1. Do you have over 15+ years of experience in your line of work?

2. Are you at the fork of the road when it comes to your next career move?

3. Are you dissatisfied with your career and want to transition to do more meaningful work?

4. Would you like to know how to leverage your experiences, skill, talents and uniqueness to elevate your career?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, I hereby assure you that your best days are ahead of you. Moreover, You Deserve To Be Fulfilled!

Work is meant to fulfill you. So, if your current work leaves you feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or if you work with energy sucking people or have a boss from hell, it’s time to consider if a next career move is for you.

Note, I’m not talking about a job, although your job could be your work. Rather I’m talking about a spiritual desire that’s innate to all humans—the sense of fulfillment you get after a day’s work! Often satiated by doing that matters to you and thus energizes you and leave you much happier!

Self Knowledge is Superpower

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao Tazo

How much do you know about yourself? Who are you? Why are you? What do you live for? What angers you? What brings you joy?

For instance, are you wired to work with people or work with hands or things? Are you a micro thinker-see the smallest of details or are you a  big picture thinker?

If you have never considered these questions before now, they may seem futile to you. Nevertheless, I assure you that the answers you come up with for yourself are where your superpower lies.

As a certified coach, I work with all kinds of personalities, but there is one particular group of people that I find are struggling in the current workforce more than others.

These are the people who will be the first to tell you they prefer to work for someone else for they don’t fancy entrepreneurship. However; they fail to realize that while they don’t have to be entrepreneurs, the current job market expects them to be Intrapreneurs.

Intrapreneurs are individuals who are self-directed and possess the same qualities as entrepreneurs only that they thrive best within organizations. In other words, they have a dispositional liking of working for someone else. They are sincere about not being ready to take the risks, time and monetary investment the entrepreneur takes. Although they welcome these risks and challenges on someone else dime.

So, what characteristics do these individual possess? Why does that even matter? Should you wish to boost your career, what must you do to ensure you remain competitive in an ever increasing volatile and competitive job market?

Here are my thoughts on the current job landscape, and why you need to know if you wish to remain relevant and competitive so as to elevate your career for the next move.

Create Value

“Service is taking action to create value for someone else.” Ron Kaufman

Value creation is the fundamental idea that drives business success. For if you are not creating value you are becoming irrelevant. This idea has made some billionaires, noble peace prize winners, gurus, and brought about some of the iconic brands we love today.

You may not consider yourself a brand, but from the standpoint of your employer you are. To your boss, you are either invaluable or redundant. As such, if your employer does not see the value you create then you are a liability, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re deemed obsolete.

Being that today’s job market is quite different than say 10 or 20 years ago. You are expected to adapt, transform and embrace the change as it unravels. Things have and are changing more rapidly than we can keep up.

This is why rethinking your next career move requires some strategy rest you remain redundant. Value creation is how you ensure you remain competitive. The best advice on this matter is borrowed from Carl Newport, the author of so good that they cannot ignore you?

You may be thinking, where do I start, is it too late? Imagining the future is your best starting point. For then you’re able to unlock your creative abilities to design a future within your control. Meaning that if you don’t have that right now, but have the desire and will to learn, engage yourself more deeply, soon you’ll foster creativity that propel you to that future—vision.

Carl Newport calls this a Craftsman mindset. One that empowers you to learn and acquire new skills to design, develop and deploy your career as you desire. Although this can seem onerous even chaotic, it is the most rewarding journey you can embark on for yourself. The alternative is to do nothing, and thus become dependent on others or some government agency for your survival.

Do You Have  a Craftsman Mindset?

If you took statistic in college you know that the rule of three applies in life and everywhere else. In the case of the job market, the rule of three follows that only 33% of the population are competitively rewarded. While the other 33% compete for what’s left and another 33% either give up or is nonchalant. The the remaining 1% accounts for the margin of error.

For more insights on this, refer to the diagram below. Note, it gives you an idea of what to expect when creating a new path for yourself. The assumption here is that you will have to think and take action like an entrepreneur (simply, you will need to be an intrapreneur) who builds on a technological product. Remember how the IPhone glory days? Today it’s almost ubiquitous.

The difference is that in your case you may choose to build on your resilience, adaptability, a new skill, or better yet opt to recalibrate your job exit strategy (you can do better elsewhere). Whatever the case, the distribution curve here demonstrates the framework to growth and success. The intention here is to give you hope and share some perspective on how to create a meaningful career that brings you happiness, a work life balance and more.

Do You Understand Your SWOT Analysis?

SWOT stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats or Trends in your respective market/industry.

Do you know why your boss hired you? Or why you were promoted beside the fact that you graduated from an Ivy League university or have 10 plus years of experience? What is your adaptability quotient? What is your leadership quotient? How well do you relate with others on your team? Or simply what’s your brand and brand promise—or best asked; what experience can one expect if they were to work with you?

For in stance, if you work with VPF Strategies, you should expect our interactions to be quite engaging, high energy, dynamic, educational and empathic. Coupled with unique levels of reality checks. All intended to ensure your experience delivers a more meaningful and happy experience through out our engagement.

Knowing you brand promise is critical in differentiating yourself. The fact that many businesses have gone virtual means you are now competing with the entire global market. Not to mention, employers no longer read through resumes or CVs. The bots/machine learning technologies are the best at selecting the most qualified candidate based on data analytics. So, how do you plan to stand out?

The Digital Era

Welcome to the digital era! The future of work is the Now of Work where the 3Ds rule: Design, Digital and Data. Therefore, knowing your design (how you are wired), how you interface with others digitally and feeding the digital system the sort of data that best describe your best self or your value offering is what will separate you from the competition.

So, how do you compare with the current trend or what’s now pivoting to the global reset? Businesses, employers, employee, nations and cultures are experiencing a shift that is exacerbated by the pandemic?

Do you have a risk management plan for your career, or how do you plan to mitigate all these changes? If you don’t have one, are you open to exploring the possibilities of how to move your career to the next level?

Take Risks, Be A Leader

Whether you know it or not, you are a leader. Leading self first, and those that choose to follow you. No matter how incredible or low your competencies are, there will always be someone who has more or less skills than you. Simply, there are those who look up to you, so act accordingly.

Realistically, we are leaders if we so choose. It’s time you step up your game. Show up more, be helpful to your colleagues, those in your team and cultivate the skills that you admire in your best leaders. Embody the same, and learn to own and sell your ideas. For then, you’ll wow yourself and those you sell your skills to if you focus on your strengths and uniqueness!

This requires you to be open to discovery, change and be more agile. The current pandemic has presented challenges that are insurmountable in scale and are a test of how much systems, governments, nations and people can withstand change. You and I are not exception. We will need to be tolerant to changes, fail forward, learn quickly, iterate and build resilience as we go.

More Reading: Being a Tolerant Failure Leader

The truth is that unless you have some level of autonomy where you work, you will be forced to adhere to things that you may not believe or agree with. This is why I suggest you think of what you can leverage for yourself. Is it your 25+ years of experience, or your UX impeccable designer skills or your incredible customer service skills? Whatever the case,  only you know.

I recall one of my best clients, a former professor at a local university (met in 2020). Today, she is a business owner having launched a consulting business in the healthcare industry. Her value offering includes culturally and ethically sound best practices that boost profitability for all stakeholders sustainably. Her career change was largely influenced by George Floyd’s murder, and the desire to create value that’s more meaningful for her and those she serves.

Whatever the case, one thing to note is that no matter how bot systems (machine learning) technologies seem attractive and efficient to any production unit or employer, humans will always be superior. This is why you want to consider your skills to ensure you align with the prevailing market needs and the touted list of skills needed in this digital age.

More Reading: The Future Of Work: How Ready Are You? 

It’s imperative you figure out how to sharpen the shaw as the late Steven Covey would say now than later. Your best approach is to think of how you augment your skills, talents and experiences along the lines of any of the 4Cs: Creativity, Communication, Collaboration and Critical Thinking.

Still, you will need to sell your self to your current employer if you want a promotion or raise or at best want to standout from the more tech savvy millennials and generations Z (assuming you’ve been in the workforce for 20+ years. In this regard, consider ‘how great leaders inspire action’—or as Simon Sinek would say Start With Why.

In my opinion, if you have more than 15+ years of experience in any line of work, and have not positioned yourself to stand out based on your experience, it’s time to ask why not? Much like companies are touting purpose as the means to align business operation in post pandemic times, you too will need to do the same to have an edge—therefore, rethink purpose!

Red More: Purpose That Inspires

Mindset 

It is said that how you show up accounts for 80% of your success while 20% accounts for what you know—your competencies. This is largely influenced by what you know or don’t know, and we know that confidence is a function of knowledge and exposure.

According to scientific research by a Stanford Professor Carol Dweck, mindset is the state of how you see your levels of learning and intelligence. If you believe you can learn anything you choose to, then you are likely to engage yourself with more vigor. Unlike if you believe you cannot learn anything then you will not even try.

Concluding that people who believe they can learn anything are constantly learning new things, and are thus said to have a growth mindset while those who believe they cannot improve their intelligence level are said to have a fixed mindset.

What you know or don’t know determines not only your levels of confidence but access as well. Imagine if you knew that the pandemic was going to cause the kind of change that we have seen since Summer of 2019? Wouldn’t you have reorganized your life with this insight? Additionally, imagine the levels of calm and peace you would be enjoying mitigated the current floods of fear? You get my point.

This may be a hard pill to swallow if you don’t enjoy learning new things. If that’s the case, consider hiring a coach or figuring out your next move to exit the job market because there is more change coming. As it turns out, change is the only constant thing to expect in life.

Today’s Key Performance Indices

Adaptability quotient is now a critical KPI (Key Performance Index)—measuring how well you cope and handle change. From what I’ve observed, this is the greatest challenge that I see some of my clients struggle with the most. Thankfully, for me it’s one of my strengths. For since childhood I learned how to recalibrate quickly and seamlessly adapt having grown up in Africa where change was the most certain always.

Upon probing further, I’ve discovered that the realization of a shift and or an unwelcome change is the ultimate culprit for many. Thus causing mood swings, anxieties even mental challenges. Being that the change is unfavorable in the individual’s mind, they either disregard it even though they are aware of it. This then becomes the greatest cause of inaction, apathy, delusion and much bewilderment.

The most common mistake here is the assumption or the belief that, ‘what got me here will take me there’—a cardinal rule break given the current precarious world we live in. For to be where you want to be, you’ll need to be deliberate, intentional, strategic and agile in designing, developing and deploying whatever you wish to see 1, or 5 years or even 20 years from now.

After all, those dictating change and reset to us have carefully followed this same pattern (more precisely the bell shape curve diagram shared earlier). It demonstrates the journey those willing to take control of their lives. Or the expected levels of awareness necessary if you want to thrive in today’s world of the survival for the fittest . Hard to hear but it’s the truth!

Conclusion

Harnessing your superpower to move your career to the next level is simple but not easy. To succeed in this undertaking  means that you’re willing to be more human than ever. After all, how else do you standout among the robots, bot systems, etc.?

Embracing your unique identity is your edge in todays digital transformation era. That means you be wiling to come alive, be unique, dynamic, and own your true power. Being more self-aware of who you are, your gifts and talents will ultimately differentiate you from your twin. Including of course being more vulnerable in sharing with those you trust about how you feel— a must if you want mental clarity and authenticity.

In all, if you don’t know where to start, hiring a coach can help you navigate these changes to help amplify and augment your skills and experiences. By so doing you’ll grow in being attuned to self, become more resilience, adaptable, authentic, collaborative and learn to communicate effectively advocating for you and your needs. In the long haul, you elevate your essence, creativity, collaborative and critical thinking skills, and before you know it you’ll be up to the races. Wouldn’t you want that?

What are your thoughts on the Now of Work?  Do you have a plan of action to mitigate these changes from negatively impacting your life, health and future? Share on the comment below. Or if you would like to explore the possibilities of us working together, reach out at carolyne@vpfstrategies.com or best schedule a 30 minutes complimentary session.