Take Charge!: Focused and Inspirational Advice for Career Changers

By Claire Coldwell

This book is an exploration of career topics for people who need a quick fix of inspiration.

It contains succinct, informed advice from a trusted adviser a kind of career agony aunt. The advice is specific to the issue which you are grappling with right now and will challenge your complacency, make you think differently and keep you on track.

It addresses the big questions of expressing self through work as well as the immediate issues, such as writing a great CV. It provides enough information to make you think seriously about taking charge of your career and sufficient direction and practical advice to build confidence in managing your career without having to work through a step-by-step programme.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 14, 2006
• ISBN: 9781456790516

Claire Coldwell

Claire has a track record of success in providing career coaching and advice at all organisational levels and across all sectors. With a degree in psychology and a particular interest in personality and motivation, she has extensive experience of working with individuals to enhance self-awareness and working relationships.   Keen to quickly get to the heart of each individual's specific career issues, her approach is to enable people to evaluate, understand and maximise their personal resources and the opportunities around them, in order to gain greater fulfilment in their work and life experiences.       Claire is a member of the British Psychological Society, the Association of Business Psychologists and is currently the United Kingdom President for the Association of Career Professionals International.

Book preview

Contents

THE MEANING OF WORK

NEW YEAR, NEW CAREER

MID-LIFE CRISIS

WHAT’S YOUR STORY?

TAKING CONTROL

THE RIGHT ATTITUDE

DON’T DIE!

MYTHS

MAKING CHOICES

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

PLANS

PORTFOLIO CAREERS

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS

GOALS

WHO ARE YOU?

THE ULTIMATE CV

THE TRUTH ABOUT OLDER JOBSEEKERS

TESTING, TESTING

THE INTERVIEW

BE YOURSELF

THE INTERNET AND JOB SEARCH

BACK TO BASICS

STAYING POSITIVE

WHAT REALLY COUNTS

NETWORKING

THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS

POLITICS AND CAREER

MISTAKES

SEEING WITH NEW EYES

LITTLE THINGS THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

LIMITING OURSELVES

FOLLOW MY LEADER?

BACK TO WORK

EIGHT STEPS TO CAREER SUCCESS

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

WHAT’S SACRED TO YOU?

TAKE A BREAK!

SO, NOW WHAT?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

About The Author

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR CAREER!

As a career coach, I see hundreds of people who, having twenty or thirty years’ work experience under their belt, have either lost their way in terms of career or admit they never actually found it in the first place. Increasingly, I also see young people who have one or two years’ work experience and are disillusioned already.

For both those groups, and many others, each with their own individual story, their experience is that work does not provide the satisfaction or fulfilment which they had hoped to achieve.

Years ago, career paths were generally predictable in that if you knew what you wanted to achieve it was fairly clear how to do it. But things have changed and, while expectations of fulfilment in every area of life have raised over recent decades, such expectations don’t come with instructions of how to achieve it. So we are left floundering and inadequate, and if that weren’t bad enough, our organisations are now telling us that we have to manage our own career.

Career coaching for adults is something that was unheard of when most of us started work. We had our session with a careers adviser while we were still at school and then we launched ourselves, equipped or not, into the workplace. Some of us found our feet sooner or later and began to carve out what we considered to be a career. Others, more enlightened perhaps, knew they were just beginning a series of jobs.

SO, WHERE ARE YOU HEADING?

The quest for career satisfaction is not just about a tweak here and there to get back on track. When people facing a career crisis contact me for help, they come with some fairly substantial questions:

‘I’m sure that I have more to offer to the experience of work than this - how do I begin to find out?’

‘I believe that there could be a couple of options for my future career – how do I decide what’s best for me?

‘The job search scene has changed since I was last looking - how do I approach it and market myself effectively?’

‘My situation means that I have to stay put in this job for a while – how do I make the best of it?

‘There’s more to life than work - what about the bigger picture?’

Do any of these questions strike a chord? I hear these every day from people who come to me for career coaching. These people are not unsuccessful or unfocused and they are not waiting for life to drop opportunities in their laps without any effort on their part. They’re people like you.

You’ve probably had a good education and, more than likely, plenty of support and encouragement from your parents; maybe you have set challenging goals for yourself in your early career and have achieved them. You have energy, talent, commitment and a desire to contribute something through your work.

We know that, for our generation, we have greater opportunities and flexibility than previous generations. We’ve taken hold of those opportunities and we’re reaping the rewards. We’re earning a good salary and experiencing considerable choice about what we do with our earnings.

Over a period of time, though, you may get a nagging feeling that there’s got to be more to life, particularly to work aspects of life – that there must be something more. Maybe you float this notion with your partner, who gives you a look that says ‘hmmm, mid-life crisis’ or ‘hmmm, hormones’ depending on your gender.

You talk it through over a drink on a Friday night with your closest friend and he, too, looks at you in disbelief. He points out that you’ve achieved all you aimed for, you’re in line for that ‘most wanted’ promotion. Your kids are well-adjusted, so what more could you want?

And of course, you couldn’t possibly bring up the subject with your parents. You’re aware they never had the opportunity to get anywhere close to what you have now, and they’ve supported you through your education and are so proud of you. You couldn’t even hint at a growing feeling that there must be more to life.

‘So it’s up to me then?’

Many people recognise that it’s up to them to make the change in driving their career, but they also accept that they need some help in doing it.

If you really want to be less passive about the proportion of your life which you’re spending at work, where to go for advice?

What you need is a trusted adviser who you can call on for succinct, informed advice when you need it – a kind of career agony aunt. What you’re sure you don’t need is a life-changing programme. You need the equivalent of a phone call or e-mail – sound advice which is specific to the issue which you are grappling with right now, and which will provide immediate direction.

I began to write monthly newsletters to address just this need and made them available on my Web site for clients and ex-clients. Soon strangers, logging in to the site, asked to subscribe, too. The feedback I receive tells me that people appreciate regular, focused career advice to challenge their complacency, make them think differently and keep them on track.

So this book is a collection of those newsletters which covers a range of career questions – those questions which I listed earlier.

This book provides direction in a succinct and digestible way. It’s written for people with no time or inclination to make big life changes (at least not right now). It’s authoritative, enabling and friendly. At the same time, the approach is inspiring and positive. It therefore addresses the big questions of expressing self through work as well as the immediate issues of writing a great CV. It provides enough information to make you think seriously about taking charge of your career and it provides enough direction and practical advice to build confidence in managing your career without having to work through a step-by-step programme.

I’ll be sharing my understanding of careers and what does and does not work in the job arena. At the same time I’ll be encouraging you to look at the bigger picture of your own life and how these ideas fit. My approach is not a production line, one-size-fits-all kind of thing. It’s about helping you shape and define your individual career in the light of what I’ll be presenting you with. I’ll be encouraging you to consider what you want for the longer term as well as providing you with immediate practical advice to sort out your current concerns. You’ll find that, while you’re dealing with the detail of your career transition, you’ll be addressing some of life’s big issues at the same time.

HOW TO USE THE BOOK

This is written for people who want career reassurance or guidance – fast! So it’s structured in a way which addresses those questions I listed right at the beginning. You can fast forward to those chapters for immediate advice and later, when you have time, read the rest. You’ll also notice that I’ve included some quick reference guides which provide background information to the chapters, drilling down to provide more ‘technical’ detail, as well as examples, on some of the nitty-gritty HR stuff.

While each chapter is self-contained and will give you the answer you are seeking, the whole book builds a handbook for supporting your career which means that you’ll be better able to manage it for the long term.

SECTION 1

     ‘I’m sure that I have more to offer to the experience of

work than this – how do I begin to find out?’

THE MEANING OF WORK

‘Life asks of every individual a contribution, and it is up to that individual to discover what it should be’

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), developer of existential psychology and logotherapy; Holocaust survivor.

The questions which clients most often bring to me are - ‘How can I get people to see what I have to offer at work?’ and ‘How do I know what’s the right job for me?’

Why are these questions important? Why is work important? The stock answer is because we spend a good deal of our life at work, but that’s not the whole story - it’s not just about investment of time.

What people are seeking (although they don’t always recognise it) is work which expresses their true sense of self. Work which embodies that unique bundle of skills, experiences, talents and perspectives which makes each of us an individual. It’s important, not only to be doing work to reflect that sense of self, but to have it recognised by others. In that way it’s not just an expression of self, but an extension of self.

That’s often why people are so disoriented when they’re made redundant - it’s not just the loss of material security, it’s about the feeling that a fundamental way in which they contribute to the world is no longer valued.

I’m often asked if this viewpoint is realistic. It’s hard to believe that people undertaking mundane or unpleasant tasks can feel fulfilled, or that they are expressing themselves through their work. But I constantly come across examples of people doing ordinary jobs, who feel fulfilled. I recall a taxi driver in Florida who kept telling me ‘I love my cab! I love it so much that my husband has to drive around with me in order to see me!’ And indeed there he was, sharing the experience of Penny contributing to the world of work, running his life from a mobile phone in the front seat of a cab.

What Penny loved about her work was a connection with a variety of people and the ability to provide something for them - efficient transport within an area she knew well. She was clear about what she had to offer and she was fulfilled because she was able to do that.

People I see through my work are often not clear about what they have to offer and not sure whether it’s valued. Granted, sometimes it’s hard to figure those things out when you’ve had a lifetime’s experience of believing a whole bunch of myths about work. For example: ‘You can’t be both happy and successful in work’; ‘No-one genuinely likes successful people’; ‘Work is a drag, and the only reason we do it is to fund an enjoyable leisure time’.

Whenever I read about William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement, I’m in awe of the way he expressed himself through work. Last week I read him described as ‘poet, designer, craftsman and radical socialist’ - all those! And all true! But my first thought was ‘They’ve forgotten painter, architect, historian and lay preacher!’ This man knew he had gifts and invoked tremendous energy to express them, even when he wasn’t sure quite where it would take him or whether he was likely to be successful. ‘Work’, he said ‘is the embodiment of my dreams’.

I believe that it’s within each of us to find work which gives expression to our unique gifts. The process takes time, learning, challenge and a preparedness to ditch the myths we’ve grown up with, but the difference it makes to dragging yourself out of bed for another dreary day at work or leaping out, eager to contribute in a way which doesn’t actually feel like work, is tremendous.

So, where to begin?

I’m a great believer in using energy as a guide. In that first conversation which I have with clients, it doesn’t take long to see where their energy is going. Consider what energises you. It may be aspects of your work or leisure, or something which you haven’t done for years. Observe how you feel when you think about aspects of work and leisure pursuits. Then dig down to think about what about it energises you. Is it connection with people? Using a particular skill? Being able to help others?

Nick Williams, in his excellent book ‘Unconditional Success’ says, ‘we need to be curious about who we can become and what we can achieve, and let our work be the vehicle for the satisfaction of our curiosity.’

So, get curious! Use these questions as a focus:

-     How would I describe myself and what I have to contribute?

-     How far does my current job reflect that?

-     What energises me and what drains me of energy?

-     What are the work myths which I embrace?

-     What do I want to be known for?

-     If I knew that I couldn’t fail in my work, what is it that I would do?

-     What am I afraid of?

QUICK REFERENCE 1:

     A GUIDE FOR APPROACHING THE QUESTIONS IN THIS BOOK.

The problem with books that set questions, just as I have at the end of Chapter 1, is that you don’t have to pay much attention to the quality of your answers. This is the great benefit of working with a career coach in person. They don’t let you off the hook. But do yourself a favour, if this is striking a chord with you so far, stop now and read this piece.

It occurs to me that it’s all very well asking these searching questions at the end of each chapter, but most people don’t have a clue how to approach the answer.