Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of the books TimePeace: Making peace with time – and the Book of Answers: 105 Career Critical Situations. I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in professional development, career management, time management, and work-life balance strategies.
Today’s question is : What’s more valuable to job force…..jack of all trade or expert in a few? Which is better to stay employed and get promoted.
Once again, it will greatly depend upon your career goals. Let’s look at some career goals as an illustration.
- Want to be valued and considered a MVP in my department at my next performance review
- Want to be valued and considered a MVP in my division within 3 years
- Want to eventually become a Director or VP in development and research within 8 years
- Want to own my own consulting business within 10 years.
In all of the above, it’s beneficial to be an expert in your dominant field or role, and very good in adjacent areas and roles. The degree in which you are proficient in each area depends on your current career path.
If your goal is to be considered a valuable contributor to your department, you need to be ready to step into other people’s positions on an as-needed basis. The argument of “that’s not my job” is fine is but it also limits your value to your department. You still want to be an expert in your assigned tasks, but being able to manage other adjacent tasks, functions and areas of your department increases your value. You will not be able to be an expert in all areas, but if you can be an adequate temporary solution in some adjacent roles (jack of some skills AND an expert in one or two) to help the team to conquer the current huddle, your value increases.
As you sale up the career mountain, business networking and collaboration becomes more important.
If you want to be the GoTo Person in your division, you need to be well-connected and knowledgeable across departments. You don’t need to know everything about everything; merely seem that way. This means you know how to gather the data or borrow the expertise from someone else. By creating a entourage and support circle of co-workers, mentors, and other experts, you can provide the needed service to both sides of the equation. You will have become an opportunity agent for both the requester and the supplier.
The higher the stakes, the wider the net of experience.
For instance, if you are interested in receiving an Average Performance Rating, then you only need to do excellent work in your assigned duties (expert in one or two areas). But the higher the stakes and the higher you rise, the wider your experience net needs to be. As you rise on your career ladder, you will be depending more on your business relationships, market trending and forecasting experience, business cycles and even human nature. You will find that the higher the rung, the further away from the technical details you will be traveling. You will be traveling more toward forecasting, predicting and designing long-term strategies.
You will still be knowledgeable in your primary technical skill, but that will no longer by your dominant attribute or value.
Conclusion: If you have your Individual Development Plan (outlined in the IT Professional Development Toolkit program), it will be easy for you to determine which areas to focus on as an expert; which to gain secondary experience and knowledge; and which gaps to fill in with your network of experts, mentors and collaborators.
The IT Professional Development Toolkit is covers a comprehensive set of development tools and techniques in less than 10 minutes per practice. It contains audios, videos, articles, webinars, presentations and practice exercises designed to be less than 5-8 minutes in length. It can be used as a reference platform or a 12 week course program.
The IT Professional Development Toolkit, goes into the who, what, where, when, why and how to accomplish all of the above. The toolkit comes in two forms: DVD and online eLearning program. For more information, click on the below version.
For more information about the toolkit, click on the above buttons or please go to my website at www.lauraleerose.com
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