like they’re running a business within a business, said Hole. Cut costs, reduce inefficiencies, boost sales, improve product, repair equipment, upgrade your training – basically, take ownership of problems – and you’re on your way towards a potentially more engaging, and more lucrative, job. “A lot of times,” Hole went on, “you create a position. The very act of stepping up and asking for it would give us a clear idea of your abilities. Frankly, it would blow us away if anyone would do that. We’d be shocked! Stunned!” Maybe just showing initiative would have done it, but doing it right, he pointedly added, “takes some thought, some really deep thought.”
Let this be a lesson, then: if you’ve struck a comfortable balance between smarts and ambition, getting the occasional promotion can be a simple matter of keeping down the weeds in your project portfolio so the boss tip-toes through nothing but tulips. But if you want a quicker ascent, a rosy performance record won’t cut it. You need a strategy.
Every aspect of your character, your actions and your appearance counts – use them to your advantage or change them. And keep in mind that, if the plum job you’re eyeing doesn’t seem likely to free up, you can always try to pitch a position of your own. But before taking on any of this, understand that career advancement starts with good old-fashioned, troublesome soul-searching.
Know thyself and you’ll know not only what you actually want to be, you’ll also recognize the time, energy, cash and, yes, deep thought necessary to get there.
As a professor of applied psychology in the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Education, Bryan Hiebert works mostly at studying work. He’s also president of the Canadian Career Development Foundation and an editor of the Journal of Career Development. All erudition aside, careers are practical matters, and Hiebert likes to treat them that way, without the padding of academia. “Few people set up their lives to be slobs, right?” he says. “But sometimes it happens because they don’t have a vision of the person they want to become.
“Probably outside a person’s choice of mate,” he adds, “career-related decisions are the second most important ones a person will make in their lifetime.” Anyone taking such choices lightly has ultimately “left their life satisfaction up to chance.”
Or, much worse, up to an employer.
Category: Career Track, First Job, Leadership, Work
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