Show Notes
This is the first in a series of shorter episodes. I’ll be highlighting some tips, tricks and how-tos that are simple but have a powerful effect on your engineering career.
Today I’m introducing a new habit for you to try. And it’s an easy one to take on because it provides a lot of satisfaction. It’s the habit of revisiting your recent accomplishments.
The how-to is very simple:
Go back over a period of time, identify what you’ve accomplished, and acknowledge those accomplishments in reference to your goals.
The period of time can be whatever makes sense to you. And your goals will be those you set out with at the time. So for me I usually look over the last year in reference to my resolutions and annual goals from a year ago. But you can do this at any time for any duration.
How Rediscovering Your Accomplishments Can Move Your Career Forward
In addition to the accomplishment itself, identify how you accomplished it, the role you played, and the impact it had. The impact on the organization, on the mission, on other people, and on yourself and your career. Then use that story to move your career forward.
Here are 3 ways you can do that:
- Make this habit part of your self-assessment. In previous episodes we’ve talked about the importance of doing self-assessments and having a career vision. Assessing your accomplishments and their impact enables you to set new goals and refine your vision.
- Update your networking story. Capture the “golden nuggets” from your accomplishments and incorporate them into your networking conversations and your elevator speech. This is a great way to communicate your engineering contributions and leadership abilities.
- Provide input to your annual review. Include your accomplishments, the role you played, and how it furthers the mission of your organization. The more you can show how you are an asset in this way, the more recognition and opportunity you can attain.
You’ve likely forgotten some of your accomplishment stories. And you probably haven’t looked at them thoroughly with respect to your goals. The process of rediscovery will help with that. It’s an excellent way of noting time and progress.
But wait, there’s more – more benefits than you realize. The rediscovery process:
- Demonstrates how far you’ve come up the learning curve.
- Highlights new skills you have now because of your accomplishment.
- Provides reassurance of your capability and thus builds resilience.
- Builds confidence by reminding you that, even though you felt doubtful, you succeeded.
- Points out your perseverance and creativity in how you solved a problem.
- Shows you where you’ve met and exceeded your expectations.
- Presents you with wisdom you now have to pass on to others.
Give this a try. Go back and rediscover your accomplishments. It’s easy to assume that they were few or not very impactful. But you’ll probably realize you got farther than you think – once you go back and look.
References for Today:
- Here are links to the previous episodes I referred to earlier:
- More about self-assessments can be found in Episodes 1 and 2.
- More about career visioning can be found in Episodes 5 and 6.
- More about networking can be found in Episodes 12 and 13.
- To learn more about leveraging these and many other approaches to elevate your career and become a remarkable engineer and leader, I invite you to check out my signature program. We can work together to create a strategy for a fulfilling career that enables you to make a difference.
- If you try this new habit of rediscovering your accomplishments and want to share how it works for you, feel free to let us know through my website or LinkedIn.
Up next on Her Engineering Career Podcast is another short episode on how to get unstuck when you’ve been in the same place for too long. You won’t want to miss Episode 28.
