Most people give you advice on what to do. It’s refreshing when someone takes the opposite tact.

Carter Cast, in The Right and Wrong Stuff: How Brilliant Careers are Made and Unmade, shares how constructive negative feedback from his boss forced him to rethink how he was showing up at work, and allowed him to start over within the same Fortune 500 firm, and from there launch a successful career with other companies.

What did he do to climb back from the edge?  I share his list of eight career action steps:

• Develop goals and objective performance metrics
• Recognize your blind spots and solve for them beforehand
• Identify skills gaps and correct for them
• Seek mentors to guide you and share unspoken rules
• Create a learning circle with others who can help identify trends
• Keep a journal so you can codify your learning journey
• Increase visibility among higher-up
• Develop a valuable interest and become an expert.

Today, it’s a workers’ job market. With 48 million people joining the mass resignation, it may not be that hard to get a job.  But launching a career is another story. You need to do all the things that will make you more valuable to higher-ups in your company. And when you look for advancement elsewhere, this sage-advice will boost your success.