Who is Responsible for your Professional Growth?

Taking full ownership of your career development is the proactive answer to the subject matter. I'd bet that most readers would have the same answer. It's ironic, considering that the great multitude don't seem to behave in that proactive manner. It is ironic too that many of us dream of career success and yet we wait for breaks and depend on others who have more power to prepare us and then offer us the opportunity. It is of no wonder why we are often frustrated, disappointed, feeling used,  bitter and victimized by our own victim mentality.

Dependency and a bad sense of entitlement are the enemies of career success.  People who wait for their company to send them to training are left behind by those who take the matter of professional development  into their own hands. People who think that tenure and long hours of work alone will get them the coveted promotion or salary increase will be outran by those who deliver better results at shorter amount of time. Those who show leadership despite the absence of a title will soon have that title while those who gripe more and work less will find themselves griping some more and working much lesser.
Sometime ago when I was younger, I heard somebody wise said that the only person who can promote you is yourself. Your bosses just act on the imminence of your promotion. That's because if they fail to act on it, another boss (from another company) will.

Here's my call to action. Take  charge of your career success by drawing a road map to it, identifying all the key actions and working hard to learn and then demonstrate those necessary skills. If your company is unwilling to invest on your professional development or is doing a lousy job at it, do it yourself.  The return on your investment of time, money and effort will be exponential.