A beautiful 'career'...

A while ago a very wise person (and I have forgotten who now) told me that your career was like a person. They said that you had to nurture it, feed it, care for it and protect it. The payoff being that in turn, it would take care of you. In that moment I assigned a gender to my career. Female. Not a woman but definitely female.

For a long time when anyone asked me about my career, I was always quite apologetic in tone.

Me: Oh yes, I did a law degree when I first left school.

You: Oh but you never used it?

Me: Well no I never actually practised. (Correct answer: every single day of my working life)

I would also find myself apologising for the somewhat random trajectory of my ‘career’ because to put it quite frankly, there was no real ‘rhyme or reason’. I would sometimes - very disrespectfully and politically incorrectly - refer to it as ‘schizophrenic’ because I couldn’t make claim to that seamless pathway that so many of us, in my generation anyway, managed to achieve.

Law, Marketing, HR, Culture, Change, Executive Leadership. New Zealand, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia. To be sure that’s not so unusual for New Zealanders. We like to get around. But within those disciplines and locales I mostly chose roles that suited my personal, not professional ambitions of the time. Because of that, my roles have fluctuated in seniority and sector but my god has it been rewarding.

I guess it’s stage of life, but when people ask me now about my career I am no longer abashed by the wildly circuitous route that has brought me to where I am now. Sometimes you have to go sideways, or even backwards, to get ahead

And what is a ‘career’ anyway? That wise old Google tome, Dictionary.com describes it as 

noun. an occupation or profession, especially one requiring special training, followed as one's lifework.

It then goes on to illustrate with a gloriously old-fashioned example: He sought a career as a lawyer.

Well sorry DC but I am going to call bullpucky on that and propose a definition of my own for the word career.

noun. A set of interactions between two living organisms. One a human being and the other, that wonderful beast - the organisation.

A career consists of a series of human interactions that can be wildly successful and fulfilling or conversely filled with anxiety, strife and stress. It is either a gloriously rewarding experience that makes you want to ‘go the extra mile’ or a ‘deeply dark and soul destroying venture where you despise every minute. At best it can be a blend of both and at worst merely mundane and perfunctory – which is my own personal idea of employment hell.

As humans we are programmed to be looking ahead in terms of what success looks like. For me, it has been to lead the function, to build team, to get stuff done to shift organisations, to make them better for our people. I thought I had to be at the top of the proverbial ‘tree’ in order to do that successfully. And I have proudly built wonderful, successful, capable teams and been a member of teams that have been abundant in passion, talent, challenge and care.

In my current role we talk a lot about ‘the future of work’ and what the emerging workforce will be looking to organisations to provide. Flexibility, care for the planet, adaptability, agility, balance, psychological safety, freedom to be themselves, opportunity to contribute (up and down), less hierarchy, less restrictions. As a Gen-X’er, when I see this list, it is exactly what my generation, well me at least, wanted from work. I think we were just too scared or conditioned to ask for it. So actually this is nothing new.

Looking at where I am in my ‘career’ now, I want to ensure that I have the courage to continue to achieve everything in that list above and that I continue to challenge myself in how I do it. I think I have figured out that maybe you don’t have to be at the top of the ‘tree’ and that sometimes the branches at the base - that give others the support to get to the top - are just as critical.

Sometimes it’s good to stop and assess what you really want out of your work, how you want to contribute and make impact and not just deliver what is expected of you or what you are conditioned to expect of yourself. It might just lead to some exciting change.