Career Traps
Introduction To A Series On Top 10 Career Traps
In my decades-long career across multiple industries, I’ve seen the same tragedy repeat itself. Brilliant, hardworking people hit a ceiling or, worse, are moved out of their companies. Most of these were avoidable because the stall or exit was driven not by a lack of capabilities but by behavioral issues.
When I introduced the importance of behaviors as part of the Behaviors, Outcomes, and Skills (BOS) Framework and the Behaviors Blueprint, I focused on which behaviors to prioritize to advance your career. However, there is another aspect to consider about behaviors – Career Traps that result from behaviors. These are the behaviors to avoid.
Over the next 10 weeks, we will explore the top 10 career-derailing behaviors and how to address them.
The Negativity Trap: Where you become the “Chief Skeptic,” killing every idea and thought.
The Competence Trap: Where competence in a particular function or task keeps you in the same role forever.
The Low-Maintenance Trap: Where your silence makes you invisible to decision-makers.
The Firefighter Trap: Where addiction to urgency prevents you from building scalable systems.
The “No-Image” Trap: Where you let others define your brand.
The Specialist Trap: Where you hog information for job security and do not share your knowledge with others.
The Perfectionist Trap: Where the pursuit of the “flawless” prevents outcome delivery.
The Scrambling Trap: Where you believe that a systematic approach is not necessary to deliver outcomes. This usually results in a lot of rework.
The Lower-Level Trap: Where you, as a senior-level employee, perform junior-level tasks.
The Dunning-Kruger Trap: Where a total lack of awareness leads to an inflated sense of competence. This is also the land of the know-it-alls.
In this series, I invite you on a journey most professionals never take. Each week, spend a few minutes reflecting on whether your career is being stalled by one of these behavior traps. We’ll examine how these traps manifest in the real world, the “one-year outlook” on what happens when people trapped by these behaviors don’t address them, and my personal take on how to retool your behaviors to break free.
The road ahead is yours to shape!
Suresh 😊