No Career Conversations in Isolation
A career is not built or planned in isolation of the work itself. Talking about a career without talking about the actual work is meaningless. There’s no career without the work.
Your career should be seen as a function of Exposure you have. Exposure of two primary things: People & Projects. What you get to work on, and who you get to do it with. By its definition, your career is the work you get to do, and not something you get as the outcome.
When you discuss your career, the focus should entirely be on the work you’re getting to do at the moment, and the work you want to be doing in the future.
The way to get to the work you want to be doing in the future is earning the trust of your manager. This is what makes having dedicated ‘career discussions’ with team members difficult for the manager. From the team member’s point of view, these discussions end up dwindling into a vague territory of what the team member thinks they see themselves doing far into the future, often demanding a concrete path to get there. But unfortunately, earning trust cannot be chalked up to a definitive timeline. By regularly indulging in feedback conversations with your manager, you gradually form a path to earning that trust.
This is why career discussions are not meetings you have at 1-2-3-month intervals, but a continuous journey you are on with your manager.
The way to build a great career and land the work you aspire to do is to seek feedback from your manager on your current work, and then doing an exceptional job at it. Once you do that, you utilise the trust you earned and demand more work.