You Alone Own Your Career Path
Often people believe their manager is responsible for their career progression. Truth is it’s all on you!
There is a popular saying within top-ranked high school cross country teams: “Champions are made in the summer.”
The high school cross country season runs from September through November. The first day of practice is usually in mid-August, once school starts back up. It’s then that the coach tries to mold a band out of shape teens into endurance warriors, who will laugh at the lactic acid burning in their legs by the time the state qualifying series rolls around.
But, be assured, back in June any coach worth their salt handed each athlete a carefully crafted, personalized summer training plan. They were given mileage goals to hit based on their fitness level. For the cream of the crop athletes that probably meant logging as much as 1,000 miles over the three months of summer.
The teams that find themselves on the podium come November are the ones who took that seriously. Away from the eyes of their coach they woke up at the crack of dawn to beat the heat. They hit their long slow distance days, their harder mile repeats, and honored their rest days for recovery. With no coach yelling at them to do so, they recorded their splits, tracked their improvement, and entered their mileage into a log book.
Champions are made in the summer. The coach can’t do it for them. Each one of those runners must take it upon themselves to return that first day of practice fitter than they were the last day of track practice the spring before.
Racing into Shape
When a cross country runner comes back from the summer and clearly hasn’t done their off-season work, they are at a severe disadvantage. The first race of the season will be in just two weeks. Reluctantly the coach will sigh and resign that this kid will just have to “race into shape.”
Many employees expect that they will naturally round into shape simply by doing their job. They believe that the projects they are handed will get steadily harder as they progress, just like the workouts through the cross country season, and this will allow them to improve.
While assuredly that is true, the rate of that improvement and the upper bound of that performance is going to be severely limited. It is almost impossible for an out-of-shape runner to become a state champion by racing into shape through the season; it is similarly difficult for you to develop your career into being a senior leader by only learning from the tasks that are handed to you each sprint.
Building a Base
A high school cross country race is typically 5K (that is 3.1 miles for you Americans). So it might surprise people that the best runners will put in over six miles on most days and usually over ten miles once or twice a week.
Wouldn’t it just make sense to go out there and run your 5K race distance over and over? Trying to get faster at it each time? No, that’s not the way it works. Runners work to put in solid base mileage, especially over the summer, so that when race day comes that 3.1 miles seems like nothing!
Similarly, we should all work to become subject matter experts on what we do during our scheduled work week. Just like cross country runners are trying to hone their specialty of a 5K race. We want to be great at that task!
However, just like the runner is laying that foundation of fitness, we must broaden our peripheral skills of indirectly related technology. That wider knowledge base will end up making our race day seem so much easier.
The “long slow distance” (or doing LSD as runners jokingly say) that adds to a huge part of that base training isn’t usually done in a regular team practice. That mileage is usually put in over the weekend. The athlete has to take on the responsibility to build out their base on their own time.
Cross Training is Critical
Besides simply running, the top cross country athletes also do other things to get into form. They swim. They bike. They lift weights. They even play ultimate frisbee!
These other activities do a three key things:
- They can mix things up to keep it fun and interesting.
- They reduce injuries of too much slamming of foot into pavement.
- They help you develop different muscles that running alone can’t.
Similarly, there are other muscles that you need to develop in order to move along in your career path. If you are a software developer there is more to becoming a senior engineer than just being able to write code excellently.
There are skills to learn about architecture and scalability. You need to learn how to mentor, help with hiring, and become a leader. And you also need to protect yourself from burn out by doing other tangential activities.
So after you do successfully build that base, start to branch out into other areas. It may seem odd or awkward at first (shouldn’t I be running??), but in the long term that’s going to be what helps you be at your best.
The Role of Your Coach (Manager)
So does this mean that the coach has nothing to do with your success?
Absolutely not! There is a reason that there are dynasties in high school cross country. The same schools often occupy the top spots in the rankings year after year. Why?
Surely not because there is something in the water fountains that breeds faster runners. The tradition may play a role, but ultimately it is because the coach has successfully inspired them and given them the road map of how to become successful in their sport.
But at the end of the day, it is the runners who put in the mileage. It is the athlete who takes the advice from the coach and applies it every single day. Not just when the coach is watching. Not just when teammates are around. Nor do they just give their best on race days.
The top runners go out and execute the plan on their own. They sneak in a second evening run, after having already ran normal practice that morning. They pound out that LSD day on Saturday and cross-train on Sunday.
The coach has a huge role. They will give you a personally crafted map to become successful. The caring coach will provide you thoughtful advice, sometimes about race strategy and sometimes just about life.
Usually top athletes will go back to the coach wanting more. They’ll say “Hey Coach, I feel really good after this workout. What extra can I do?” And the coach will tell them to hit a faster split on the next mile repeat or say add a couple extra miles to the long run this weekend. Or whatever the coach knows the runner needs to take it to that next level.
The good runners beg for more. The good coaches either eagerly give it to them or, other times, sagefully advise them to take a day off.
Go Forth and Be Coachable
One of the top qualities in athletes who are lauded by college recruiters is when they are deemed “extremely coachable.” That means the athlete will buy into the program’s philosophy and follow the plan. They go out and get it done, even when they don’t understand it, because they trust their coach.
Now that only works when you have a good coach! If you don’t think you can buy into what the coach is selling, well maybe you need to change teams.
But if you believe your coach knows what he/she is doing. And you believe they have your best interest at heart. Then ride that partnership all the way to new heights in your career.
Ultimately though, the coach can’t run the workouts for you. Your manager can’t read that book for you, make you step out of your comfort zone, or force you to take up a side project.
YOU must take ownership of your own progress. Because no one else can log those miles for you!
