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

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.