6 Steps To Transform Your Career
The coronavirus pandemic has affected people and businesses in different ways. Some can’t make their product fast enough to get out it onto the shelves while others are suffering tremendously from the ramifications of lockdown.
Organisations are having to re-structure and make redundancies in order to survive. This can sometimes end up being a great opportunity for the individuals involved - but clearly adds to the uncertainty of an already uncertain present and future.
On the flip-side, many people have more time and space to reflect on their lives and how they might do things differently moving forward.
So whether career change has been forced upon them, or because the pandemic has allowed them to see the changes they would like to make, we are seeing more and more people wanting to take control and make changes to their ‘post Covid-19 life’.
Understanding the barriers to career transformation
We also must recognise that, pandemic or not, there are many of us who would really love to transform our careers but we don’t for a myriad of reasons: fear of the unknown, fear that it won’t work, fear that we cannot provide financial support to their loved ones, it is just too late to change now… and of course the one that stops us in our tracks every time… I just don’t know where to start.
Ascend has been working with organisations and clients to help them through their career transformation for over 10 years, from complete transformations to making a few tweaks to help you thrive in your new chosen path.
Here we want to share with you some of our thinking in how we approach this with our clients and hope that it helps you to at least take a first step. Some of it may be uncomfortable to begin with because we believe in asking difficult and thought provoking questions to really get you to think about what you want, so we can help you make it a reality.
Here are 6 ways to transform your career
#1 Recognise that you can sabotage yourself by your own mindset
We can get locked in by our own thinking and convince ourselves that certain things are true when, in reality, they are not. People also think that it is better to keep challenges to themselves and therefore must overcome them on their own.
Sharing your concerns, thoughts, challenges allows you to think about them more freely.
By opening up to other people and telling them what you are thinking, is usually enough to distil some of these untruths and open the door to other possibilities.
Tell other people what you are thinking – don’t keep things to yourself – it could open other doors you hadn’t thought of.
#2 Update your thinking on what a career is
Traditionally we have been brought up to believe that we need to get on the career ladder: you pick a chosen path early on in life, work hard for one or a few corporations and, as long as you do a good job, a promotion and pay rise every few years and at the end of it you can retire at a decent age with big fat pension!
In today’s world, the career ladder is less and less a reality and it is more like navigating a map - moving from career ladder to, what is now known as, a career lattice. Rather than a more or less upward movement, it can move in many directions: diagonally, sideways, downwards and upwards.
We often recommend reading The 100 – Year Life by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott. It is an interesting take on life and longevity discussing that people will live and work longer so it is important to do things you really enjoy doing since retirement will take place much later if at all.
They discuss the possibility of having multiple ladders and multiple lattices within your lifetime. It is well worth a read.
#3 Learn from the past
It is crucial to look back at your career as this can teach us many things that we can build on when looking to the future. This is more than a quick glance back, it should be a considered reflection on your career.
While you are looking back think about the following questions:
What were the times when you performed at your best? What do these times have in common?
What were the times when you were held back or derailed? What do these times have in common?
Now ask yourself: “What is it that enables me to be at my best?”
Think about the work you were doing, the environment you were working in, people you were working with and for, and any other factors that influenced how well you performed.
By looking back in the past and spotting trends you can use that to project forward for the future to help you make better choices.
Through our Career Transformation work we have developed simple but effective exercises to help our clients through this crucial thinking.
#4 Understand your present
Just as important as learning from your past is understanding your present. We break this down into four areas:
Do you know what your personal brand is?
How you are perceived by your colleagues in your organisations and with clients/suppliers outside of your organisation? Does it match what you think your personal brand is or what you want it to be? Quite often there is a disparity here and the reason why you might not be getting that next promotion or considered for roles you think you are perfect for.
To learn more about Personal Brand, read our article What is your real brand at work and what does it say about you?
Identify your top 3 strengths:
Do you know what they are? If I asked your colleagues what they were – what would they say? And are you using those strengths in your current role? Are they being allowed to flourish in your current environment? If not, ask yourself why not?
It has been proven that people perform better when they are using their strengths.
What are your passions?
What interests you? What gets you out of the bed in the morning? Is that aligned to what you are doing? Have you built your career around what you love doing? That will naturally come through and reflect and enhance your performance.
What are your values?
These are the guiding principles of how you live your life. Are you living your values in your current role?
#5 Create the future you really want
When working with our clients and the future that they see for themselves, we do not focus on the next rung on the ladder or the next year, as this only allows them to think incrementally about their future.
By asking people to think about themselves at a point further in the future, they think in a more transformational way, which is absolutely necessary in order to make the shifts and leaps required to achieve it.
We help people think how they can bridge from where they are now to where they want to be.
#6 Leverage your network
This is a key exercise in career transformation. Some people feel shy or reticent about approaching people in their life for help but really it is one of the most important aspects of transforming your career. And you would be surprised at how happy people are to help when asked.
Think about the people who might be important to you for getting the career you want. There will be different relationships within this – mentor, organisations that you already know that might help you with connections (and some that you haven’t even met yet), friends, colleagues, competitors.
To learn more about building powerful relationships, read our article Gaining competitive advantage through the power of relationships.
When working with clients, we spend a lot of time identifying their networks and strategies to maximise them with specific exercises to help focus them on their goals.
An investment in your future career
As you can see there is a lot to think about and explore when thinking about transforming your career but it is worth it if the end result is a career (or careers!) in which you thrive and really truly enjoy.
No one else can do this for you – they can help – but ultimately it is up to you.
Guiding you through your career transformation
Ascend has developed a four-stage process to guide you through your own career transformation process. We use a variety of thinking tools, practical exercises and insight to help you generate and evaluate opportunities to make the best of the next phase in your career.
To read more about our approach click here. We also work with business owners and HR Directors to provide bespoke and highly focused outplacement support.
If you would like to speak to us about how we can help you, please CONTACT US.