Career transitions are often challenging periods to navigate.
Even when we intentionally choose change and willingly embark on a career transition, the first steps can feel overwhelming.
I like to start this conversation from a holistic perspective. Every career decision and potential change or transition is embedded in the totality of the client’s career life and therefore has its own unique and overriding narrative. Guiding each client through a reflective process at the beginning helps gather important experiential information, including personal attitudes towards and expectations of work and career, their relationship with work and career, and the meaning work and career hold for them.
These reflective conversations reveal a client’s motivation, acceptance of, or tolerance for, change. They reveal personal aspirations, goals, challenges, and fears. They reveal practical considerations unique to that client’s life.
This reflective information helps inform and shape a specific career transition approach, plan, or strategy that is relevant and attainable for the individual client.
If you are considering a career transition or simply noticing changes in your relationship with work and career, try reflecting on these 6 sample areas.
Motivation and Stamina. Career transitions can be exciting. The possibility of new opportunities and expanding our experiences can be highly motivating, and they can also be risky, challenging, and destabilizing. The process can be short or drag on much longer than we anticipated. It is helpful to be aware of and acknowledge the range of emotions that accompany a transition and regularly conduct a motivation “check-in”.
Do I have the motivation and emotional stamina for a career transition? How is my energy, motivation, focus and mood today, or this week? Can I identify when and under what circumstances my motivation drops? What can I realistically accomplish today, or this week? How do I feel about what I have accomplished so far? What needs re-adjusting, what should be prioritized? Am I avoiding next steps? How organized, or disorganized, do I feel?
Capacity or tolerance for change. We may envision a different job, role, or profession, but be resistant to change. Others of us have no hesitation in leaping into change. Most of us are a combination of these two in varying degrees. When we have a better understanding of our attitudes toward change, when we gather personal information and feel more personally invested in, and accepting of, the changes to come – even the unknowns – we can move forward with more confidence.
Transitions often include changes in salary, in “professional status,” in which skills we are using, in day-to-day responsibilities and will likely require a period of adjustment and/or training. Transitions include new work environments, new leadership styles, new colleagues, and new team dynamics.
How do I feel about change? Am I open or resistant to change? Can I accept this transition and the changes I will experience? How do I feel about changes to my salary, taking on a new professional identity, re-training, being in a different work environment?
An honest and compassionate “check-in” gives us information about our capacity or tolerance for change(s). This information provides perspective, opens possibilities, and creates room to make any adjustments to a career transition approach, plan, or strategy.
(Re)defining your expectations of work/career. We all carry expectations and internal narratives of what work and our career lives should look like, feel like, and what we want them to provide, from financial compensation to personal fulfillment. Understanding our expectations and any narratives guiding us gives us more of this valuable reflective information.
What are my expectations for work and career? How do these expectations influence my choices and decisions? What am I open to? What am I resistant to or unsure of? Can my expectations be redefined, re-framed, expanded, or changed?
Reassessing skills and capacities. We often associate our current skills and capacities with our work or role. It is common for many clients I work with to see a career transition as a loss of skills or a suspension of skill development. In truth, each of us comes equipped with a portable value and a diversity of learned and transferable skills. In addition, each of us possesses innate skills and talents and a continuously expanding “experiential expertise” derived from our accumulated life and work experiences. We each bring a unique approach to our work (“how” we work) and equally unique perspectives shaped from our experiences and contributions. This living, expanding personal value isn’t suspended but should be re-examined, re-assessed, and potentially leveraged in new and creative ways during a transition. This can open a wider horizon of potential opportunities or new areas to research and network.
Can I identify some of my innate or natural skills? What makes these skills “portable,” transferable? How would I describe “how” I work? What unique perspectives, experiences, skills, and contributions shape the roles or positions I have had? How would I describe my expertise, my value, at this stage in my work and career life?
Finances. Career transitions may mean a period of unemployment or at the very least changes in income. These are very real considerations that influence whether a transition is possible, and how a transition could be planned for.
Is a career transition feasible financially for me? Do I need to remain in my current work role/profession while looking for opportunities? Can I be without work for several months, or even up to a year? Is it possible to go back to school or to retrain?
Support and self-care. Support and self-care are key ingredients when navigating any career transition.
Do I have the support of family, friends, colleagues, mentors, career counsellors/coaches? Where can I reach out for conversation, support, and perspective? Am I practicing self-care, including taking time away from the transition process to experience other areas of my life, other skills, other personal interests, or responsibilities? How compassionate am I towards myself during this transition? How flexible am I when I do not accomplish that “to do list” regarding job searches?
What new insights, thoughts, or ideas emerged as you worked through the reflective questions in this sample checklist? How can you leverage this gathered information to create a series of flexible yet attainable steps during your career transition?
Career Counselling can help at any stage of your career life. For help, guidance, and support to navigate a career transition/change contact [email protected] for more information or to book a consultation.
