Taking the Driving Seat in your Career

I was recently asked to host a talk for One Young Total, a community of Total employees created in 2018, after the Total Group first took part in the One Young World Summit in Bogotá. One Young Total is an internal network of employees committed to promoting innovative ideas and projects that foster positive change. Its goal is to offer internal and external networking opportunities and encourage experience and skills sharing. I was asked to prepare a talk on career development. 

Given the subject some thought, I named the talk “Taking the Driving Seat in your Career”, and kicked off with a traditional safety moment, with reference to Total’s Golden Rule number 2, Traffic.

When we get behind the wheel, to ensure our safety we buckle up, ensure we know the rules of the road, and make sure we are attentive to our surroundings, looking about us at all times. As a driver, it is best to be confident and in full control rather than a nervous driver, or by taking risks and being a danger to yourself and others.

Clearly this safety moment was a metaphoric introduction to my talk, transposing the image to how we manage our own careers : to truly be in control we need to be proactive, avoid unneccesary risks, know the rules of the road and proceed with confidence.

How many of us, however, really drive our careers in this way? And how many of us, on the contrary, are lacking in confidence, and not sure of the road or the rules that govern it? How many of us follow the car in front, or turn on the GPS and follow its instructions? 

Reading the road ahead

Throughout our professional lives many of us blindly follow the “intelligence” of a third party (in the early years we are guided by our parents, university career advisors, and as we progress we get guidance from our managers, from HR…). How many of us ask ourselves this question : what is the risk that their guidance is different from our professional reality and you end up driving into the proverbial river ? (We’ve all seen the images of drivers who have blindly followed their sat navs into water only to find out the map isn’t up to date…)

And how many of us trudge on with our careers despite nagging voice of our professional GPS telling you do a “U turn”, turn right…? 

Despite being an HR professional with particular interest in HR development, my view is that too many of us follow the professional GPS, and that we’d be better off unplugging it, and reverting to a more sensory approach. Imagine instead setting the general direction and then intuitively sensing our surroundings, following the quivering arrow of a compass and adapting our route based on what we see and feel along the way, just keeping a general sense of direction towards where we want to go? 

This requires us to be proactively aware of our professional surroundings, to be registered for job alerts even when we aren’t actively looking, and then to be able to make the move at the right time and heading in the right direction. 

Of course, taking this intuitive, compass-like, approach opens up a new world of opportunities that we might have overlooked or driven straight past if we are blindly following the GPS. 

Career ladders

Often when we think about career development we talk about the “career ladder”, ascending upwards. In reality, and more so than ever in today’s world of agility and constant transformation, its not a question of ascending ladders, but more about doors that are open or closed, corridors or footbridges taking us laterally from one place to another. 

There are plenty of career development opportunities that offer growth and learning and development without climbing the proverbial ladder. 

Making a lateral step to a different area of the business requires us to think carefully about how to market the experience we have gained to date. The starting place in most career conversations and interviews is often experience. When writing your CV or preparing for a career conversation it is important to prepare and ask yourselves what you want to showcase. 

Ask yourself the following questions : What were the main functions of each job? What was the working environment? For whom and with whom did you work? What were your main successes? What have you accomplished? What were the challenges? What have you learned? What can you leverage in the future? 

Building blocks of our career success

Beyond the experience, it is important that we can explicit clearly the skills we have acquired and have to offer. Think clearly about what you bring to the table.  

What skills have you acquired? How have you acquired them? Through formal education? On the job training? Through your different professional experiences? From exposure to others or through your network ?

Make sure to have concrete examples of how you use these skills : this will help to prepare for the interview, and help structure your CV.

What skills are linked to the needs of your previous jobs or professional discipline? What skills are transverse, transferable? What level of mastery of skill do you have? Is that in line with your level of career? Do you need to acquire more skills? 

Remember to take a medium term (3+ year) outlook on your professional development and skills acquisition and start any new role by looking ahead and considering your learning and development goals to help you along. 

Personality

Over and above the professional experience and skills, taking the driving seat of your career is to recognize that hiring decisions are also driven by human nature: it’s often said that a hiring manager knows the outcome within the first few minutes of a career discussion. Obviously the decision will be taken objectively, based on a reasoned analysis of the skills needs and level of expertise, however there is also a key human element to the decision. What are the candidate’s natural traits, their personality, and how will this influence their on the job behaviours ? Clearly our personality will impact how we are perceived, but more crucially and beyond the short term consequences during the selection process, thinking about personality in the context of professional development is key to finding a role you’ll like and avoid finding yourself doing a job you don’t enjoy. When we consider what percentage of our adult lives we spend at work, it is important to make sure that we make the right decisions for our careers, based on self-awareness and considering the compatibility with the potential role. 

A key point to be aware of is that there is no good or bad personality profile : it is a matter of situational context, whether the role is “right” for you will depend on the work environment, who you will work with, what activities make up the role and how natural it is likely to feel, and how much effort is required, how much energy it is going to take. There is no “good and bad” personalities, but each trait has a scale with opposing extremes that both have their advantages and disadvantages, and that will be more or less compatible with different types of jobs and working environments. 

There are many different tools available to analyse our personality, from quick free online self-diagnosis tools, to certified psychometric assessments with professional HR support to debrief and help you to interpret the results.

When considering where to take your career, it is crucial to build upon your self awareness and think about your personality in the context of the working environment and roles that you might be considering. How you will fit into the role, thrive in it, will depend on how compatible it is with your natural talents, your personality and your motivations. 

Let’s break this down using the big five model, or OCEAN, which is a means to think about the groups of personality traits that sit behind many psychometrics.

Openness to experience, Learning approach :

Would you describe yourself as creative, curious, imaginatory, someone who likes variety, is open to innovation, and willing to try new things? Are you ambitious? Bold? Imaginative?

Or alternatively, are you instead more consistent?  Cautious? Prudent ? Are you someone who is more at ease with stability, happy with the status quo, focussed on the here and now? Some jobs will require high levels of creativity and novelty. Other jobs focus on execution and strictly following processes or methods with no tolerance for deviation or initiative. In what type of job would you be happier?

Conscientiousness :

Are you someone efficient, organised, ordered, self-disciplined, someone who likes planning, and takes pride in your reliability and attention to detail ? For some jobs these are qualities that will help boost your career success, but in other jobs on the contrary, perhaps you would be more comfortable if you are someone who is more flexible? Spontaneous? Agile? A risk taker? Would you be happy spending hours on end checking data, organizing tasks and planning? Or is your ideal job more carefree, with a more unstructured approach to work?

Extraversion :

Would you describe yourself as someone outgoing? Energtic? Do you get your energy from others and find yourself vocalising your thoughts and being interactive with those around you? Are you enthusiastic? Action orientated? Are you comfortable being visible? Do people think of you as someone who is talkative? Assertive? Sociable? In some work environments some of these personal traits will be advantageous, however some jobs might better suit the introvert, someone who prefers a more solitary approach, who is perhaps more reserved and quiet, deliberate in their actions. An introvert is likely to be more reflective, getting their energy from their own thought processes, and taking time calmly and silently to think things through. An introvert working in an environment that requires some more extroverted behaviors will use considerable effort doing their job and need to “recharge their batteries”. In my previous roles I met many a business school professor who described themselves as highly introverted, entered the profession through a love of research and who needed to muster up a lot of energy to teach and be ‘centre stage’ during their presentations. 

Agreableness :

Next comes the interpersonal element. Are you someone who is compassionate and friendly and empathetic? Do you thrive in social harmony? Are you seen as others as someone kind? In some jobs these personal traits will be fundamental, and without them you will struggle. In other jobs these traits will mean your guard is down and you will be at a disadvantage, and would be better suited to someone displaying more cold or detached traits, with a “poker face”, and a more distant, firm and reserved personality. 

Neuroticism :

The final element of the OCEAN model is neuroticism. The traits measured here are  self-control, howemotional you are, your relationship to stress. Are you someone who is rervous? Sensitive? Or Resilient? Confident? Some jobs come with constant daily pressures. Other jobs have peaks and troughs with sudden but short lived moments of pressure. Others are more steady. How you react under pressure and how easily you handle your emotions will influence your ability to operate serenely in some jobs, and give you warning signals that other jobs might not be for you. Someone who thrives on pressure will not get as much personal satisfaction in a job that doesn’t stimulate, and vice versa someone who is less resilient to stress will probably want to avoid jobs that have a heavily pressured working environment. 

Motivation

Once you have given thought to your personality, also consider your motivation.  What gives you energy? What drives you? On the contrary, what saps your energy? 

Recognition : Are you driven by a need to be recognised, to be visibile and noticed? Or do you instead prefer to be out of the spotlight and support from the shadows? 

Power : Are you driven by competition ? Do you seek to be influential and drive results in others? Do you like to control others? On the contrary, are you less motivated by power and are happy to follow others’ authority ?

Fun : Do you get your energy from having fun and enjoying work? Or is a job just a means to and end ? 

Altruistic : Are you motivated by helping others? Or you believe more in self-reliance? 

Affiliation : Are you driven by autonomy? Or are you energized by collaborative work? 

Tradition : What is your approach to rules, structure, hierachical authority? Are someone who is driven by a sense of independence ?

Security : Do you seek clarity, predictability ? Or on the contrary do you need variety and risk?

Finance / Money : Are you driven by financial aspirations? Do you seek financial outcomes and results?

Aesthetics  : Are you driven by a need for functionality? Or perhaps you are more motivated by self-expression, look and feel?

Science : What drives your decision making? A rational objective head driven approach? Or more intiutive gut driven thinking?

Aspirations

Enriched by your introspection and self awareness, you’re now ready to grab the steering wheel and firmly drive yourself forward.  Think about what type of job you want to do? What skills you want to develop? Consider how realistic this is based on your current skills, abilities and profile. What types of job can you aim for? What is a realistic progression? What skills gap might there be? How can you fill it?  

If you have a good self awareness of your current strenghts, coupled with awareness of what is required in the future and you can maximise your growth factors (learning capacity, agility, social skills, powers of perception) over your derailing factors (things that can send you off track, behaviours, competency etc), then you maximise our talent potential and stand a greater chance of reaching your aspirations.

Growth Mindset 

A crucial element to your success in driving your career forward is your belief in yourself. Believe you can grow, and understand that effort makes you stronger. Be prepared to put in time and effort, and know that this leads to higher achievement.

Never feel inferior or limit yourself based on what school you went to, what your degree was in. Each and every one of us can develop, nobody is fixed by what they have done in the past, where they come from or who they are.

Whilst Carol Dweck’s famous growth mindset theory is now 30yrs old, recent neuroscience research points to a phenome called brain plasticity which indicates that connectivity between neurons can change with experience. With practice, neural networks grow new connections, strengthen existing ones, and build insulation that speeds transmission of impulses. These neuroscientific discoveries have shown us that we can increase our neural growth by the actions we take. This research literally shows that if we rise to take on challenges and learn from them we can train our brain and increase our abilities and achievements. 

The key is to find your talent sweet spot and be prepared to use your growth mindset to step outside the comfort zone. Consider two factors what you CAN DO (your skills, your ability and aptitude) versus what you WANT TO DO (your motivations, aspirations). 

Your natural talent zone is where you have the necessary skills and your work and environment matches your motivations and aspirations. However with a growth mindset you must know when is the right time for you to step outside this comfort zone and into the development zone to learn new skills in an environment that meets your motivational or aspirational needs. In the short term you’ll may be find it a challenge, but given time and effort you will succeed and find yourself on a virtuous growth curve driving your career onwards or upwards.

Sell yourself

Finally, once you have given thought to your aspirations and identified what you can and want to do, and where you might want to take your career to meet your motivations and drive yourself forward to learn new skills, you need to consider how to sell yourself. 

In an open job market, it’s the recruiting manager that makes the first move, and “sells” their job by advertising it. Don’t forget that its not all about what the manager has to offer in terms of job, but what you have to offer in terms of candidate. 

How do you succinctly pitch yourself? Firstly, know what the manager’s problem is so you can best tell them how you will solve it for them. This means knowing the job description, doing your research about what they need, and mapping this to your profile. Clearly this means a personalized approach : a customized CV, and a customized interview pitch, based on the position you have applied for. 

How do you describe your profile succinctly? What are the three key words that describe you? What are your key acheviements? Show the manager that you are forward looking. How do you see your next steps professionnally? What do you bring to their team, and what do you hope to learn whilst there? How does this position help you along in achieving your professional vision? 

In conclusion, taking the driving seat of your career starts first by selecting your vehicle, and deciding on your driving style. Do you see yourself in a Sports car or a 4x4? People carrier or sleek limousine? How much do you want to spend, and what will it cost you in the long run? Can you pay for your vehicle by cash up front, or will you need to loan some capital to invest in your new wheels? Up to you, but chose wisely based on the road you want to take, and the type of driving you’re prepared to do, and how comfortable you are with your investment.

Once you have your ride, grab the steering wheel with confidence. Know the direction you want to go, with an idea of your destination in mind, but keep your eyes open to the road and adapt to the opportunities that arise along the way. Buckle up and know the rules of the road for your safety, and above all else enjoy the ride.

Alan Lambert is an experienced international HR leader, currently working in the global Corporate HR Strategy team for a leading energy major.