In 5-10 years from now, where do you see yourself? If you are reading this, you probably have some level of desire to move up in your career. You want to feel confident in your work and the impact you’re making. You want to feel valued, heard and a sense of belonging.

We often get bogged down with the problems we are facing. We end up in reactive mode and neglect the bigger picture of our career growth.

Here are five things you can focus on to grow in your career confidently.

1. Communicating Your Expectations and What’s Important to You

Remember the last time when you felt like your boundaries have been crossed? Or the last time you felt like others weren’t meeting your expectations? Making it a priority to communicate your values and what’s important to you will help you set clearer expectations.

2. Leveraging Your Unique Strengths

Know what your unique strengths are and use them to your advantage to reach your performance goals. If you’re a people person, how you can use your people skills to help bring you and the team to the next level?

3. Building Trusting Relationships with Others

When we think about work, we often focus so much on performance and the tactical tasks. We end up neglecting the people aspect of the job, which is actually the most important! If you think about it, a lot of what we stress about on the daily are mostly interpersonal issues. Prioritizing actions that’ll build trust with others will help you lead more confidently.

Here’s an older post I wrote on building trust through difficult conversations — check it out for additional details!

4. Having a POV and Sharing It Often

When we are not feeling heard or valued, we often end up closing ourselves up more. But you, just like everyone else, have a unique, valuable perspective! You’re doing a disservice to your team by not sharing them.

5. Finding Opportunities to Do More of What You Enjoy

This one can be tricky especially because there are always those things that we don’t love when it comes to our career. Think about the aspects that you enjoy most. Put yourself in situations where you can do more of those things.

What are some actions you can commit yourself to doing today to help you grow into your next leadership role more confidently?

Share this post with a friend or colleague if you’ve found it helpful! More to come soon.