In Career Management and Corporate Life Mentoring we refer to the need to master the following generic phases: education for professional development → entering the first job → technical → administrator → functional → specialist → supervisor → managerial → leadership → executive → direction → board role → retirement → post-retirement roles. We also recognize that the career and business life path is not a straight line. We should, in our orientation, see our career progression following a pattern like the one above. When there is deviation, we must be aware of it and, as far as possible, influence the new course. This will confirm that we are alert and directing the evolution of our career and corporate life. We will make mistakes but they will be manageable.
We all start somewhere in our careers, whether as administrators or technical personnel. That is the base that is highly recommended. It is during these founding years that we discovered ourselves in the business world.
In most cases we are naive and impatient. It is expected because we have no experience and we just want to shoot through the phases of our careers. We are soon honored and learn to be open-minded about our careers. If we do well as managers and technical workers, we will easily move into areas of expertise. We are also poised to become productive and functional players in our various industries.
We must all have a proper foundation for potential future career paths. We go wrong at these fundamental stages, we suffer the consequences later in our careers. These stages are the foundation for future supervision, management, and leadership roles. This is on top of our academic and corporate development programs.
Many people can confess that their strong performance during their administrative, technical and functional founding years paved their transition to supervisory, managerial and leadership roles. The reason is obvious; We all have to earn the trust of our superiors through hard work and great performance in our early jobs. They are the core of any business and therefore highly visible to leaders. Many companies compete at this level in their sectors.
More than 50% of the curriculum in professional and corporate academies is at the administrative, technical, specialization, and functional levels. These are the areas that can be verified with the investment in development that the company makes. The intellectual capital of companies is tied to these levels of the company’s knowledge base. Top management and leadership are rewarded for how well they deal with company talent at these levels. The future of the company is guaranteed by the best talent at these levels. This is what sustains some of the best economies in the world. This is not to suggest that the levels of supervision, management and leadership are not important. They are. However, the critical mass is found at the administrative, technical, specialization, and functional levels. If things go wrong here, the impact will be enormous.
From now on, development into the future is more of a partnership between candidates and management. In most cases it is done in conjunction with business schools and internal corporate academies.
So why do we need mentors? Each of these careers has its own dynamics, considering that they play a fundamental role in the company. They are demanding with people, they require a different mentality, discipline, behaviors and characters. Each employee must understand their space in the company and act accordingly. Mentors are there to remind us that this is a normal growth path that other people have been through before them as well. Each of these races leads somewhere. Postulate that and anticipate the destination. Do the latter and make sure you succeed at the next level, which is probably more challenging than the current one. The higher you go, the less depends on your administrative, technical, specialized and functional experience.
Most likely, the mentor will advise you to keep your portfolio of tests, write a lot about your milestones, etc. You are undoubtedly going to experience difficulty as you progress through the management and leadership levels.