Assess your career journey

Stock taking – organisations do them and so should you. Taking stock helps you to re-strategise for the future and to take the best of your past with you. Here are some areas to assess as you trace your success journey to date.

What you have learnt: This could be knowledge gained through new courses but also what you’ve learnt everyday on the job; through trial and error, watching others, mentoring others and unlearning what no longer works.

Learning from all situations keeps you fresh so don’t shut yourself down by looking at learning only as that which you are taught in a conventional training session.

Practical skills you have acquired: Skills are important to your career and the more current they are, the better. What skills have you learnt? How did you learn them? How have you grown them? Which ones came naturally to you, which required more practice? Use these questions to identify the skills sets you can march forward with.

How you have enriched your mind: When did you last read a book or an article outside your ‘usual areas’? How many people unlike yourself have you interacted with? How open minded have you been? If the mind is not exercised, it stagnates. Share your brain by helping to solve problems, pursue the creative and the thought provoking.

The variety of your experience: There’s nothing wrong with focusing on a given area of expertise or staying with the same job. But engaging with a variety of things and roles brings you new perspectives and can sharpen your capacity to handle what is different and unusual. It also stops you from being ‘put in a box’ of what you are or can become. 

Engagement outside your comfort zone: How have you engaged with things different from anything you have known or experienced? What has ‘been stretching but rewarding? What did you find scary but did anyway? For example stepping out and chairing that high profile meeting? Offering to be part of the team that you feel is out of your league? If not go on take a chance!

What you have outgrown: Unfortunately, sometimes we hang on to things that no longer work. You know you have outgrown your role, for example, when it no longer excites or challenges you and becomes really comfortable. If ‘comfortable’ is what you want, fair enough but sticking with comfortable might flat line your future progress. 

What you have been truly successful at: Whether you have had a goal oriented work life to date or not, having a definition of ‘successful’ is important. This is helpful for upping your game going forward. If you have approached your career day in day out without any milestones, it’s time to take a more strategic approach. For example, what do you want to achieve in the next 12 months, three years?   

Now take action: What have you been successful at to date? How can you enhance it?