|
Re-engaging with your work.
One of my clients (I’ll call him Steve for anonymity purposes*) came to see me recently feeling quite disillusioned about his career. He was in the IT industry, had steadily worked his way up the corporate ladder over the past 4 years, and now in a prominent role had generated some very impressive achievements over the past 18 months. However, even with all of his successes he had been experiencing significant dissatisfaction with his career [‘a feeling of emptiness’ as he described it] which had increasingly become worse, to the point where he was ready to hand in his resignation.
Not wanting to lose a valuable resource the company had arranged for Steve to undertake our Career Directions program to see whether there was another position within the company that could better align with Steve’s interests and values so he could reengage and reconnect with the work he was doing.
Following completion of the assessments and self-evaluation tools, Steve was able to gain a much clearer understanding of personality type, his work interests, career values, strengths and talents and with this new-found clarity could see why he had been steadily getting more dissatisfied with his role.
Steve’s preference was to be able to develop supportive and collaborative working relationships with his colleagues in order to get the most out of teams. He wanted the opportunity to create and inspire consensus in a group that ensured projects were being delivered on time and within budget. So he could see why he was feeling dissatisfied having to work with IT systems/data on his own for pretty much the entire day - not very inspiring at all when looking at his preferences, values and strengths.
If you are experiencing feelings of dissatisfaction within your career, one of the first steps that I recommend for you would be to gain some self-awareness around your values, interests and strengths. What is happening within your workplace or within your career that is not aligned with your values or your interests? Does you work allow you to harness your strengths and talents or is your job mundane and boring? Is the work environment conducive to your personality thus allowing you to perform at your best, or does it seem to drain your energy?
A great exercise for you to try is journalling.
|
Journalling exercise – discovering your values:
Step 1: Consider a time in your professional life when everything was going well for you … a time in your life when you were on top of the world. Write in detail about this experience.
What was important to you in the above example? Use a list of 10 words to describe what you most valued.
Step 2: Consider a time in your professional life when things were not going well for you … it seemed as if the world was against you and nothing was going your way. Write in detail about this experience.
What was missing? Use a list of 10 words to describe what you most value that was missing in this example. Now, look at the words you used to answer the questions above and begin to choose 10 words that you feel most represent your core values. Rank the words from 1-10 with 1 being the word that you most value. In the diagram below, place your number 1 value in the top slot of the diagram and place values 2, 3, 4, and 5 in the second row of the diagram. |
Two additional resources that you may consider to enable you to enhance your self-awareness and understanding include our Career Directions program or our Purposeful Careers Journal. Both programs have powerful tools that will allow you to get clear on your career values, interests and strengths so that you can begin to create your Career Blueprint and career action plan.
Alternatively if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me at Annemarie@annemariecross.com
Just to give you an update on Steve - after recognising his desire to become more involved within a team leadership/mentoring function, the company (not wanting to lose a valuable employee) supported him in undergoing some professional development in leadership and project management. Following completion of the course he moved to a team leadership/project management role which is far more satisfying for Steve.
Steve has benefited from undergoing their self-exploration and ongoing development, as he is now working in a role that is more aligned with his interests, values and strengths and the company has also benefited by not having lost a valuable staff member, but rather repositioned him to another area of their organisation in which he excels. A real win-win!
Till next time, have a great fortnight everyone!
*This article is being published with client’s approval.
To your success!
Annemarie
|
A personal note from Annemarie...
Not
subscribed yet?
