Reflective Conversations – An Essential Step In Career Change
Written by: Britt-Mari Sykes, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Career change is the subject of the most recurrent conversations I have with clients. But those conversations turn less on a strategy for career change; rather, clients are often seeking time and space to voice, explore, and gain perspective on the more personal questions and experiences they have around career and change.
These more experiential, client-centered, and contextual conversations are important and often overlooked steps in a career change. By including these reflective conversations, we enhance the value of any strategies that are subsequently put in place to help a client navigate a career change.
Consider the following 3 areas for reflective conversation.
Reassessing our relationship with work and career
Reassessing our relationship with our current work and career allows us to go deeper to explore the meaning and value work holds for us, the expectations we have of our career lives, and the experiences we have had.
Re-examining the development and route our career path has taken allows us to question whether our professional growth (and our aspirations for professional growth) feels congruent with the opportunities, responsibilities, and scope our current role offers us.
Reflecting on and possibly identifying what we feel is missing in our current work and careers enables us to separate out and gain perspective on what may be problematic about our specific work environment, and what we feel we need personally at this stage in our lives.
Shifting our mindset around that one right decision
Many clients I speak with are struggling to find the right decision when it comes to career change. Is there a difference between the right decision and a more intentional and personally appropriate decision? Yes!
The desire to make the right decision is certainly understandable as changes of all kinds, including career change, can be quite challenging and destabilizing, often presenting us with more uncertainty than certainty. But what I often see and hear is the pressure clients put on themselves to make that one right decision. As a result, many of the clients I speak with feel paralyzed by this pressure, and career change becomes even more stressful.
One way to shift our mindset is through reflective conversations. These conversations provide time and space to discover our personal position, contemplate possibilities within the reality of our lives, and place our desire or need for change within the larger context of the world around us.
It is not about making the right decision but about making personally appropriate decisions that we can stand behind at this moment in our lives.
Gathering information: Discovering your personal position
Whether we are contemplating career change or actually embarking on steps toward change, we can benefit from and make better decisions by understanding our personal position.
Our personal position is an important foundational piece we can then layer into our career change strategy along with research, labor market information, trends within the job market, a particular industry or field, and specific job opportunities.
Exercise
Reflect on the following 12 questions:
What is my current attitude toward work? What meaning and value does work hold for me?
At this stage in my life what expectations do I have of work/career? What expectations do I have of myself? How do these expectations influence and impact my relationship with work and career? Have these expectations changed? How?
How would I describe the relationship I have with my current work and career? Is it personally satisfying? Why? Is it problematic? Why?
How would I describe my current work environment? My specific role? What works well? What is problematic?
Have I outgrown my role? Can this role expand? Are there opportunities for professional development?
In what ways do I contribute to my role or to the work I do beyond what is expected of me? Am I given the opportunity to contribute?
What do I value, what is important and meaningful to me – personally and professionally?
How do I feel about embarking on a career change? How do I feel about the decisions I will have to make? Am I comfortable with a potential change in professional “identity”?
How would I rate my level of motivation for change? How can I prepare myself for the time and energy a career change may require?
Do I have support around me – family, friends, and mentors – as I implement change?
What is my day-to-day reality? What other personal contexts factor into my decisions and choices around work and career? These may include financial or health considerations, burnout, personal values, a toxic work environment, job loss, the need for re-training, childcare, or eldercare.
Is a career transition financially feasible? How long am I able to go without work? Is re-training or going back to school a possibility?
Based on your reflections, and the information you have started to gather, what is your current personal position? Is this the time for a career change? If so, what first step can you take towards that change?
Are you considering a career change or questioning your current relationship with work and career? Career Counselling can help at any stage of your career life. Contact hello@mycareercanvas.co for more information or to schedule a consultation.
Britt-Mari Sykes, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Britt-Mari Sykes Ph.D. is a Career Counsellor and founder of CANVAS Career Counselling working remotely with clients across Canada. Britt-Mari offers a reflective and strategic process to clients, one that integrates their lived experiences, values, and aspirations. This experiential approach to career counselling helps clients gain greater clarity and perspective and design practical steps towards a more meaningful relationship with work and career.
