Whether you’ve just started your climb up your career ladder, or you’ve been navigating the choppy waters of competitive jobs and promotions for years, aiming high – for those senior management roles – should always be your goal. When you become a senior manager, you begin to learn skills that you can directly translate into other high-level positions in companies across the world – and you’ll learn how to manage intelligent, hard-working people, too. Use this guide as a starting point to help you plan your ascent into senior management roles as you rise through the ranks to the positions you covet most.
Hard Work
While hard work alone won’t get you promoted to the top, it is absolutely a prerequisite for those looking to advance their careers to the level of senior management. If you’re not perceived as a hard worker, and you’re rarely noticed for all the energy you’re putting in, you’re unlikely to show other desirable traits in a worker, like diligence, efficiency, dedication, and loyalty to your brand and your company. You can show off your hard work by:
- Tagging managers in the high-level work that you produce and send over email
- Staying late in the office, or arriving early each day
- Putting in the time to organize office social events and other group meetings at work
- Making sure you’re vocal in meetings, where you will be noticed for your positive attitude
There are dozens of other ways to show you’re working hard, like avoiding taking days off and volunteering for overtime. All of these will factor into your eventual promotion.
Extra Training
Those workers who start their careers in junior positions can often rise to the level of CEO over the course of their careers – but they need to get training at each step of their ascent if they’re to make promotions stick. This means not only understanding the ins and outs of your business, but also of the industry at large, and having a good grip on the forces driving your particular market. It also means gaining valuable skills in management that you can only get from a reputable institution.
Institutions such as Kettering University Online will provide management courses to suit your job and your industry. Talk to your managers about your aspirations to become a future leader in your field. Be sure to find the time and the cash to put towards one of these training regimes at a university, and you’ll be ready to jump into more senior roles as and when they arise.
People Skills
While management can be taught at college, it’s more difficult to manage people on a one-to-one basis. These skills – of empathy, compromise, and rapport-building – all fit into the ‘people skills’ field. That field is crucial for your career progression, as you won’t get anywhere by alienating people, making them feel small, or being difficult to talk to in one-on-one situations. You need to focus on this set of ‘soft skills’ if you’re going to make your way into the highest echelons of business in your career.
One way to make sure you’re always working on your people skills is to try new things. Be sure to join communities across your town or city and meet new people from across the social spectrum. Be confident, even if you’re a natural introvert, have a set of questions and strategies that you want to develop in order to attract people to you, and cultivate a magnetic charisma that makes people around you feel good.
Patience and Ambition
On the one hand, your drive to the top is all about ruthless ambition. You want to clamber up the ladder as quickly as possible, leaving your competition far in your wake as you succeed in impressing your superiors throughout your working life. On the other hand, you need to be patient: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your career will take time to develop and flourish. If you leap at every single opportunity for promotion and progression, you may find yourself disappointed, and your superiors put off by your energy and ambition.
As such, finding the right balance is absolutely crucial to help you progress your career into those most senior roles that you’ve set your sights on. Be patient with your ambition, and only reach for opportunities that you feel you can make the most of. If those opportunities aren’t coming your way, you should feel free to make a sideways move into a different company, where your expertise may be more valued.
There you have it: the key tips to help you towards a career in senior management in the near future.