رونوشت کامل Know Your Limits To Grow Your Career | TPMS Podcast Episode 20

run a half marathon. That's pretty normal for me. when I'm hiking, ⁓ you know, I'm I know that I can, you know, this is my upper extreme here, but I can hike 20 miles at a constant four miles per hour, assuming flat terrain. And that's something I can do pretty well. But once I get past 20 miles, I'm pretty shot. There's not much more I have left to give. ⁓ so those are kind of my limitations as far as the speeds that I'm able to hit over certain distances. And so I know my limits physically that way. but when we think of in terms of our limits in our in terms of our career path, sometimes it's not so exact or so obvious to us what our limits are. And the problem is a lot of times we can get ourselves into trouble or hot water if we can get into a work situation where maybe we're in over our heads with the skills or the knowledge that we have is is not adequate or not sufficient. Maybe we thought it was, but then we were faced with a challenge we'd never dealt with before. And all of a sudden things aren't so fun. So I'll just give you a quick example of this. When I first got out of college into my first career job, ⁓ You know, technology was a lot different back then. But one of the things that I realized really quickly was that I I was not very good at data entry and maintaining records. ⁓ I thought I had some pretty good Excel skills, but I realized that everyone else in the office ⁓ much more proficient at it than I was. ⁓ it's not necessarily that I didn't have some skills, it was just that they just knew exactly what what tools to use, what variables to use, what functions to plug in, in order to get the necessary outcome, necessary output from Excel. And I it just took me a lot longer to do it. ⁓ so I realized I wasn't really good at these things. Even, you know, for example, like in our the office that I worked in, I was one of the younger ones, just brand new. But we kept physical records, physical files in fire safes, as well as in on a computer system. So we had redundancy in our record keeping. So even in just Filing records, like I was a lot slower than what some of the some my other coworkers could do. so little things like that. I just noticed that I was just I was not very quick or not very proficient in it. ⁓ And some that was just the lack of experience on my part. I just I was not practiced. on the other hand, I noticed that I was actually pretty good at certain things, like thinking strategically, writing in depth reports, and asking the right questions to problems. Those were some things that I actually did pretty well. So being able to recognize and identify areas where you're not so strong and other areas where you are stronger ⁓ can very important in helping you grow and develop careerwise. Now it's common for people to get in over their heads. And so ⁓ I one the things that I think is helpful is to develop an understanding of where your skills are at. So, for example, you could take a specific skill and you could identify that skill that you need in your career path. ⁓ you can you can assess where you're at with it. So the way I like to do this is to think of this in a process. So the first level would be a novice. You know, you're you got initial knowledge, perhaps a skill or two. the next level would be ⁓ Emer the emergent level. So you possess some knowledge and skill and experience, but it's you kind of have minimal confidence with it. the third level up would be kind of this ⁓ adept level. I have foundational knowledge and skill and a good level of experience. You know, I'm very adept at what I do. the next level up from that would be advanced. You have you're you're at a very advanced level, you're very competent and confident what you do. People respect your work ⁓ and ask for your advice on things, and then the highest level would be. ⁓ an expert level where you could, if someone asks you about this topic, you could lecture on it for hours. You could lead a team to complete this project and you would feel very comfortable doing it and people would would turn to you for expert counsel and advice and working on this project. So those are really ⁓ the five levels that think you should run your skills through in your particular field ⁓ and just kind of assess you're at with them. And kind of determine, hey, do I need to, do I need to increase my knowledge and skills in these particular areas? or what areas do I need to actually master and make better? ⁓ or you could also look at it from the perspective of, you know, what where am I where am I weak and where do I need to kind of bring things up to ⁓ of ⁓ an adept level that rather than just being at the novice or emergent level. And that can really help you move your career forward. if you have a clear understanding of where those limits are on your skills and on your experience and on your knowledge. Now I'm just gonna share two quick examples here of they're both engineers and just the different experiences that they had in their career. And these these are experiences I heard straight from their own mouths. So I'm gonna share these. I'm not gonna share names, but ⁓ just to kind of give you an illustration of what I'm talking about. So this particular experience happened With a mechanical engineer who had recently engaged in a civil engineering project. They were, were building a a bridge across a river. So very ⁓ very challenging, very complex project, very long-term project. but when I had an opportunity to meet with this ⁓ engineer, ⁓ there was actually several of us that were meeting together. this particular engineer actually said, you know what, I am ⁓ I'm in over my head on this project. ⁓ And and I'm really afraid because I'm afraid that if I tell my boss ⁓ that I don't feel like I'm capable of handling this project right now, I th I'm afraid he's gonna fire me. ⁓ you know it's a competitive environment ⁓ and afraid he won't find another spot for me. If I keep going as is, the other the other

thing I fear is that it it may be discovered that I am incompetent and and worse yet, you know, there might the project might be compromised in some way that may come back to haunt me and haunt the company. ⁓ and so she was like, I I really don't know what to do right now. Like I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. So the the counsel that we we gave her at this this time was just to say, Hey, you you you just absolutely need to talk to your boss and just be very honest and upright with them. And obviously you're a very competent person. You've already gotten so far in your career and you were thought competent and believed competent to do this project when you're initially hired because of past successes that you've had. And so, you know, take confidence in yourself. And so this woman, she, you know, I was really I thought it was really awesome of her that she could just kind of confess this. And it showed a lot of humility on her part, which is one of our first which is our first step to wisdom. And and sometimes in a career situation like that, you just do you have to show some humility and just say, ⁓ yeah, I I'm in over my head on this project, or this project's not a good fit for my skill set. I thought this was something I could do, but now that I'm in working, I realize that I'm not adequate in my skills or my experience for this project. so we just counseled her and we told her, you know, tell, you know, just just go to your boss and just explain the situation. To him and just say, hey, when I got on with this project initially, I thought I had the skills and the the know-how for it. But as I'm getting more in depth on it, I'm realizing that I'm inadequate in my ability to execute on this project. I don't have the project skills. Some of my engineering skills in certain areas are lacking. And I don't feel like I'm what the project needs. And so that that was kind of what we counseled her to go and do. And I was really, I thought it was really great that she brought this up and was willing to talk about it and You know, in situations like that, it's really better to act sooner than than later so that ⁓ can be properly assessed and put into perspective. ⁓ I'm gonna share one other quick story with you. This was a particular situation. in this case, it was a nuclear engineer. And this this happened during the 1990s and the early 2000s. But you can have the opposite problem where you're living too far within your limits, where you're not being stretched and your capabilities aren't being used. And that's just as harmful as if you're being stretched beyond your limits. ⁓ and so one of the situ the situations that this nuclear engineer found himself in was that he and his company had the capability of totally getting rid of nuclear waste. They had that technology, they had that expertise, they could do it. ⁓ but as they were going from nuclear site to nuclear site, they just kept running into government red tape and running into all sorts of issues. ⁓ one of the things they ran up against is the government just didn't want to cut all the cleanup jobs that they had, they didn't want to cut people's jobs. So the processes, technology that they're introducing would cut a lot of jobs because the technology just cleaned up the mess by itself. It didn't need people. ⁓ And So eventually this nuclear engineer eventually had to come to the realization that, hey, you know, I'm not getting anywhere here in the United States. They're not accepting the technology. They're not accepting our contracts to totally clean it up. And when we do get a contract, it's not, it's fully for doing part of our technology, not the full, the full bit. So he actually ended up making the decision, I've got to move, I've got to take my family elsewhere. So I actually ended up doing jobs in Europe and he traveled a lot. And so it was a big change in lifestyle for him. But He was able to get, closer to that cutting edge in his career ⁓ and able to push up against his limits and what he was able to accomplish and do and clean up nuclear power plants, ⁓ which a lot of fulfillment, a lot of success to him. ⁓ And it was a tough decision to kind of move away from some of the power plants in the United States and kind of move out of his comfort zone, it was the right thing to do. ⁓ So hope this has been helpful, just kind of thinking about this and and understanding your limits. And so I would what I would do as an exercise today, I would take a little bit of time to go and just jot down some of the skills that are essential in your particular career field or career path and just say, hey, where am I at with them? I I would make at least a list of five, maybe 10, and start out and just go through each one of them and just plug it into that list that I gave you earlier. So, you know, ask yourself, you know, am I a novice or am I in a at the emergent level with this? Or am I adept at this level? Or am I at the advanced level or am I expert? Like I'm I'm about as good as it gets out there in my field. plug your skills and your knowledge level, your specific knowledge sets into that that scale and just yourself and see where you're at. ⁓ And that will really help you understand you need to improve in your in your career efforts and in your learning. And as you do that, you'll you'll definitely develop the wisdom needed to be successful in your career. My friend, it's been great to be with you today. I've really enjoyed our time together. I hope that something I've said today has been helpful for you and that this exercise that I've shared with you will be of benefit to you. I just want you to know that you can be very successful in your career. This is a great time to be alive and a great time to be developing a career. Never have there been more opportunities in the history of the world. ⁓ never is technology and information has been prevalent and so available and so fantastic in so many ways. But I know you can do this. I know that you can be successful and I am rooting for you all the way. ⁓ But I thank for joining me today on episode number 20 of the Philip Mason show.