6 Principles for Reaching Your Ultimate Career Potential (Part 2) - Work It Daily

6 Principles for Reaching Your Ultimate Career Potential (Part 2) - Work It Daily The following article is a continuation of the previous article written on the first three of the six principles to reaching your ultimate career potential. The Bridge Model is a nonlinear model designed to provide you with key concepts required to reach your ultimate career success. Regardless of what type of career growth you are looking for, these principles are the common factors that will distinguish you as someone worthy and capable of reaching your highest career potential. The first three principles were covered in a previous article. They are Build Your Base, Respond Responsibly and Influence Impeccable. The next three principles are as follows: 4. Distinguish Yourself The farther you want to take your career and the higher you want to climb, the tougher the competition gets. What are you doing to stand out from the crowd? By doing things such as performing beyond expectations, ensuring you have a strong team working for you who can do the same, and taking unwanted or tough assignments are the types of things that help differentiate you from others. It is doing things out of the ordinary (for example, being successful in a difficult assignment) which demonstrate you have the ambition and history of high performance required to get ahead. 5. Grow Your Skills Do you know what skills and experiences are needed to advance your career? Hopefully the answer is yes but if not, you should identify these and put an action plan together to ensure you have what it takes as you continue to navigate along your career path. Having a career plan that will guide you along your path is essential. t ensures you keep on track and grow in the appropriate areas. Share your career plan with your leaders or mentors, or key stakeholders to get some input on the areas where you need to develop. As well, it helps keep your stakeholders updated on your aspirations and enables you to enlist their support as you advance. Another key aspect of growing your skills is to develop others. Learn to be a talent developer so you can groom your successor and have a strong viable candidate to replace you when you are ready to move up to the next position. 6. Encourage, Enlighten, Expect As you continue to chart your own course of career growth, you should encourage and enlighten your key stakeholders on what to expect with regards to your performance. You should also encourage your peers, subordinates and superiors to expect only the best from you. By encouraging them to expect the best, you will most certainly want to deliver the best and this propels your career ahead. You should also practice being transparent and sharing as much information as possible to enlighten those around you about important information occurring in your work area. Individuals who advance into higher-level roles are those who are willing to share information because they know information is power. They want others to be empowered with knowledge so they can perform and do well. If you practice this, you will single yourself out as one who is worthy and capable of continued career advancement. The six principles of the Bridge Model should be consistently practiced as you continue to advance along your career path. It is a fluid model designed so you can go back and forth between each principle and continue to practice and master these six areas that enable you to reach your ultimate career success. Read more » articles by this approved expert | Click here » if you’re a career expert Photo credit: Shutterstock Have you joined our career growth club?Join Us Today!