Making your boss look good can only reflect favorably on you. Both your boss and his or her supervisors will appreciate this.

The best way to make your boss look good is to handle your work efficiently and thoroughly. If your boss is fair, he or she will give you credit for the work, increasing your chances of promotion.

If your boss is not doing his or her share of the work, leaning on you unfairly without giving you the credit, it’s still likely that you’ll be promoted when your boss is promoted. That person knows you’ve been doing more than your share, and he or she won’t be able to take a new position without your help.

Becoming a Mentor to Others

Maybe you’re only 27 years old, or perhaps you’ve only been with your present firm for a year and a half. Yet, with your previous experience and achievements, you may already be in a position to serve as a mentor to junior members of your organization. This can be accomplished on an informal, ad hoc basis, and you can literally choose the amount of energy you’re willing to commit. Helping junior members always looks good to those above you, especially at performance review time.

Stay on top of your job, your department’s goals, and your company’s objectives. This three-way strategy includes reviewing your job description, deciding precisely what your department’s goals are, and determining your company’s objectives:

Your Job Description

First, knowing your job description and honoring it, or amending it if necessary, protect you from any misunderstandings. It will also give you an idea of the part you play in the total picture of the organization, an important factor in your work satisfaction and chance of promotion.

Your job description ideally contains all the important activities of your position, the knowledge you need to have or acquire to perform those activities, and some sense of your overall role. If your job description does not adequately detail the information you need to know and the responsibilities you have, now is the time to change it.

Company Goals

Second, learn and understand the goals of your part of the company. By whatever method your organization is broken into groups — department, division, project team — your group has objectives.

Goals are important to guide actions as well as to mark milestones. Knowing your group’s goals will help you to set priorities for your own work and make wise decisions concerning how jobs can best be done.

What is the Mission?

Finally, be aware of your organization’s mission. Any organization, from the smallest business to the multibillion-dollar corporation, has a mission. If you don’t already know it, find out. Your organization’s brochure, annual report, promotional literature, or employee handbook will have the mission spelled out.

The mission will unify and give meaning to all the division or department goals. Although conflicts among divisions will occur because of the nature of different responsibilities, a solid base can be produced when all employees realize the overall mission of the organization.

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Do you feel some days as if you’re making little or no progress on your chosen goal? If so, take heart: The world is full of people who followed a sequential approach to achieving fabulous goals. In other words, they went from one accomplishment to the next, almost in step by step fashion, and you can do the same.

Words and Deeds

In publishing, here are two individuals who achieved one notable goal, and then built upon that achievement in accomplishing something even loftier.

Michael E. Porter, Ph.D., wrote the acclaimed text Competitive Advantage, detailing how corporations and organizations could identify their strategic assets and use them to establish a market niche. Years later, Porter wrote The Competitive Advantage of Nations, a blueprint for governments to have more viable economies.

The late Stephen Covey, PhD, conducted seminars for corporate leaders and eventually wrote the bestseller, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Covey then established his own publishing house, created and spun off his own literary agency, and developed proprietary products such as calendars, newsletters, software products, and guidebooks.

He wrote several more best-selling books and produced video programs distributed worldwide. His influence continued to the far reaches of the globe, and The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People is now used in classrooms.

Words and Scenes

In the motion picture industry, the process works much the same way. Jodie Foster was first a childhood actor, then an accomplished actor, the winner of two Academy Awards, then a director, and then a director/producer.

Others who established careers as actors first and then became successful directors and/or producers include Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Barbra Streisand, Ron Howard, Danny DeVito, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Natalie Portman, Drew Barrymore, Brad Pitt, and Ben Affleck. Penny Marshall and Rob Reiner, once husband and wife, were successful television sitcom actors who achieved star status as major motion picture directors, much like Ron Howard.

In his twenties, Steven Spielberg directed the film, Sugarland Express, starring Goldie Hawn. Though few people saw the movie, it received critical acclaim. A year later he directed Jaws, and two years later, the start of the Indiana Jones trilogy.

One Step at a Time

The path to fame and fortune among directors is largely made from one film to the next. The takeaway: Everybody starts somewhere

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