Work experiences you need

Developing and growing your career requires experience. It is through our successes and failures that we learn the most.

We tend to think about work experience as one-dimensional, in other words, that it is about experience in general. There are, however, different experience sets that we need to go through in order to develop our career. This depends first and foremost on our preferred career direction. The aim is to gather experiences that lead us toward our future direction.

Lets take an example. Ellen Goldman interviewed 36 CEO's to identify different types of work experiences that were important to develop the ability to think strategically. She identified 9 types, including for example:

• General work experience: a wide ranging variety of experiences that are significant in scope and are autonomous.
  
• Being mentored: particularly early on in one‘s career with have frequent contact and immediate feedback on performance.
  
• Being challenged one-on-one by a key colleague about one‘s thinking.
  
• Dealing with the threat of organisational survival by an external entity: for example a takeover threat or the loss of a key customer.

Think outside the box when it comes to what sets of experiences you may need.
Then, write down one action you will take to get one of these experiences in the next 14 days. Experiences won't happen unless you start somewhere!

Further reading: Goldman, Ellen F. (2008). The power of work experience: Characteristics critical to developing expertise in strategic thinking. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 19 (3): 217-239.

How God will help your Career Decisions

The last four years has seen a blossoming of research on the role of spirituality and religion on individual's careers. The research does not differentiate between belief systems but rather focusses on whether people have a spiritual or religious framework.

There is a difference between spirituality and religion, but that's another blog post (or two) for the future.

So how will God help you?

Ryan Duffy and David Blustein conducted a study on the relationship between religiousness, spirituality, and career decision self-efficacy. They found that spiritual/religious frameworks play a significant role in an individual's confidence about making career decisions. Here's an extract from their findings:

"While the exact link between these variables and confidence in making career decisions is not clear, we propose that the stability and support granted by a strong base in religion and spirituality helps an individual have confidence about a host of decisions, including those concerning one
s career."

There's no such thing as thinking too big

"I think I'm thinking too big" said David.

This was his response to writing down his Preferred Career Directions for the future. We were at a career management and strategy workshop for postgraduate students of The University of Queensland Business, Economics and Law faculty which I was facilitating.

"First there's no such thing" I replied. "Tell me about your possible directions".

"First, I want to be a successful economist". A worthwhile goal, I thought, to excel in his chosen profession.

"Second, I want to be an expert in developmental economics". A specilisation in developing economies, fair enough.

"Finally, I want to turnaround a nation".

Wow.

"David", I asked, "where are you from?"

"East Timor" he replied. "We're in a mess. But have a look at Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia - they all turned around their nation in the space of one generation. I believe we can do the same".

There is no doubt in my mind that David will make a significant contribution to his country. He's the next Treasury Secretary, Presidential Advisor or whatever role he ends up in to turn around his country.

There's no such thing as thinking too big.

Noctors and Opportunities

Heard of a Noctor?

A Noctor is a senior nurse practitioner.  They are almost a doctor. This is not a position that was around 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. It creates a whole new set of opportunities in the health profession.

The nature of work is not static.   Opportunities come and go.

Use the following questions to identify opportunities in your profesesion: 

• How is your profession changing? 
• How are the needs and wants of customers in your profession changing? 
  
• How are organisations changing to respond to these demands?

Once you've reflected on these, think about how can you position yourself to take advantage of these opportunities. Write down one action you will do in the next 90 days. Then do it.