Cheers to Your Career!

“What’s your 5-year plan?” is a daunting question. Especially early in one’s career. A lack of experience makes it challenging to identify what you like about your current role or what you might like better. You’ll receive many promotional opportunities throughout your career and having a plan will help you navigate which to accept. Without a goal, you’ll likely end up blindly taking the next pay raise or title upgrade offered to you. Though those initial promotions may feel exciting, later in your career you’ll likely need to make lateral moves to gain experience and become a stronger candidate for that “dream job.”

Here are 3 steps to help you create a career that you love.

Step 1: Identify your principles

Write down every thought that comes to mind when you envision your dream life. Don’t worry about being tidy with it — just focus on getting all your thoughts onto paper. For thought-provoking questions, review last month’s article, “New Year, New Me.”

Ask yourself, “What about my dream life makes me feel fulfilled?” Challenge yourself to take each point a level deeper. For example, if you’re social, ask yourself “With whom?” Family, friends, co-workers, clients? Are your clients new each day, or do you develop longer relationships with them? Are the co-workers your teammates? Do you lead others?

Highlight any principles that seem to govern your points. For example, you might have written down that you run every day, swim in the summer, and are able to keep up with your grandkids at the playground, so the overarching principle may be “health and fitness.”

Step 2: Define what role your career will play

Since work is how we spend much of our lives, it’s understandable to want it to be enjoyable; however, we also have lives outside of work that can provide fulfillment. Identify various ways in which your career can support you in achieving each of those principles:

Example - physical health: Must your job require you to move about or is it enough for your job to offer you flexible hours to go for walks, pay enough for a gym membership, and/or include benefits and insurance to access these resources?

Example – helping people: Must your job involve helping others in your day-to-day interactions, or is it enough for your job to offer you time-off for volunteering, or enough pay for you to donate to charities on your own?

Example – travel: Must your job require you to travel for work, or is it enough if it offers you the ability to work remotely from any location, or offers enough vacation time and pay for you to travel on your own?

“Don’t confuse having a career with having a life” – Oprah Winfrey

Step 3: Have conversations and focus on upskilling

Rather than relying on job descriptions, which can often be misleading, have conversations with people who are currently in roles you are considering and with your current mentors and leaders. Now that you have a clear vision for what principles you want to achieve with your career, you’ll be able to ask more pointed questions to get value from these conversations.

When speaking with people who are currently in roles you are considering, ask them about their experience in their line of work, what they find fulfilling, and if/how they achieve some of the principles you’ve identified on your sheet. Ask them about the skills and experiences that have helped them succeed and for their recommendations on how you can gain such experiences – these will be the next steps in your 5-year plan.

When speaking with mentors and leaders, remember these three tips for advocating for yourself. A true mentor will speak positively on your behalf when you’re not in the room. It’s a good idea to make these people aware of your goals so they can help identify opportunities and put your name in the hat for you.

I encourage you to share this exercise with your friends over a nice bottle of wine and compare your results. The beauty of this process is appreciating our uniqueness and the ways we each will achieve fulfillment. Cheers!