Charting Your Own Course for Your Career

SUMMARY

Do you feel like your career is just something you do every day? You get up every morning, go to work, come home, and it's like Groundhog Day. You're not really sure what it is that you're doing it for other than collecting your salary.

Well, stick with me because this week, I want to start talking about more intentional career planning.

In times that are a little bit tougher, things aren't going the right way, and you are not getting all the rest that you want. If you're feeling a little bit close to that thing called burnout and don't know why you're doing it all, it's really easy to just pull back and not give it your best. So, this shift that we want to talk about this month is going from scattered where you are just doing stuff, there's no real purpose behind it, and you don't have enough time to get it done anyway, to being planned.

I'm not talking about “planned" in terms of your calendar or business plan. I'm talking about the plan you've got for your life and then the plan that your career has to be a part of that life.

What is your ultimate purpose in life?

When you understand that, you will be able to fit everything — including your career — into that so that it does what you want it to do rather than controlling your life. You also need to make sure that as you do this process, you understand your true priorities. And that starts with YOU looking at YOUR VALUES.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation and start looking at your vision.

I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you feel like your career is just something you do every day? You get up every morning, go to work, come home, and it's like Groundhog Day. You're not really sure what it is that you're doing it for other than collecting your salary.

Well, stick with me because this week, I want to start talking about more intentional career planning.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation on these 9 Crucial Shifts that every leader needs to make in today's world by helping you to set your own course in your career.

We started off a few months ago talking about your identity, and then we moved into your intelligence and looked at emotional intelligence and its importance in being a leader. Emotional intelligence are those skills that go beyond your cognitive ability and are more about the inner workings of you—the person—and how you respond or react emotionally.

We talked about the fact that you're an emotional being. You're not a robot, you're not artificial intelligence, you're human, and looking at how being human needs to be worked on to give yourself the best opportunity to get the results you want.

However, before we get into more technical skills or professional leadership, I want to devote this month to giving you a different perspective around setting some intention of making sure that all these things that you are becoming and, therefore, the things that you are doing are actually leading you where you want to go.

I know that in my own career, in the military, corporate, and now for the last 15 years of my own practice, there have been times when I felt like I was just ‘doing it’. I didn't really remember what I was doing it for.

When you operate that way, your mojo can sometimes be lost.

In times that are a little bit tougher, things aren't going the right way, and you are not getting all the rest that you want. If you're feeling a little bit close to that thing called burnout and don't know why you're doing it all, it's really easy to just pull back and not give it your best. So, this shift that we want to talk about this month is going from scattered where you are just doing stuff, there's no real purpose behind it, and you don't have enough time to get it done anyway, to being planned.

I'm not talking about “planned" in terms of your calendar or business plan. I'm talking about the plan you've got for your life and then the plan that your career has to be a part of that life.

If you've been around me a while, you know that I don't believe in work-life balance. Why? Because work and life are not separate. Work is just a part of your life. When we try to separate work from life, we tend to miss the mark. So, your work or your career needs to fit in with your overall purpose for your life. To get this started, the first thing I want you to do is think about why you got into the career that you are in in the first place.

Yes, I know we all need to earn an income. We all might do what we do because it's prestigious and gives us the significance we want. Those things are great, but what I'm talking about here is what impact you want to make.

The work that I do in this leadership area is around helping you to be a greater influence, have a greater income, and make a bigger impact. So, let’s focus this month on getting you back in line with the impact that you want to make: What’s the real reason?

You can be tossed around by the stormy seas or stagnate in the still waters of whatever the circumstances are that you’re going through right now, OR you can set the sails yourself and chart your own course for where it is that you want to go, making sure that you tack, manoeuvre and shift where you’re going if you’re going off track to what it is that you want to achieve.

In fact, the most important thing here is who you're ‘becoming’.

One of the things I love to do with my clients when we're going through this process is to ask them this question — and I’m going to ask you right now, and I'd love you to give it some thought because this is the foundation that you'll be able to work from to set a clearer intention and one that's going to get you to where you want to go:

“Imagine that you had 15 minutes where I made sure that you were in front of an audience all around the world that had some sort of device that was connected to the internet. That's billions of people that you would get 15 minutes to talk to. What I want to ask you is, what would you like them to learn? What is it that you'd like to talk to them about? What would you like to leave them with that they're going to remember?”

And I guarantee that if you give it some thought, it won't have anything to do with what you do in your career. It would be a higher purpose than that. It would be who you are and what you stand for. What are your values? What do you believe in? Those are the things that you would want to work on or that you would want to speak to them about.

I like to call it your calling.

What's your reason for being?

Why do you get up every single day?

And if that's out in front of you,

What is it that motivates you to go beyond just doing your job?

What is it that excites you?

What is it that you feel a part of?

I understand that because of life's happenings, you may have forgotten all those things. There might have been things in your past when you first got into your career that you did it for, and because of the day-to-day grind, the ups and downs, the changes, and all the things that you’ve been through in your career, you may have forgotten that. You might have cast it aside and thought,

"Hey, I'm never going to get that….”

“I'm never going to be that….”

“I'm never going to do that. So, I'm just going to continue doing the do and hope that I get what I want out of it."

So, it’s going to take some thought and courage because here's the thing: The reason why you push that down, avoid talking and thinking about it is that when you believe that you are not capable of getting there or doing or being that, you don’t want to think about it because it frustrates you and gives you another reason to fail. If you push it away and you don't go after it anymore, then you don't need to prove to yourself or anyone else that you're able to do it. That internal dialogue that we've talked about over the months previous, that “mini-me” that keeps reminding you of the things you are not, rather than you taking back control of what it is that you believe about yourself and thinking about what you can and what you're going to.

What is your ultimate purpose in life?

When you understand that, you will be able to fit everything — including your career — into that so that it does what you want it to do rather than controlling your life. You also need to make sure that as you do this process, you understand your true priorities. And that starts with YOU looking at YOUR VALUES.

So, we've talked about your overall picture, vision, or life mission. Now the next question is:

"What do you value?"

"What are the most important things to you?”

For me, for example, it's family. So, I want to ensure that everything I do for whatever part of my life is focused on my family. However, in my corporate career, that wasn't the case. That's when I started to dislike being in those roles. I started to get down on myself and feel like a fraud because family was my number one value, but I was never home with them.

And that's where feeling bad about yourself can come in. When you're not feeling good about yourself, you're not able to do your best. So, “What are your values?” is the second thing that we need to look at.

Someone once told me that you can tell someone's values when you look at their calendar, their cheque book, or their cash flow.

So, where are you investing your time and your money that shows an indication of your value?

Now, I don't totally agree with that. What that shows is what you ‘appear’ to value, yet it may not be your true value. Then, that frustrates you even more because you're out of line with getting everything you need to do and chasing the dollar. You're getting out of line with who you really are, and that's what brings further push down and suppression of your true identity.

Over this month, I'm going to pull these things apart. I'm going to help you regain your vision. I'm going to help you realign your vision and your true values so that you can set priorities and ensure that when you say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to things, you do so in line with that.

When you and I work in line with who we truly are, who we are meant to be, and what it is that is our higher purpose, it's in flow, and things are easier and effortless. It's definitely not going to be perfect ever. However, when it goes off track, that purpose brings you back on track. When things are not going as you want them to, it motivates you and inspires you to keep going. So, intention, being more intentional and acting on purpose is really important for you as a leader and in your career.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue this conversation and start looking at your vision.

I'll see you then.