Email Page
Print Page
Back
to Tip Archives
Back
to Current Tip
The New Year is always a great time
to reflect on the past year, take inventory of accomplishments,
and start thinking about the year ahead. The reality in
both business and the military, however, is that juggling
demanding work and personal commitments makes it difficult
to reflect, plan and set goals for the future. With today's
challenges, it is more important than ever to invest the
time to reconnect with your career goals and develop plans
to achieve them.
In both the military and the business
world, I have noticed that there is not much long-range
career planning going on. When I ask people why they are
not planning ahead, they mostly give reasons that they are
too busy, too swamped, too overwhelmed to think about their
vision for their career futures. My point is that you cannot
LEAD your life or career by only focusing on your objectives
today, this week or this month. Long-range planning, taking
inventory, reflecting, and long-term goal-setting are the
fundamentals to leading your career and achieving your potential.
In times when you are swamped, prioritizing career leadership
is even MORE important, especially if you want to maintain
some semblance of control over your life. Without it, your
vision for your future becomes fuzzy, you lose sight of
your career dreams, and the pressure from work makes it
hard to stay focused and motivated.
Here are some exercises to help you
with career leadership.
1. The Timeline Exercise.
Take some time and draw your "career lifeline." Start with
high school and plot all the major events of your professional
career ending with the present. Identify the high and low
points and the events and times you were most proud and
most excited. Note the times that you felt the most challenged,
perhaps even lost when things were not going your way. Identify
the experiences when you really succeeded, when you failed,
when you were stretched, and when you learned valuable life
lessons. Point out for yourself the transition times when
things fundamentally changed for you. Then, take a step
back and look at the whole career lifeline. What are some
of the major underlying themes or trends over your career?
What principles and values are always present regardless
of the situation? What roles have the events had in who
you are today? The first step in understanding where you
are heading in your professional life is to get a strong
image of where you came from. You are a culmination of your
past experiences. Getting back in touch with them fosters
and re-ignites passion, excitement, and self-insight that
are such integral aspects of career leadership.
2. Envision the Future.
I borrowed this exercise from Daniel Goleman's book, Primal
Leadership. Think about where you want to be sitting and
reading articles like this one ten years from now. Think
forward to ten years in the future. What would be your ideal
career situation? What kind of responsibility would you
have? What would your work situation look like? What would
you be doing during the work day or work week? What kind
of people would you be working around? How would your work
environment look and feel? The answers to the questions
contain your vision for your career future. Try to write
descriptive answers to these questions in a free-form format
to better develop the vision. Share it with a mentor and
verbalize it into a tape recorder.
3. Extending Beyond Work.
This exercise can be really fun. Take a sheet of
paper and number it from 1 to 20. Write next to each number
one thing that you want to do in your life before you die.
The goals can be professional, recreational, artistic, philanthropy
related, athletic, and more. The key is to write down the
things that are important to you. One thing that makes this
challenging is that most people think in terms of what they
want to accomplish this week, this month or at best, this
year. This exercise helps you break out of short-term urgent
focus and think more long term. When finished, take a step
back and look at your entire list. Are there any patterns
or trends in your list? Share this list with your spouse
or someone who knows you. Dreaming and defining long-term
aspirations both inside and outside of work is a big part
of career leadership.
Stay connected with your career vision,
your accomplishments, your goals, where you came from, your
dreams and your self-development. It is easier to have passion
for what you are doing today when you first have a vision
for where you are going tomorrow.
Copyright 2004. Cameron-Brooks, Inc. All rights reserved.
