By | Jim Morris | www.themuse.com
It’s natural to wonder “What’s next?”—or, more accurately, when you’ll climb to the next rung on the ladder in your career. In an ideal world, your boss would just tell you whenever you’re making moves in the right direction.
But it’s not an ideal world, and for a variety of reasons, a manager doesn’t always tell a direct report he or she is a rising leader. So, you may have to find other signs that your company believes in you and your potential for growth. Sure, being assigned a leadership coach or getting invited to attend a specialized program for management are obvious indicators. But there are other, more subtle signs that might be equally telling.
1. You’re Asked to Do Weird Jobs
Every organization has a set of core tasks that people at different levels perform, but most companies also get one-off projects that they willingly do to satisfy a key customer or as an experiment in a new category. Being asked to work on something without a roadmap is often a vote of confidence.
Keep in Mind
If you’re asked to do a task that falls outside your job description, say “yes” and show you’re willing to take on additional projects. (Unless, of course, you don’t have the expertise, support, or bandwidth.) But if you can, and fitting it in will just be a little outside your comfort zone, see this as opportunity to show how you can stretch.