Is Your Job Running out of Gas?

Or consider this scenario: "You're asked to be on a cross-functional team. Again, the benefits are clear: You'd learn about another department, and you could represent your own department. But the boss says no: 'We can't spare you. We don't have the time.' "

In cases like these, says Lassiter, the boss may feel threatened, or may be afraid of losing you if you develop too many skills. Or perhaps the boss just doesn't know how to develop people.

There are ways to get around this problem - short of quitting. "It's your job to grow you," she says. "Look for ways to handle your career development on your own. Take courses on your own time, offer yourself as a consultant to other companies, join a professional association - do anything you can to keep growing." But sooner or later, if your boss continues to limit you, you're going to feel the effects on the job. So this is an indicator well worth heeding.

Gas-tank reading: 1/3 down

You're stuck on lower-profile projects.

At some time or another, almost everyone works on a project that his or her company clearly doesn't value very highly. Often the assignment simply comes with the territory: Somebody needs to do it, and your turn has come up. But what happens when one low-profile assignment is followed by another? "If you're going from project to project, and none of these projects is important to your company, then it's time to check your gas gauge," says Lassiter.

The main problem, Lassiter insists, is not what the company is doing to you - it's what you're doing to your own career. That you're stuck in a Groundhog Day-like repetition of the same dead-end project should tell you something about how you're approaching your job. "You're allowing yourself to drift," Lassiter says. And that's a sign that you're less than fully committed to either your job or your workplace.

Settling for low-profile jobs is like putting your career on cruise control - or worse, into neutral. It suggests that you've given up on where you are now and that you aren't willing to face that fact. Of course, Lassiter points out, it may not be too late to turn things around. "Position yourself now for what you want to do next," she counsels. "Control your own destiny to the extent that you can. It may not be fair, but the best jobs don't always go to the most competent people. They go to the most visible people, the people who go after what they want."

Gas-tank reading: 1/2 down

You've been pigeonholed.

The problem is common enough: Within your company, you become identified with the position that you first held or with a project that you tackled early in your career - and no matter what skills you add, no matter what promotions you earn, those early associations continue to hold you back. You're like an actor who's been typecast, and if you don't find a way out of that pigeonhole, you may find your career stagnating.

"I see this phenomenon a lot," Lassiter says. "A woman came to see me who had originally been hired in a bank as an administrative assistant. That was three jobs ago. Now she's managing a major database initiative for the bank, but to her boss, she's still an administrative assistant. She's not getting the resources that she needs to run the project successfully. Just as important, she's not being offered the supervisory experience that she'll need for future assignments."

To get around the pigeonhole problem, develop your skills as a negotiator. Learn how to ask for what you want without putting other people - in particular, your boss - in a corner. "Don't confront your boss with your concern that you've been pigeonholed," Lassiter advises. Instead, propose a demonstration project, a special task or initiative that will take, say, 10% of your time and that you can use to change the way the boss looks at you. "You're saying, 'Give me a test,' " Lassiter explains. " 'I can do the rest of my job and still have time to tackle this project. Let's see how it goes.' If it works, the company benefits, and so do you. And if the boss won't even let you try, your job is even more out of gas than you thought."

Gas-tank reading: 2/3 down

Your reputation is working against you.

Reputation is a taboo subject that most people, and most companies, shy away from. But your reputation can kill you, or it can vault you into new levels of opportunity - often without your even knowing why. How well you manage your reputation can determine how much gas remains in your tank.

"A reputation is created by an action or a perception," notes Lassiter. "Then it gets spread throughout an organization by word of mouth. Once it gets established within a company, your reputation can be hard to change - even if it's based on a misperception or a miscommunication."