MANAGING YOUR CAREER WITH POWER

YOUR PERSONAL CAREER MANAGEMENT GUIDE

TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION In PDF Format

Gerald M. Sturman, Ph.D. The Career Development Team/Bierman House

1999 The Career Development Team/Bierman House. All Rights Reserved.

Contents

Preface ........................................................................................... vii Why Another Book on Careers? ................................... The Rules of the Game ................................................. Getting To Where You Really Want To Be ................. Noone Said It Would Be Easy ................................... Acknowledgments ......................................................... vii vii viii ix x

Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................ 1 Using This Guide .......................................................... 1 The Fundamental Propositions of Career Management ...................................... 2 The Career Management Process Managing Your Career with POWER ............... 5 Chapter 2 - Assessment - Knowing Yourself .......................... 9 If You Knew Who You Were You Could Be Who You Are ............................ Alternative Sources of Assessment ............................... Synthesizing Your Assessments .................................... Skill Assessments ........................................................... Assessing Your Motivated Functional Skills ................ Assessing Your Adaptive Skills ..................................... 9 10 14 20 20 27

Chapter 3 - Investigation - Knowing Your Environment .... 35 Waking Up To The Realities of Your Environment .... Reading for Career Information ................................... Career Networking ........................................................ An Information Gathering Exercise .............................. The Reporting Steps ...................................................... Suggested Networking Form ........................................ 35 35 37 41 43 44

Chapter 4 - Matching - You And The Work Environment ... 45 You Are Responsible for Managing Your Own Career .............................................. The Work Environment - People, Places, Jobs, and Cultures ............................................. Your Worklife Preferences ........................................... People Preferences Check List ..................................... Places Preferences Check List ...................................... Jobs Preferences Check List .......................................... 45 46 46 47 50 52

iv Managing Your Career With POWER

Cultures Preferences Check List ................................... Putting It All Together .................................................. The Matching Game - An Example .............................. The Matching Game ...................................................... Job Families ...................................................................

55 57 58 59 60

Chapter 5 - Choosing - Development Targets ........................ 61 Your Current Job ........................................................... Current Work Environment Analysis ........................... Current Work Environment Development Targets (Example) ...................... Current Work Environment Development Targets ........................................ Longer Term Development Targets ............................. Making Choices - Filtering Career Possibilities ........... The Filters of Choice ..................................................... The Process ................................................................... Skill Filter Worksheet .................................................... Satisfaction Filter Worksheet ........................................ Practicality Filter Worksheet ......................................... Willingness Filter Worksheet ........................................ Longer Term Development Targets ............................. Longer Term Development Targets Worksheet .......... 61 62 66 67 68 70 70 74 76 77 78 79 80 81

Chapter 6 - Management Managing Your Career With POWER ...................... 83 Putting Yourself in the Drivers Seat ............................ Aim Yourself at Career Management ........................... Managing Your Career With POWER .......................... (P) Plan Your Development ......................................... (O) Obtain Feedback .................................................... (W) Work It! .................................................................. (E) Evaluate Results ...................................................... (R) Revise Your Plan ..................................................... Internal Barriers ............................................................. Creating Your Development Plan ................................ Development Plan Worksheets .................................... 83 83 83 84 89 91 92 93 94 99 100

Chapter 7 - Presenting Yourself ............................................... 105 Work and Self-Expression ............................................ Forms of Presentation at Work .................................... How You Look .............................................................. What You Do and How You Do It .............................. 105 106 106 107

Contents

What You Say and How You Say It ............................. The Career Management Meeting ................................ What You Write and How You Write It ...................... The Internal Resume ..................................................... Presentations ................................................................. Communication Quality Check ....................................

109 110 113 115 116 118

Chapter 8 - Selected References ................................................ 119 General Comments ....................................................... Assessment .................................................................... Information Gathering .................................................. Networking .................................................................... Targeting ........................................................................ Career Planning and Management ............................... Communication ............................................................. Personal Growth and Development ............................ 119 119 120 121 121 122 124 128

About the Author ......................................................................... 133 Extra Planning Forms

Preface

Why Another Book on Careers?

hen I wrote If You Knew Who You WereYou Could Be Who You Are! which is a comprehensive career assessment tool, I was very clear that it was not going to be another career development book. While there was no one resource for people who wanted to go through a comprehensive self-assessment with regard to their worklives and careers, there were plenty of books around that dealt with the subject of careers and how to find or create or develop them. I was not interested in adding to the mass of words on the subject, even though I had my own ideas and opinions and beliefs about how it ought to be done. If there is no need to fill, why bother? We published If You Knew Who You WereYou Could Be Who You Are! in August, 1989 and the reception was gratifying. The book fills a critical gap in the literature and is powerful in supporting people to find out who they really are in relation to their worklives and careers. The same questions kept arising, however, from both professionals and individuals who used the book. How do we translate all of this valuable information about people into useful career planning, career development, and career management? What else can we read and work with and use to guide ourselves and others in this difficult process? How can we use the assessment tool in connection with counseling and workshops? In other words, where do we go from here? This Guide answers these questions.

The Rules of the Game

anaging your career is something you do all the time - whether you are doing it in a fully aware state and your actions are deliberately taken, or you are wandering through your worklife in a trance, unaware that you are constantly making choices that determine your future. And, just like the rest of life, career management has many of the aspects of a game. There are rules, strategies for winning, competition, scores, and rewards for winning, thrills, and disappointments. You have a choice about how you play the game. You can learn the rules that work to win. You can make up your own rules and hope that they work. You can make believe you know the rules. You can operate with the belief that there are no rules.

viii

Managing Your Career With POWER

By working with tens of thousands of people in helping them manage their careers, we have observed that certain things work to make career management effective in empowering people to get what they want out of their worklives. You might say that these are the rules of the game. The unique contribution we have tried to make here is to organize the process into an easily understood and easily remembered set of activities that, taken together, form the game - career management. As with any game, mastery begins with learning the rules. The next step is learning and practicing the actions that lead to winning. And finally, mastery comes with the creative application of both the proactive processes and the reactions to the moves of others - a balanced offense and defense! We have attempted to make the rules and the actions as well as the offensive and defensive strategies easy to remember and apply so that it is possible to understand them and to stay awake about them throughout your career. We have created a systematic, rational process distilled from the writings and experience of 100 years of career management practice in the United States - the best of what works! We have also developed a process for learning the game whether you learn it on your own, with a counselor, or with others in a workshop. Its all here. Playing and winning with it is up to you!

Getting To Where You Really Want To Be

areer management is the process of getting to where you want to be in your worklife. By where you want to be we mean the environment of work place, people, activities, and experience in which you are most satisfied. But what if you already are where you want to be? The challenge in this situation is to manage your career in a way that you maintain or even increase your satisfaction in a changing environment. Every environment changes. Change is natural and inevitable, and managing yourself during change is an important skill. The other choice is to be somewhere else - in a different job, or career, or position, or environment - or doing some different things in the same job, career, or environment. Whatever the circumstances, successful career management, getting to where you want to be, requires three personal characteristics that must be developed and exercised - intention, know-how, and energy. Intention is being always clear about what you want. Know-how is knowing what you need to do and when you need to do it. And, energy is doing what you need to do when you need to do it! This guide cannot provide you with these three characteristics, but it

Preface

ix

will provide you with ways of discovering your intentions with regard to your career and worklife, with the kind of know-how or skill or information that will help you determine what to do and when to do it, and with practical hints about creating and maintaining a persistent energy in the process.

No One Said It his book was written at a time of unprecedented change in Would Be American and world economic history. Many major corporations Easy!

have abandoned their old paternalistic cultures and have created a new demand for employees who are self-sufficient, motivated, interested in contribution and getting the job done with excellence, and willing to tie compensation and other rewards to performance. Gone are the guarantees of lifetime employment. Opportunity still exists, but the individual must seek it out and take advantage of it while it lasts. Above all, flexibility and adaptability are required to survive and prosper. It is a time of enormous personal challenge to everyone in the workplace. This guide is about you and for you. It is your personal career management guide. The work you do in and on these pages is intended for your personal use in creating a worklife that is truly satisfying for you. Whether you work in a large company or small, in an office, factory, store, theater, laboratory, shop, workshop, studio, hospital, classroom, farm, boat yard, outdoors or indoors, for yourself or someone else, on a team or alone, or you are just trying to find out which work and career is right for you, this guide is for you to read, and work at, and reread, and rework, and sleep on, and process, and digest. We recommend that you not do it all in a single sitting. There is a lot to think about and some of your best thinking takes place when you are out for a walk, or working on something entirely different, or relaxing in a hot tub, or eating a meal, or even when you are asleep! Let the processes work on you as much as you work on them. Take your time. Your life counts on it! Doing this work will raise as many issues and problems as it solves. You will confront many barriers - both in your mind and in the reality of implementing your plans. No one said it would be easy! Success requires staying up against those barriers. Your intention, know-how, and energy will help you do that. You have the opportunity to create, out of the deep inner core of your own self-expression, a rewarding and satisfying worklife. That is what you have to look forward to and what makes the effort worthwhile.

Managing Your Career With POWER

Acknowledgments

he work presented in this book is distilled from many years of working with tens of thousands of people on their careers, individually and in groups. The experience gained in workshops and counseling sessions, conducted in large and small companies, in a wide variety of industries, and under every conceivable organizational circumstance, from downsizing (and no opportunity for advancement) to rapid growth (with the need for people to move around), has contributed to the practicality of the technology presented. Our company was started by Tom Jackson and many of his ideas still form the foundation of our work. Many professionals have contributed to this work including our trainers, who created the practical application in the real world, and our clients who keep us focused on what works and what can be done to adjust to their environments. Some of these colleagues and clients include Jose Acevedo, Rose Arant, Phoebe and Jack Ballard, Pete Borden, Joyce Boyd, Jean Cholko, Vicki Clark, Joyce Cohen, Jill Conner, Mary Crannell, Liz Gilbert, Bob Goldie, Audrey Goodman, Katherine Henley, Bob Johnson, Dorothy Johnson, Nettie Spiwack Kraus, Mariana Maddocks, Lynn Manning, Ken McCoy, Linda Nugent, Elaine Post, John Reed, Marcia Stevens, Jim Taylor, Sue Thieme, Maribeth Weber, Mary Jane Willier, Nick Wolfson, and Allen Zerkin. Special thanks are given to Peggy Bier, who runs our organization and provides the leadership and the demand for quality and service that keep us working hard to do it better next time. Her sourceful energy keeps it all going day by day and adds a priceless quality to our thinking and our products. On a more personal note, Peggy once again sacrificed uncountable nights and weekends to give me the time to research, think through, and write this work. Her constant support and love are in every word and page and chapter presented here. W. Breese White, Vice President and Director of Training and Development for The Career Development Team made an important contribution to this Guide. Our eyes and ears to the working world, Breese spends most of his time on the front line working directly with trainers and group participants in the career management process. Breese has participated deeply in molding this work to make it as realistic and useful as possible. Gerald M. Sturman Greenwich, CT May, 1990

1 Introduction

Using This Guide

he purpose of this career management guide is to provide you with a comprehensive tool that will allow you to manage your own career with success and satisfaction. Following this guide will allow you to have your career provide maximum personal satisfaction and self-expression consistent with contributing maximum value in whatever job you do, career you choose, or organization in which you work. You can use the guide by yourself and at your own pace, or as part of your work in a course or with a counselor. The career assessment portion of the career management process is provided in the companion assessment volume If You Knew Who You WereYou Could Be Who You Are! also published by Bierman House. We strongly recommend that you use the two books together. The assessment volume should be completed as the first step in the process before proceeding with the career management material contained in this guide. This guide can be used in several ways. For a complete and detailed exploration of career management, the guide should be read through and the exercises performed in order from the beginning of the book to the end, with enough time left between successive chapters and exercises to allow the material to sink in and be processed by the natural functions of the mind and your experience. The guide can also be used as a reference to specific parts of the career management process at any time when it is required for review or use in a specific career action step. Do the exercises in pencil so that you can erase and change and correct your work. The process is dynamic and some of the choices are difficult and will require thinking and rethinking before decisions are made. We recommend that you do the work in the guide in a way that you would be willing to show it to someone else whom you trust to give you honest feedback. That person may be a counselor, your boss, a colleague, friend, or relative. It is valuable to have the perspective of people who knows you well, can see you objectively, and would be willing to tell you the truth as they see it. Ultimately, it is up to you to choose to use someone elses opinion, but it is always valuable to have it whether you choose to use it or not.

Finally, have fun with the process. Take it seriously, but dont make it weighty and significant. Challenge yourself, but dont put yourself in the stressful position of trying to make difficult decisions quickly or irreversibly. Remember that many people have successfully changed jobs and careers at every stage of life. There is nothing wrong with experimentation and it is absolutely acceptable to make mistakes. Lighten up and let your energy flow!

The Fundamental Propositions of Career Management

Proposition 1: You Are Not Your Job Title.

here are three fundamental propositions and a corollary that lie at the foundation of a successful career management process. A clear understanding and acceptance of these propositions and the willingness to operate in your career from this foundation will allow you to be considerably more effective in managing your career. uman beings naturally identify themselves with their job titles or professions, and a significant part of their self-image is invested in this identification. Think about your own experience when you meet someone for the first time and they ask you What do you do? If you are in a job or profession that has some social status or meets some common standard of success or respect, you feel pretty good talking about it. Im a department head. Im a marketing manager. Im a professor. Im an executive. Im a manager at AT&T. Im an artist. Im a professional musician. If, on the other hand, you are not particularly proud of what you are currently doing, or your job is not one that you think usually commands respect from others, it may be embarrassing to talk about. It is particularly difficult to talk about what you do if you are currently unemployed. When you identify yourself with your job title or profession you limit your possibilities. A man in Youngstown, Ohio, who believes he is only a steel worker cannot be trained to become a computer programmer or to start his own machine shop. A woman who has been in the home for 25 years and who identifies herself only as a homemaker cannot go out and earn an advanced degree. A 60-year old retiree who thinks he has been only a corporate manager all of his life cannot become a consultant. A person with a degree in engineering cannot become a human resource expert. A doctor cannot become an artist, nor an artist an entrepreneur.

T
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We are not implying here that you should not be proud of your job or your profession. Just understand that you are not your job title. You are a human being with skills, accomplishments, personal qualities, likes and dislikes, values and needs, a particular personal style, and other characteristics that may be thought of as the building blocks of who you are in relation to your worklife. These building blocks may be put together in very many ways to create a career. Understanding this proposition will free you to expand your thinking and begin to manage your career in a way that works best for you. Proposition 2: You Can Create A Career Consistent With Your Goals In Life.

It is important tothings in that, as a human being,do not livethe realize you have power to create your life. Most people their
lives as if they can create anything. They wake up in the morning, peer out from under the blankets, and wait to see what hand life is going to deal them today. They go through the day responding to what happens to them. Their jobs are like phonograph records that they take to the office, put on the turntable, and play in the same way day after day. This passive way of living often keeps them from realizing their goals and leads to frustration and job dissatisfaction. Many people are also working in jobs that someone else thought might be the right ones for them rather than in a job that was consistent with their own goals. Perhaps it was their parents, or a teacher, or a boss, or even a career counselor who said they ought to take a particular job because it would be the right thing to do. If you are like most people, you will have from five to seven different kinds of jobs or careers in your lifetime. The real question is will each one of them come out of the blue and descend on you, or will you exercise some choice in the matter? The fact is that you always had a choice in the matter. The difference is whether you make the choice consciously or unconsciously. You have the power to create things out of nothing. An idea, an insight, a thought, a notion that you can have your career be the way you want it to be, along with clear goals that define that way, are all you need to get started.

Proposition 3: You Are Responsible for Managing Your Own Career.

TheFrom time to time the organizationone else is for may tell you hard, cold facts of life are that no going to do it for you! you work
where to go and what to do when you get there. But, that demand or request or suggestion usually comes from the organizations short term needs and not because someone is consciously and creatively managing your career. If you wait for your career to unfold in this way, it will not be your career except by chance. That is, you will

probably not be moving in the direction of having your own worklife vision become a reality. You may feel comfortable and secure for a period of time because you are being a loyal and obedient employee, but the potential is high for you to hit the wall of dissatisfaction if the discrepancy between your vision and the reality of your job becomes too great. And, as your dissatisfaction grows your performance suffers. You enter a cycle leading to plateauing and, often, termination. Outplacement professionals cite job-person mismatch and poor adaptive skills as the most frequent cause of job loss among middle and upper-level managers who have been in their organizations for 15 years or more. You will find it significantly more satisfying to plan your own career and make choices based on that plan than to be the passive receptor of someone elses control over you. To follow your own career plan is not inconsistent with the notion of loyalty, being a good team player, following instructions, and satisfying the organizations needs (either short-term or long-term). Mastery of career management in the organizational context is practiced by aligning your vision and your career plan with the goals and challenges of the organization. Discovering where your best contribution can be made and creating a development plan that will move you in that direction serves both your vision and the organizations goals. Because satisfaction at work comes from the experience of full self-expression through contributing value, the needs of the organization can provide a channel for the realization of your vision. If there is truly no opportunity for you to find this channel anywhere in the organization, now or in the future, your plan may need to be carried out elsewhere. The greatest benefit in taking responsibility for managing your own career is the sense of freedom that comes from knowing that the choices you make at any point in your life are based on your vision and your plan. The alternative of making decisions based only on your current circumstances will almost always lead to frustration and dissatisfaction. Taking responsibility for managing your own career is the clearest path to full self-expression in your worklife. Freedom of choice is power the power to create your career in the way that works best for you the power to create the experience of success and satisfaction in your life. Corollary: Noone anaging your own career can be one of the most difficult things Said It Would Be you do in your life. First, you are entering the playing field with a Easy. collection of internal barriers that will naturally block your way. These barriers might include such things as difficulty managing time,

or excessive concern about what others think of you, or fear of financial insecurity, or being politically naive or overly blunt, or any of the hundreds of other attitudes, behavior patterns, rigid beliefs, or real or imagined fears or deficiencies that everyone carries around as part of their natural way of dealing with the world. Second, you are managing your career in an environment that will also provide significant barriers. Examples include a manager that is not sympathetic to your career needs; an organization that doesnt support or encourage your growth; an apparent lack of opportunity in your company or industry or the economy at the present time; race, sex, and age discrimination; financial institutions unwilling to take a risk on your new business ideas; a public that doesnt understand your art; a saturated market for your product; or lack of support at home. These barriers will become particularly obvious when you start managing and creating your career to be consistent with your vision of your worklife. Whenever people discover something they really want they also discover, almost immediately, all the reasons why they cant or wont get it. When you see an ad for that brand new car you want, the thoughts come up - How am I going to pay for this? Do I really need it? The old one will last a few more years! What is my spouse going to say? The act of creating a vision automatically brings to mind the barriers to realizing that vision. Some barriers are real and others are imagined. Either way, they can serve to keep you from getting what you want. A big part of the battle can be won if you are willing to acknowledge the barriers that come to mind, whether they are real or imagined. The process of overcoming barriers starts with telling the truth about their existence in your mind. This self-disclosure allows you to start the process of separating the real barriers from the imagined and creating the strategies and tactics required to overcome the real ones and release the imagined ones.

The Career Management Process Managing Your Career with POWER

areer management is a process that can be followed throughout your life. Career management is not an event such as a workshop or a lecture or a counseling session. Along with the other things you manage such as your health, your relationships, your time, or your money, your career or worklife changes over time and requires planning and attention to details on a continuous and life-long basis. In common with the other things you manage in your life, there is a technology to career management. Mastering this technology, or way

of doing things, will allow you to manage your career most effectively in getting what you want out of your worklife - making your vision a reality. This Guide will provide you with the details of this technology through a series of discussions and exercises designed to lead you through the career management process in a way that allows you to develop mastery as the process unfolds. The career management process has five major components that spell out the leading letters of the words - AIM at Career Management - AIMCM. The five components are:

1.

ssess your style, skills, personal qualities, interests, barriers, developmental needs, vision of your worklife, and other factors required to provide a clear understanding of yourself in relation to your worklife.

A I

2.

nvestigate the environment around you and discover the opportunities - first, in your current job, then in your department and division and company; then in the economy, and in other organizations and industries. What is present now and what changes will the future bring?

3.

M C

atch your assessment of yourself with the opportunities. Where can you make the greatest contribution consistent with your own vision and the needs and challenges of the environment?

4.

hoose development targets that will allow you to expand your contribution.

5.

anage your career with POWER! Manage your career in a planned, organized, and energetic way that produces results. Follow the POWER method:

Plan your developmentbarriers to goals/targets, - specific action steps, schedules, be overcome,

required resources and support.

Obtain input from others.third feedback from peers, Get manager, family, objective parties (human
resource professionals, counselors, mentors, colleagues, etc.). ork It! Take action with energy, intention, and know-how. Handle the barriers and express your commitment.

Evaluate results. Measure results against goals. Revise your plan as needed and keep working it.
Each of these components of the process is described in detail in the subsequent chapters of this Guide. Detailed exercises are provided to support you in creating and implementing your plan, and it is recommended that you carry through the process in the order presented. The results will be well worth the effort!