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Career Growth Patterns

Steer your career where you want it.

Methods for steering your own career, at any level and in any field. You take stock of where you are and what you want, build the skills the next step needs, make your work visible and grow a network before you need it. Later suits cover working well with your manager, making the case for promotion and changing role, track or employer.

49 cards · 7 suits · 5 recipes · 2 missions

What's inside

• Take Stock7Is it clear what you want next?
• Build Skills7Are you growing on purpose, not by accident?
• Be Seen7Do the right people know your work?
• Build A Network7Have you built relationships before you need them?
• Manage Up7Can you and your manager work as allies?
• Move Up7Are you already working at the next level?
• Change Course7Have you tested the new path before leaping?

A few cards

Take Stock

Career Timeline

Draw your working life as a line of highs and lows, then read what the peaks share.

Build Skills

Skills Map

List the skills your current and next role need, rate yourself honestly, and circle the two biggest gaps.

Build A Network

Network Map

List the people who know your work, by closeness and where they sit, and spot the gaps.

One card in full

Move Up

Read The Criteria

Find the written expectations for the next level and put your evidence next to each one.

Promotion decisions are made against criteria, even when nobody shows them to you. If your organisation has a written framework, it's the closest thing to the exam paper. Laying your evidence against it turns "I think I'm ready" into a clear picture of where you're strong and where you're thin.

How to use it

1. Find the written expectations for your current level and the next: a framework, job descriptions or a promotion policy. If none exist, ask your manager what the panel looks for.
2. Copy each criterion for the next level into the left column of a table.
3. In the right column, add your best one or two pieces of evidence for each, from your Brag Document.
4. Mark each row: strong, partial or missing.
5. Note where the criteria use vague words, and ask what they mean in practice.
6. Take the partial and missing rows to Name The Gap Together.

Example

A staff nurse puts her evidence beside each line of the senior nurse band description and finds nothing under "leads audit". A software engineer discovers that half the next-level criteria are about influence beyond the team, where his evidence is thin.

Watch out

• Treating criteria as the whole story. Compare them with what you hear when you Ask The Level Above.
• Stretching weak evidence to fill every row. Honest gaps are more useful.

Recipes

• Close The Skill Gap: Find the skills that matter for your next step from people who have taken it, rate yourself honestly, then build one skill a quarter through focused practice and shared learning.
• Get Seen For Good Work: Make your work visible without boasting: choose what you want to be known for, keep a record, describe outcomes, share work in progress, show it to a wider audience and credit the people who helped.
• Ready For A Career Talk: Prepare for a career conversation with your manager by working out what good work feels like for you, what you value, where you want to head, and then saying it plainly.
• Widen Your Circle: Build a network before you need it: map who knows your work, reach the outer ring, give before you ask, learn from people in other roles, choose a few advisers and reconnect with old colleagues.
• Work Well With Your Manager: Build a working relationship with your manager in which you understand their pressures, agree what good looks like, run your own one-to-ones, raise problems early and bring choices rather than only problems.

Missions

• Make your promotion case: from "I think I'm ready" to a one-page case that maps evidence to each criterion of the next level, with the gap agreed with your manager and a date for the decision.
• Plan a change of track: from a vague urge to do something different to two options tested in small ways, a bridge story and a dated plan to move or to stay.

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