Your Professional Gaps and How to Address Them
Greetings and welcome to episode #2 of The Exclusive Career Podcast! I’m Lesa Edwards, Certified Executive & Leadership Development Coach, Certified Job Search Strategist, and one of fewer than 25 Master Resume Writers in the world.
Today, I wanted to dig into your professional gaps, and the options for addressing them. For the purposes of this episode, I’m coming from the approach that you already know what your professional gaps are.
What do I mean by a professional gap? Here are some examples:
-Written or verbal communication skills
-Public speaking
-Empathy
-The ability to coach
-Lack of success in hiring the right people
-Micromanaging – or not being strategic enough
These are just a few examples. What I want you to hear – loud and clear – is that we ALL have professional gaps.
The question, then, becomes how to address them.
1. Direct education/training/development.
From formal degrees, to certifications, to continuing education courses, there are longer-term and shorter-term solutions to a professional gap.
You also have less formal options, such as Udemy, Coursera, and LinkedIn learning – even seminars at professional conferences may fill the gap.
In my opinion, this is a cost/benefit analysis – how long will it take? How much does it cost - and will my employer pay for it? Do I need to receive the credential from the very best – or is good enough, good enough?
2. Hire complementary team members.
One of the most important skills a leader can develop, in my opinion, is the ability to hire team members who aren’t “mini me’s” – people whose strengths and motivated skills are diverse and different from yours.
This way, you can delegate tasks and projects that don’t play to your strengths, while at the same time giving team members projects that they will enjoy, be challenged by, and grow from.
Win-win.
This really must start at the hiring phase – otherwise, it’s a bit like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Asking behavioral questions around their strengths and skills, and listening carefully to their answers, will give you important clues.
While tools like the MBTI aren’t to be used for hiring, they can be extremely beneficial once you’ve hiring someone to further understand their preferences. Of course, there are hiring tools specifically designed to help you make the right hiring decisions.
3. Identify work-arounds.
This can range widely depending on the gap, from strategies you can use directly to support you can ask others for.
For example, direct strategies could include developing the gap via volunteer work, seeking mentors who can support your efforts to develop the gap, and professional networking to learn how others have been successful in your gap area.
Indirect strategies could include negotiating upfront when you are offered the job to reassign a specific job duty or hire a contractor, the previously mentioned assignment to one of your direct reports, to researching the possibility of technology taking over the job duty, to questioning whether the job duty needs to be done at all.
Get creative, be collaborative, and try to approach this challenge as if it were someone else’s – how would you counsel them to address the situation?
There are important considerations when addressing a professional gap. Here are some suggestions:
1. Give yourself sufficient time to conduct your research.
Allow yourself to research potential credentialing bodies, seek out mentors, or delegate job duties. Be patient – but don’t let too much time pass.
2. Plan your time accordingly.
Deciding to take coursework or ramp up your networking efforts takes time – schedule it in and determine what might need to be pushed to the back burner.
This might include time for studying, travel, follow-up, research…think through all the components of the option you choose and plan time to complete each.
3. Step into a growth mindset.
Whichever option you choose, you will be facing a (possibly steep) learning curve, a mixture of hits and misses, and frustrating delays and missteps.
You have two choices here: You can decide you’re on the wrong path and beat yourself up, or you can decide you are learning and growing – and this is all part of the deal you signed up for.
Of course, there is the possibility that you have actually chosen a path that isn’t working for you for whatever reason, but tell yourself the truth – do you really need to make a mid-course correction, or do you need to double down on your original decision?
No matter what – beating yourself up is optional and DOES NOT serve you.
4. Surround yourself with support.
Perhaps you need to make sure your boss is onside with your plan. Does your significant other or family and friends know what you’re undertaking – and will they support you?
Naysayers have no place in your efforts to address your professional gaps – surround yourself with supporters who will tell you the truth in love.