7 Signs You Are Stagnating At Work
We all know one of those colleagues — bright and driven, but wasting away in a job they’ve been doing for years. They may be working hard, but they are trapped in old thinking and stuck in a rut, often putting as little thought into their work routine as their daily shampooing routine — lather, rinse, repeat. Some just look stale, while others start to stink. With each passing day, their hard-earned knowledge and skills become more obsolete, and they become less fit to work elsewhere. It is painful to watch.
While it is easy to see in others, how do you know when it is happening to you? How do you know when you are past your sell-by date? It can be easy to miss the signs of stagnation because they aren’t alarm bells that sound when something goes wrong — they are silent signs that appear when most everything is going right. But it is when we are at the top of our game that we get stuck on a plateau.
Here are a few signs that you might be stagnating at work:
- Things are running smoothly — You feel on top of things…finally. Your files are organized (perhaps even with those little labels you can print out and stick on — the ones that make you feel like everything is under control).
- You have the answers — You know your business and have ready answers for known problems. In fact, you’ve got answers ready before people have finished asking their question. You know how meetings are going to end before they start because “I’ve seen this movie before.”
- You are getting positive feedback — You’re good at what you do. You’re a top performer and are surrounded by positive feedback (well, at least if you surround yourself with the right people).
- You’ve become the mentor — People now seek out your guidance. You are in the mode of giving back, “paying it forward” and developing the next generation of leaders.
- You’re busy but bored — You’ve got a lot of responsibility and are moving fast. You’re doing more and more work, but it isn’t necessarily harder work. You’re overworked but underutilized — a deadly duo that leads to exhaustion.
- You’re fixing other people’s problems — You’ve got your stuff together, so you start noticing everyone else’s problems. Your insights on what your colleagues need to be doing differently are becoming regular topics of conversation in your meetings with your boss and other higher-ups.
- You’ve become negative — You find yourself increasingly critical and perhaps a tad grumpy at times. You aren’t crazy bitter, just suffering from a low-grade annoyance (much like a faithful old dog tolerating a new puppy in the house).
The world is changing fast. And if you aren’t learning faster than the world is changing, you are falling behind. In science and technology fields, in which information is doubling every nine months and decaying at 30% a year, 85% of a person’s technical knowledge is likely to be irrelevant in five years’ time. And, we don’t even know which 15% will remain pertinent!
If you’re feeling stuck, try the following to get your groove back:
1. Toss your notes — Throw out your best practices and develop new practices fit for the new realities of work. Try shredding your crib notes, stump speeches and other templates that have you stuck in a rut.
2. Ask more questions — There’s no more powerful shift than moving from a place of knowing to a place of inquiry. Pick a meeting or conversation and try leading it by only asking questions.
3. Take a job you aren’t qualified for — Move out of your comfort zone by taking a job you aren’t fully qualified for. You don’t need to leave your job; just push yourself to the outer limit of what you know how to do. Remember, the best leaders don’t just give people a pat on the back; they also give them a push — or an eviction notice — that it’s time to leave your comfort zone.
4. Staple yourself to a problem — Commit to a challenge outside your current scope and let it drag you into unknown territory where you’ll have to improvise, think and rethink.
5. Borrow a job — Swap jobs with a colleague for a day or two. You’ll either gain new insights or you’ll hate the job so much you’ll reclaim yours with grateful enthusiasm.
If you think you might be at risk of getting stuck, take the Learning Zone quiz to find out if you are in the learning zone or the burnout zone. Or share the quiz with a friend who is feeling stuck.
When we linger too long on a plateau, a little part of us dies inside. But when we step onto a new learning curve, we feel alive again. We may feel the short-lived discomfort of un-learning what has worked for us in the past, but we also feel the exhilaration of learning what we need to know now. Watching this young girl attempt the 40-meter ski jump for the first time captures both the anxiety and the exhilaration of being out of our comfort zone.
If you or your company shows signs of stagnation, it’s time to find the next growth curve. Maybe someone on your team is ready for a challenge two sizes too big. Maybe that someone is you!
If you are stuck climbing your way up a corporation, it might be time to get off the career ladder and get onto a learning curve. Because right now, it’s not what you know that matters most, it’s how fast you can learn.
Liz Wiseman is a researcher, executive advisor, and speaker who teaches leaders around the world. She is the author of the bestselling books Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and Rookie Smarts: How Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and named as one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world.
