What does it take to expertly and actively manage your career?

You’re on board with the idea that only you can ultimately be responsible for your career and that responsibility means actively managing it. But what’s next?

Having clarified what components you want and need to be present in your working life right now, there are five key skills that can help you make the most of your opportunities. And they might help you create new opportunities, too. The five key skills are: curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism and risk taking.

Most of us are generally really strong on some of these and less so on others. It’s certainly worth the effort to get as good as you can at each of these key career management skills. Any change requires both awareness and desire. A self assessment is often a good starting point – how do you rate on these five skills? Give yourself a rating out of five for each and then start paying attention to opportunities where you could practice getting better. Stay tuned for our next blogs which will include tips on how to get as good as you can on all five skills.

Lifelong learning – the new job security?

And if so, who is responsible?

Some see the world of work as a scary and chaotic place. They believe loyalty is seldom rewarded, restructures are aplenty, and industry changes are relentless. Others, however, take responsibility for their ongoing learning and development and start to see the world of work as a place where they can have autonomy. They feel like they are steering the ship rather than flotsam bobbing on the high seas!

If you happen to work in an organization that provides you with development opportunities, then lucky you — make the most of them! But if you aren’t so fortunate, we’d recommend you start putting your learning plan in place now by asking yourself the basics. What would you do if you could? What would you do if you had to? And what learning will support either of those scenarios? Get planning. It’s a key part of active career management.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, that’s as useful a question as the statement “and they lived happily ever after…”  Both imply that there is a one off event or decision that without any further attention or effort serves us beautifully and perfectly for the duration of our lives. If only …

Although logic tells most of us that’s not how the world operates, we can still fall into the trap of functioning as if it were.  What then happens is that we can spend our lives with a sense of unease, that the answer is alluding us and we are spending all of our time and effort on the “wrong” thing.

By the time you have finished reading this sentence, another job title will likely have been invented.  We can simply never know every possible option.  What’s the alternative then?

Rather than getting hung up on the “right” answer, get clear that there likely isn’t one and instead focus on the components that you want to be present in your day to day work life.  Then, find out what is available, and match them as best you can. In other words, take responsibility for actively managing your career on an ongoing basis.  Watch this space for more on how you do that.