Episode #129 Progression Series Part 2: More Recognition

Welcome to the Progression Series: 4 podcasts in which I challenge the myth that career progression is only about promotions and pay rises. I introduce you to the 4 pillars of career progression that provide the best motivation for solving your Imposter Syndrome and are the key to making your experience as a lawyer so much easier and more fulfilling.

In this episode:

The 4 Pillars of Career Progression

Progressing your career is about more than a new position, a new job title and the accompanying pay rise. These have their value. But unless they are accompanied by progression in other areas, their impact on your day-to-day experience and performance as a lawyer will be limited. You just find yourself facing the same challenges and problems you did before, only now at a level where the stakes are higher and you have less support.

How is this progress?

Real career progression goes deeper and it lasts SO much longer. It’s not just about your career. It’s about progressing who you are in a way that impacts every aspect of your life as a lawyer – in a positive and powerful way.

Enter the 4 Pillars of Career Progression.

The 4 pillars of Career Progression are the 4 principal areas of lawyer life that determine how happy and successful you are in your work. They are:

• Recognition
• Confidence
• Balance
• Fun

These pillars are an essential feature of career progression. It only counts as progress if one or more of these areas is in a more advanced state than it was previously. Specifically, if you achieve one or more of the following:

• More recognition
• More confidence
• Better balance
• More fun

You don’t have to advance all 4 pillars in order for it to count as career progression. But the more pillars you progress, the more impactful and sustainable your career progression is. Over the next 4 weeks we’ll be taking a close look at each of the 4 pillars.

This week’s focus: More Recognition

Being recognised for your work and the value you bring is an essential part of career progression, and you probably believe that this recognition can only come externally from a promotion and a shiny new job title. But if you are focusing exclusively on promotion for validation, you miss all the other forms of recognition you are currently getting – not to mention the opportunity to recognise yourself. 

If you see progression solely as a leap up to the next level, you miss the opportunities to internalise your achievements and progress along the way – which means you don’t grow as a person or properly prepare yourself for what will be expected of you and who you will need to be at that next level.

Imagine you are fixated on going for partnership but don’t get it. If you see that as a failure to get the recognition you crave, you are not taking into account all of your wins along the way: the times you stepped up to the challenge, the times you received positive feedback from clients, the occasions when a partner gave you more client-facing opportunities and responsibility.

Racing to be GIVEN recognition (like a promotion) means you don’t take the time or energy to develop the capacity to recognise yourself for all your incremental achievements. If you fail to get a promotion, you see it as a rejection by your boss, or your firm. If you achieve the promotion, you’ve hung your sense of achievement on what was in someone else’s control to give to you, rather than on all the steps YOU took and the progress YOU made along the way. This means you will always need recognition from others to feel valued.

In this episode, I explain why having a strategy for progression that also builds your capacity to recognise yourself is so important. Recognition needs to come from YOU too, not just from other people.

Progressing your career isn’t about the promotion. It’s about progressing who you are in a way that impacts every aspect of your life as a lawyer.

In Imposter Syndrome Coaching you pick one of the 4 pillars of career progression as your main goal and we work through the 4-step process for solving your Imposter Syndrome to help you achieve it. Enrolment for the next class is coming soon. Don’t miss the announcement. Join the waitlist now.