1/ A thread on career growth

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👉" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach rechts" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach rechts"> Takeaways
Skill alone doesn’t matter. If no one but yourself knows about your skills, you won’t get any opportunities.

What you want is to:

1. Maximize Available Opportunities
2. Maximize Sponsors https://twitter.com/dschenkelman/status/1298294245606993922">https://twitter.com/dschenkel...
2/ https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⭐️" title="Mittelgroßer Stern" aria-label="Emoji: Mittelgroßer Stern"> Introducing some concepts
- Growth: access to more challenging and/or new opportunities. Growth is multidimensional.
- Opportunity: a possibility for improving and/or displaying your skills. They might be accompanied by financial rewards, recognition, etc.
3/ - Skills: what you can do, including knowledge required to do it
- Sponsors: People that are aware of available opportunities and can grant them to you.

https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="❓" title="Rotes Fragezeichen-Symbol" aria-label="Emoji: Rotes Fragezeichen-Symbol">And relevant questions
- Who are you displaying your skills to?
- Who gets you access to opportunities?
4/ ♼ Applying systems thinking
- Your opportunities increase as new opportunities are granted to you. This rate depends on your sponsors.
- Your skills improve depending on how fast you learn from your opportunities.
5/ - You get more sponsors the more people have a positive perception of your skills. These displays depend on your skills, e.g.: when you are given the opportunity to present you are displaying your presentation skills. If you are good at presenting, sponsors will perceive that.
6/ https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🤔" title="Denkendes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Denkendes Gesicht"> How do you get the right sponsors?
Identify them. Consider the informal organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_organization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Info... href="https://twitter.com/Lethain">@Lethain has a great post on staying aligned with sponsors https://staffeng.com/guides/staying-aligned-with-authority

Avoid">https://staffeng.com/guides/st... biased sponsors. @lara_hogan has a post on this https://larahogan.me/blog/what-sponsorship-looks-like/">https://larahogan.me/blog/what...
7/ https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👀" title="Augen" aria-label="Emoji: Augen"> How do you make your skills and work visible to sponsors?

1. Generate content: internal blog posts, brown bags, etc.
2. Ask for 1:1s
3. Share your accomplishments @b0rk has a great post on that https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/">https://jvns.ca/blog/brag...
8/ Generate self-awareness.

Instead of asking someone “can you recommend me for X job?” ask “what skills do I need to improve on to be ready to do job X?“. The latter shows you are open to advice.

@skamille has a great post on this https://medium.com/@skamille/debug-your-career-ask-for-advice-f0124c15837d">https://medium.com/@skamille...
9/ If you& #39;ve read this far, great https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😁" title="Grinsendes Gesicht mit lächelnden Augen" aria-label="Emoji: Grinsendes Gesicht mit lächelnden Augen">

You& #39;ll probably find the full blog post valuable: https://yenkel.dev/posts/how-to-achieve-career-growth-opportunities-skills-sponsors">https://yenkel.dev/posts/how...
You can follow @dschenkelman.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: