Career paths are not Linear

This this a summary of 5 thought leaders of why its the new normal for a Career path not to be linear ... A career is a series of decisions, big and small

When you think about a “career” in the abstract, it seems like a very linear thing—one step leading to the next in a causal chain that adds up to success or failure. That’s not how it works, of course.

 A career is a series of decisions, big and small. Even a successful career can take many wrong turns along the way. However, a master plan and smaller-scale goal setting can significantly increase your chances of moving in the right direction.

The idea behind this article is to help extract from these varied professionals how to formulate the grand plan, assess the risk-reward at every stage and evaluating each decision in detail. A diverse range of experts, from Tim Ferriss to Deepak Chopra, explain this mindset-shifting, holistic approach to career development.

Its about leveraging their hard-earned wisdom to make the right choices, mitigate risk, and build the networks of trust that will support you throughout your career.

5 very different experts: Sarah Robb OHagan, executive, activist, entrepreneur, and the CEO of Flywheel Sports | Dorie Clark, marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and author (Reinventing You) | Stephen Miles, founder and CEO of The Miles Group | Tim Ferriss, podcaster and author (The 4-Hour Workweek and Tools of Titans) | Deepak Chopra, medical doctor, public speaker, and author of more than 80 books

The key questions to reflect on are:

1. What has guided your career thus far?
2. How would you describe the balance between luck and conscious decision making in this process?

The 5 videos summaries below give some great food for thought from real switched on experts

Sarah Robb O'Hagan on asking for help

Consider:

?        Think about your current position. How much do you rely on your colleagues?

?        Who do you turn to for professional support? How willing are you to ask for help?

When you’re starting out your career, it’s easy to put tremendous pressure on yourself to know all the answers. Perhaps you’re eager to impress management. Maybe you’re afraid that vulnerability could be perceived as weakness. Maybe you’re overly confident from past success. Whatever the reasons, Flywheel Sports CEO Sarah Robb O’Hagan has learned the hard way that not asking for help is a big mistake. She lost two jobs in her 20’s by not reaching out for help. Later in her career, even as a CEO, she discovered that admitting vulnerability and asking for help has a surprising, counter-intuitive effect. Rather than driving people away, it transforms them into your biggest supporters.

People love to share their expertise. Asking someone for help honors their experience, communicating the fact that you value and depend on them. It also gives them permission, by example, to accept their own professional vulnerabilities. This, in turn, inspires gratitude and deepens collegian feeling. The result: over time, you establish a network of support instead of an office full of isolated careerists working next to one another, but separately. And in the long run, trust and interdependence turns out to be best for everyone’s career.

Takeaways/actions

• Try to recall the last time someone above, below, or at the same level as you in your company asked you for help or support? How did it make you feel? How did you respond? How did it change your working relationship with that person going forward?
• Take a minute to think of at least three areas in which you could use more professional support. Are you taking the necessary steps to get it? Who in your organization could you ask for help? Do it... Over the next few days, ask at least one person for help in one of the areas you listed above. Take note of how the colleague responds and of the practical result.

Dorie Clark: Become a subject matter expert

Consider:

When you imagine an “expert” in your field, what comes to mind? What marks someone as an expert?

“The truth is a lot of people hold themselves and their ideas back,” Dorie Clark.

This is true even of people who aspire to be known as authorities in their fields. But the fact is that leadership in a networked world doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You have to put yourself out there, creating original content, establishing social proof of your credibility, and growing your network. These three levers are the foundations of success as an expert in your field. The good news is that you don’t have to spring into the fray fully formed. In fact, engagement and dialogue are the arena in which you’ll refine and develop your best ideas and, in the process, establish your reputation.

1.      Content Creation

• Share your ideas in the public sphere. Write, speak, and debate about the ideas that are important to you. As the dialogue progresses, you'll get valuable feedback to help you strengthen your ideas. Interviewing others can become a source of content and connections.

2.      Social Proof

• Signal your credibility by publicly displaying your credentials: Affiliations, Awards, Advanced degrees, Prestigious publications, Leadership roles at professional associations.

3.      Your Network

• Leverage your connections. Cross-pollinate your ideas with other thought leaders. Solicit feedback and hone your ideas. Encourage others to act as ambassadors for your best ideas.

 I found Dorie so interesting I went straight to her book : Stand Alone.

Definitely worth a read, but if you want the summary see here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/stand-out-egotistical-essential-step-career-today-gareth-nicholson

Stephen Miles: Assess yourself

Consider:

How do the skills you are learning in your current position serve your long-term career goals?

 CEO Coach Stephen Miles, author of Your Career Game: How Game Theory Can Help You Achieve Your Professional Goals teaches you how to think “three moves ahead” by managing inter dependencies and interconnections among coworkers, managers, and others in a manner that supports personal career efforts:

• game theory -- a strategy for maximizing gains and minimizing losses within prescribed constraints
• career game theory – a strategy for accelerating your career

 Definitely a book on my list, ... and if you not certain try the below questions. If this sparks interest, maybe the book is for you too:

Assess the playing field: Your boss.

• What are your boss’s motives?
• Does he or she want to be known for creating talent and being a net contributor of talent inside your company or does he or she want to be known for delivering outstanding results?
• What evidence do you have to support this assessment?
• How will this assessment impact your approach to your work? 

Assess the playing field: Your peers.

• What are your peers’ strengths?
• What are they doing that is disproportionate to what you are doing?
• Given this knowledge, how can you position yourself to be the best candidate for the next job?

Tim Ferriss sets anti-goals to mitigate risk

 Consider:

•  What is one of the greatest risks you ever took?
• How did you prepare yourself beforehand?
• What negative consequences, if any, resulted from the risk?
•  How did you manage them?

Fear and stress make people make bad decisions. At the same time, life sometimes involves real risks, and it’s important not to navigate them blind. As an investor and a “human guinea pig”, Tim Ferriss has taken some major risks over the course of his career, yet he considers himself quite conservative. How does he mitigate risk? How does he manage fear and stress? Like everything else Tim does, there’s a system to it.

• Fear Setting: A thought exercise for evaluating risks that supports more effective and less reactive decision-making; most effective when practiced regularly.
• Worst possible outcomes: What are the worst things that could happen if I made this decision? Make your anti-goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timeline.
• Minimization strategies: What could I do to minimize the likelihood of these things happening?
• Course correction strategies: What could I do to get back to where I am now if these things happened?
• Fear Rehearsal: Practicing worst case scenarios in small doses in order to inoculate oneself against the fear of such scenarios happening.

A firm believer in Stoic philosophy, Ferriss mitigates risk by inoculating himself against it. For every new goal he sets, he examines related “anti-goals” — the possible risks associated with the new venture.

Having detailed the worst that might possibly happen and outlined strategies for recovering from it, he’s in a position to step bravely into the unknown. The ancient stoics did something similar, “rehearsing” disaster scenarios in order to live more bravely. Afraid you might go bankrupt? Live for a week on nothing but oatmeal. Wear the same pair of jeans for a week. Push yourself beyond the limits of what you’re used to, and understand that you can not only survive, but also thrive under the most challenging of circumstances.

"Stress is an ambitious person’s name for fear." , Tim Ferriss

Deepak Chopra - Making Healthy Choices: The Path to Personal Fulfillment

Consider:

• Take a moment to reflect on the role you play in the social network at work. Are you the colleague, manager or leader that you want to be?

Takeaways

Deepak Chopra describes radical well-being as operating at peak performance at all times in body, mind and core being. To begin living like a radical well-being, what habit changes for body and/or mind would be beneficial to you? How will you start small, making easy choices at first?

The key he describes is constant reflection, and then set your intention:

Start by answer 3-5 of Dr. Chopra’s Reflection Questions for better understanding your perceived roles currently and thn look to slowly redirect if not exactly what you would like:

• What are my unique skills or talents. Am I using them?
• What do I want my legacy to be at the end of my life?
• Do I have any heroes, mentors in history, mythology, religion that I would call role models? What can I learn from them?
• What kind of world do I want to live in?
• What kind of a leader do I want to be?
• What can I give to my team?
• What do I need from my team?
• Why do I have the goals I have?
• How are these goals going to impact the quality of my life?
• How are these goals going to impact the quality of life of all of those who come into contact with me?

Goals & setting intention are very important, but success is more than achieving your goals. Success is the  progressive realization of worthy goals. Reflection helps ensure you aiming for your real goals.