Expert shares 5 good habits for career growth

Kicking a bad habit is hard, but sometimes, building good habits can be even harder. 

Forty-six percent of employees attribute their career success to having the right habits, according to a recent report from professional training and coaching platform Crucial Learning. This compares to just 22% of employees that credited the decisions they made and the 24% who chalked it up to natural talent, meaning that building a healthy work routine is twice as critical for employees looking to advance. 

“If you look at your outcomes and results at work — good or bad — as well as your career and your relationships, so much of all of it is determined not by the things you do periodically but by the things you do habitually,” says Justin Hale, a principal consultant in learning design and research at Crucial Learning. “So addressing those habitual behaviors is really the leverage point to trying to change your results long term.”  

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Unfortunately, many employees build bad habits without knowing they’re doing it. For example, getting defensive in the face of criticism instead of taking the time to reflect on what was said is a common workplace bad practice, according to Hale. Processing feedback constructively is crucial for career development, and without breaking that habit, finding success is made harder. Another example is as simple as looking at emails first thing in the morning. It forces employees to deal with the loudest problems first, rather than the most important, which sets them back in the long-run. 

Thankfully, there are many options for employees looking to put themselves back on the right path — it’ll just take some time to break old cycles and start new ones. One strategy is to simply replace certain habits with similar new ones so as not to start from scratch, which is often where people fail to make changes. This means that if an employee is used to looking at emails first thing in the morning, they can replace that by checking their Slack or Teams chats instead. 

Hale also encourages the use of a habit loop to make sure new behaviors stick. This is when an employee rewards themselves with something that makes them feel good every time they choose a good habit rather than the bad one they previously had. 

“When employees are thinking about the right habit for them, they shouldn’t be copying other people’s because they won’t find the same impact and it will lead them to failure,” he says. “Each person has to find the keystone habits for them that will create that domino effect for them.” 

And while there is no one-size-fits-all solution, Hale shared a few tips on where to start.