Who Should I Be?

The articles I have posted appeared to be a random selection of my life stories.  I hope that each story has helped you with some ideas or another option on how you can deal with your situation.  I know our situations are never identical but as long as the stories help being a catalyst to an action, I am delighted.

You may have noticed that each article has labels.  There is a structure to these labels.  The website arranges the labels in alphabetical order, but upon rearranging them, the labels look like this

• Knowing Yourself
• Aspiration
• Career Planning
• Managing Yourself
• Career Conversations
• Managing Others

When I started working, I had not figured these out.  I now have the hindsight and hopefully others can benefit from it.  Throughout my journey and until now, I have had the blessing and fortune of meeting people whom I could reach out to for help.  To these people I am thankful.  Many of them are written or will be written in my stories.  With this knowledge I have helped my coachees and those who seek my help with this process.

There are two areas that I have not touched on yet.  These are:

• Career Execution
• Constant Review

You may have your own algorithm for a successful career planning and execution.  If you do, congratulation! You are ahead of many that I have spoken to. 

For me, my career journey starts with knowing myself well.  Who am I really?  What am I capable of?  What are my strengths, my weaknesses?  How do I find out?  Knowing myself better will help me articulate my aspiration.  Sometimes a person should have more than one aspiration.  In fact I think everyone should have a plan B.  This will help make the career planning more robust.  Just like a game of chess, you may plan many moves and execute some of them.  The aim is the same – being successful.

Now that you know more about yourself, where you want to go and have made your plans to get there; the next action is to take the first step to begin the journey.  You need to manage yourself so that each step taken is aligned to your competencies and aspirations. Some steps may include gaining additional skills and knowledge. From time to time, during your journey, someone may present you with an opportunity.  How do you evaluate these opportunities?  Will the opportunity move you closer to your aspirations?  Will it help you gain additional competencies?  Opportunities may not always be presented to you.  Sometimes you need to seek them out.  How do you seek them? A good network and great career conversations will help you find out.

There will also be obstacles and derailments in your career paths.  How does you minimize these?  How do you get out of it?  Managing yourself and others well will help.  I think of others as those I come into contact with – my boss, my staff, my peers, my friends, my family members and my network.  The way you interact with them will determine your success in managing yourself and others.

Finally, one needs to get feedback constantly.  You need to know if where you are going have changed and if you have deviated from the planned path.  You must to know if you need additional tools, skills and knowledge to continue.  There are many things you need to know.  To find out, you will need to seek constant feedback and reviews to move forward.

As you read my stories, reflect on the labels (or steps) too.  I hope that both the stories and the steps can help you as you create your own exciting career journey.