[Guest post by Bruce Hazen.]
Whether a career transition is one of your own choosing or one that is done to you, beware of a premature rush to job search tactics. For most people this premature rush means updating their resume and starting to patrol the internet job sites. If they’re a bit more extraverted, they may start to network with colleagues, friends and acquaintances. But this is when they start to realize something strategic is missing.
No, it’s not the fact that they haven’t defined the bulls-eye that they’re targeting, although this step is going to be crucial. With a defined target they can move to the next critical step in a well designed search – the personal marketing plan. But it’s not yet time for that either.
There are three career questions that must be addressed first. They cause you to answer profound and fundamental questions about where you are now in your career trajectory. If you don’t know your current location along that trajectory, you may be trying to solve the wrong problem.
Let’s take a look at The Three Questions. They are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive in framing your career:
- When is it time to move up?
This doesn’t just mean promotion. It asks if it’s time to progress in your role, team, company or the profession itself. (You need a development emphasis in your search for new work) - When is it time to move out?
This doesn’t necessarily mean leave your employer. It could also mean move out of a role, a level of responsibility, a team or maybe even move out of a profession or industry altogether. (This calls for a transition strategy, commonly also known as a search strategy) - When is it time to adapt your style for greater success?
You may like the work and the people and enterprise you work for, but you’re not getting the success you want. You know you need to adapt and change something, but you may not be sure what or how. (This calls for a coaching strategy.)
Example: Julie was a skilled researcher who had Peter-principled her way into a leadership position running a research department within a high-tech company. She came to our first consultation convinced that she needed to move out of the company due to frustrations with managing her team. When I explain The Three Career Questions to anyone, I ask them to first talk about the two questions that they didn’t choose before we discuss the one they feel is most compelling. She described her frustrations as well as her distinct lack of training or coaching to take on her leadership role. I diplomatically suggested that she had a leadership style issue as a new leader and targeting a management role at a new company would simply relocate the struggle/problem to a new address without adapting her style for greater success. Our work switched to management coaching and she decided to turn her current position into a learning laboratory and more of a success before moving out.
Good questions embody values and insights that cause you to think and iterate your ideas and decisions to design even better ones. Use The Three Career Questions to refine your career decision-making and strategy early in the process.
Oh, there’s a fourth question too: When is it time to stay the course when the answer to all three question is: “not now”? Answer: Enjoy that ride when you can.
About the author: Bruce Hazen is a career and management coach in Portland, Oregon. He has lead Three Questions Consulting for 20 years and is the co-author of the chapter on career coaching in the Sage publication, The Complete Handbook of Coaching (2018).
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