The republic of uzbekistan chirchik state pedagogical institute of tashkent region independent work

It’s your call

The difference between Alice and Bob is that Alice is proactively seeking ways to make her job more fulfilling, and Bob is expecting to be told what to do.

Even though it is a manager’s responsibility to ensure that their direct reports are motivated and are having a positive impact on the company whilst being fulfilled in their career, there can sometimes be a misunderstanding about who is actually responsible for planning that career. In my experience, there is only one answer: the employee themselves. The manager facilitates it happening.

Given a choice between being passive and active in the way your career is going, you should always be active.

Now, it’s impossible to write an article that will help you define exactly where your career will want to go. You may want to be an individual contributor. Maybe you want to become a manager and one day run your own company.

However, regardless of what you feel like you want to do, or how you want to grow, I would heavily encourage being entrepreneurial with your career. Find out what you want, and then think about ways that you can make it happen.

There are broadly two ways in which you can affect growth in your career:

• 
  Growing outwards: where you focus on improving your existing skills to become more of an expert at your current role. This aligns with an individual contributor career track.
  
• 
  Growing upwards: where you focus on beginning to experience what it’s like to operate at the next level up in the org chart; aligning with the management career track.
  

Let’s have a look at some ways in which you could actively grow, motivated by yourself and on your own terms. If you feel uncomfortable just doing these things in case you feel like you may be overstepping your mark, then perhaps just start with a conversation with your manager.