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要想更好地发展，实现职业目标，提早思考并做打算总是好的，但是尽管如此，你还是要当心，不要太过急切地为目标职位培养能力，以至于忽略了在现有职位上的业绩。实际上，有时候这种情况之所以会发生，是因为公司想要尽快培养高潜力员工，来填补管理层空缺。在这种情况下，管理层会敦促员工变得更积极主动，更充分地证明自己的领导力，参与工作职责以外不同领域的工作。很多高潜力员工虽然已经摩拳擦掌，跃跃欲试，想要证明自己的能力，但他们的经验和成熟度还不足，不能很好地自我管理自己的发展。如此一来，他们对本职工作的关注就会减少，很多之前表现稳定的员工也会表现失常。

现任职责优先

“在我们着重培养的一些雄心勃勃、潜力巨大的员工身上，这种情况时有发生，”一位人力资源总监说，“通过我们提供的管理发展培训，他们深知提高自己的软技能对职业晋升意义重大。”

“然而，有些人为了展现更大的主动性，培养领导力，太过急切地想要参与工作职责之外的项目之中。为了提升自己，做更多事情，他们没有在工作职责和发展目标之间做好平衡，在主要工作领域的表现就会失去原有的水准。通常都是最有野心、最有希望的员工会在追求更多职责的时候出现这样的情况。”

“我们虽然鼓励员工更加积极主动，承担更多责任，但我们也不希望他们忽视职业晋升最基本的要求，那就是在现有职位上展现你的能力，取得优异成果，并保持稳定的工作水平。在任何职业阶段，这些都应该是你的首要任务，也是获得更好机会的必经之路。”

用出色表现证明自己是一切的基础

尤其是在职业早期担任普通员工时，无论是做会计、程序设计员还是销售，你都要在本职工作中以优异的表现证明自己。要想成为成功的销售经理，你必须首先成为一名优秀的销售专员，要做出色的工程经理，你要先证明自己是一位踏实可靠的工程师。你应该积极主动利用身边的环境和机遇，但与此同时，你也不应该忽略现有职位的主要职责。

我们公司一位潜力巨大的高级顾问就出现了这样的情况，他把太过关注未来，以至于忽略了在现有职位上需要承担的职责和需要做出的成就。他想成为一名顾问经理，所以非常关注公司管理团队面临的更大挑战，主动向不同业务部门提供解决方案。我们虽然很欢迎他献计献策，但他的表现离自己的年度业绩指标相差甚远。几周之后他才意识到自己已经严重偏离了本职工作重点。

后来，他和我分享了他对工作重点的思考。“我当然还是想尽快成为一名顾问经理，我的目标没变，”他说，“我还是会继续寻找机会，根据顾问经理一职的需要从各方面提升自己。但是，如果我不能做一位踏实可靠的顾问，一直稳定地做出优异的成就，那我也就不能获得职业晋升的机会了。”

Try Not To Get Too Far Ahead Of Yourself

While you always want to look and plan one step ahead if you want to better pursue your development and attain your career objectives, be careful that you don’t get too enthusiastic about developing your capabilities for a future role while losing focus on the results you need to deliver within your current job.  Actually, this situation is sometimes created by companies trying to accelerate the development of high potentials to fill their growing needs at management levels.  In such cases, management pushes staff to take greater initiative, demonstrate more leadership, and get involved in areas beyond their job function.  Many high potential staff are already very ambitious and eager to show their capabilities in other ways, but don’t yet possess the experience or maturity to self-manage their development well.  The result can be less attention to their current job responsibilities and a drop in performance among previously reliable staff.

Your Current Job Responsibilities Come First

“This happens occasionally with some of the highly ambitious, high potential staff we’re trying to develop,” says one HR director.  “From the management development training we provide them, they know that improving their soft skills is critical for their career advancement into a bigger role.

“However, in trying to show greater initiative or develop their leadership skills, some become too eager to participate in projects outside their job scope.  In wanting to improve themselves and do more, they don’t balance well their job responsibilities with their development objectives and stop delivering good results in their main job function.  Often, it’s the most ambitious, most promising ones who seek more responsibilities that falter in this way.

“While we encourage employees to take more initiative and responsibilities, we don’t want them losing sight of the most fundamental requirement for advancing their career, which is to show your ability to get good results and perform consistently in your current role.  At any career stage, this should always be your top priority and way to better opportunities.”

Everything Is Based On Demonstrating Your Strong Performance

Especially early in your career as an individual contributor, you want to demonstrate strong performance in your job function, whether as an accountant, programmer, or sales person.  It’s difficult to become a successful sales manager without first becoming a good salesman, or a strong engineering manager without first proving yourself as a solid engineer.  While you want to be proactive and involved in leveraging situations and opportunities around you, you shouldn’t overlook the main responsibilities of your current role.

This happened to one of our high potential senior consultants who began looking too much towards the future while taking his eyes off of his current responsibilities and results he needed to deliver.  In preparing to become a consultant manager, he focused too much on the bigger concerns of our management team and offering solutions to different areas of our business.  While we welcomed his input, he began falling way behind his annual revenue target.  It was several weeks before he realized he’d moved too far away from his job priorities.

Afterwards, he shared his realization about what those priorities were.  “Of course, I still want to become a consultant manager as soon as I can.  That objective hasn’t changed,” he said.  “And I’m still going to seek out opportunities to improve myself in areas needed for that role.  But regardless of my leadership potential, my advancement isn’t going t happen if I can’t reliably deliver results as a solid consultant first.”

（责任编辑：职场达人）