3 Innovative And Modern Ways To Show Initiative As A Mid-Career Professional
No matter where someone is in their career path, I am a big proponent of showing initiative as a way to differentiate yourself from your peers.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about possible strategies to show initiative when just entering the workforce. And while I believe you should never stop using those strategies, showing initiative can look different as you advance in your career.
With that in mind, how can you show initiative when you’ve advanced beyond entry-level positions and into manager and senior manager roles? In this article, I outline 3 potential ways to show initiative and find success as you continue to advance along your professional journey.
“Getting Stuff Done”
No matter what role you’re in, you are always expected to produce. Whether it’s making a sale, building computer code, or fixing some internal process, at the end of the day, we’re all expected to accomplish goals that will help our companies advance and grow.
It’s not the most poetic advice, but proving you can “get stuff done” and take your given tasks all the way to completion is one of the best ways to advance your career.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have all the right answers or the ability to accomplish all your tasks without any help, but if you prove that you can carry out the tasks you are expected to know and ask smart questions on activities you are unfamiliar with, you will earn a reputation of “getting stuff done” that will have a positive impact on your annual reviews.
Personally, I try to put this into practice by thinking of what a successful outcome looks like for each of my tasks. For each project, I ask myself “Am I reasonably expected (and do I have the capability) to complete the task with little or no support?”
If the answer is “yes,”, I strive to achieve the intended result on my own (but if I ever get stuck, I always make sure to raise my hand). Or, if it’s expected that I may need guidance along the way, I try to independently accomplish the areas I can manage on my own while asking smart, concise, and compiled questions to my supervisor when assistance is needed.
Holding Yourself Accountable
One benefit of starting out in your career is you have less accountability. Less is expected of you, and chances are, your work is heavily reviewed by your manager. It’s a great perk of most entry-level roles.
However, as you advance in your career, you are expected to hold yourself more accountable for your (and your team’s) actions, projects, and results. This can involve being responsible for meeting or missing deadlines, accepting results of projects (whether successful or not), and owning mistakes.
While holding yourself accountable is easy during successes, it’s maintaining personal accountability during mistakes, errors, or failed projects that show true initiative and professional responsibility. You should always strive to avoid mistakes, but holding yourself accountable to those mistakes helps you learn from the situation and grow (and it can be a great motivator to “get stuff done!”).
A lot of interviewers ask applicants about a time they’ve made a mistake in their careers. The question isn’t for the interviewer to get a sense of how clumsy you are. It’s to show how you hold yourself accountable, adapt to unforeseen situations, pivot to a new solution, and learn from your missteps.
While it can be tough to hold yourself accountable during times of personal mistakes or errors, everyone (even your bosses) has made plenty of mistakes in their careers, and learning from these mistakes is what helps us grow both personally and professionally.
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Managing Up
This sounds contradictory, but “managing your managers” is another great way to show initiative.
You can do this by being proactive and giving your bosses status updates before they ask for status updates, asking them smart and concise questions, informing them when they are needed (and ensuring they complete their assigned tasks), and telling them about a problem or situation before they hear about it from someone else (which goes hand-in-hand with personal accountability).
Why does managing up matter? Well, your project is probably a small part of your boss’s overall workload, so they’re not always thinking about your tasks. Your boss wants status updates, but they will often forget to ask for those updates as they focus on other projects or direct reports.
As a result, it’s up to you to be proactive in keeping your bosses informed. By doing so, you’ve just made your manager’s life is so much easier as they know they will not face any surprises on your projects.
While the channel of communication with each manager is difference, one possible (and easy) way to manage up is recurring 1:1 meeting with your boss. Whether it’s daily, weekly, or whatever the appropriate cadence is, this adds a structured way to manage up and ensure timely communication of project status and needs to your supervisor.
It’s All About Making Your Boss’s Life Easier!
If you are getting stuff done, holding yourself accountable, and managing up, your boss doesn’t have to think about you.
And while it sounds odd, when your boss doesn’t have to think about you, it’s usually a good sign. They know that, through these three strategies, you will give timely updates on your work, loop them in when they are needed, and bring the project to completion. This provides relief to your manager as it allows them to focus on one of the many other items they have on their plates.
And while it seems obvious, not everyone is implementing these strategies. There are plenty of people whose managers have to chase them down for status updates or to ensure they complete their assigned tasks. And there are people who divert responsibility and don’t hold themselves accountable. Following these tactics will show initiative as you advance professionally and help set yourself apart from your peers.
Don’t Confuse Initiative With Being A Workaholic
Make sure showing initiative (especially “getting stuff done”) is not confused with being a workaholic.
I wrote a similar point at the end of my last post, and it’s still pertinent to the above strategies. Always implement the above steps under the consideration of your own work-live balance and personal situation in your industry, organization, and role.
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Meet The Writer!
Hi! My name is James Blake, and I have been working as an accountant for over 11 years. I recently started the Accounting Career Coach Instagram account in mid-2022 with a mission to provide lessons I’ve learned throughout my career to help people make decisions in their careers. While some of my content focuses specifically on accounting, many of my posts focus on general career topics that I believe are universal across all industries and roles. I’m early in the coaching game and I would love to turn it into a larger endeavor at some point, but for now, I’d love to connect with you on Instagram @accounting_career_coach.
