Career Growth Framework
Here’s the ‘Career Growth Framework’ that I introduced during the recently held UxNow conference and the participants had a great time engaging with it.
Everyone wants growth in their careers. Some look for financial growth, and some for meaning in their work. This is a conversation I often have in my coaching and mentoring engagements at fondesan.academy too.
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I have been practicing it for over a decade now, and it has helped me be more conscious about my career choices and doing work that matters to me.
It has allowed me to make decisions about the kind of places I want to work at, the people I want to work for, and the time in my career I want to devote to it.
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The growth framework is divided into 4 parts and it allows one to take charge of careers with more clarity and thought.
1️⃣ Intellectual growth : The right usage of your knowledge, skillset and potential.
- A clear indication of this is how comfortable you are with ambiguity.
- How intellectually stimulated you feel about the work you are doing.
- How much can your manager trust you with new work
- In a new situation are you confident to look inwards or look sideways to seek help from others.
- Will you have a sense of validated confidence, achieved due to the success of the work.
- Are you ask-oriented or told-oriented.
2️⃣ Personal Growth : Your growth as an individual in terms of your self, yout health, fitness and in terms of growth in your relationship with peers, family members
- What are the biases you have developed over the years, and does that harm you or aid you in your growth.
- How does things like failure, closure of a project, impact you personally as a person
- What does your personal Ambition look like — are you willing to put in the sacrifices required to achieve it.
3️⃣ Professional Growth: Your growth as a professional, and the contributions to the Design Profession and field of Design in wherever you work.
- How self motivated are you to continue as a professional and transition from one organization to the other
- Is there more inbound interest in your profile than you having to click the apply button
- What is your contribution to the professional community that you are a part of.
- How close you are to the company’s priorities
- Are you documenting your learnings along the way
4️⃣ Financial Growth: A sense of feeling of getting what you deserve.
- Most people chase this when planning careers.
- This more often than not catches up, if you have taken care of the above three.
- Promotions are always facts based and not hope based
- Your reliability keeps deciding the kind of work and the financial reward you get.
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Thank you to all the participants!
It was amazing to have Hardik Pandya and Aakash Kumar also join in the panel. Hardik’s publicly available notes on design careers, leadership are a must read for anyone thinking about navigating careers.
