Build a Career Worth Having
Article from the Harvard Business Review written by Nathaniel Koloc
We live in a time of chronic dissatisfaction in the workplace. Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace study found that as many as 70% of working Americans were unfulfilled with their jobs, 18% to such an extent that they are actively undermining their co-workers. This is a marked increase in workplace dissatisfaction from 2010, when Conference Board found that 55% of Americans were dissatisfied with their jobs.
How can we explain this? Certainly factors like the sluggish economic recovery and stuck wagesplay a role, but I think the real answer is even more straightforward: It’s not clear how one designs a satisfying career in today’s professional culture, especially if lasting fulfillment (as opposed to salary maximization) is the goal.
At my company, ReWork, we connect talented professionals to meaningful work opportunities at companies that are making substantive social, environmental, and cultural progress. Based on our conversations with over 12,000 professionals and hundreds of hiring managers, we’ve gained insights into what’s lacking in the traditional approach to career planning, and how professionals can create careers with an ongoing sense of purpose. Here’s my advice:
1. See your career as a series of stepping stones, not a linear trajectory.
There’s an implicit view that careers are still linear. Sure, many people accept that the career ladder is broken, but most still attempt to somehow increase the “slope” of their career trajectory.
They wait until they are unhappy, look around for opportunities that seem better than their current job, apply for a few, cross their fingers, and take the best option that they can get. Then, they toil away until they are unhappy again, and the cycle repeats. Though this approach can increase your salary over time, studies show that, once you make more than $75,000, more money doesn’t correlate to happiness or emotional wellbeing.
Most people end up with a career path of somewhat arbitrary events that, at best, is a gradually improving wandering path, and, at worst, is just a series of unfulfilling jobs
The solution to this dismal cycle? Let go of the idea that careers are linear. These days, they are much more like a field of stepping stones that extends in all directions. Each stone is a job or project that is available to you, and you can move in any direction that you like. The trick is simply to move to stones that take you closer and closer to what is meaningful to you. There is no single path — but rather, an infinite number of options that will lead to the sweet spot of fulfillment.
2. Seek legacy, mastery, and freedom — in that order.
Research from authors such as Daniel Pink (Drive), Cal Newport (So Good They Can’t Ignore You), Ben Casnocha and Reid Hoffman (Startup of You), and Tony Hsieh (Delivering Happiness) shows that there are three primary attributes of fulfilling work:
Legacy. A higher purpose, a mission, a cause. This means knowing that in some way — large or small — the world will be a better place after you’ve done your work.
Mastery. This refers to the art of getting better and better at skills and talents that you enjoy using, to the extent that they become intertwined with your identity. Picture a Jedi, or a Samurai, or a master blacksmith.
Freedom. The ability to choose who you work with, what projects you work on, where and when you work each day, and getting paid enough to responsibly support the lifestyle that you want.
The order is important. People are fulfilled most quickly when they first prioritize the impact that they want to have (legacy), then understand which skills and talents they need to have that impact (mastery), and finally “exchange” those skills for higher pay and flexibility (freedom) as they develop and advance.
People don’t typically have just one purpose. The things you’re passionate about — women’s health, early childhood education, organic food, or renewable energy — are likely to evolve over time. And it’s important to develop a high degree of freedom so that you’re able to hunt down your purpose again when it floats onto the next thing. This means being able to do things like volunteer on the side, go months at a time without getting a paycheck, or invest in unusual professional development opportunities.
Read entire article on the Harvard Business Review.
