Who Will Choose Your Career Path?
There are many people giving career advice. The experience of a career may be different for everyone. Like success, respect, and good art, each person may define it differently. What is your career path?
People nearing the end of their career may often suggest that you should do what you love, love what you do, and make sure you enjoy life.
Those who are closer to the beginning of their career may suggest that money or compensation is a bigger driver. We can’t forget about those who claim schedule flexibility, flex time, or time off, as holding a significant importance.
Career Options
Honestly, your choices and strategy has a significant number of options. Doing what you love, loving what you do, receiving more pay, accepting less pay, travel opportunities, flex schedule, work from home, a car, a 401K, paid healthcare, and so much more.
What about skills, are you doing something that aligns with your natural talent? Can you learn more about something that interests you even when you aren’t so skilled?
Considering that there are so many options why is there often a lack of job satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty.
Organizational Psychology
People closely connected with organizational psychology would probably suggest that the leadership and culture has something to do with that. Does the organizational culture shift to fit the people or should the people shift to fit the culture?
A losing battle may be to think that any individual will push, shove, or stretch the culture and create their own uniquely special opportunity. Sure, some of the job may always flex to accommodate the best of the best from the person filling its shoes. However, it is unlikely you’ll completely change the dynamics.
Career Path
Three things I think make a lot of sense about a career:
- Give one hundred percent of you for whatever compensation you accept. Never scale your output by the amount of compensation.
- Always remain open to learning and improving your knowledge and skills. Everything changes, you’ll have the choice of change or staying stuck.
- Job markets are typically selfish. They don’t really care about how hard you are working or the sacrifices you’ve made. They care about the best story and those who can deliver on it. So build it.
When we remove the money from the calculation, things really change. Remove the security of the job and that mixes things up too. The real constant is change and so the highest risk for your career is insisting on staying exactly the same.
You should pick your career path, unless of course you would rather let that up to someone else.
– DEG
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
