What do you do if your career setbacks can actually boost your training and expertise?

It is often said that failure is a necessary part of life that helps us progress. When we face setbacks, we can use SWOT analysis to improve upon them. This involves identifying our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By leveraging our strengths, we can work on our weaknesses and take advantage of opportunities while mitigating threats.

Quem n?o percebe que os contratempos e os erros fazem parte do processo de crescimento profissional pode viver na passividade e inércia ou insatisfeito e frustrado. N?o aceitar suas limita??es e suas falhas impedirá que você avance. "Quando eu me aceito como eu sou, ent?o eu mudo." Carl Rogers. Os erros podem ser diminuídos ao máximo, mas sempre existir?o em algum grau, e a maneira como você os enxerga, reage e os aproveita como oportunidade de aprendizado é o que fará a diferen?a. N?o fique ansioso para realizar muitas mudan?as e entregar grandes resultados rapidamente. Apenas foque em entregar seu melhor a cada treinamento ou atividade. Conhe?a seus pontos fortes e fracos e aprenda como lidar com eles de uma maneira produtiva.

There’s Purpose In Your Pain! Setbacks are the glue to comeback! Your pain is your gain to wealth. A wealthy mindset, character, endurance, and happy tears. It’s the darkness in the tunnel where there appears to be no light, that molds us. While holding on to hope, making the right decisions, moves the light closer to guiding us away from the tunnel. We’re coming out shouting with eagerness to help someone else come through a dark place. The story, there’s light at the end of darkness!!!! To get out of it, you have to go through it, to get to, your breakthrough!!

Many of us will face a setback at some point in our careers. If we keep focusing on its negative aspects we shall miss the silver lining. While setbacks are disruptive in the short term, they can galvanize careers in unexpected ways. At the core, careers are best understood as lifelong journeys where detours and unconventional paths are natural and often valuable. First, recognize that the decisions leading to the path you’re on now were made by an earlier, less experienced version of yourself. Take a step back and ask, are these goals still appropriate for my greater skills and knowledge and understanding of what career success is? How can I update? Is it skills or goals or the mindset or the path or something unexplored ?

Feedback is your friend! Actively seeking feedback from various sources within your network offers diverse perspectives and fosters continuous learning. Believing that you have nothing left to learn can hinder your resilience and expertise. Regularly gathering feedback might also reveal skills you lack, presenting opportunities for growth. Therefore, consistently soliciting feedback throughout your career is essential to maintaining peak performance and nurturing a growth mindset.

A setback in your career is an ideal opportunity to diversify your skills. Often, the day-to-day responsibilities of your role might hinder this progress, but now you can dedicate your full attention to upskilling. View this as an exciting challenge rather than a necessity stemming from career difficulties. To broaden your skill set, consider taking online courses through platforms like LinkedIn Learning or Coursera, focusing either on new areas or enhancing your existing skills. Additionally, attending conferences or participating in webinars with keynote speakers can provide invaluable insights into the latest trends in your field. Whichever path you choose, maintain a mindset of continuous learning to unlock new opportunities.

I have always grown the most as both an individual contributor and a leader when I have stepped into something brand new. As long as your skills transfer, knowledge can be obtained. If you are a high performing individual, you most likely need to feel challenged at work. Stepping into something new and unfamiliar gives you that opportunity to learn and be challenged and not get complacent in something you are too comfortable with.

Career disruptions can be disheartening and may lead you to question yourself and your choices. Instead, consider viewing these disruptions as opportunities for introspection and growth. These moments allow you the time to evaluate how satisfied you are in your current career or maybe it can be time to pivot into a new adventure. Whichever path you choose, employing the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) method for goal-setting can greatly enhance your chances of success. This approach not only helps in setting clear goals but also outlines a pathway to acquiring new skills and opportunities.

Years ago, I left a state job teaching in higher education and moved out of state with my family to explore a new region. After a year, I decided to move home because the weather was too extreme for me. However, I could not find a job near my old hometown and looked in a nearby state. I found a job doing corporate instructional design work. I expanded my skills (learning Articulate 360 programs, Camtasia, Voice-Overs, project management, and more), discovered I love that line of work, and made many new friends from my team in the process. Changing careers was scary at first but expanded my skill set exponentially. Lesson: Don’t be afraid of change during this time.

To effectively turn setbacks into growth opportunities, cultivate a broad perspective. Embrace curiosity and cross-disciplinary learning to enrich your expertise. Share your knowledge through teaching, which reinforces your own understanding. Reflect on successes to identify strengths that can be leveraged in future challenges. Adopt a growth mindset to persist through adversity, and work on emotional intelligence to navigate complex professional landscapes. Finally, establish a robust feedback loop, acting on insights received to continuously evolve and improve your skills and approaches.