By Barbara Poole
Career Coach

I heard a recent interview on National Public Radio with Gabriela Montero, the young Venezuelan pianist who is taking the classical world by storm with her improvisational work.

Her style is applauded by many critics for her fresh approach, while some purists renounce her for taking liberties with the classics. Regardless, she has firmly established a strong community of followers and she continues to stir up excitement in an often-staid music genre.

Montero began playing on a toy piano when she was 7 months old. By the time she was 18 months old, she was picking out themes from lullabies her mother sang to her and, at age 2 or 3, she began improvising on those themes.

She gave her first public performance at the tender age of 5.

Now 37, she was asked whether she ever considered doing anything besides making music for a living. She replied, “I think it was fate. I could never really get away from it. It is what I was meant to be.”

Many of the people I know and work with would give their right arms to have the question of what they were meant to do be so clear cut. I count myself in those numbers, having followed a series of bunny trails to get to where I am today. I am consistent with the research that suggests that the average person entering the work force nowadays will have on average three to five distinctly different careers and at least eight to 10 jobs along the way.

In my case, I’ve actually done a variation on those career statistics by having a series of careers that sort of morphed into the next thing, rather than being distinctly different. Having started as a therapist out of graduate school, I somehow migrated into a consulting firm that needed someone with a clinical background.

From there, I took my consulting skills into a series of positions within large organizations that involved roles as a training manager, human resources director and organizational development specialist. Some years later, I happened onto a liberal arts college that was looking for someone with a business background and counseling skills to be its director of career services, a role that I held for four years. And finally, about 12 years ago, I discovered coaching, or more accurately, coaching discovered me. I like to tell people that I was coaching before it became cool, back when most people’s first question was whether I coached women’s basketball or tennis.

I would love to tell you that my career history represented a calculated, strategic series of moves. The truth is, I kind of stumbled my way from one role to the next, building onto a foundation much the way a child builds a tower of blocks. One thing led to the next, and before I knew it, I had evolved into a new direction and a new way of earning a living.

The differentiating factor in this pattern became the shift to self-employment that I made when I started my business back in 1996. Once I no longer lived within the confines of an organizational structure, my work really began to grow and evolve, and I have had the good fortune to work with many different industries, organizations and client scenarios. My work remains a constantly changing portfolio of projects, and I love it that way.

I have grown into a boundaryless career, a term which has come to define those careers that grow organically and evolve from one thing into the next, rather than being confined to a single role, field or industry. Boundaryless careers are a trend which is consistent with the new economy in which changes in the business environment and technology are outpacing the shelf life of career lives that people used to so carefully construct.

A boundaryless career can be incredibly rewarding and it can also be a wild ride. Sometimes it grows that way by necessity, but more and more people are beginning to choose to sit outside of the perimeters that would define a more traditional career.

How do you know if a boundaryless career might be a good fit for you? Consider how the following statements match up to what you know of yourself by rating each one on a 1-5 scale, with “5” meaning that it is very true of you:

1. I enjoy multi-tasking.

2. I view making mistakes as an important part of making progress.

3. I thrive on change and become easily bored with routine.

4. I have good stamina and a high energy level.

5. I typically come up with numerous ways to solve a problem.

6. I am self-directed and well disciplined.

7. I am money-motivated, but I don’t have huge security needs.

8. I am a risk-taker and I like having to rely on myself to figure things out.

9. Walking into situations without much structure doesn’t scare me; in fact, I actually prefer it to well-defined roles and circumstances.

10. Freedom and flexibility are among my top values; tradition and approval from others matter very little to me.

The more 5s you had, the more likely it is that a boundaryless career would be a good fit for you. So if you, like me, have not had one particular career grab hold of you and dictate that this is what you were meant to be, take heart. You and I are well-suited to the economy of the future, and we need only buckle our seat belts and enjoy the ride.

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

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