So you want to advance at your company. You are ready to take on more job responsibilities. More job duties could be the way to learn and grow, as well as move up the ladder. How do you ask for more job responsibilities? Don’t become overloaded and take on new work that builds up you and your career.
Follow these tips to go through the process successfully.
Align new job responsibilities with the needs of your org and yourself
Look at what both your organization and you need yourself. Understanding those needs and identifying something that checks all the boxes will go a long ways. Things like the below will help:
- Does your boss have a lot of pressure and need to delegate
- Are you able to take on more work successfully
- Is your boss able to take the time and discuss
- Are there things your boss needs to delegate
- Should you take on more work or up the quality of current work
- Identify how new job duties can benefit the organization
Learn some new skills to apply to the job responsibilities you desire
Go into this process having an understanding of your current skills. If there are things you can learn or improve on and those things align with needs of the organization, those are top candidates to take on. Learn those and add real value to your org.
When you talk to your boss, you need to be able to backup that you can do the job responsibilities you are asking for.
Plan out how you will sell the job duties to your boss
Even if you have figured out job responsibilities you want. After you have gone thru items like the above. Still have a good plan on how to sell your idea of job duties to your boss. Don’t run into this and wing it.
Ensure you sell it on how you benefit and bring value to the organization. As well as how you help your boss and make them look good. Don’t make it about you and how it benefits you.
Leave it open for your boss
After you have a plan and have brought your pitch to your boss, then leave it open. Don’t make it an ultimatum or a must have. It needs to be more of an offer, that the boss can take you up on at their discretion. Oh, and make sure you make it clear how this helps your boss out. That will go a long ways.
Additional reading to help with upping your job duties
When looking to add to your job duties, here are some additional posts of value. Tips to build up a high performing team, and learning more about what Agile software development is. High performing teams are extremely valuable to organizations. Becoming a member of one of those teams will set you apart and help you grow at your organization.
Additionally, Agile can be used for so much more than software development. It is a set of ideas that helps teams communicate and collaborate. Which only improves what that team can do. So learning Agile and how to use it to best effect can make you very valuable to your organization.
Also some great reading from Forbes, on how to go about asking for more job responsibilities. Check out the article on the right way to ask your boss for more responsibility.