“The world we have created is a product of our way of thinking. Nothing in the future will change in the future without fundamentally new ways of thinking.” ~ Albert Einstein
I’ve been writing lately about being a Career Contrarian.
We’re in a transition from an Age of Standardization to an Age of Personalization, that flips the concept of success to where individuality matters and where the pursuit of personal fulfillment is the primary indicator of success in our work.
Because the story of success we’ve been telling outdated, we need a new way to talk about work that focuses on the individualization of our experiences, rather than their generalization.
And, our work narratives need to focus on our value as opposed to our skillsets. Everyone has skills. Many are the same as yours. Skills are commodities and those that focus on skills alone are easily replaceable.
You Need to be a Career Contrarian
You need to adopt a Career Contrarian perspective if you want to feel fulfilled in your work.
To be an effective Career Contrarian you need to craft a narrative of the value you bring to an organization or a team. By focusing on value, you demonstrate that you’re an asset, not a commodity. Value, though, needs to align with the needs of those making the hiring decision.
You’ve probably been told to identify your “transferrable skills” (a term I hate) so that you can align them with the roles you want. But what got you here (your skills), won’t get you there (your desired role). Focusing on skills makes you a commodity. And decisions on commodities are always cost-based. There will always be someone younger, faster, and cheaper who can perform with the same skillset.
The essence of a Career Contrarian is reframing your professional value as a strategic asset rather than relying on commoditized skills that no longer fit.
Fortunately, There’s a Roadmap
Bruce Feiler in The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World (Amazon Kindle link — no affiliation) provides a tool kit to help discover your own career narrative. The heart of this toolkit are six questions:
- Who is your who? How do you complete the sentance: “I want to be the kind of person who ______________.” There are a lot of influencers whose personalities and values shaped your own outlook, your narrative. Who are those people? How did they affect you? How do you reflect their influences?
- What is your what? I want to do work that ___________. This becomes the plot of your narrative. There’s rarely a single what; they are responses to key needs that drive your choices and guide your next steps. You need to pinpoint those motivations to achieve the meaning you’re seeking.
- When is your when? I’m at a moment in my life when ___________. This is the forgotten element of most work stories. You’ve probably relied on the linear “plan-then-implement” model of seeking work, in which you basically replace one job with the next. Your work self constantly changes in response to your environment and to your internal clock. Your response to this question determines whether you stay where you are, or go somewhere else.
- Where is your where? I want to be in a place that __________. This question is the setting of your work story. All good stories are bound in place. What are the places where you thrive? Where is the ideal setting for your work story?
- Why is your why? My purpose right now is to ______________. What is your underlying motivation? What have you’ve been wrestling with since childhood? What is the problem you’ve been trying to solve?
- How is your how? The best advice I have for myself right now is ______________. This is the most important of the six questions. It’s how the others get operationalized — how things happen; how you’ll get from here to there. The irony is that if you answer how too soon, you’ll be trapped in the same situation. You won’t be fulfilled because you haven’t taken the time to self reflect and understand what actually makes you fulfilled. Only after exploring the who, what, when, and why are you ready to focus on how to actualize them.
The greatest impediment to a meaningful life is what you don’t know about yourself. Feiler’s roadmap provides a way to achieve a better understanding of you and your motivations.
This knowledge about your motivations reframes your professional value as a strategic asset. This seperates you from your competition AND ensures greater fulfillment in your work. This reframing will help you become a Career Contrarian.
So Become a Career Contrarian
The key to attaining fulfillment and excellence is an empowered mindset that fits unique circumstances to unique interests and abilities. And the circumstances providing fulfillment differ for each individual — there’s no such thing as one-size fits all fulfillment.
Can you shift your mindset to thrive in the Age of Personalization, where you can find fulfillment?
Can you focus on your passion, purpose, and achievements to define your unique mastery?
Can you become a Career Contrarian?
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If you’re struggling with how to achieve your career goals let’s chat about how I can help. You can use this link to my calendar to schedule the best time to talk.
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