Accelerate your career through stretch assignments 2019

Do you feel stuck in your career?  You can accelerate by taking on stretch assignments. Take on roles that challenge you. Look for career opportunities requiring skills you want to develop. The point is to get out of your comfort zone. If you have strong technical skills, look for opportunities that challenge you to develop soft leadership skills. You can think of these assignments as lateral career moves. Instead of moving up the ladder, you move across in a different role that forces you to learn new skills. You can move up by applying these freshly minted experiences.

What do companies consider as stretch assignments? Employees take temporary assignments in different areas within their field. A hardware engineer might take on a 12 month assignment as a systems engineer or as a software developer. A financial analyst could rotate into accountant roles. A software engineer can stretch into an engineering program management position. These positions can be temporary, or they can evolve into more permanent positions. They must challenge the employee.

When you stretch, you will feel comfortable. You will find difficulties in your new role. You could feel like you'll fail miserably. You might wonder why you bothered. If you find yourself feeling this way, you must persevere especially if seek promotions into management. Stretch assignments will test your tenacity. They will make you question your abilities. A key note: good stretch assignments push you outside of your comfort zone, so you can learn and apply new skills.

I can attest this personally. I'm in a leadership development program (LDP) where I work. I've been through it twice. First, I rotated out of systems engineering into software engineering. Although I have a minor in computer science, it had been years since I programmed in C++. I forget many constructs related to object oriented software development. However, my team helped me, as I quickly learned a non-technical skill. You can ask others for help. In fact, you always need support from your team. They know their craft, and they want you to succeed. I recalled software engineering tenets including unit testing, configuration management, and test driven development. When I felt unsure, my team members pointed me to materials to hone my software engineering skills.

Not every skill you learn focuses on technology such as software development. If you intend to become a leader, you develop soft skills. Communication, time management, people management. Think of them as are forms instead of science. You will make mistakes. What ever you do, you must not become complacent in your role. Your team and program management depend on you to see your project through its next milestone. In leadership roles, you must learn how to manage your team, and you must communicate their concerns up to program management. Keep track of tasks and responsibilities, as your reputation will precede you. You should develop a reputation as a leader who can get through challenges. Your team and project management must rely on you.

How do stretch assignments accelerate your career? You volunteer for challenging assignments, and you lead them to success. You learn new skills that you transfer into promotions. I've been told that receiving a promotion is a matter of having the right skills at the right time. You must develop broad skills that you can transfer into higher levels. If course, you retain your central expertise whether in engineering, business development, or finance. Challenging stretch assignments broaden your skills because you lack skills you need for new roles. You develop new skills through on the job learning.

I give you my second personal example. I'm currently in a product engineer role. I own a software product my team develops. Ownership exists in a figurative sense. I own the software configuration management, software problems database, and the documents pertaining to the software package. Where do the challenges exist? First, I quickly learned the product: how to maintain it, compile it, install it, and test it while keeping track of customer delivery deadlines. Second, I must communicate status to program management while leading my team of software developers on an Agile schedule. This requires communication and commitment to keeping track of software problems and the software development solutions. Software products inherently exhibit complexities. Communication can lack quickly, so I must keep the problem database maintained at all times. I must communicate customer needs through project management down to the team. All this while keeping to the schedule.

Are stretch assignments worth your time? Absolutely! They can feel daunting, as you take on responsibilities in new fields. However, you will push through the difficulties. You will develop a reputation for excellence. You will learn new skills and master them. By broadening your skills, you will be ready for opportunities whenever they arise. You will accelerate your career because you learn more in short periods of time by taking risks. You take risks by taking on assignments outside your core area of knowledge. You develop new skills because you do not want to fail in your new endeavor. In the long run, you prove yourself worthy of promotions. You do this faster than peers who chose their comfort zones over trying new things. If you have an opportunity to take a stretch assignment, go for it. You will learn much about yourself and where you want to point your career.

Grow your career through challenging stretch assignments

Want to learn more about career advancement and leadership? Please read my prior posts on the subject:

• How to Market Yourself for Larger Paychecks and Promotions
• How to Evolve Your Stagnant Career towards Exciting Fields in STEM
• How to Turn Cynicism into Positive Action
• Sometimes leadership means cleaning up the mess you created
• Learn from your mistakes to build on your experiences

How to Market Yourself for Larger Paychecks and Promotions

Engineering students often learn all the technical details behind the engineering jobs we begin after graduation. Unfortunately, they rarely learn business aspects behind their roles in companies including marketing and sales. One aspect that students rarely learn is the importance of marketing oneself. The underlying key means understanding that companies exist to make money. Some companies make money for their investors. Others make money to support local communities. In order to earn larger raises and promotions, you need to prove your value to your manager. In this post, I will give on advice on how you can do that.

To many engineers and technologists, the concept of marketing oneself feels foreign and uncomfortable. Many of us exist as introverts: We enjoy spending time alone or among other nerds who share our common likes. (Think about the last time you hung out with fellow engineers to watch The Big Bang Theory or the latest Marvel movie. Did you hang out with any managers?) The idea of bragging to managers scares introverts because they might fear judgement or rejection. At this, I once felt this way. A good manager is a leader who wants their team to succeed. An excellent employee wants to see their manager succeed by showing them positive results. They help the manager move up in the company. Senior Managers look for managers whose teams win contracts, sell products, and make their customers happy. When you show your achievements regularly, you make your manager look good in their managers' eyes. This will reflect positively on you.

Here are several ways you can market your achievements to your manager:

• Regular status reports
• Monthly One-on-One Meetings with your manager
• Communication with Program and Other Managers
• Achievement Emails
• Yearly Reviews

Regular Status Reports

These are often known as Items of Interest or IOIs. Most managers request monthly status reports, and others request them bi-weekly. If you intend on marketing your achievements, you must take your IOIs seriously. Yes, status reports can be a major pain in the butt. However, you must complete them sufficiently if you want your manager to consider your for higher raises and promotions. You might want to give weekly status reports to stay on your manager's radar. According to Veli-Johan Veromann at WeekDone, "weekly reports are an efficient way to communicate all projects, tasks and progresses during a week." They note that reports must be accurate and brief to keep your manager's attention. You could communicate the following topics:

• Major customer presentations given
• Quantitative results including dollar cost savings or product sales
• Contract wins with dollar amounts
• Efforts to fill in any gaps you have
• Achievements that show leadership such as achieving a major team milestone

Quantify your results as much as you can especially if you can show that you brought money into your company, or you saved your company a significant amount of funds. For example, suppose you implemented a process improvement. It might take four hours for a test engineer to test Major Electronic Manufacturer High-Tech Wireless Widget, and your process improvement brings that down to an hour. Per device, this might appear as an insignificant event. However, suppose the test engineer costs the company $25 / hour in labor fees, and your company will sell one million electronic devices. By trimming three hours off the testing time, you just saved your company $75 million! You achieved an awesome achievement, and you must communicate that to your manager during your regular status report. Market yourself!

An important reminder: Keep your regular status reports brief. New employees reason that every achievement matters no matter how small. I should know, as I used to report minor achievements myself. It will take time for you to understand what you should report. If you are unsure, find a senior employee and ask them for advice. You can ask them to review your status report draft. If they agree, get their feedback and trim accordingly.

Monthly One-on-One Meetings

To market yourself, your manager must know you and your accomplishments. Although you will email your manager (a.k.a., boss) your status reports, emails can seem impersonal. You must follow them up with in person meetings. Sometimes, your manager will schedule monthly one-on-one meetings. If they do not, it is your responsibility to get regular time on their calendars. According to Bruce Tulgan, of RainmakerThinking Inc., "The fundamental goal of one-on-one meetings is communicating with your boss about the work you are doing for him. With each boss, decide what to focus on at each meeting." Tulgan suggests that you ask yourself the following questions during each meeting:

1. What problems have not been anticipated?
2. What problems need to be solved?
3. What resources do you need to complete your tasks or your manager's goals?
4. Is there anything that you do not understand? Any instructions or goals that need clarification? 
5. What things have happened since the last meeting that your manager needs to know about?
6. Do you have questions for your manager?

Clear communication is a major component of employee to manager meetings. You want to communicate your achievements, that is true. However, you must communicate any mistakes or errors you made and steps you have taken to correct them. Employees are human, and humans make mistakes. You will make mistakes. The important thing is that you learn from them and make sure you put steps in place that prevent them in the future. Managers expect their employees to screw up from time to time. What they don't expect is for employees to be proactive about their slips and falls. Catch your mistakes early and often, so they do not get repeated one million times and cost the company millions of dollars.

You can express concerns during one-on-one's with your manager. If you feel your performance slipping, meet bi-weekly. Your manager can coach you into better performance. According to Christine Zust at Kent State University, "a good coach recognizes the gem that lies beneath the surface. The coach can often see things that the protégé can’t. If you are helping your protégé to become a greater leader, then make an honest assessment up front. See where the gaps exist. Work with the protégé to create an action plan for improvement. Support the protégé’s goals and action plan." A novice employee might think that reporting bad news to a manager will poorly reflect in their yearly review. I argue that the opposite is true. You must give yourself an honest assessment, so you can communicate skill gaps to your manager, and your manager in turn can offer advice for you to close those gaps. (Click to Tweet). You want to communicate this during in-person meetings well before your yearly review. You give yourself time to improve and show how brightly you can shine in challenging situations. Otherwise, your manager will give your a poor review.

See: "The Top Complaints from Employees About Their Leaders" Published on HBR.org by Lou Solomon on June 24, 2015

In short, you must meet with your manager regularly. Not convinced yet? According to Lou Solomon at the Harvard Business Review, "data shows that the vast majority of leaders are not engaging in crucial moments that could help employees see them as trustworthy." From the graphic above, the top complaint about managers is that they are "not recognizing employee achievements." Regular face to face meetings with your manager give you opportunities to close these communication gaps. If your manager is not proactive in meeting with you, you must insist on arranging those meetings. Your career depends on it!

Communication with Program and Other Managers

What is the fifth employee complaint according to Solomon? Managers who take credit for their employees' ideas. How can you overcome this? Meet with other managers. If you work for a small company, it might be difficult for your manager to steal your ideas because ideas spread quickly in small groups. However, it becomes difficult to prove origins of ideas in larger companies if employees do not speak up. Your direct manager assigns you to work on specific projects or programs. You report to team leads, project managers, and program managers. Talk to them as much as you can! They speak among themselves, and your ideas cannot get claimed by someone else if you tell multiple people about them.

If your employer uses a stakeholder based feedback system, you might list your program manager as a stakeholder who gives feedback to your manager. You want to make your program manager happy. Establish face to face / one-on-one meetings with your program manager especially if you are a team lead. You want to ask yourself the same questions that you asked before meeting with your manager. Who knows, you might take on a position under that program manager. Although you will make mistakes, and the relationship might sour at times, you want to communicate any issues you face during the project cycle. Do not be scared of getting negative or critical feedback from your program manager. Instead, think of it as opportunities to improve yourself. Set goals to report improvements back to your program manager, so they know you heeded their warnings and advice.


Achievement Emails

Often, we receive kudos from program managers for milestone achievements. Perhaps, you led a team to a successful software delivery. You gave an important presentation to a customer or client, and you pleased them with your results. You helped the company win a multi-million dollar contract with a major customer. Whatever the achievement, forward the email notice to your manager. If possible, mention this achievement in passing when walking through the office, and make sure to include them in your regular status reports.

Your manager can list your achievements in status reports to their managers. Remember, you want to make your manager look good. Your manager wants to show positive results because they reflect positively in their yearly reviews. Help your manager succeed by showcasing your success. Do not be afraid to toot your own horn. You achieved something great, and you have the right to tell people about it. This is a key to marketing yourself.


Yearly Reviews

Few employees enjoy yearly reviews, and surprisingly few managers like giving yearly reviews. However, fewer managers show willingness to do away with them. (An alternative to yearly reviews are 360 reviews as discussed in Performance Reviews Are Dead. Here's What You Should Do Instead by Thomas Koulopoulos, Founder of Delphi Group.) Until that happens, you must summarize your yearly accomplishments during this review. Focus on major accomplishments. Go through your monthly or bi-weekly status reports. You saved them, right? Look for the biggest accomplishments in each of the areas your company's yearly review process ranks its employees. Keep it short and sweet. Do not repeat yourself because you want your major accomplishments to stand out. Remember, do not make your diamonds hard to find by hiding them in the mine. Put your diamonds on pedestals and shine bright lights on them!

If you continually meet with your managers, you will shine bright during your yearly reviews. They should be an informality, yet you must not neglect them. Many companies still use yearly reviews to rank their employees and to decide how much salary increases go to each. You will compete with your fellow employees. Many of them will be friends. This does not mean that you throw them under the bus. In fact, if you are in an engineering leadership position, it behooves you to help them succeed and showcase their success to their managers. A good leader looks for employees with potential, and you summarize yourself during the yearly review to maximize your potential for growth and value.


Summary

It will take time for you to achieve a promotion. If you are a new hire, it might take several years to achieve a promotion. However, if you communicate your achievements with your manager regularly, you do not allow them to forget you as a person and employee. You put a face to the name, so your manager sees you as someone valuable to the organization. Do not fear discussing setbacks or receiving negative feedback. If you meet with your managers regularly, you will have opportunities to correct your errors well before they become issues. You will succeed because your manager will coach you to success. You must get out of your shell and be willing to market yourself by consistently communicating your efforts and successes. You will get used to marketing yourself, and you might find yourself writing about it!

How to Turn Cynicism into Positive Action

You sense that cynicism grows inside you. Instead of trying to push it away and treat it as something to be avoided, you should accept it and see it as opportunities for improvement: of yourself and others. Your levels of cynicism will ebb and flow. When it reaches high tide, you must pay attention to it and be deliberate in using it for good. Of course, you need to bolster your emotional intelligence at those times because you don't want to speak rudely to the wrong people. Choose your words carefully.

Why do you feel cynical? Self reflect to ask yourself why. You might feel unchallenged at work despite your efforts to change this. You could view the people around you as insensitive to your needs. Perhaps your leaders where you work offer one self-served business fad after another. You could have other reasons. Whatever they may be, find them and write them down privately.

Let's suppose you take on a non-technical leadership role. You know you need to develop your soft skills, yet you yearn to invent exciting technologies. Your company's culture infers that employees in leadership roles focus on one project and refrain from spearheading side projects. You feel frustrated and feel your growth stagnates. This feeds your cynicism. 

Who says you can't develop leadership skills while doing technical work? Why must you work on the big projects whose leadership cares only about meeting customer needs instead of trying to combine that with developing new technologies? You might feel like you can't ask these questions at your level within the organization.

How can you flip this upside down to a positive? Find people whom you trust and speak to them. In business, you should speak to your mentor or coach. Their perspectives will help you see things at different angles. You might think narrowly and miss the big picture. For example, a program manager frequently gives you critical feedback. Does this mean you perform poorly? A positive mindset sees these as opportunities for improvement. However, the cynical mind views them as personal attacks. The criticism means the end of the world because poor performance equates to a stagnant career.

How can other's perspectives transform a cynical mind to positive? Cynicism is a sign of a fixed mindset. Mentors point out that other paths to success exist. (Click to Tweet) Do the best you can, and you will develop a reputation as someone who cares about the quality of their work. What about the program manager who gives negative feedback? They strive to meet program goals, so they feel pressure to motivate their team to success. Not everyone knows how to communicate well, and this applies to giving feedback.

If someone gives you negative feedback that causes concern, you will need to confront that person. Be bold and reach out to your network. Your peers can guide you in expressing your concerns respectfully. Trusted advisors can help you figure out how to address this person's concerns. Remember, you focus on the positive, and you take action to help that person succeed.

What if you still yearn for other things you find lacking during your day job? Instead of moping around, take up a side hustle. Even if it starts as a hobby, it will take your mind off work. You might develop skills that you could apply in your current role, or discuss during interviews for alternative positions. Alternatively, give back to your community by volunteering.  Take on a leadership role in your local church, synagogue, temple, or mosque. They need your assistance, and you will find joy in helping others.

Your best answer might be finding work somewhere else. It is one thing to feel cynical. It is another to allow this cynicism from blocking your best work. Take deep breaths. Relax. Do something else and go back to work the following day feeling refreshed. However you feel, you must do your best possible work. Your reputation depends on it. Even if you change jobs, you will tell your story of how you overcame adversity to succeed. Yes, you will hurt during the process, yet you will persevere. You will get through the difficulties. You will succeed.

Look, cynicism can prevent you from taking positive action at times when they matter the most. Nurturing one's tendency for introversion waters cynicism, and it grows in the darkness. Instead, you should practice extroversion to shed light on your cynicism. Positive light allows your growth mindset to flourish and minimizes cynicism.

Sometimes leadership means cleaning up the mess you created

Several months ago, my manager put me in charge of organizing a Critical Design Review or CDR. This was not just any CDR. During this CDR, high school students from five robotics teams that my company supports would visit us and present their designs to company managers and their school administrators. As you could imagine, the CDR involved much planning over a period of several months. Some might say it was like organizing five weddings simultaneously.

To give you some background, robotics volunteering is a requirement of a Leadership Development Program (LDP) that I am in. This involved both mentoring high school students and planning the CDR. As the Director of the CDR, you might think I had it together. Quite the opposite: I over relied on email as my preferred means of conversation, and this naturally caused much confusion. To make matters worse, I shied away from delegating tasks to my LDP peers. Don’t get me wrong. I eventually made the CDR a success but not without creating a royal mess of things along the way.

How did I create a mess? After meeting with my LDP manager, she strongly suggested I delegate tasks. On the surface, this presented no difficulties, as I maintained an accurate task list. I even decided how to assign responsibilities. The mess, however, spilled out when I underestimated the effort needed to complete one such task: contact facilities to put them name signs on the auditorium row ends indicating where each robotics team would sit. I thought to myself, “that’s just an email to the facilities manager. I can do that myself.”

Oh, how wrong I was. It turned out that it did not fall under facilities’ roles and responsibilities to place seating markers. By putting out that request, I rubbed the facilities manager the wrong way. Word reached out events coordinator who promptly called me and yelled at me: everyone involved had no clue what they needed to do, I didn’t use services of administrators who offered their help, and the event is a week away.

At her advice, I organized a meeting with all of the people involved. I made a chart of the things that needed to be done and those responsible: lunches ordered, tables and chairs setup, audio visual systems setup, name badges to be ordered and put out, and so forth. By speaking with everyone on the phone, I left no confusion remaining. I double checked we had everything covered. The events coordinator who told me earlier that day later told me I was doing a great job.

In the end, the high school robotics CDR came and went with great success. What did I learn from this experience?

• Rely on your team and delegate. If you ask them nicely, they will gladly help you. After all, no one wants to fail.
• Get on the phone! In this age of email and IMs, it’s easy to forget in person communication. Of course, that doesn’t mean to not follow up with email. It means that you should speak to people directly instead of sending mass emails that could cause confusion.
• Focus on the positive. It was so easy to see all that I did wrong, yet I remembered to focus on what was going right. This prevented me from being too hard on myself when I need to push forward with the project.

What would I do differently if I was asked to organize a similar event in the future? Given that I discussed lessons learned with my team, I would include them all in the first planning meeting for the next event. This way, I would clearly communicate all the tasks required to make the next event successful and not create any messes along the way.

Learn from your mistakes to build on your experiences

One aspect of being an effective leader is the ability to learn from your mistakes. You can think of mistakes as opportunities to improve yourself. The first step to learning from a mistake is to admit that you made a mistake. I’ve made many mistakes throughout my career. For example, I interned at Disney Research while earning my PhD. After completing my PhD, I interviewed for a post doctorate position. Despite doing well on my internship and publishing a conference paper, I did not get the job. What happened? The research scientist I worked with left Disney Research to become a professor, and his replacement decided to take the research group in a different direction. I did not consider this. Lesson learned? When interviewing for a position, you must make sure that your skills and experiences align with the company’s strategy.

Once you admit your errors, you can reflect on what caused you to make it:

• Did you not listen when receiving a task? I’ve done this myself on many occasions. For example, I’ve allowed my mind to wander instead of listening to the person talking. Here, it’s important to not have any distractions. Take notes. I prefer an old fashioned pen and notebook.
• Did you misunderstand what was asked of you? It happens to all of us occasionally. Recently, I spoke to a program manager about setting up a peer review meeting. I noted that I should have the meeting in a couple weeks. When I received the meeting notice, he commented that we weren’t ready to have the meeting. Simple mistake made, so I cancelled the meeting.
• Did you overestimate your own abilities? You thought you had the skills necessary to complete your project, and you soon realized that you did not know what you’re doing. This happened to me when I took a stretch assignment in software engineering. A month into the assignment, I realized that I was over my head in writing a software application.bi spoke to my Agile team, and they gave me advice and assistance I needed to complete it.
• Did you not care about what you were doing? When you feel unchallenged, it becomes easy to not care for your quality of work. This is a dangerous place to be because you will develop a reputation for shoddy work. You get out of this mindset by proactively speaking to your manager. If you feel uncomfortable, speak to your mentor or someone you trust. I’ve had to complete administrative tasks multiple times. These can be boring, yet they need to be done. In fact, I’ve helped my manager in the past by volunteering to complete project plans.
• Did you not double-check your work? This is a common mistake whether one writes software, documentation, or designs hardware. In fact, it is different to find your own mistakes in your work because we all become blind to our own endeavors. There are multiple ways to prevent mistakes. Take a break if you get tired. I’ve found myself in situations when I’ve worked long days and returned the following morning to correct the errors I created because I was tired. Alternatively, hand your work over to a colleague to look at it. A fresh pair of eyes can find flaws you missed. In fact, this is the general idea of peer reviews: people unfamiliar with your work will mark your errors to help you improve.

I could list many more examples why people make mistakes. The important things for you to do after admitting errors are to reflect on them and learn. You should ask how you messed up and write ideas on how you can do better next time. Although it can be easy to dwell on your missteps, you should put them aside and not be hard on yourself. As long as you learn your lessons, you will do better next time.