Post by Melissa Milloway

There's no easy button to opportunities. I learned this way later in my career than I'd like to admit. When I first wanted to become a people manager I couldn't figure out why it wasn't just happening. I was active in our learning community, I was supporting teammates, I cared about the work. But I was never asking the right questions about what it would take to get there. To get the role I needed to: ➡️ Show that my moving into it wouldn't be a loss for the team, it would make us better. ➡️ Demonstrate potential and get org support behind me. ➡️ Prove I was already operating at the next level. ➡️ Build supporters for my promotion case and tie it to a business need. And if still it's not happening? There are a thousand other ways to get there. Want to be a people leader? For instance: ➡️ Starting your own consultancy with direct reports. ➡️ Launching a non-profit where you're building and leading a team. The path your company offers is one option, not the only one. With speaking, I spent years getting declined for conferences. Here's what it took: ➡️ Taking every piece of feedback and going back and making improvements. ➡️ Building my brand and growing my network over time. ➡️ Funding it myself, because in 15 years maybe 3 conferences or travel have ever been covered. ➡️ Finding ways to make extra money so I could keep attending conferences. Same with my first Etsy shop. It took: ➡️ Six-plus months before I saw any sales. ➡️ Endless research and price adjustments to figure out what worked. ➡️ Long nights to keep it going until it grew to 30K a year. None of these things fell into my lap. I had to figure out exactly what each one needed, then go do that, step by step. Before I figured this out, I was frustrated. I felt like I had the experience, I was putting in the work, and I still wasn't getting the opportunities. What I didn't see at the time was that I was waiting for someone to notice instead of going and making it happen myself. Nobody was coming to give it to me. Once I accepted that, everything changed because I stopped being frustrated at the situation and started asking what I could do about it. If you want it enough, you'll find a way to get there. But you have to know what "there" requires first. What's an opportunity you had to work a lot harder for than you expected? #eLearning #InstructionalDesign #LearningandDevelopment