Dulcie Swanston is the founder and director of Top Right Thinking, providing accredited training across the country. Having recently published, It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science, a book designed to help you adapt, change and develop, Dulcie is here to share her top five ways to advance your professional development.
Embrace failure
A 2019 study reported in Science Direct found that our learning is optimised when we fail 15% of the time. Learning to bounce back when we receive difficult feedback or don’t get something right is one of the key indicators of high performers.
Ask yourself when you last failed, what you learnt from it and what you are doing differently as a result. If you don’t have plenty of examples to hand, you probably aren’t learning as much as you could.
Become deliberately curious
Naturally curious people tend to advance faster because they will ask questions, not only advancing their learning, but also that of the people around them.
Asking questions from a place of curiosity, without appearing to judge others is a real skill. Deliberately remember to be curious. Actively consider what makes people want to make a particular decision or why something works as it does — and think about how it could work even better.
Asking open questions and using “What” instead of “Why” or “And” can mean that your questions are received with less resistance and more honesty.
Increase resilience and brain power
Your brain has extremely complex ‘wiring’ that’s fuelled by a cocktail of chemicals and requires a reliable flow of blood, oxygen, and biochemical energy to operate — even just to stay still. Growing knowledge, skills, and behaviours to advance your professional development will require extra energy to create new neural pathways and habits. Balanced levels of chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins support this growth — and enable you to bounce back when things don’t go to plan.
If you don’t create the optimum internal environment for your brain, you simply won’t have the fuel you need to power your growth. Rest, regular breaks for fun and exercise, time with friends, mindful hobbies and positive thinking are not just nice to have — they are crucial for growing your brain circuitry.
Network – with a difference
Rather than attending events that bring you into contact with strangers with whom you exchange a business card, find opportunities and spend networking time building deep and genuine connections with people who could help you to achieve your goals and enhance your life.
As human beings, we are more able to receive challenges and be stretched by people we trust and who we believe care about us personally. Therefore, nurturing relationships where you can hear difficult truths from a professional confidant has real power.
Invest in a mentor or coach and build a strong, mutually beneficial relationship — think about how you can help them too. Don’t just look upwards in your organisation, grow great relationships downwards to learn from and support the next generation. The CEOs who might employ you in the future, might not be senior to you currently.
Don’t let imposter thinking hold you back
Whilst you like to think you embrace new challenges, your brain would rather you didn’t. Behind the scenes, our brain tends towards the status quo, because change and growth require more brain fuel.
You can’t always trust what you think. Our brains can create some impressive excuses for us to avoid spending extra energy on professional advancement. It’s why “I’ll do it tomorrow…” is something we often find ourselves saying and why being promoted or achieving a new qualification can leave us feeling uneasy. One study suggested that 70% of people suffer from ‘Imposter Syndrome’ — a sensation that they somehow don’t deserve the success they are achieving.
Review the evidence for your success with a coach or mentor. You will probably conclude your advancement is down to hard work and a growth mindset. Imposter Thinking can be ‘evidence’ — but it usually evidences you haven’t plateaued and are still stretching yourself. It also takes a certain level of intelligence to reflect and learn with a degree of humbleness and people with psychopathic tendencies don’t tend to experience imposter-type thought patterns. So, feeling a bit of a fraud could be a positive indicator!
