How to grasp the three stages of career development.
Career development has three stages.
The first stage is to learn how to manage yourself, and to have the ability to manage oneself.
This stage includes the transition from a student role to an employee role, entering work mode, integrating into the work atmosphere, and achieving work performance.
During this stage, we should try to discover our strengths, and our advantages, that is, we need to figure out what we can do and establish a foundation for the future based on it.
This stage relies on self-discipline, diligence, hard work, humility, as well as a positive and upward mindset.
The second stage is to learn how to manage others and to develop leadership skills.
After experiencing the first stage, if one performs well, it is possible to enter the second stage, transitioning from managing oneself to managing others, no longer relying on physical strength but working with mental effort.
The feeling of work changes, and the focus shifts as well.
The third stage is to develop one’s leadership abilities.
Starting from managing others in the second stage, you are already in a managerial position.
If you can progress from initially managing a few people to gradually managing more, you may advance to the core layer, and become a senior partner, or a successor, entering the third stage where you need to develop your leadership abilities.
How to do the first stage
The most crucial thing in the first stage is to discover your strengths and weaknesses and play to your strengths while avoiding your weaknesses.
So when we start as employees, we should try to find our technical expertise in a certain field.
There is a phenomenon to be noted: the core people in the company are generally promoted from technical fields to management, such as sales technology or scientific technology.
If you don’t have any technical skills, for example, if you’re just doing odd jobs, you generally won’t be able to advance.
Even if you can advance, it will be very slow, especially for positions like assistants or office directors.
Promotion in these sequences is relatively slow, and it’s also difficult to enter core management positions.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that these sequences have no opportunities, but rather because these sequences are not involved in the core business of the company, and therefore cannot be promoted to core management positions in the core business.
However, if you are in a technical role, have technical expertise, and have achievements, you will advance quickly, such as in product research and development.
So how do you do it?
During the first stage, regardless of our position, we must strive to be the best, at least within the company, and then strive to be the best in the industry if possible.
If it’s difficult to be the best in the industry, then aim to be the best in your city in that industry.
If you can achieve this, your boss will promote you, and then you will have leaped from managing yourself to managing others, entering the second stage.
How to do the second stage
Upon entering the second stage, transitioning from managing oneself to managing others, this is a fundamental change.
Can you handle this change? Or will it be that you can’t even manage a single person?
When managing ourselves in the first stage, we need to discover our strengths and virtues.
However, when it comes to managing others in the second stage, we must learn to discover the strengths and virtues of others. This is the key point we must remember.
However, humans have a flaw, which is always seeing others as incompetent while seeing oneself as capable.
One’s eyes are full of others’ shortcomings and one’s strengths.
While to some extent this may be understandable, it is not acceptable for a manager.
As a manager, it should be the other way around.
You should see others’ strengths and virtues everywhere, learn to appreciate others, and utilize their strengths.
Only then will others be willing to let you lead them, your work will be able to progress, and you will have the opportunity to grow and establish authority, leading others to achieve results together.
On the other hand, there is a most painful and difficult-to-speak aspect of transitioning from an employee to a manager, which is when the tasks you assign to subordinates are all messed up by them.
If you think, “Forget it, I might as well do it myself,” then there’s trouble.
You’re going back to managing yourself, giving up on managing others. Managing oneself is easy, managing others is hard, but it’s the difficulty that makes you grow solid.
How to do it? You have to watch him mess things up right in front of you, yet still trust him, encourage him to continue, and even take on his mistakes and shoulder the blame for him.
It’s through this kind of mentality that your capacity gradually expands.
If you can truly accomplish these things, you will have truly grown, completing the transformation from an employee to a manager.
How to do the third stage
After the second stage, moving upward means entering the core layer, which is the transition from a manager to a leader, such as becoming a senior partner, successor, or directly starting a business.
This is a low-probability event.
Becoming a leader requires even higher demands, taking on more responsibilities, no longer just focusing on how management is done and what results are achieved, but paying attention to how to enhance leadership and decision-making abilities.
Leadership skills here include personal and organizational or team aspects, which is another topic that will not be elaborated on here.
To become a leader, the first thing you need is not only the ability to see the strengths of others but also the ability to see your weaknesses.
When you see your shortcomings, you should know how to make yourself perfect, attract more outstanding individuals to your side, and use the strengths of others to compensate for your weaknesses.
There are no perfect people in the world, everyone has flaws and shortcomings, but there can be a perfect team, and the perfection of a team can lead individuals towards perfection.
Therefore, the third stage is not about seeking similarity but embracing diversity.
You need to recognize your shortcomings and bring together people with different styles and personalities through common goals and shared beliefs, enabling different individuals to come together to start their businesses and become founders, co-founders, or founding partners.
In this stage, you manage strategy and culture, find various talents, and bring these talents together to work collectively.
Of course, for the vast majority of people, it is difficult to reach this stage, but through understanding this stage, we can see our weaknesses, and understand where we need to strive, rather than being proud and complacent with little achievement.
There is no shortcut to career development.
As you progress through these three stages of career development, the success rate decreases the higher you go.
Therefore, not everyone can experience all three stages, but they can be our goal to strive towards.
When we have a sufficient understanding of these three stages, we are more likely to have a clear plan for our career development, rather than feeling lost or giving up when faced with difficulties.
Life is a process of constantly climbing uphill and solving problems.
So, even though the probability of success decreases as you move higher up, I still recommend that everyone should aim to progress.
This can be seen as a state of mind in life. When we face everything with a positive attitude and persist in our efforts, we will have no regrets when the curtain falls on our lives in the future.
There is no shortcut to career development; if there is any shortcut, it is only through dedication and perseverance.
Nothing in the workplace is done in vain — each experience is an indispensable part of your life journey. As long as you are dedicated, each experience will contribute to your accumulation of abilities and wisdom.
