This is Part 3 in the career series – Aspire Forwards. Aspire Forwards like this picture of the single Red Seat at Fenway is an attempt to inspire and help you, the reader, to reach for the stars. Basically I am asking you to be like Ted Williams and hit the metaphorical 502 ft. home run at Fenway.
In the previous article, we discussed the need to stop looking for a job and start finding a career instead. Beyond identifying the core difference between a job and a career being the striving for what you want to do versus settling what you can or is willing to do, we really didn’t spend much time digging into the concept itself. That is what we will do here.
I think for most people when they think of the word career, it is defined as an upwardly mobile ladder that you must climb. My perspective is different. When I talk about pursuing a career, I am not talking about professional accolades or positional power. Achieving those things might be a product of your career, or perhaps not. To me career is defined not by the positional power you attain or the esteem you get from externalities. Instead I firmly believe that a career is defined by two things. 1. The ability it affords you to self-actualize and 2. The feeling you get from going to work instead of all the other things you could do.
It is not a particular novel idea to think that the goal of a career is self-actualization. Although I am sure there are more than a few college professors who probably feel Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a bit outdated, I think most forward-thinking businesses still use it as a barometer when they are trying to build career plans for their employees. I know my company does! Additionally, even though scientist have expanded upon the model since it was developed, our goal here is not to delve into the exact depths of the human experience but instead we use Maslow as a roadmap to understand what it is the we are striving towards.
What is great about Maslow is the simplicity of his model and the fact that he focused on how we fulfill the human potential instead of how we avoid its pitfalls.
So, what does self-actualization mean for you? If we follow this model it is clear that it is something that is beyond the basic and psychological needs. Think about the last article, where we discussed that there are absolutely situations where you will seek a job, simply because you need to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Similarly, if you are in a well-paying job, that many would call a career, with no real risk at losing your income, but managed, like my wife was, by a Bill Lumbergh type, then although your basic needs may be fulfilled, this isn’t really a career
As I think about this model in context of job versus career, it appears to me that that being in a career means you are in a situation where when you wake up in the morning you are at some level excited because you get pursue your passions in an environment that not only allows you to do so, but asks you to.
An example of this is my brother. If you met us together you wouldn’t realize that we were brothers, well beyond genetic similarities. We are by all accounts Scandinavian giants with too much love for potatoes, pork and beer. Where I have spent my life in either school or behind a keyboard at work, my brother, after finishing the mandatory years of schooling in 10th grade, chose to not go to high school, but instead got an apprenticeship as a plumber. Although he is one of the smartest math minds I have ever known, he had no interest in becoming an engineer. He loves working with his hands. He loves fixing things that are broken, sometimes so much that he will take his working motor cycle a part, just so he can figure out why it isn’t broken. For him being a plumber isn’t just a job, it is his calling and he genuinely loves what he does. How many people with advanced degree’s sitting in fancy offices behind keyboards can actually say that they love their work?
As mentioned I went another way. I loved going to school. My brother was already a certified plumber at 19, finished his year of military service at 20 and was a home owner at 21. I stayed in school till I was 25 earning my Masters in Business and Communication and didn’t become a homeowner until I was in my 30s.
Despite me living the life that often is considered the career life, I would venture that my brother has just as much of a career as I do.
There is another piece to this conversation that is often forgotten. In fact, as I was thinking about writing this series, I didn’t even think of it until I read the Marshall Goldsmiths book “What got you here, won’t get you there.” It is mostly a book about understanding your own faults as a high performer and/or manager, something I can relate to, as I have far too many of them. But he also talks about how there are certain static biases that are woven into how managers consider the needs of their employees. An example, you may have a 20’s something coming in with loads of student debt, needing to make big bucks to pay down the loans and get their life started. To the manager, this employee often becomes trapped in the money motivated bucket and when life happens and say the employee gets kids and wants to have more flexibility, the manager isn’t able to change their perceptions and what might have been a really good understanding of the employee’s needs don’t change and what might have been a great career fit is no longer.
The blame for these static biases are not just on the shoulders of the manager though, it is also on us as individuals. Far too often I think we either don’t know what we want, or we forget to do a gut check every once in a while on if what we thought we wanted is still what we want. And if you do that gut check, then you also have to have the courage to share that with you manager. I say courage, because I think most of us fear that level of honesty, cause let’s face it, the message may be that our time with our manager is coming to an end. And if we tell the manager that, then we may lose our job. The thing is, that means we are living in fear, and as know from Maslow, if we are living in fear, we aren’t being self-actualized.
I don’t think anybody believe reaching the level of trust between an employee and a manager, where you truly can share this kind of conversation, is easy. It isn’t and it isn’t exactly like you as an employee can just apply that level of trust without it being reciprocal. So, a central question in the search for a career becomes how we can build that level of trust with our manager. As a recruiter I think the answer lies in the questions we ask even before we join a company and our ability analyses the responses we get. There are books out there that will you the answers you are supposed to ask during your interview, to make sure you get the job. I think those books do a lot more harm than they help. The goal shouldn’t just be to do what it takes to get the job, it should be to make sure it is the right job, with the right manager for who you are now what you are wanting to do.
I can’t tell you what those questions are, but I can tell you what I recommend to the candidate work with. Ask the questions that matter to you, for what you want out of your career and ask them to not just one person, but every person in the process. As you move forward this allows you to compare the answers allowing you to see when there are inconsistencies. In my experience the greater those inconsistencies the more you should be concerned.
In addition to looking for inconsistencies you should also listen to what they are actually saying and you should match that up with what you want out of your next career destination. Early in my career I was in a situation where I felt like I needed a job, even though I likely waited a bit longer before that really became true. But because of my growing desperation to not be unemployed I didn’t listen, when my future boss told me that he had only three priorities in life, the company, god and his family. As I learned the hard way, working 4 years for the guy, when someone lists their company as their first priority over their family and their faith, I need to be worried about our mutual fit.
Finally, instead of keeping your cards close to your vest about what you want long term. I suggest letting your future boss during the interview know what you are actually looking to do with your career and asking them how, if you come work for them, they will help you achieve that. The beauty of this approach is, you are allowing trust to build before you ever foot with your new employer. If you don’t get the job, because you were honest, then let’s face it, it was job not a career. If you learn that this manager doesn’t have the ability to allow you to self-actualize and still gives you a job offer, then you have the ability to say no, and keep looking for the right thing.
Interested in continuing the conversation or do you have perspective you would like to add find me on twitter at @JensBSvendsen.
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