Career Resilience: How to Make the Most of Your Mistakes
We’ve emerged from the confines of our pandemic office bedrooms into a bold new world of working: semi-remote, fully remote, flexi-time, four day work weeks… the list of ways employers are handing autonomy to employees keeps growing.
But we’ve also seen other things: mass layoffs, demands to return to the office, companies struggling to accommodate the remote shift … there’s no shortage of ways our careers can be interrupted or straight-up halted.
Wherever you’re at professionally,?it’s a good time to think about creating a buffer against unpredictability.
That’s what Career Resilience is all about, and we have our own resident expert in Najim Zaytoun, who’s giving us his top tips.
Najim is a psychological coach and learning consultant with experience of professional adversity at its most extreme: he was let go from his role as a Senior Learning and Organisational Development Specialist at Klarna, the global payments solutions provider, as part of the company’s mass layoffs last year.
In this article, we’ll get his take on bouncing back from adversity through a series of best practices that not only help you overcome your mistakes, but help you build your career upon them.
What is career resilience?
First, let’s define career resilience by what it isn’t.
It’s not somehow immunising yourself against hardship. That’s crazy. Humans don’t work like that.
It’s not even about learning to take criticism well. Sure, that can be part of your resilience toolkit, but that’s not enough to build continual resilience in your career.
Najim sees resilience as a?positive?force as opposed to simply a neutralising one:
"It doesn’t mean being immune to adversity — it is how you bounce back from negative experiences."
Hardship can take on many forms?throughout our careers. We might:
When times are tough, your resilience skills are the ones that will allow you to benefit from professional adversity.
To sum up: a resilient career is one that is actively boosted and buffered by adversity.?We take learnings from our trickiest situations so that we come away stronger.
So how do we build a resilient career?
领英推荐
How to build career resilience
Najim suggests six foundations of resilience development that will see you move through “negative” outcomes in a proactive, growth-driven state of mind.
1. Build a strong network
Just like our personal lives, a strong network is crucial in times of adversity.
“From psychological research we know that one of the major contributors to resilience in general is having a support network. The stronger your network, the easier it is to bounce back.”
2. Embrace continuous learning
“When you invest in learning, you’re investing in yourself over the long term. It’s the ultimate resilience strategy in my eyes.”
There are two big upsides to a focus on constant learning:
At Your Current Job
If you keep growing in your current role, you’ll be able to work on new projects. You’re providing massive value to your employer or your clients. “This decreases your chances of being let go from a position, but it also opens doors to more opportunities.”
Looking for Your Next Job
Hiring companies are going to love your commitment to professional development. You’re demonstrating self-motivation, willingness to improve, adaptability, curiosity… How many companies etch these words on their “team values” page? You’ll fit right in.
And who knows? Maybe you discover a new skill or topic that sets you on a whole new path — careers aren’t linear anymore!?More discovery means more opportunities?to find your true excitements in life.
3. Try something new
Tied into lifelong learning is trying new things and learning new skills. While it can be tempting to stay in your comfort zone, truly resilient professionals ensure they have many strings to their bows.
Why? Because when times get tough, there will always be more opportunities out there for those who can provide the most value to their potential employers. And?a curious mindset is one that will be most open to new things and potential new skills.
A good starting point can be skills related to those you already have. If you’re a UX designer, coding might be a great way to help you understand the restrictions and requirements of the engineering team. If you’re working in sales, a course in digital marketing techniques will boost your customer acquisition knowledge.
For the full article, head to the Vektor blog!