Having Great Career Conversations (Part 1) - Self Exploration

After spending over eight years in various player-coach, first-line and second-line manager roles, I have realized that when it comes to retaining top talent the key is to create a healthy give-and-take relationship with direct reports and team members; where the goal is to facilitate employee growth and satisfaction. While customers remain a key external stakeholder for organizations (and managers), employees need to be our #1 priority as internal stakeholders. Irrespective of industry segment, type of work or nature of teams, a typical business year from an employee's perspective has some predictable pressure points. One such pressure point is the (dreaded!) mid or end-of-year Career Conversation.

As November rolled in, so did the internal trigger for employee self-assessments and a push for the all-important appraisal and review cycle in a lot of organizations. If you are working for a company where this cycle is timed differently, I would still urge you to read-on as the end of a calendar year (especially our 2nd pandemic year) is always a great time for self-reflection and future forward planning.

This article focuses on the essential steps that employees can take while preparing for a great career conversation, that leaves them heard, understood and valued. If you are a manager / supervisor, this is a good self-help guide to share with your teams.

Career Conversations are all about developing and flexing the skill of - Asking for what you deserve

There are 3 key elements to having a great career conversation which focuses on what you want to achieve in the short or long-term in partnership with the organization that you are currently working for:

1. Self Exploration [This article focuses on (1) Part 2 & 3 to follow shortly]
2. Aiming & Developing a Plan
3. Collaborating with your Manager

Self Exploration

Throughout my career no other question has perplexed me quiet as much as this one - "What's next?". Irrespective of the answer one might usually arrive at, the moment this question pops up, it is an indication of the need for change. But before we aimlessly pursue change for the sake of it, it is important to pause and think about "What needs to change? Why?" And as we bring these questions to the workplace, it is critical to understand that before we can expect anyone else to help facilitate the change we want to see in our careers, as individuals we need to know the answer ourselves. You have to clarify for yourself what you aspire to do with your career before you can communicate it confidently to others.

It’s a very profound question at the heart of it is ‘where does meaning reside for me?'

Finding Your Compass

People are most successful in jobs that align to not just their qualifications and skill-sets but also their values. What parts of your job directly align with who you want to be as a human-being? Which of your own core values do you bring to work everyday? How have they shaped your career?

Understand What Motivates You

As you look back at your professional career, college or school days reflect on moments where you felt energized, joyful or even super-human. In sports speak one would call them moments of PEAK PERFORMANCE. Are you able to see a pattern in these moments where you didn't just do well but were able to sustain this success over a period of time?

What do you enjoy doing the most?

This question forces you to be honest about the future. The underscored emotion behind these activities that evoke peak performance are usually more Fun, that Drive Sustained Enthusiasm and Come Naturally to You.

Clarifying What You Want

No one knows about your hopes and dreams for the future or what you are capable of more than you do! The clue to finding clarity on what you want to do next is often found in things that make you feel most purposeful. If you’re unhappy in your career and want to make a change, one of the most important steps you can take is to become aware of your purpose. In the book ‘Start With Why’, Simon Sinek talks about thinking, acting and communicating from our ‘why’. Your ‘why’ is your purpose. It’s the reason you get out of bed every day and why you do what you do.

Knowing what we want, setting a goal and rationalizing it alone is not sufficient.

The neo-cortex is the part of our brain in charge of our rational thoughts, not our behavior. Our ‘why’ or purpose appeals to our limbic brain, which is responsible for our emotions, decision-making and behavior. Purpose drives our actions and behavior.

Give Words to Wants

Now that we have gone through the exercise of re-evaluating your values, tying it back to projects / activities that allow you to fully express them, while making you feel like you are at your PEAK PERFORMANCE; it is time to actually articulate all these wants on paper. Research suggests that writing our goals on a piece of paper or in a journal, trains our brain to commit them to our long-term-memory facilitating better recall of information.

Neuropsychologists call this the "generation effect" which when applied to goal setting, trains your brain to work on finding ways to make the goal a reality, even when you are not consciously thinking about it.

My Personal Hot Tip:

Crystallize your Career Ambitions into THREE "I want to..." sentences. This is not as easy as it sounds because for most people it pushes us to get to the point about what is important and personal to us. For individuals who avoid direct conversations and like to hide behind a lot of small-talk or beating-about-the-bush, this will be an interesting exercise and one which will leave you feeling refreshingly powerful and assertive.

Here are a couple of examples for your reference:

I hope you found this article useful in your journey of self-exploration as you seriously think about your professional career or life. Stay tuned for the 2nd edition in this series, where we will focus more on turning your 3 wants into SMART goals and learn about building our own Individual Development Plans (IDPs). Until next time...keep hustling! :)