Its Not Only About Doing A Good Job

In my last blog I talked about the importance of friends in moving your career forward. Your network will help provide you with information, advise and assistance. In the same way what gets you high visibility assignments and promotions is the relationships you development with the people making those decisions and your ability to let people know about your good work. The same is true about your boss. Face time with the boss is important. Find ways to build a relationship with your boss. When it comes time to handing out assignments and promotions the quality of that relationship is every bit as important as the quality of your work.

Not only is connecting with your boss important but so is keeping him or her informed of your successes. People think their bosses know what they do on a daily basis and what they have accomplished. Surprisingly most don't. Most bosses are overworked these days. If nothing is going obviously wrong they assume your doing an okay job. However, your successes often go unnoticed or may be attributed to others.

It is important therefore that you make sure that when you do something significant the right people know about it. You need to do that without seeming to be self-promoting. You can do that with matter of fact updates to the people you need to influence. E-mails allow you to do this easily and routinely. An excellent technique for making sure all the right people know about business success is to send out a note praising your subordinates for their outstanding efforts. That way you can brag all you want about the achievements and at the same time be considered to be a good boss because you are sharing the credit for your successes.

Remember if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears who cares? If you do great work and nobody knows about it, in terms of your career it is as if it did not happen.