In the Loop: Of a Flourishing Career

By Katherine Street

Not so long ago, we didn’t choose what career we wanted to pursue—it was usually chosen for us. No wonder we have such trouble making great career decisions. We need help, but we don’t always admit it or seek it out.

In the Loop is about sorting through the noise to find truths, useful habits, and new ways of thinking to achieve professional goals. Katherine Street, a career coach and consultant, busts common career myths and provides a framework so you can:

• overcome obstacles that frequently derail careers;
• identify fundamental steps to help your career flourish;
• create a résumé that highlights qualities and skills; and
• recover quickly when career dreams go awry.

The author shares more than sixty exercises for career development, a résumé builder, and an outline for writing convincing job applications. There is an entire chapter dedicated to what employers look for when selecting candidates.

Once you’re in the loop, you’ll be inspired to make a difference every day you go to work. Moreover, others will want to be around you because you’ll make work fun. It will be a great feeling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jun 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781504317627

Katherine Street

Katherine Street spends her days coaching individuals and consulting with organisations about what needs to be in place to create careers that flourish. She has two adult children with her husband, Andrew. She lives on the beautiful island of Tasmania.

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Copyright © 2019 Katherine Street.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-1761-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-1762-7 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/04/2019

Contents

INTRODUCTION: Career Flourishing Doesn’t Happen By Accident

Chapter 1: Two Fundamental Insights

What elements create a career that feels like it is flourishing?

Chapter 2: The Space Outside The Loop

What sorts of things might get in the way of my flourishing career?

Chapter 3: Staying In The Loop

What fundamental things can I do to ensure my career flourishes?

Chapter 4: Who Is This Looper?

What do I need to know about myself to have a flourishing career?

Chapter 5: What Is The Bigger Loop?

What do I need to know in the environment around my career?

Chapter 6: The Decision Loop

How do I make decisions to keep my career flourishing?

Chapter 7: The Action Loop

What actions do I need to take to keep my career flourishing?

SECTION 2: A Practical Focus To Keep You In the Loop

Chapter 8 Résumé Crafting

How do I create a résmué that highlights how fabulous I am?

Chapter 9 Writing Job Application Letters

What shape and structure is a good application?

Chapter 10 Writing Against Selection Criteria

What is the best framework for writing these?

Chapter 11 Preparing For Interviews

How do I make sure my emotional state supports me to interview well?

Chapter 12 Performing Proudly In Interviews

How do I best answer interview questions?

Chapter 13 Looping Back After Setbacks

How do I recover when career dreams don’t go according to plan?

Chapter 14 Celebrate Being In The Loop

What difference does general positivity about my career really make?

Additional Resource: Start Your Own Career Group

References

Introduction

Career Flourishing Doesn’t Happen By Accident

As managers of our own career, most of us should be sacked.

Gallup, the leading organisational research company, has reported that the number one reason over three quarters of people leave their job is the quality of their immediate manager. People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Most managers don’t wake up each morning vowing to make the life of their people miserable. Most managers try their best, but they are leading by accident and most don’t bring a planned, conscious, continual learning approach to how they lead. A lot of people manage their careers with the same accidental approach.

As a career coach I have heard countless stories of careers in which people feel stuck, thwarted, derailed, declining and that things are just plain not progressing in the way they want them to.

Confusion reigns about how to manage career and there are a host of reasons for this. First, the world of work is ever-changing. What worked in career ten years ago is unlikely to work now, and this pace of change is increasing. In addition, career as something people get to intentionally manage is a relatively new concept. We have only had to deal consciously with directing our own careers for a generation or so. Before that, the company dealt with it, or the family you were born into determined it. As such, people are still figuring out what is important and what needs to be focused upon. On top of this wisdom is thin on the ground and contradictory advice comes thick and fast. Cutting through this confusion so you can feel you are in the loop of a flourishing career is a core focus of this book.

The concept of being in the loop is an attractive one. We all want to be in the loop. When you are in the loop you feel part of a special group, the ‘in crowd’, those who know things that others don’t.

When people are in the loop of a flourishing career they know they’ve got this thing called career sorted. If you are in the loop there are predictable things you know about your career. You know you make a difference through the work you do and people would miss you if you weren’t around. You know that others want to be around you because you make work fun, and that you are resourceful and resilient, generous and hopeful. You know you give work a good name and that through your career the world gets the best of you. It is a great feeling.

The unfortunate thing is that feeling in the loop is not common, and even when it is there it often doesn’t last. Being in the loop is something many people want to experience and hold onto. But it isn’t something that happens by accident. It happens because people put effort and focus into their career, doing the small ongoing things that don’t have to be hard, but pay off in the long run. Over many years of working with people to shift them from career frustration to career flourishing I have collated a toolbox of these small things which we will explore in the coming pages. This toolbox of actions and habits are informed by research and they reliably bring people to and keep them in the loop of a flourishing career.

Looping your way through this book

Are these questions you ask about your career?

Is my career going well?

Am I on track?

Am I doing it right?

Am I ready for what is coming next?

Do I know the opportunities I want to seize?

Am I aware of the changes I need to make?

How much difference am I making?

How valuable am I to others?

How do I compare with others?

How do I compete with others?

Am I putting my best foot forward in selections?

This book will give ways to answer the above types of questions. You will be introduced to new things that I hope spark your curiosity. Please experiment and give things a try. Not everything will work for you and that’s OK, just hustle onto the next concept and give that a go.

This book is divided into two Sections.

The first section helps you deal with big picture career thinking. It covers the things that get in the way of a flourishing career and how to specifically maintain and care for your career. You are going to learn about a career maintenance model that will help you keep your career in top shape. You are going to spend a bit of time digging around to understand the person who is central to your career—you—so you understand yourself well, make appropriate career decisions, and take career actions that benefit you. And we will look at the environment around your career for the impact the things around you might have on you being in the loop.

The second half of the book deals with the mechanics of bringing your definition of career success into reality. We get practical and look at how to prepare a fabulous résumé and how to write job application letters, including the ones where you have to address selection criteria. We delve into preparing for and performing well in interviews. We will explore the recruitment process from the perspective of the organisation and the people who will be selecting you. Too often job applicants focus solely on themselves without understanding the complexity of recruitment and the mindset of the selection panel, who are clearly an integral part of the process.

As we go through we note that conventional methods of getting a job are on the decline, and new methods for fitting people with work are emerging. The fundamentals we explore will be useful with all new approaches to recruitment and selection. Finally, we will look at dealing with rejection when you are not successful in securing a job or some other career goal, along with celebrating not just your successes, but also that you are in the loop.

Each chapter contains practical exercises. The intent is you do these exercises as you read, then come back to them again and again as your career continues to unfold. For this reason, and because many people are not comfortable writing in books, the resources you find at the end of chapters are replicated for you to download on the website, www.flourishing.com/intheloop/resources. My suggestion is that as you read each chapter, download the work sheets, make a couple of copies and start a resource folder for your career.

Build your career resources and knowledge year after year as your career develops. Allow the history and development of your career to unfold and be recorded. Referring back to previous worksheets often provides invaluable information to help in career decisions yet to be made.

At the end of each chapter you will also find a set of Loopy Questions designed to deepen your learning from each chapter. You might like to grab yourself a special notebook in which you reflect upon and journal on each of these questions after reading the chapter.

People in the loop have the capacity to pay it forward, so I encourage you to generously share the information you learn as you go along. When you talk with others about a concept it helps to consolidate your own learning at a deeper level. Therefore, the more you share with others what you are doing to enhance your career, the more you will feel confident about the concepts you learn, and your ability to have useful career conversations with others will skyrocket. As you learn, it is inevitable you will notice when people might benefit from different career thinking. Don’t hold back. The ideas, resources and worksheets in this book are for sharing. As you hear people talk about being out of the loop, offer to have a coffee with them. Listen to their career frustrations and share what you have learnt. In fact, you might like to use some of the Loopy Questions posed at the end of each chapter to help others with new thinking about their career.

There almost seems to be a taboo in workplaces and social circles around talking about the topic of career, born in part from a sense of scarcity. This is such a pity. The concept of career, and being able to shape and make decisions about career, is a relatively new phenomenon—think about how much career choice people had only one hundred years ago—and we are still learning how to do it well. It needs people to talk about it, debate it, experiment with it, and generously share what works. In the words of American poet and activist Maya Angelou; When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, we are blessed. Help the careers of others and wonder at the ‘luck’ that opens up in your own.

You might even like to gather together a group of like-minded people who also want to be in the loop and start a career group. This is a group of people who meet specifically to support the development of each other’s career. As a group, you might use each chapter of this book as a source document for a meeting. There are a number of groups already formed who do just this—I call these Loopers Groups, as they are made up of people Inside the Loop. Some information on how to start one is included at the end of the book, but really it is easy—just go ahead, invite some people and start.

Now it is time to settle in and be introduced to two fundamental insights that reliably support people to be in the loop of a flourishing career—enjoy.

It is time to become a career manager you want to work for.

Chapter 1

Two Fundamental Insights

I love the word insight. Here are some dictionary definitions for it:

1. the ability to perceive clearly or deeply; penetration

2. a penetrating and often sudden understanding, as of a complex situation or problem

3. the immediate understanding of the significance of an event or action

4. the ability to see and understand clearly the inner nature of things

5. a clear understanding of the inner nature of some specific thing

6. awareness of one’s own mental attitudes and behaviour¹

When you have an insight, the world changes. It is impossible to not see and understand what has become clear to you. Insights create change, and they often bring energy and new focus.

To help you join the ranks of people who know they are in the loop, this book looks at many exercises, questionnaires, links, research, scripts, frameworks, busted-up myths, systems, and stories. But first we need to get two important insights. Getting your head around these two fundamental truths about career is key to getting the most out of this book.

The first insight is that to be someone in the loop, you need to regularly take time to work on and not just in your career.

The second insight is that you need to know what your own definition of career success is.

Get these two things straight, and you cannot help but change your career projection for the better.

Let’s look deeper into both.

Insight 1: Work On, Not Just In, Your Career

People in the loop know that career success is not obtained by just doing their jobs well. They know that just doing good work isn’t sufficient for them to be noticed and rewarded, and for career success, fulfilment, and flourishing to follow. They know that working in their careers is not enough. While it is true that hard work and competence are fundamental—and the basic starting point—people in the loop know they need to actively work on their careers too. In the loop people care for their careers by working on them so they continue to flourish.

In this book we are going to explore lots of ways you can work on your career, but for a quick taste let’s highlight some of the things people in the loop do differently to work on their career.² When in the loop and working on your career, you might seek out mentors, coaches, and other guides and you might actively look for networks you can join. Often you will have sharpened your decision-making skills and your action-taking skills, so you push through barriers that would stop others. You will be someone who tries new and different career pathways, staying open and curious about different approaches. You dedicate time to reflection and practices that help you know your strengths and capacities better, including knowing and standing by your values and understanding what is meaningful for you. You probably acknowledge that the decisions you make and the preparation you do today impact the results you get, and you actively work on becoming emotionally strong and intelligent. It is likely you search out and continue to engage with learning and development and you will actively learn career skills, such as better interview techniques and job-application writing—and doing things like reading a book like this!

This list is not exhaustive, and those in the loop don’t do all these things, and often they will do different things. Being in the loop involves acknowledging that what you need to do to stay there is individual and unique. It is dependent upon who you are and the circumstances of your career. The common theme, though, is to be actively working on, not just in, your career.

People tell themselves all sorts of stories about why they don’t work on their careers, and the problem is they believe themselves. Here are some excuses, all from intelligent, talented people who were not happy with their circumstances but were not doing anything about them:

I don’t want to be pigeonholed.

—Matthew, twenty-nine, drifted into programming but is extremely bored

But a better idea might come along.

—Sue, forty-three, became a nurse to please her mum but has always found it routine

I want to, but a little rebellious voice tells me I don’t have to.

—Tim, thirty-one, doing hospitality while he works out this career thing but gets seduced into long periods of travel rather than continuing the study that would change his direction

What if I choose the wrong thing?

—Claudia, twenty-five, working in a small office with a boss she does not like and contemplating extra study

But now is not the time to start—maybe next year.

—Tony, thirty-six, has been frustrated as a senior accountant now for eight years

Other people are going to be impacted.

—Tania, thirty-three, miserable and snappy at her kids after spending her days working in a dead-end job

Thinking about this just makes me depressed.

—Simon, forty-six, addicted to gaming in his spare time while lots of things fall apart around him

This first insight is fundamental. No one is going to ride out of the horizon and rescue you by presenting you with the career of your dreams. Waiting is not a strategy for being in the loop. Hoping is not a strategy to be in the loop. Ignoring is not a strategy to be in the loop. It takes work, and when you are ready to do this work, you will need to know what your own definition of career success is.

Insight 2: You Have to Define Career Success to Get It

I worked with Carly several years ago. She didn’t feel she was in the loop of anything and certainly didn’t think her career was flourishing. Not in her mind, at least. She worked as a communications adviser for a successful tourism venture. She was paid well, her work was appreciated, and the people around her were easy to get along with. Within broad limits, she was autonomous in deciding the way she approached her work. A campaign she had run the previous year had been nominated for an award, and colleagues from her university days often expressed their envy about the situation she had landed in. Yet she just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not quite right. It used to be, but it just wasn’t anymore.

Contrast this with Rory, who felt his career was successful yet he kept getting ribbed by friends and nagged by loved ones to stop drifting. He had dutifully done studies at university like his mother had wanted him to and had an arts degree. In the five years since finishing his studies, Rory had undertaken two separate eighteen-month contracts with a government department working in interesting policy areas, where he had soaked up knowledge. In and around these contracts he had continued working in hospitality and loved the freedom this gave him to do fun things during the day. He had also done two further courses: one in adventure guiding, when he thought his future was in ecotourism, and one in catering, just to shore up his hospitality credentials. He enjoyed both the policy and hospitality work and at the moment loved having lots of different experiences.

Carly thought her career was languishing, and Rory saw his as flourishing. Yet to most casual observers the opposite should be true. Sometimes, like Carly, you can feel that you should love your career but don’t. And sometimes, like Rory, others can think your career is not flourishing yet you do. The distinctions are quite subtle. One week you might feel that everything is going well, you are on the right track, the work you do is important, you are making progress, and others appreciate you. The next week you are full of doubts, questions, and second-guesses about what you are doing and why you are doing it.

A person in the loop of a flourishing career knows that to feel that their career is successful they need to have their own definition of what that success is. They know that the closer their reality matches the vision they have, the more they will experience their career as one they feel is successful and they enjoy participating in. The emphasis is on you. You, rather than others, define whether your career is flourishing. What might be a flourishing career for someone else may not be that for you. It is an entirely subjective experience, and you have to define it yourself.

Outlining what you want to define as career success is not easy. It is not easy, because it takes reflection, time, a dash of wisdom, and courage. On top of this, as we will explore soon, there are loads of misconceptions and myths about career that skew and often cloud your definition. Carly was not flourishing in her career, because she was not clear on her definition of career success. Her envious friends had adopted a traditional, commonly accepted definition of a successful career being one in which you are well paid and given more and more responsibility. Carly’s disquiet was coming from a growing understanding that those things weren’t part of her as yet unvoiced definition of career success. Rory, on the other hand, was clear about his definition of career success. At its core, his definition was to learn and have fun. He knew it wasn’t a definition he would hold forever, but at this point in time, it was working just fine.

People in the loop of a flourishing career know that career success is not about finding a perfect fit, never having crappy days, or never doubting what they are doing. Transitory crappy days and moments of doubt are inevitable in anyone’s life and career. In fact these can even be useful signs that decisions need to be made or transitions need to be explored in your definition of career. Nor is a flourishing career about fitting into someone else’s preconceived idea or society’s expectations of what a career should look like.

Markers Of A Flourishing Career

While everyone will have a different definition of career success, there are some markers that reflect if someone will see their own career as flourishing or not. These markers are part of the insider knowledge those in the loop intuitively, but not always consciously, know.

Some of these markers are surprising in that they don’t fit with traditional notions of career success. As Carly was discovering, with a flourishing career we are not necessarily talking about a traditionally successful career as defined by status, power, influence and monetary rewards. Those might be some of the factors that constitute a flourishing career for you, but they may not. In the loop you know it is up to you to define what constitutes success and what doesn’t.

In my work as a career coach I have consistently found that when a good number of the following eight markers are present people are more likely to report satisfaction and a sense of well-being about their career.

Positive Emotions

People in the loop experience a good ratio of positive to negative emotions when they think about and engage in their career. The sorts of positive emotions they experience include things like interest, amusement, delight, peace, pride, wonder, excitement, joy, grit, surprise, compassion, connection, and satisfaction. A ratio of three positive to one negative (3:1) is a good minimum guideline to aim for. This ratio has been identified by researchers as the minimum needed to feel you are flourishing in any area of your life, not just career. ³ At the end of the work day, people who are in the loop reliably feel their positive to negative ratio is well north of the 3:1 ratio and they feel the experience of their career adds to their overall well-being.

Engagement

The second marker of being in the loop is that your career provides you with opportunities to lose yourself in what you are doing. This involves having a chance to regularly feel immersed and engaged with activities involved in your career. You might even enter a state that has been called Flow.⁴ For most people, Flow is highly desirable. It is a state in which you become one with the work you are doing—to the extent that you lose track of time, are totally focused, have a sense of just knowing what needs to happen next, and are using your skills well, slightly stretching them in fact, in service of something that you find challenging but achievable. That sense of engagement is something many of us crave.

Relatedness

When this marker is present, you have the reality that the practice of your career has you come into contact with people who you care about and who care about you. You get to be kind to others and they get to be kind to you. Your impact on others is predominantly positive and people would miss you if you were not at work. You get a sense of connection with colleagues and clients.

Meaning

This marker is one of having the sense that what you do adds to something bigger than you. You feel your work is meaningful and makes a difference in the