St. Louis Business Journal
Introspection is fundamental to career satisfaction

By Anna Navarro

September 2003 - Why is Jessica Taylor (not her real name) having such trouble finding work she likes?

She is highly competent.  Jessica has worked for a number of blue chip giants as well as smaller organizations.  Along the way she has been promoted many times and many regard her as having high potential.

She also knows what she wants to avoid; isolation, bureaucracy, working with numbers, writing reports and an intensely political environment.

So why has enjoyable work eluded her for so long?  That's the question Jessica asks me.  The answer is that she needs to do some structured reflecting to take stock of her options before making any more changes.  While Jessica clearly prefers action, she says she's willing to slow down and reflect on what she wants to do.

If she decides to go forward, we would start with an analysis of her past.  What does she like and dislike about the work she's done before?  Why did she pursue the educational path she took?  Does she engage in any leisure activities that could provide a clue to her future career direction?  What messages or models did she get about work from her parents?  We explore her history to look for the patterns of positive experiences that can be built on.

We also need to discern what tasks or activities she wants to do in her future work.  By exploring what she enjoys doing and does well, we will uncover the core of what her career should be.  She reports that she's always been good with numbers and that's why she pursued finance, but that working with numbers has become boring to her.  That's a big part of her problem.

"Good awareness", I say.  "So what does intrigue you?"  "The people side of things" she says, "but I have no training in that and I don't think I can afford to go back to school to get it."

She's fallen into a common trap of believing she can only work in the field for which she has formal training.  That's a huge fallacy.  But to pursue "the people side of things" is so vague it doesn't help us much with direction.  We need to dig deeper.

What kind of "people skills" does she enjoy and is she good at?  Is it managing people to meet a goal?  Is it consulting?  Is it training and developing people?  Is it selling and persuading?   Figuring that out is a multi-step, labor intensive process.  Once we can really define the core of what she enjoys doing and does well and naturally, we can begin to build a case for an employer about why she can do that kind of a job, whether she has formal training for it or not.

Many of the other items in the introspective stage require courage to articulate, especially if she doesn't see a way of achieving them.  Examining her financial goals and location preferences, acknowledging passions and life priorities that may conflict with career objectives, discovering "dream careers" all can result in confronting hidden desires that can be startling and sometimes even frightening at first.  But how can she maximize the possibility of attaining them without at least looking at them?

Other parts of the work would require her to reframe her thinking to move from the negative to the positive.  For example, she wants to avoid bureaucracy and a highly political environment, but what working conditions does she want instead?

The journey would lead her deep inside herself.  The result would be to produce a very carefully considered list of 15 core items that represent the most important things she wants in a career.

The second stage of the work would be to translate that list of 15 items into a specific work target.  This stage would involve a great deal of brainstorming and investigation, activities which are challenging, but Jessica finds less daunting then introspecting.

Where she goes from there would depend on the target she aims to reach.  The third stage, which is about going after her goal, can involve job hunting, re-education, starting or buying a business, or renegotiating her existing job for more satisfaction.

I caution that at the outset it's difficult to tell what the outcome will be and that on average the process takes a year to complete.  It varies as much as the individuals who undertake it.  Jessica smiles, "That's good", she says, "I'm not a cookie-cutter type person.  When can we start?"

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.