Ignite Your Career by Changing Your Circumstances

If you ask human resources people how to get out of a rut, they may dutifully present you with a career ladder that demonstrates how — at least in theory and in due time — you’ll be able to climb to the next rung in your company’s petrified organizational structure. If you ask your friends, they’re likely to tell you to jump to one of your employer’s rivals, where, after a year or two, you may catch a bad case of deja vu all over again.

Isn’t there a more effective way to shift your career from neutral to drive? Follow this advice to make real changes in your employment circumstances — changes that can make your job feel like a brand new day:

Deemphasize the Negative

It’s hard to improve your career’s circumstances if your immediate work environment is toxic. That’s why some experts say it’s important to disengage from dysfunctionality wherever practical.

“People who find themselves stuck in negative emotions start politicking with others,” says Susan David, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research affiliate in the psychology department at Yale University. “Negativity can be self-sustaining within a group.”

Of course, few can afford to ignore office politics entirely. But the more you can place your own emphasis on bankable achievements, the more marketable you’ll be to a broad range of employers.

Change Sectors or Industries

Pursuing a change of subject matter, or your career’s scenery, is another way to reenergize.

It won’t be easy to convince a hiring manager that you can transfer your sales skills from life insurance to living room furniture. But if you can creatively bridge the gap — for example, by pointing out that in both scenarios, you’re selling a long-term investment — you’ll have a shot at making the leap.

How can you improve your odds of success? Attend trade shows, read as much as you can and work your network — all with your target industry in mind.

Bootstrap Your Career with Further Education

Dramatically improving your educational credentials — not just picking up your umpteenth certification — is another way to get yourself out of a career rut.

Finishing your bachelor’s or going for an MBA, even if it means four years of night school, is an investment you’ll likely get back many times over.

“An MBA is a great way to jump-start your career and move yourself to the next level,” says Stacy Blackman, a Los Angeles consultant who helps students get admitted to MBA programs. “It’s a very good chance to change disciplines, to completely change careers.”

Relocate to a More Dynamic Job Market

Some say that if you can’t achieve job satisfaction in your own backyard, you’re just not trying hard enough. “To think you can’t find one fitting opportunity where you are — that’s ridiculous,” says Dan Miller, author of 48 Days to the Work You Love. “The grass is greenest where you water it.”

But in some industries and occupations, talented folks may rise to the top of the local labor market relatively early in their careers. For an entertainment industry professional, expectations can only be so great anywhere outside Los Angeles; for finance gurus, Wall Street will always beat Walla Walla. So consider relocating to a venue with a higher career ceiling.

Create an Advisory Board for Your Career

Of course, major career moves are easier said than done, especially in the likely event that you’re acting without the institutional support of your present employer. It’s nearly impossible to create major changes for yourself without reaching out. So don’t even try.

“Establish a personal board of advisors,” says Lawler Kang, author of Passion at Work. “Your board could include an HR person, a mentor, a person from an industry you want to get into. Get their feedback on your plans — their support is amazingly powerful.”

The Discovery Cycle-A Model for Career Development/Change

To a large extent, moving forward in your career and life is about learning from your experiences and overcoming the obstacles so you can strive to create the future you want.

The good news is you can learn these skills. One model you can use is called the Discovery Cycle, an assessment tool created by Dreamsheet. It is based on the premise that human beings must go through a personal learning or discovery process to create the future they want.

There are four distinct steps in this process of discovery:

Step 1: Projecting a Vision

It is often best to start this process with a description of the future you want to create — something you can picture, like a movie projected on a screen. It should be very meaningful to you and become a source of energy and commitment. Even if you aren’t sure what you really want, making your best guess enables you to begin exploring it more. Refining that vision over time is how you can create the future you really want. Without a stake in the ground, you will never get closer to your vision.

Step 2: Taking Action

Executing a plan is how you can move closer to turning your vision into reality. Like an actor in a movie, it is turning a good script into a great performance. Executing a plan is all about taking specific, concrete steps toward your vision. Good plans are realistic, specific and always focused on moving forward. Since visions are usually longer term and can seem almost too big to achieve, executing a plan lets you break a long journey into shorter trips.

Step 3: Experiencing Results

Evaluating results is how you get feedback from the world around you, so you know how close you are to achieving your vision. It’s the feeling actors get when the audience applauds or the critics pan their performance. Evaluating results is sifting through this sea of sensory input to find evidence that your actions are working. Being as objective as possible is important, since even bad news can offer tremendous learning and insight.

Step 4: Reflecting on Lessons

This is sometimes the most difficult and essential part of the Discovery Cycle. It can turn bad news into great insights — about the world and about yourself. The truth is, as long as you are willing to learn, you can create the future you want. The more clearly you see yourself and the world around you, the sooner you will realize your vision. In fact, the lessons you learn will help you clarify your vision and make it stronger.

You may already do these things to some extent, but most of us are hardwired on one side or another. Ideally, your Discovery Cycle should be balanced. Like the tires on your car, the more balanced and fully inflated your cycle, the smoother the ride and the more likely you’ll get to where you really want to go. 

Drive Your Own Career

Brian (not a real person) was a successful accountant. He made a good living, had been promoted several times and worked for a respected firm. Yet Brian was unhappy and didn’t know why. He had done everything he should have, at least according to the messages he’d received from his family. But by following those messages instead of listening to his inner voice, Brian strayed far from his true calling –– carpentry –– and was now miserably successful.

Impossible to Avoid

You get messages from your family from the day you’re born. Some of these messages deal directly with work, including:

• The jobs that are considered appropriate based on gender or income potential.
• The circumstances under which it’s appropriate to leave a job.
• The acceptable motivations for working.

Your family may have clearly stated some of these messages, or rules. For example:

• “Of course you’ll go to medical school. Your father did.”
• “It’s not appropriate for a man to be a nurse.”
• “You can’t work for minimum wage!”

You may receive other messages subtly via comments about other people. For example:

• “Can you believe she quit because she was bored? What about her bills?”
  Message: It’s more important to earn money than be happy in your job.
• “Mr. Smith sure is doing well. He owns his own business now!”
  Message: Entrepreneurship is good.
• “Boy, she’s really making a difference in the world.”
  Message: Social service is a worthy field.

These Messages Have an Effect

As you became an adult, you internalized some of the messages from your family. The little voice in your head that tells you to look both ways before crossing the street is the same one that “tsks” when you consider a career that is unacceptable based on the messages you’ve received from your family through the years. The conflict between these messages and the skills, interests and abilities you possess as an individual can cause lots of stress and, ultimately, lead to bad career decisions.

Let’s look at Brian again. His family messages included:

• “A good job is a professional job, like a doctor, lawyer or accountant.”
• “It’s better to be at the top of the ladder than at the bottom.”
• “Income is the most important consideration.”
• “It’s not acceptable for a member of our family to work with his hands for a living.”

It’s that last message that’s causing him the most conflict. Because Brian is listening to –– and following –– messages that don’t match his true desires, it is highly unlikely he will ever feel fulfilled as an accountant.

Get Back on Track

If you realize you’ve been following someone else’s career rules, it’s time to get back on track with your own. Follow these steps to get started:

• Recognize the Messages: Articulate the messages and rules you carry around in your head. Question every assumption and bias you have about jobs and work. This can be tricky, because assumptions are often invisible to us. Keep asking yourself why, as in, “Why can’t a man be a nurse?”
• Evaluate the Messages You Uncover: Scrutinize every family message you recall. Is it something you value? Is it something you believe? Most importantly, is it a rule you want to keep?
• Keep the Good, Toss the Rest: Keep the messages that match your values and beliefs. They will serve as a guide in your job search and work life. Toss the ones that run counter to what you believe. They will only get in the way when you try to hear and follow your inner voice.
• Learn More About What You Believe: You will likely uncover some gray areas where you don’t believe what your family taught you, but aren’t sure what you should believe, either. This is a good time to do some self-assessment work.

By learning to listen to what your own voice is telling you, you’ll be on track to find the career that’s right for you.

Passion Can Drive Your Career

Whether it last happened today or 20 years ago, most of us have been hit with that pit-of-the-stomach, Monday-morning moment of questioning: Why do I work here? Is this all there is?

What’s missing for many American workers is passion, a positive emotional connection to our work — often our most energy-consuming pursuit. The good news is that with introspection, planning, action and support, you can redirect your career to incorporate what truly excites and invigorates you.

Passion Drives the Most Successful Careers

In the context of work, passion is more than a best-seller buzzword, according to Sally Hogshead, author of Radical Careering. “The word ‘passion’ has a cheesy connotation, but you have to see it as a nonnegotiable element of your career success,” she says. “In fact, if you’re going to be your most successful, you have to be passionate.”

To put the drive back into your career, you first must get back in touch with what energizes you. “Look back over the course of your life — even back to when you were 12 years old — and seek patterns in what you like about what you’ve done,” says Lawler Kang, author of Passion at Work. “Try to come up with a high-level passion, even a mission. Then ask, ‘Does this job meet my personal mission?’ whatever that mission is.”

Your passion may take many forms: working with people, grappling with an organizational puzzle, telling stories or building that better mousetrap. It’s wise to come up with more than one endeavor that energizes you, because some passions don’t lend themselves easily to a career.

Put Passion into Your Work

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that any work activity that touches on your passion will automatically gratify you. “Even if you’re interested in golf, it’s unlikely you’ll stay interested in working in a golf store and selling equipment,” says Julie Jansen, author of I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This.

Suppose you’ve got the talent and decide you want to be a golf pro. For a successful candidacy, you need to lay out a plan that will help you put all the pieces together. “You’ve got to get some substantial stuff on your resume — fill in the blanks, repackage yourself, get training,” says Jansen. A reality check with professionals in your target occupation is key.

Inject Passion into Your Job Opportunistically

Of course, many of us don’t have the time and money to undertake a total career change. Big changes typically come with big expenses. But some professionals develop creative ways to infuse their careers with a passion that has been a long-term avocation.

“A client of mine, an account executive at a global ad agency, is passionate about health,” says William Arruda, a consultant with Reach Communications Consulting. “So she came up with several ways to inject her passion into the daily grind.” The account executive worked with the on-site cafeteria to design healthful menus, led after-work yoga and kickboxing courses and gained a healthcare company as a client.

That’s one way to serve up a career with a side of passion.

Fuse Different Interests into an Incredible Career

Glenn Street entered the sports mascot industry by happenstance, but he got hooked by passion.

Street, now president of Calgary-based Street Characters, which supplies mascot costumes for hundreds of professional and college sports teams in the US, Canada and elsewhere, used to work in commercial real estate. He considers this career “a great ‘paid’ education,” adding, “I learned a great deal about marketing, sales, negotiating, business law, contract law and other things.”

Street’s career direction changed when he was called into emergency service as a mascot during the 1984 Calgary Stampede. His committee chair asked him to substitute for the usual mascot, who was in the hospital.

“They figure the weight of the costume (85 pounds) has caused his rib cage to compress, and so they’ve had to remove one of his ribs, because it was pressing against his heart,” Street remembers the chair telling him — followed quickly by, “So, do you want to wear the costume this weekend?”

“Being young and foolish, I agreed,” says Street.

Taking this risk not only helped Street spot a budding industry and grow a company to serve it, but it also showed him he could combine two seemingly divergent passions — business and mascots — into a rewarding career.

Career Fusion in Action

Thousands of others have combined their interests to find fulfilling careers. For example:

• Before Deena Hoagland’s son suffered a stroke, he was a good swimmer who loved the water. So Hoagland, a therapist, took her son to a nearby marine mammal education facility to swim with the dolphins. Now, years later, she’s executive director of Island Dolphin Care, a nonprofit that offers dolphin-assisted therapy to children with special needs.
• Lee Goff‘s career focus changed several times. His original undergraduate major was marine biology, but he wound up getting a master’s degree in entomology. As an entomologist, one day Goff walked a mile from his hotel to a conference to attend a presentation on mites. When he got there and found out the talk was canceled, he didn’t feel like traipsing all the way back to the hotel. So he went to a different session on forensic entomology — the use of insects in crime scene investigation. “That was over 25 years ago now,” says Goff, who today is chair of the forensic sciences program at Chaminade University in Hawaii and occasionally consults for television shows like “CSI.”

According to Hoagland, “trailblazing — cutting a new path — is difficult, lonely at times and takes believing in yourself, tenacity and a great deal of patience. But anything is possible.”

Fuse Your Interests into a Career

Would you like to be the next Street, Hoagland or Goff? It’s not as outlandish as you may think, especially if you listen to the following advice from those who’ve successfully combined interests into their work:

• Ignore the Naysayers: “If you’re passionate about your dream, don’t expect others to understand it,” says Street.
• Take Action Despite Uncertainty: If one theme is common to people who have melded two seemingly conflicting interests into a career, it’s that they’ve been willing to jump without knowing where — or even if — they’d land. On the surface, their successes may look like pure chance, but it’s really a result of taking chances. “We can’t tell what will happen,” Goff says. “So find out.”
• Think About Your Assets, Not Liabilities: “Your diverse interests can oftentimes be beneficial to the seemingly unrelated career,” says Kent Seko, a designer for S&S Power. Seko found a way to turn his architecture background into a career designing roller coasters. Your unique interests “give a perspective to a job that others in that field of work or those desiring to be in that field of work may not have,” he says.
• Accept Sacrifice: “Be prepared to work hard, especially during the early years,” says Street. “‘If you build it, they will come’ only works in the movies.”

Sincere Interest Can Take You Far in Your Career

Remember the last time you met someone with whom you wound up having a great deal in common? Remember that “aha” moment when you learned the other person shared one of your strong passions? You probably ended up talking to each other about that common interest for the next hour or two, completely losing track of time along the way.

You didn’t even have to try to connect with the other person. It just happened, simply because you were both enthusiastic about a certain something.

The same thing goes on all the time in the world of work, and you can cultivate it in your career exploration or search for an internship or entry-level job. By simply sharing with people what you’re sincerely interested in and asking them for their advice and ideas, you can uncover or even create all sorts of opportunities that will help your career development.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose you’re a college sophomore majoring in environmental studies, because you have deep-seated feelings and beliefs about environmental protection. If you could find some people who are currently working in environmental protection and tell them about your strong interest in the field, you would almost certainly connect with some similar-thinking professionals (and other students) who would gladly open your eyes to career-related opportunities.

How could you find such people? Several ways:

Join a Professional Organization

Hundreds of professional organizations target people who have an interest in environmental issues, and several of these groups are aimed specifically at students. The Student Conservation Association, for example, offers conservation service opportunities, outdoor education and career training for students interested in the field. As importantly, though, it can expose you to a significant network of people to share your passion with.

Meanwhile, professional organizations like the National Environmental Health Association have dozens of state chapters. Find the chapter in your state, join it and attend meetings and conferences to find hundreds of people in the field with whom you can discuss your common concerns — and uncover employment opportunities.

Go on Informational Interviews

Informational interviewing is just a fancy term for talking to people about their jobs. In the vast majority of cases, if you ask someone whose job interests you to talk to you about that job, the person will happily do so. Why? Because you’ve shown interest in something he feels strongly about and people love talking about themselves and what they do.

With the explosion of the Internet, you don’t even need to live in the same area as the person you want to talk to. Instead of or in addition to an in-person interview, you can contact people by email and speak to them that way at their convenience. (Often, you can email people who seem too famous or too inaccessible to talk to you and be surprised when they respond, sometimes with much more information and advice than you would have expected, solely because you’ve shown sincere interest in them and what they do.)

Volunteer

There is perhaps no better way to prove your strong interest in a certain field than to volunteer with an organization in that field. After all, you won’t be getting paid for your efforts, so the people you’re working for and with have to conclude you’re contributing simply because you enjoy the field so much.

In many cities, the local chapter of the United Way serves as a clearinghouse for hundreds of volunteer opportunities in the area. So if you were interested in volunteering in an environmental capacity, you could check with the nearest United Way chapter and see what possibilities exist.

Just as you might hit it off with someone at a party, you can also hit it off with someone in the world of work. And that someone, seeing your sincere interest, will more often than not be flattered to introduce you to the many career-related opportunities that await you. All you have to do is ask.