Young professionals often view their career development too narrowly. We tend to spend a considerable amount of time creating plans that focus on improving our technical skills early on in our careers while neglecting the more strategic interpersonal skills that make big career moves possible. Why?

Many of us tie the idea of career development to promotions because moving up on the career ladder is a tangible way to measure our success. To achieve a promotion, we may ask ourselves:

• What goals do I need to achieve to show that I have made enough impact?
• What skills do I need to demonstrate to show that I’m ready for the next step?
• Which projects do I need to participate in to gain enough experience to take on more responsibility?

Our professional development plans emerge from our answers. These plans are rooted in clear, concrete, and tactical goals with well-defined outcomes that can be achieved within a short period of time. Often, our goals require mastering technical skills that are needed to perform our job duties effectively, like expanding our knowledge of new tools or becoming proficient in new programs.

We see these development plans as recipes for success, and for a short period of time, they are. While technical skills may help us achieve our first promotions, they won’t help us as much three or four years down the line. As we advance to more senior roles, a greater emphasis and value is placed on interpersonal skills — skills that shape how we work on our own and with others. And those skills take much more time to develop. The earlier you begin to hone them, the better.