By Author Tapan Rayaguru, Career Coach at Sunstone Business School.

Let’s understand what career growth really means and see if we are on the same page. How about a short quiz to start with?

What is real career growth?

1. You just got promoted with a fancier title and 20% more money with no change to your role

2. You got paid the highest possible variable pay / bonus for the last year

3. Your designation has changed twice in the past 3 years with barely anything changing in your role

4. You recently changed jobs and moved to a different company with a bigger title and a 25% pay hike but on your first month of work you figure you are going to do more or less the same tasks

5. You seem to be doing a lot more variety of tasks and quantity of deliverable than you did last year but still carry the same title and a meagre increase in your compensation

It definitely doesn’t mean:

1. getting paid more for performing the same role

2. a change of title with very little change in your responsibilities.

3. working for a different company with a different role or title

Career growth means you take up more responsibilities today than you did yesterday and continue to do that at regular intervals.

Consider below to get that additional responsibility

1. Volunteer more – when there is a new ‘task’ that the team has been asked to do and your manager is looking for someone to help him/her, offer up yourself as a volunteer. For example – there is a client visit coming up and your team needs to showcase its work and someone needs to put together a script and get everyone ready for it.

2. Suggest new things that the team could do – put yourself in your manager’s shoes and see what all you would do differently if you had his/her role. Go ahead and suggest those as things that your team should do in a very non-threatening way in a one on one set-up.

3. Get to understand the ‘why’ – You, of course, are good at the ‘how’ of a task and probably know ‘what’ you are building but often people forget the most important ‘why’ question behind the output they are asked to create or operate in a certain way. As you get that opportunity to do that extra bit in your current role, make sure you make the most of that opportunity and fulfill that responsibility well. Only then do you build confidence for more such opportunities in the future and eventually you get the role and the privileges that go with the role.

If you are the type that does not feel confident to take on more for the fear of failure or lack of confidence watch out my next post on what it takes to get past that hurdle.