Being a Maven or a Manager? A Catch-22 Situation

About a year ago, I burned out at my high-stress, high-salary job and switched to a low-key public sector position in the same field. I perform well at the new job, but am not sure how to advance my career or grow professionally. Most of my co-workers want to advance into supervisory positions, but I am not interested in that because it would just be a return to the people management, budget woes, and extra hours that I intentionally left behind. On the other hand, it's important to me that I be -- recognized as -- a sophisticated and valuable contributor. Can you recommend any strategies for raising my profile at work without choosing the management track?

I have long objected to the commonly held belief that becoming a manager should be the ultimate objective of a successful career. Managing people is not something that we should assume every ambitious professional will be good at, or even like. The job demands a unique set of interpersonal and operational skills that few people inherently possess and fewer still will ever be able to successfully develop. Not to mention the stress factors that have driven you and many others away from the management track.

What, then, can a non-manager do to achieve recognition as a sophisticated and valuable contributor?

Become a maven. One surefire way to earn the reputation you seek is to make it your business to know as much as possible about your work and the business you are in. Become the go-to person for people at all levels of your organization who have complex or obscure questions. If you don't know the answer, find out. Be helpful to everyone who approaches you with issues, and you will soon attain senior status in the minds of your colleagues and leaders. You may already know a great deal about what you do, but you can always enhance your knowledge by staying current on trade publications and online resources and reading everything that is published internally by your organization. Information that might seem superfluous or trivial now can often be the key to an important solution later on. By seeking a broad view of your job and your organization rather than just focusing on your narrow function, you will be able to discern connections and patterns that others cannot and you will boost your value to the mission.

Fill the leadership vacuum. Your organizational chart is clear about who manages whom. What it does not tell you is who actually steps up day-to-day to take responsibility when leadership is needed. When groups of people in different departments work toward the completion of a project, they might formally reply upon their managers to lead the effort. However, it is often a trusted member of the team who understands the perspectives of the different stakeholders who makes the most valuable contribution toward getting things done. You should look for opportunities to be that person. As well, volunteer to lead committees, task forces, and other ad hoc groups formed by your employer for the completion of finite and short-term projects. There is very little glamour or glory in leading groups of people who are not accountable to you in any meaningful way. You will often get stuck with a disproportionate share of the work and you may be frustrated in your efforts to get timely and accurate responses. If you succeed, however, you will also become known as dedicated, sophisticated, and infinitely valuable.

Build your network. Too often, people focus on networking within their professional community to the exclusion of the people who work with them every day. If you want to raise your profile, start by getting to know your colleagues and leaders and making sure that they know you in return. Ask people out to lunch or coffee. Get them talking about what they are working on, their career path, where they plan to go next. Be a good listener, but also share a bit about yourself, your contributions, and your aspirations. Just as you would with an external contact, stay in touch and share relevant information. If you read something online that reminds you of the last conversation you had, send the URL together with a brief note. I am not describing anything other than good professional networking practices. The twist is to apply these practices to your internal relationships. If you do, you will make great strides toward the recognition that you would like to achieve.

Pursue degrees and certifications. A more labor-intensive, yet very effective, means of enhancing your professional profile is through education and certifications. Depending upon your industry, a few choice letters after your name can often make the difference between your views being heard or disregarded. Evaluate what additional degrees or certifications might be valuable to someone in your role and whether the additional credibility that you might attain is worth the time and expense of getting there.

Exceed expectations. The simplest thing you can do to become recognized as a sophisticated and valuable contributor is to deliver work that exceeds the expectations of your managers. This means doing not only what you are asked to do, but also anticipating and meeting needs. You may be asked, for example, to provide a report of past-due accounts. A competent performer will provide a spreadsheet detailing the names of the accounts, what is owed, and how many days past-due. A superlative performer will think about why the data has been requested and provide everything that his or her manager might need. If the information is necessary to make a decision regarding whether the organization should scale back on doing business within certain industry sectors, you might provide an analysis of the percentage of past-due accounts associated with certain industries. You might extend the analysis back a few years and provide a graphical representation of the data. This is the sort of work product that makes managers swoon and which will surely bring you closer to the recognition you seek.

Ironically, if you do all of the above, you will probably be identified as an ideal candidate for promotion to management.

Lily Garcia has offered employment law and human resources advice to companies of all sizes for more than 10 years. To submit a question, e-mail HRadvice@washingtonpost.com. We reserve the right to edit submitted questions for length and clarity and cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered.