“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
Henry David Thoreau
Tag: MeaningFull Careers
-
Quote to Consider: To What End?
-
Listen In -> The Career Journey #4: Engaging Fully With Your Own Career Journey
No one can make your career journey move forward but you.Yes, others are involved. Yes, circumstances intervene unexpectedly for good and ill.
But we cannot wait for circumstances to change or others to act when it comes to our own next decision.
We need to engage ourselves. Assume ownership of the stewardship of our lives. Get involved. Stay involved. Make our next decision, even if a small one.
Join Claudia and I as we discuss this final—and most rewarding—aspect of The Career Journey.
Listen in.
-
Listen In -> The Career Journey #3: What If You Were the Most Important Clue?
We look for vocational validation from so many sources. Evidence, support, credentials, positions, titles, ranks, and on the list goes.Who or what will tell us what role, position, and/or field we should be investing ourselves in?
But what if the most important clue were you? What if it were your own journey of learning and growing, developing interests, expanding skills, and need for ever increasing challenge that could give you the most meaningful information about the next steps in your career journey?
This week Claudia and I discuss the value of using your own professional development as a crucial, if not central, source of clues for charting your path forward.
Listen in.
-
Listen In -> Planning Yourself Out of Career Suicide #4: Structure
Ah life.Yes, it does come down to making real choices in real time.
In this week’s show, Claudia look at how setting goals can help us structure our choices.
Instead of slowly and painfully suffocating in your current position, try setting one goal for yourself in three simple areas.
- Professional goal. A challenging contribution to the mission of the organization.
- Personal development goal. Tend to your own learning, growing, and maturing as a person.
- Relational goal. Make and deepen connections via networking, mentoring or collaboration opportunities.
Working toward these three goals will give you a meaningful and rewarding reason for staying in your current position.
When it is no longer possible to set a goal in any of these three areas, you then have a basis for making a move to another company or another field.
Listen in.
-
Listen In -> Planning Yourself Out of Career Suicide #3: Criteria
After opening up so many possibilities by exploring clues last week, we now need a way to make choices. We need to go somewhere in particular instead of everywhere in general.What makes work meaningful and rewarding to you?
The answer to that question is different for each of us.
You may be looking for a particular role. You may want to fund a certain lifestyle. You may want to continually expand your responsibilities. You may want to leave work at the office at 5:00 p.m. You may be drawn to a certain industry.
The key is to be able to articulate (to yourself) your criteria for making your next decision.
Join Claudia and I as we discuss the value of knowing your criteria for making career decisions and the risks of not doing so.
Listen in.
-
Listen In -> Planning Yourself Out of Career Suicide #2: Clues
Clues instead of conclusions.When looking for a way out of a room with no light, is it more effective to grope around blindly until we find the exit or to pull out the key-chain flashlight in our pocket?
A key-chain flashlight is not a very significant source of light. But bringing a small amount of light into a situation is actually far more helpful than continuing to grope blindly.
In our second conversation about avoiding career suicide Claudia and I explore how to shed additional light on our job situation by looking for clues. Looking for clues opens up options. Drawing conclusions closes options off.
While we eventually need to make a single choice, thinking that way at the beginning of the process in actually counter-productive. Watch the world open up when you begin by looking for clues.
Listen in.
-
Education for What?
I’ve been thinking about the value of formal education since returning from a college tour with my daughter.Granted there’s an expectation in the culture that necessitates degree work for appropriate professional credentialing. But in addition to that, there is the importance of being able to think clearly, comprehensively and complexly in order to meet the challenges of 21st century planet Earth.
I’m not a big fan of the job-focused approach to education. While being able to secure a job is vital in this money-based world, we need more than the capacity to impress to result from our education.
Try asking yourself, “Whose world is this?”
If your answer is, “Theirs” then your focus becomes figuring out what “they” expect and making sure you have it. Once you learn their rules, your education becomes a means to comply and compete. To get the job and to keep the job.
If your answer is, “Mine” then your focus becomes figuring out what “you” want and making sure you are taking steps to make it happen. You become a participator in making the rules, and your education becomes a means to think and act more creatively, more systematically, more resourcefully. To show up fully and make a difference.
If you have teens like I do, whose world are you preparing them to inhabit?
-
Wrapping up Podcast Series on Vocational Passion
If you missed our podcast series on Vocational Passion, be sure to visit iTunes or Odeo and download all five conversations.
It is surprisingly common to think that finding meaningful work is too much to ask. That we are not worthy of an energizing job where our contribution is welcomed and rewarded.
We have got to change that assumption! It gives our bosses too much power in the employer-employee partnership. We assume that the company belongs to them more than to us. We assume that those with positions at the top of the organizational chart are somehow more entitled to a rich and meaningful career than we are.
Such assumption need to end yesterday. Join me in designing creative alternatives for showing up alive and invested at work. Join the conversation.