Michelle Gibbings (pictured below) is a leadership and career expert and author of the books Step Up: How To Build Your Influence At Work and Career Leap: How To Reinvent And Liberate Your Career. In this guest post Gibbings offers her top tips to something we all need – a promotion and bigger salary. Read on…

The world is changing.  How we work is changing. To become the leader of your career and secure that promotion here’s five tips to get you on your way.

1. Get planning

Actively plan your career by setting aside time to reflect on the goals you want to achieve, progress you’ve made and identify key next steps.

This includes elevating your awareness of what is happening around you, in terms of how your role, profession, industry and sector is changing.  The majority of the workforce will be impacted by automation and artificial intelligence, and you want to ready for this. Also look at developments in other industries that may impact.   This helps to widen your view about what’s possible for your next career step.

2. Become the ‘go to’ expert

An expert is known for something – having spent considerable time establishing a reputation as the expert in their particular field.  This reputation is enhanced by speaking at industry conferences, hosting or being interviewed on podcasts, blogging on social media or writing a book. 

When a person is the expert, the work finds them.  As well, we are prepared to pay more for the services and skills of someone who is deemed an expert.

3. Build your value

Be clear on the value you offer organisations.  Everyone brings certain skills and ways of operating to the work they do.  It’s essential to be able to clearly articulate that value and how you can help an organisation, business or client achieve their objectives.  You then need to consistently deliver value with the work you do, and always go above and beyond what’s expected from you.

4. Get connected

Build a profile where you are known for something, are respected, and have a network of people willing to back you and advocate for you. That means you need to spend time thinking more about what you can do for others than what they can do for you.  The more you proactively help others, the more they will want to help you.

Consider:

• How can I help a colleague or connection build their network?
• Have I got new knowledge or an insight I can share with someone who would find it helpful?
• Can I help a colleague or friend with their career?

5. Fall in love with learning

To be at the top of your game you have to stay abreast of the latest thinking and ideas from your profession, and also from different fields.  This includes developing more than just new ‘technical skills’ (such as computer programming, graphic design, or project mgt skills), but competencies (such as emotional intelligence, problem solving, critical thinking and the like) which are going to be more important than ever in a robotic world.

Successful people know that learning is crucial to future career success and are constantly seeking new ideas and ways to stretch themselves.