This section looks at the options you have when you know that progressing your career means leaving for pastures new. Finding your dream work starts with knowing what you really love to do in a work context. The following activity helps you to identify what you relish doing at work.
Find a quiet spot and sit comfortably, taking a few moments to breathe deeply and relax. Close your eyes and ask yourself the following question:
If a miracle happened and when I open my eyes I have the perfect work for me, what would that look like? What would I do for the next 24 hours?
Think about exactly what would happen, planning out each hour of the day exactly to your taste and preferences. You can include scenarios that may seem impossible and beyond your current grasp. The end result of your visualisation is not to create an accurate blueprint, but to give you clues to the key elements of your perfect work day.
What has your miracle created for you? Is it an extension of your current work, maybe just a few steps away from where you already are? Or is your dream work something so wildly different from your current job that you can’t see how you can ever make it happen? You already have all the resources you need to get your dream job, no matter how many challenges stand in your way. Of course, the further away your dream job is from your current skill set and reach, the stronger your passion must be for pursuing it so that you can maintain the momentum when the going gets tough.
For the last 30 years, Richard Nelson Bolles has published an annually updated manual for job hunters and career changers called What Colour is Your Parachute? The manual contains some great exercises to identify specific skills and give you ideas on how and where you might apply them (although the manual is more specific to the United States job market). Take a look at the companion Web site www.jobhuntersbible.com which has additional guidance on how to search the Internet for job-hunting resources.
What did you discover about your dream job from the activity in the preceding section? To what extent is that role in your reach right now? Your strategy for exploring the job market differs depending on how many steps you need to take to get to your ultimate destination. Your goal may be:
Wanting change for its own sake. You probably like elements of your current job a lot, as well as being frustrated over others. Essentially though, your main motivation for moving is to re-enthuse yourself in a fresh environment. Positive change for its own sake is really your key driver. You can make this change in your work fairly easily and quickly because you don’t need to change many factors to re-enthuse yourself. Start by looking around at other departments within your company to get a fresh perspective. A secondment (temporarily transferring to another position) may be just the trick to satisfy your need for a change or springboard you to a new role.
Increasing your challenge. You want to get to the next level, or even the one beyond that. Promotion and a rise in salary may be key motivators for you. You’re ready to compete in the job market, demonstrate that you can stretch yourself, and prove you’re worth the increased financial investment for a new employer. You need to prepare for the healthy competition you may face – think about your CV, your interview technique, and the research into the market you need to do. When you’ve done this groundwork, change can happen quickly.
Expanding your horizons. You have your sights set on a long-term goal of broadening your skills base. Maybe you see the next few years as a platform for ultimately setting up your own business, so your next move is about gaining lots of broad experience as preparation. You may need to move a little sideways to get the long-term benefit of a different skill set. This career goal may take longer to achieve because you want to change a number of factors and need to demonstrate you can adapt to a whole new work arena.
When looking for a new job, you can go it alone by sending out speculative CVs to job adverts, posting responses on Internet job boards, or working your networks (the following section is about using your current network of people to your advantage). You can also use recruitment consultancies. You may want the strength of an expert behind you who can give you support, advice, and can market you with skill.
A high proportion of career moves, especially at a senior level, are word of mouth introductions (the ‘hidden’ job market). But you don’t have to be a serial networker to take advantage of this route. When you’re searching for your dream job, don’t hold back from telling the people around you your wish list for your next move, and ask them to consider people they know who may help you. Your acquaintances may not know a potential employer, but they may know someone in the right industry who can offer you helpful information to help you prepare. Or someone in your network may be able to practice interview techniques with you or review your CV. Ask yourself:
What do I need to close the gap between where I am now and where I want to be? Who can help me do that?
Even the most high-minded and self-aware person needs the right kind of feedback and recognition in order to feel that their work is worthwhile. But giving and receiving feedback can be tricky. Sometimes you may fear to confront a problem, or feel embarrassment at the idea of offering or receiving gushing praise. Many problems at work are caused by people hoping that the problem disappears, or that they don’t need to say ‘well done’ because you’ve obviously done a good job. However, studies show that even negative feedback, poorly delivered, is preferable to no feedback at all.
Do you look forward to getting feedback in appraisals and one-to-ones? Or do you simply find them pointless and irrelevant? Appraisals can sometimes feel too focused on looking at how you measure up to a common standard – and you are, of course, an uncommon, unique individual. While the company perspective is essential, both parties benefit when the review is really meaningful for the person being reviewed. Try to see your formal review as a free, and very powerful, coaching session and help your appraiser to tailor the session to your needs – you get a lot more out of your review and also project a proactive, professional image.
Ask yourself the following questions:
What opportunities do I have to get formal feedback at work? How can I encourage more constructive feedback opportunities?
What benefits do I currently get from formal feedback at work?
On a scale of 1–10, how much do I enjoy this kind of feedback and feel motivated by it?
How can I get increased benefits and feel even more motivated by formal reviews?
If you are nervous or apprehensive, explain so in good time so that your appraiser can come up with ways of reassuring you. This might be as simple as finding a less formal room to conduct the meeting in – facing your appraiser across a cold, forbidding boardroom table is off putting for many people.
Be clear about the focus for the feedback session well in advance and prepare any relevant documentation. If you have facts at your fingertips, you waste less time and present a good impression.
Ask for specific examples of behaviour (good and bad) and an explanation of exactly why the behaviour did/didn’t match up to expectations. Ask for suggestions for maintaining/improving your performance in the future.
If you’re self-employed, you can still benefit from setting up a feedback process through self-coaching, and listening to your customers and suppliers. Here are some annual review questions you can ask yourself:
What were my successes over the last year? What has inspired me most?
What have been my main challenges and how have I overcome them? What have been my biggest obstacles and what am I learning from these?
What do my customers think about me, my business, and my products/services? (Ask them!)
How do my suppliers and partners feel about our working relationship? (Ask them!)
What skills have I developed and what have I learnt about myself?
What new personal goals can I set for the coming year?
What support do I need?
How can I measure my success?
What is your personal wish list for an effective feedback session? What action can you now take?
Getting recognition at work is all about helping others to see what your unique contribution is. You may feel that selling yourself and your skills is egotistical, especially if you tend to be naturally modest about your achievements. Perhaps you tend to hide your ‘light’ and find that over time you begin to feel a little resentful that people don’t always notice or appreciate your good work. Or you may take the opposite view and grab the limelight as often as you can, only to find that those around you push you back down into place. Getting the balance right is tricky. You may feel that you have to adopt a different work persona and play office politics in order to be successful, but the truth is that most people hate spin, and the last place they want to have to deal with it is at work.
In what ways do you put up a façade at work? Do you sometimes present a show of blustery confidence when you’re really quaking in your boots? At times this is helpful, but at other times it may prevent you from getting the support you need. If you manage staff, do you think you always need to know the answer to every problem? What impact does this have for you and the team, on those occasions when you don’t know the best solution? How can you present an authentic you at work and maintain the respect of others?
Think of yourself as a business. What are your unique selling points? Yes, you have skills, but how do you package and present these skills to the world in a way that is unique to you? Getting used to thinking about how you project your personal brand can help you to develop versatility. After all, you are uniquely your brand and you can also change that brand as you wish, according to the ‘market’ you’re in. So you may choose to display your more extrovert image in a meeting or you may let people see your reflective, thoughtful side, depending upon your audience and what’s required.
What are the trends you see developing in your work choices? You may feel you have to run to keep up with the pace of change, but if you regularly coach yourself through your work choices you can set your own pace, and establish your own standards of excellence.
Generally, you feel a sense of making progress when you’re living your values at work and being your authentic self. And while all jobs have an element of routine in them, you usually feel more inspired if you’re able to find new things to learn about yourself and your skills through work.
What were my ‘wins’ today? This could be successfully negotiating with a supplier, or achieving a deadline.
What have I learnt today? Maybe you added to your skills, picked up some new knowledge, or discovered a way not to do something!
What can I change as a result of today? Perhaps you want to revisit your time management strategy as result of experiencing a bit too much stress meeting that deadline, or you decide that you’re going to step into future negotiations more readily to take your confidence to another level.
Write down your answers so that you can reflect back on them and witness the cumulative power of these small daily successes, learning points, and significant steps that you’ve integrated into your working life.
When you think about the work you plan for the future, how prepared are you for it? Do you have a dream to be your own boss, or to create a working life that is independent of your source of wealth – by investing in property for example – so that you have more freedom to choose your work on its own merits? You can think about your future work in the context of a SWOT analysis – considering your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – as follows:
What are my strengths at work?
What weaknesses am I aware of and how am I working on them?
What opportunities do I have at work that match my whole-life goals?
What threats at work may hold me back from meeting my whole life goals?
Coach yourself for your future work by working through the following coaching questions:
Powerful opening question: What attitudes do I want to develop about work to fulfil my potential throughout my career?
Personal style: What kind of work am I naturally drawn to? What do I thrive on? What demotivates me? What kind of environments suit me best? Where do I feel most at home when I am working?
Beliefs: What negative beliefs do I have about work that prevent me from preparing for future challenges?
Motivation: What image of myself at work is most appealing as my future vision? What would I reach for if I knew that I couldn’t fail?
What’s working: What am I doing now to prepare myself for my future working life? How can I develop these behaviours and habits? What’s getting in the way of fulfilling my potential? What trends do I see developing now that either propel me forward or hold me back?
Exploring options: What options do I have to expand my working range? What is the easiest route? What is the most challenging route? What more information do I need before I decided on my options?
Taking action: What’s my first step? How much time can I allocate to planning my approach? How do I know when I am making progress? What can I do to celebrate?
