Career path : Embrace the twists and turns of your learning journey

It recently occurred to me that I’ve just hit the 20 year mark since graduating from my barrister training and starting my career! If you’d have met me as a fresh-faced bewigged legal graduate (photo at end to reward you for reading on!) and told me what I’d be doing today, I’d quite literally have laughed in your face. At that time, I had my mind set on a very different career. I imagined myself as an advocate, on my feet in court or in a tribunal. I imagined working in a liberal profession as my own boss, making my name for myself as I represented clients. I imagined billing my work per case, not getting a steady monthly salary. I certainly didn’t want to be living in a big city, and I didn’t imagine myself working in a large company. As Steve Jobs famously told the Stanford graduates in his 2005 commencement address : life sometimes has other plans for us, and you can only connect the dots looking back, and you have to trust that the dots will connect in future to give confidence to head off the well worn path and make all the difference for your career. In the ever-changing landscape of the modern workplace, one thing is clear: career paths can be remarkably unpredictable. What may seem like a linear journey often turns into a bumpy and winding road with unexpected twists and turns. So many people navigate their way through a labyrinth of professional choices, eventually arriving at a fulfilling and meaningful career, yet on a totally different road to the one they'd initially imagined.

My own career has certainly not been linear either. This September I will start a new role, so I’m in the process of wrapping up my current job and taking stock of the last 4,5 years, which accounts for about a fifth of my career to date. So what have I learnt over the past 20 years? Here’s a look back, connecting the dots at some key times in my own career path and managing my own talent and hoping to share some learning points with you.

Self-awareness and selecting a career aligned to your personality

The foundation of a successful career begins with self-awareness –understanding your passions, values, strengths, and weaknesses. Identifying your personality traits and interests can significantly aid in selecting a career that aligns with your authentic self. Take the time for introspection and self-reflection to discover what truly energizes and inspires you.

Ask yourself questions such as: What are your core values, and how do you envision contributing to the world? Are you a team player or someone who thrives on their own? Do you like to work spontaneously? Analytically? Understanding your tendencies can help you match your personality to the demands and dynamics of various career paths.

I perhaps didn’t consider this enough in my younger years and ploughed headlong into 5 years of graduate and post-graduate legal education without fully evaluating whether it actually suited the way I wanted to work. After nearly 6 years in my early career, I realized that the life I’d dreamed of as a barrister, and that I’d failed to actually ever do, wasn’t the only way I was going to become professionally fulfilled. Once I realized this, it opened up a phase of introspection and self-analysis that lead me to switch to HR. I did this because I realized I’d naturally taken managerial responsibilities for my team and I enjoyed working together, building trust based relationships and helping to develop skills, make work easier and simplify our ways of work to perform to our best. I had enjoyed hiring, training, and even the harder “HR” aspects of my first manager role (more of that below). Many years later, in one of those looking back and connecting the dots moments, when moving houses I found my college career orientation report (Morrisby profile). Reading that again with fresh eyes I realized as early as 16years old HR was already one of the career options that had been identified for me based on my personality and learning style. Thankfully I didn’t focus on HR earlier though, or I would never had met my wife at law school and my life today would not be the same at all!

Savour what you can learn in the hard times

Unpredictability often brings challenges and setbacks. These difficult moments can feel like detours, leading us away from our intended destination. However, it is crucial to remember that these hard times can also become opportunities for growth and learning.

When faced with disappointments or obstacles, take a step back and assess the situation objectively. Embrace a growth mindset, viewing challenges as chances to develop new skills and resilience. Embracing the idea that failure is a part of the journey allows us to bounce back stronger.

I have had several of these moments, and each one has made me a stronger person : To quote Steve Jobs again, at the time it was awful tasting medicine, but I needed it.

The first real hard time was fresh after being called to the Bar and not finding a pupillage (like an apprenticeship, that must be taken on-the-job after the vocational training in order to obtain a practicing certificate). I qualified not long after the Bar Council required pupillages to be paid, and this reduced the number on offer. A well intentioned policy, designed to help access to the profession for people like me (the first in my rural Cornish family to go to university, without any legal connections to secure a first job) was working very much against my odds of succeeding. I interviewed literally in every single chambers in the South West, Southern Wales and Southern England outside of London. I vowed not to work in London, and used to loathe having to go for the obligatory dining sessions at the Inns of Court. Yet, I needed to start my career somewhere and that’s where the jobs were, so off I went. I can still remember looking up in awe at the skyscrapers towering above as I exited Canary Wharf underground station for the first time, never for a moment imagining I’d then spend the most part of my work life in buildings like them in London and now Paris. The feedback I had from several interviews was that I didn’t act sufficiently self assured, and that I didn’t outwardly portray the confidence that would reassure instructing lawyers or my lay clients. In short I learnt the hard way that the job market is fundamentally like any other market, based on supply and demand, and that when supply is low and demand is high sometimes you need to fake it to make it. The more self confident, some might even say arrogant, graduates managed to look the part despite being just as inexperienced as me, and in many cases having less good academic backgrounds. But it was a question of perception, and those numerous early knockbacks and rejections were a lesson that served me well : you need to look like the right person for the job and fit into the expectations of all the stakeholders you’ll be working with.

Leverage your intrinsic motivation and do what gives you energy

Intrinsic motivation, the drive that comes from within, plays a critical role in our career satisfaction. Pursuing a career that genuinely excites and energizes you can fuel your passion during the most challenging times.

Identify the tasks and activities that bring you a sense of joy and fulfillment. Consider the times when you were so engrossed in an activity that you lost track of time and felt a deep sense of satisfaction upon completion. Such activities can be indicators of your intrinsic motivation. What drives you? Do you just do your job for the money? Do you enjoy helping others? Having authority? Do you seek recognition or appreciation for what you do? Do you enjoy social interactions in your work? Should work be fun? Do you like high speed risky work or slower analytical work?

While external factors like salary and job security are important, they should not be the sole determinants of your career decisions. Instead, seek roles that align with your intrinsic motivation, and you will find yourself eager to take on challenges and continuously develop your skills.

The second key moment of my career, when asked myself some of these questions, was some 5-6 years after starting my first job, when I worked with the MD and Finance Director to handle the effects of the 2007 credit crisis, which had taken its toll on our revenue streams. Our client base had dried up. Banks were no longer lending so our international mortgage brokering was on its knees. Buyers couldn’t afford their dream properties overseas so the estate agency business stalled. As a result our currency exchange business was also severely hit. By late 2008 I had undertaken 3 successive waves of redundancies to downsize the employee headcount and was attending meetings with the bank’s insolvency team to prepare putting the business into administration. We actually ended up closing down entirely and liquidating the business. This was the key pivotal moment that made me realise that a corporate legal career was not for me, and that I’d perhaps perversely enjoyed handling the human aspects of these tricky times.

Looking back I learnt a lot about myself and my career aspirations from that period of my career. We closed the business on a Friday, I went out to the pub with the last handful of employees left, got very merry, had an intense emotional release over the weekend and then I started as a temp in my first full time HR role on the following Monday morning. ?My pay went down for a time, but my day to day career satisfaction was way up, I haven’t looked back since and my current overall remuneration enables me to lead the comfortable life I aspired to back in the early days so the short term financial hit was well worth it to let me bounce back stronger.

Play to your strengths and hedge your bets

In today's competitive job market, individuals are often encouraged to work on their weaknesses to become more well-rounded professionals. While growth and improvement are essential, it is equally crucial to recognize and leverage your strengths.

Identify your unique talents and abilities – the qualities that set you apart from others. Align your career choices with these strengths to maximize your potential and excel in your chosen field. For instance, if you excel in problem-solving and analytical thinking, careers in fields like data analysis, engineering, or research might be a perfect fit.

Acknowledging your strengths and building upon them can provide a strong sense of competence and confidence, making you more resilient when facing challenges and uncertainties.

The red thread throughout my whole career to date has been the use of my legal and vocational skills (questioning, negotiating, drafting, influencing, advising, decision making…) alongside my language skills. My choice of studies, LLB Law and French, was taken with the language as a safety net because I didn’t know if I’d be any good at law. This set me on a path that lead me to study in France, live in France, work in France, and now even gain French citizenship. It means over the past 20 years of my career, nearly half that time I have lived overseas, and been able to access some excellent roles in our Corporate headquarters that I’d never have imagined being able to do. I even managed to use some of my “on my feet” public speaking in my role as leadership development program director. I recently had lunch with one of the leaders I trained many years ago now who said his memory of me was “the showman”. Clearly, having find the right place to work, I’ve gained some of that self-assurance and confidence I was lacking in the early years.

Skills transfer with you from job to job

Let me wrap up with reference to three key skills that I think we all need to succeed :

Leadership : seize every opportunity you can to work with people and hone your leadership and influencing skills. If you want to progress to managerial roles, this will be crucial. Even if this isn’t what you aim for, leadership is a critical competency for anyone working with people, and is often best used by people outside of any formal role. Being the one that others look to, that is there to support and guide others, that facilitates other people’s work and helps them to be better is always going to help to secure their own career path. Never underestimate the benefits of being recognized for your leadership skills by knowing how to effectively work with other people and using soft power to get things done.

Adaptability: when it comes to your career progression, lateral moves can be just as impactful as vertical moves. Being open to changes in your career trajectory stepping out of your comfort zone and adapting to the opportunities that present themselves will avoid you from stagnating and will give you the chance to learn new skills.

Problem solving : As your career progresses whatever road you take, as you gain seniority and experience you’ll find that you are trusted with more complex work. Moving from purely execution or task-focussed work and shifting to a more analytical or strategic critical thinking approach will be essential in making the leap to the next step in your career. ?After four and a half years in my current role I can see that I make decisions in an entirely different way, and I know that the strategic thinking I’ve gained in this role will serve me well in future.

In conclusion, career paths can indeed be unpredictable, but they can also be incredibly fulfilling if approached with self-awareness, a growth mindset, and an understanding of one's intrinsic motivation and strengths. Embrace the journey, learn from the hard times, and remain open to the possibilities that lie ahead. Keep in mind that career paths are essentially just a series of learning curves. As you navigate through the bumps and swerves of the uncertainties, remember that connecting the dots looking backwards will reveal the meaningful and purposeful path you've paved for yourself.

And for those of you who made it through what has turned out to be a longer article than I’d originally intended, here’s that 20 year old photo I promised of the fresh-faced bewigged legal graduate version of yours truly!?

Yes, I have aged quite a bit and the grey hair is now entirely natural, and has started its descent from my scalp to my chin...

Alan Lambert, Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management, is an International HR leader currently (for a few more weeks anyway) working at the Corporate HR Strategy division of a global energy company and is a Linkedin Talent Voices Talent Advocate award winner.?