Career Coach

By Barbara Poole

Someone told me this week that, from where he sits, my apparent role on this planet is to stir things up.

I had sent him a copy of my last column, and he has been questioning whether it is time to reinvent his career. He couldn’t have paid me a higher compliment.

Good, bad or otherwise, I know that my assignment here is to shake people out of their complacency and get them moving in the direction of the lives they genuinely want to be living.

If you caught the last issue of this column, you know that I left my readers with some provocative questions to ponder before concluding that it is time to reinvent their careers.

Sometimes it is not necessary, and often not advisable, to strike out in new directions.

I have a client who is 58 years old and three years away from becoming eligible to take a retirement package from the lucrative sales career he has had with a major pharmaceutical company.

I understand that he is a little bored these days and itching to do something new. But to sacrifice the prize that is around the corner for him at this stage of the game would be foolhardy.

Better to explore some new hobbies that he could potentially turn into a small business in a few years than to ditch the investment he has made in a comfortable future.

If he were 45, we might be drawing a different conclusion. There would be enough working years ahead of him to warrant reinventing a new professional chapter in his life and potentially worth the risk to do so.

So if you explored last issue’s questions, and after giving them some serious consideration, came away feeling like the answer is a resounding, “Yes, it’s time to reinvent my career!,” here are some tips for getting started:

Become abundantly curious about what others do for a living. We are so desensitized to elevator speeches that we often miss the interesting aspects of the jobs people hold. Ask them to tell you what they love about their work, the challenges it presents, why they were attracted to it and what qualifications are necessary.

Network like crazy. You can’t be curious about what other people do if you aren’t meeting any of them. Make it a point to show up at a wide variety of venues and events so that you can meet people from various walks of life. Doing so will broaden your horizons and expose you to a world of possibilities.

Cast a wide net. Many people make the mistake of limiting their options far too early in the exploration process. If you are really serious about reinventing your career, you have to be willing to look beyond the obvious alternatives available to you. Let’s face it: if the next right thing were obvious, you probably would have already made the leap by now.

Take inventory of the skills, experience, credentials and achievements you have built into your career to date. Then dig beneath the surface of this information to figure out which of those assets are transferable to new environments. Consider how the analytical skills you have honed in your finance career might be useful troubleshooting a manufacturing process. Or how the product display knowledge you accumulated in a retail environment might be applied to an interior design career. Train yourself to think beyond the industry and environments you have worked in thus far.

Identify the talents, gifts and passions that drive you. These are the constants that reside within you at a deeper level than the skills you have amassed or the credentials you have earned. They are also the elements that, at the end of the day, will determine whether you have found a new way to make a living or have instead identified an opportunity that will truly enhance the quality of your life.

Step away from the question of what you want to do and consider instead how you want to feel doing whatever that ends up happening to be. Are you really on a quest for more autonomy? More mobility? More space? Perhaps you are tired of the constant carryover between work and home, of lugging your briefcase home each night with more paperwork to do and e-mails to answer. Maybe what you want is a job that you can feel complete with at the end of the day and not have to think about until the next morning rolls around. Consider how you want to feel, not just what you want to do.

Integrate all of the elements above and stand back to see the picture that emerges. It will probably point you in the direction of a variety of specific alternatives to consider that would fit the bill based upon what you have defined is true for you. You might want to enlist the aid of a friend, a coach or a trusted colleague to help you with this.

Develop a strategy for pursuing the options that emerge. Depending upon the options you have narrowed down and what they require, you may find that you will need additional training, education or connections to help you make the leap from here to there. Identify what will be necessary in your particular case and get started. The sooner you swing into action, the greater the probability that you will actually make the transition to a new career.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then desire is the mother of reinvention. Use this yearning as fuel to make the leap to a career that will allow your heart to sing.

Barbara Poole is a leadership and career development coach with Success Builders Inc. E-mail her at CoachBarbara@SuccessBuildersInc.com.

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