The Four Key Elements to Think About As You Manage Your Career
Everyone will give you career advice, you don’t even have to ask. Every student has heard of several different ways to go about picking, developing and successfully managing a career by the time graduation day arrives. Mid-career people can add in all the advice they received during yearly performance review and development meetings.
So with all this advice coming everyone’s way, why isn’t everyone happy and successful at work?
It’s not so much that some advice is plain wrong. It’s more that most of the advice does not reveal the complete career management process in addition to not being tailored to you and your situation. So it ends up being more like a series of one-size-fits-all tips than the custom designed, holistic, career long process it really should be.
If you are confused, lost or stuck in your career then you already know the incorrect or incomplete ways to think about your career. This blog will explain how to put you at the center of the whole career development process and help you figure out the missing pieces that have been holding you back. You can start right now.
“You should enjoy being productive in all aspects of your life, and since work is a big piece of life both in time spent and in how it directly affects all your other relationships, you should like your work. “
The Basic Framework
There are 4 elements to good career planning and management. These elements have sub-elements so I’m not implying the process is super easy or quick to work through. But by now you know no career advice that works is easy or quick.
The 4 elements are:
- Aspire to be or do something
- Play to your current strengths while developing the new ones you need
- Understand what motivates you
- Work with people you respect in places that reflect your values
This blog focuses on how to use these elements to pick a career that will deliver a feeling of success and satisfaction. It will also focus on how to put your own career plan together so you can manage it well.
Managing a career plan is an important aspect of success and it needs to be learned. These elements will help you make decisions about what’s best for you career-wise as threats or opportunities pop appear.
This blog exists because I have seen so many people struggle finding the right answers for themselves. From new grads to seasoned pros, lots of people struggle to come up with a satisfying career to pursue. Some try several times over, switching again and again, hoping they will fall into the right career. But without knowing the elements of a good career they are just guessing. I have worked with graduates of prestigious universities who are unhappy with their jobs 2 or 3 years after graduating and feel lost. I have also worked with very experienced lawyers and doctors who felt really unhappy and stuck in a career that was never for them. It’s ashame because all of that unhappiness is avoidable.
On the other hand, in this blog there won’t be a focus on the mechanics of finding and landing a job. Lots of other career blogs and coaches feature that kind of career advice and they do it well. This site will help those who can’t quite figure out what to do for meaningful work as well as those who don’t know how to put a career plan together that will lead to their idea of success.
So, if you feel you don’t have a career direction or that there must be something better you could be doing for the work part of your life, then you are the intended audience of this blog. Read on!
The Core Beliefs That Underpin This Framework
These are the basic beliefs that my coaching is built on.
I believe you are 100% responsible for managing your own career satisfaction and success. Not your manager, not your company, not anyone else but you.
I believe that you should like you work. I also believe that some of the old Greeks had it right. The purpose of life is to be happy. The “pursuit of happiness” is even written into our Declaration of Independence. You should enjoy being productive in all aspects of your life, and since work is a big piece of life both in time spent and in how it directly affects all your other relationships, you should like your work.
I believe people like to succeed at what they are doing especially when it has a bearing on how they are able to take care of their family and others they care about. Some go further. They want many people to benefit from what they do. When all is said and done it gives them a sense that they counted somehow to others. They hope the people who benefit from their actions, services or products will acknowledge them in the moment and maybe remember them when they are gone. Some hope to be remembered for that, to leave a legacy.
I subscribe to the philosophy that being happy in your career means producing some measure of achievement in what you like doing and having that success make a difference to you, your family, your associates and others who you affect.
Sometimes when clients think about what this 35,000 foot high philosophy means to them it helps them get unstuck. Sometimes they have to dive down to a lower altitude to to figure certain pieces of it out. If you can roughly incorporate this philosophy into your life, then its just a matter of reverse engineering a plan to take control and try and make it happen.
So, even if you never read past this first page at least consider shaping your career with these 4 elements;
- Aspire to something – You get to pick your legacy
- Understanding what motivates you – Why you want to be this
- Getting good at the hard and soft skills needed – What and How you will do it
- Doing it with people you respect – Where is the best setting to do it in.
At least you will be starting to think strategically about your career.
If you want some help getting traction towards a fulfilling and successful career, read on. I hope the ideas on this site will get you to think, and to act, to control your success. Then, pass your learnings on to any students, or unhappy pros, you may know!