By Bill Meyer
Some years ago, Dr. Judith Bardwick, a clinical professor of psychiatry, stated that only one percent in any company ever reach the top spot within an organization. Obviously, that means for the vast majority of us, career plateauing, in some form or other, is inevitable. Plateauing can be caused by either the organization’s failing to expand or because they begin to contract, a phenomena that has unfortunately impacted the lives of millions of American workers over the past several years and shows few signs of an immediate reversal.
Plateauing in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing because most people seek some stability in their life; constant change is unsettling. However, plateauing becomes a problem when we look at our future as being essentially the same as our past.
The type of plateauing being referred to here is called structural plateauing. By definition, structural plateauing occurs when one’s career path is stagnate. You have effectively reached the top of the promotional ladder, and any changes that occur within your job are not likely to include significantly more authority, responsibility or money.
At some point, a career minded person finds this lack of upward mobility extremely frustrating and begins to demonstrate a lot of the symptoms of stress such as restlessness, short temperedness, sleeplessness even depression.
Time for Action
The initial step for combating plateauing is to come to grips with reality and recognize that any illusions you may have had about the future are just that illusions, and it is time for you to assume control. We all have heard that adage “Wishin’ won’t make it so.” This adage is absolutely true when it comes to reversing your career fortunes. Begin by asking yourself: Just how dissatisfied or unhappy am I? Does my unhappiness stem from feeling stuck at work, bored by the lack of challenge in a repetitious job, or is its something else?
You begin the process of taking control by analyzing and articulating the skills you have to sell. Perhaps even more important than this self-analysis is asking yourself whether you have the courage to step outside your comfort zone and do what it takes to reassume control over your career and achieve the level of job satisfaction that you deserve.
Assuming you muster the needed courage you then need to decide just how much change will be required. Some possible questions that will need to be asked and answered are:
- Is there an opportunity within my company to put these skills to use on a regular basis?
- What other companies within this city would see value in these skills?
- Am I geographically mobile considering my life situation?
- Am I aware of the factors that contribute to my level of job satisfaction such as: creative freedom, personal freedom, decision making opportunities, organization stability, etc.
The answers to these and other questions may require you to reach out to your network to seek advice and information from trusted friends and colleagues. Remember, that networking, in its purest form is designed to help you acquire the needed information to make informed as well as intelligent decisions.
In managing your career, you will need to realize that you will likely experience feelings of plateauing several times in your work career. At these intervals, you will have the choice of accepting the current level of stability in your life as a good thing or realize that the awareness of being plateaued requires you to exercise your initiative and reassume the control that is slipping away by choosing vitality in your life rather than status quo.
Remember you have everything to gain. Perhaps the challenge of taking action in the management of your career was never more aptly described than in the following quote, “It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.”