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Career strategy and planning

Big data or big questions?

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Set goals

Big questions are a useful tool to mine insights and utilize the capacities of our minds to analyse big data, solve problems and think better.

Open self-reflective questions or ‘self-coaching’ costs nothing, can be done anywhere and usefully, your mind works on them while you are doing something else.

Here are some big questions for you:

What do I really want?

Who do I want to become?

How do I lose time?

What would make my life/work more fulfilling?

How can I minimise stress?

Where do I waste money?

What does happiness mean to me?

What does success mean to me?

What needs to change?

What is my career strategy?

What am I avoiding that needs resolution?

What fears hold me back?

What goals am I committed to?

What is my role in helping the world?

Self-reflective questions are very powerful, but it is action that creates the change, which is why having a coach is beneficial to achieve more faster; time and space to think, accountability and a supportive yet challenging sounding board.

For more insights and tips, follow us on Twitter: @talentliberator If you are ready for change, get in touch about how our coaching can support you.

Happy 2014 to you!

How career resilient are you?

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Man running on water

How career resilient are you and how important is it?

I went to an interesting seminar last week about career resilience. I came away feeling confident that I am, which is good to know doing the work I do!

So what creates career resilience? Does it depend on having a laid back disposition, high levels of the ‘happy hormone’ serotonin or something else?

The quick answer is resilience is learnt. What creates career resilience is keeping an eye on trends that may/will affect your job/career, being aware of your strengths, skills and character and what you have to offer – the value of your ‘currency’, making useful connections, both insights and people, listening to and taking note of the needs of your customers/target audience and aligning yourself with what is needed/will be needed.

A lot of this is about marketing – where I started my career in the 1980’s. The definition of marketing can be adapted to your career – “anticipating and satisfying customer needs profitably.” A ‘win win’ for employee and employer or customer/client and supplier.

What also increases resilience is having a clear sense of purpose and support to achieve your potential. ‘Super resilience’ is achieved my managing your thoughts, what some call ‘the monkey mind’, hence the growth in mindfulness plus reframing knockbacks into constructive learnings.

Future blogs will focus on each of these factors.

For now, give yourself a quick career resilience audit:

Resilience audit:

Ask yourself these questions:

How well do I know my skills and strengths and where they are useful?
Who champions me in my career?
What is my purpose?
What would increase my sense of resilience in my career?
How do emerging trends affect my career prospects?
What’s my contingency plan?
What are the positive learnings from my knockbacks at work?
If you had a personal Board, who would you appoint?

Tips

Have a career strategy
Define your purpose
Get a coach or mentor to support you
Invest 10% of your salary/revenue in improving your marketability – up-skill/qualification
Spend 1 hour a week keeping up to date with general and specific trends unique to your role
Spend 1 hour a week supporting and developing your network
Develop your self-awareness

For more useful insights, follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/talentliberator