Today I’m sharing with you 3 tips as to why you need to pivot your career and, perhaps most importantly, the things you should consider before doing so. Why is this important?
Because we’re in a time of transition. Things are kind of crazy out there in the world. I think we know that. And now more than ever, we need to embrace the fact that we have two choices in life. Either as all this crazy pandemic is happening and all these changes are hitting, we can either hide under the covers and hope that it blows over which isn’t exactly the most practical thing.
Hide in the bathtub. Like my puppy tries to do. Stick your head in the sand. Or we can pay attention and realize that it’s up to us to embrace, change and view this unimaginable moment as an opportunity to take charge of our future by surrounding ourselves with people who can and will make an impact and make a difference.
I’ve had multiple career pivots and I promise you, you probably will have more than one more than three, could be four or five, even over the course of a lifetime, especially if you’re more closer to my kid’s ages, you know, right out of college, or right out of medical school. This is not your father or your grandparent’s career track,
Right? Remember, I don’t know about you, but both of my parents had their major role for over 30 years. They had the retirement dinner and all those great things. And for some of us, even some of us in the group, we have achieved retirement and now are saying, you know what? Um, I’m younger, I’m healthier or I’m ambitious. And I know that I’m not done contributing. So, is it time to pivot? And when it is, do we want to move up? Some people are looking for a raise, a promotion, a Board of Directors. See, they like what they do. They like whom they do it for. It’s not that it’s broken.
They just want more. Do they want to move over? Meaning I’m really great at what I do. I love my career path, but I’m physically relocating. I’m moving to a new organization or is it moving onto something different altogether? And those are those moments where we may want to reinvent ourselves completely. It could be going from paid to volunteer.
I call it “rightsizing your career” because sometimes, sometimes it’s about doing more and sometimes it’s even about doing less, right? So, some people want to still contribute to their industry to work in their zone of genius, but they don’t want all the stress of having to put in the hours they had been. So, those are choices. Sometimes career pivots are chosen for you.
Like if your company closes or furloughs and all the things that are happening with the pandemic, sometimes you get to choose. And I promise it’s a lot more fun when you take charge of your career path and start to really pay attention to the things that matter most. So why do you need to pivot in your career? Again, sometimes it’s chosen. Sometimes you choose it.
But three things to consider before doing. So, these are my A-ha moments. Are you ready? I built a platform that helps people think about the three main pillars of a pivot versus mindset. What matters most? What lights us up? What are our strengths? This is how you set your career GPS. The second is skillset, and that is where we connect the dots from where we’ve been to where we hope to be and figure out our dream role, and how we really align with that next thing. What do we need to do to maybe fill in some gaps? Are there free courses? Is there volunteering I could be doing to get that extra experience? Is there something I could be telling my manager I want to dedicate 10% of my time to?
One of my clients decided that his business was getting slow and he went to a CEO and said, look, everybody’s coming to me asking about what to do. Working from home. He created the task force and became the leader of it on virtual teams, how to help his company, and his colleagues thrive. So, all of those things are quantifiable and quality measurements that we can do to align our skillset and connect the dots from who we were in our prior life, our past wins or past accomplishments, and how they could impact the decision-maker in the next chapter.
So in other words, in our toolkit, we have a Career Transformation Workbook. You can make your own if you wanted, but can you track your quantifiable successes over time? Keep it in a Google sheet so that it grows over time. But across the top, I want you to keep the categories of, was it a leadership win? Was it a financial win? Did I speed the process? Did I improve the process? Did we innovate and create something new? Was I fearless? Was it employee retention win? How do the things I’ve done impact? Not just me, but my prior organization and how might they impact future organizations connect those dots.
The third thing to consider is toolset. If you know where you’re going and you’ve set your career GPS, that’s step one. If you’ve aligned your skillset, connecting dots from where you’ve been, that’s step two. And then step three is about telling that story in an impactful way. And that’s everything from, how do I introduce myself in public? You know, I’m in transition. I don’t know how to say that or that horrible seeking opportunity for that. Some people put under their LinkedIn profile do not ever do that. Do not do that. That’s not a help to you.
I promise because even in your LinkedIn or in your introductions, you want to come from a position of strength. You want to be known as the expert in water treatment or project management or whatever expert in dot, dot, dot. Not seeking an opportunity. One puts you in a position of power and authority and the other makes you needy and wanting help. And I promise you being searchable as a leader in your space is going to help you a heck of a lot farther. So as you get to part three, which is the storytelling, which is the toolset.
Make sure you’ve done a really good job of being crystal clear so that it’s search engine friendly so that your resume can go through the computer tracking system. But perhaps most importantly of all, when you’re telling your story, make sure you’re Rocking Your Connections, make sure you’re attracting the right people. Make sure you’re going back to your old inner circle of folks.
Not just the people you know recently, but those people whom you’ve built friendships along the way. Like I just had a three-way virtual coffee with a friend from 15 years ago. Make sure. You’re connecting and reconnecting with folks because that’s the way to get your foot in the door faster to remember how awesome things were to build connections and help all three of you share your new collective group of friends that you’ve collected over time to share the wins you’ve had over time. The learnings that you’ve had, you’ve all been in separate places growing over the past X number of years.
So, rocking your toolset part three is really, really important because that’s the way to learn why you should confidently tell your story how, when, and where to do so. So again, career pivots are sometimes chosen for you, but I promise when YOU take charge of your career pivot and do one thing better every single day, you can move forward faster toward a career in life you love without selling your soul or losing your mind. And that my friends are what gives us a life worth living and a career worth having. And gives us those moments where we can jump out of bed in the morning and be completely and utterly proud of whom we’ve become. And know that we are indeed able to make an incredible impact on the world.
So, if you have questions make sure you join the Career Coaching Corner, which is our tithing. We’re going to be here every day. Live 3:00 PM Eastern now through June 25th.