In our fast-changing, fast-paced, technological society, people will need to create their own futures. Futures where work and rewards will be conducted in an environment defined by innovation, complexity, speed, and adaptability. An important first step to aligning oneself with such future is to develop a Career Development Plan that is aligned with such an environment.

Career planning is a proactive process of assessing your current condition, determining your desired career-life future state, and identifying the actions that will achieve that future. The only constant in today’s business world is change. The very nature of our global economy mandates that you be flexible and adaptive to market trends and regularly reassess what your options are.

People who are in career transition are often confused and may blame it on the complexity of today’s job market. But, very often, they don’t really know what they want because they’ve overlooked the critical first step: They don’t really know who they are. You are responsible for your career development, advancement, and satisfaction. Take control of your career. We’ll show you how and where to begin.

 

Who am I?

 

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar… I hardly know, Sir, just at present,” Alice replied rather shyly. At least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then".                                                                    – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

People spend more time planning their vacation than making career choices.

Richard Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute? concludes, “Huge life-decisions often are made in the whim of a moment. No wonder surveys of worker dissatisfaction find that up to 80 percent, or four out of every five workers, are dissatisfied with some important aspects of their jobs or careers.” Too many people don’t know where they are going but they’re in a rush to get somewhere. Taking the express train might get you somewhere faster, but when you get off, it might be the wrong stop.

Put on your CEO hat. You would never start a marketing campaign without thoroughly assessing the product and its markets. In business, periodic audits and other organizational self-assessments are the norm and appropriate. Similarly, as CEO of your career transition, your self-assessment is a critical component in the career planning process.

You must know what you have to offer potential employers. Know what value you can contribute to an organization. If you can’t define that value, you are at a major disadvantage. To overcome this disadvantage, you need to conduct a self-assessment to support future decisions.

Any decision is only as good as the information you base it on. So the first question in making your next career decision is, what kind of a person am I? In marketing, it is called product knowledge. It is a grave mistake to go to the marketplace without thorough knowledge of the product.

 

Self-Assessments

Think of your self-assessments: your interests, personality, values, and skills, as your center of gravity that can serve as your point of reference for decision-making and guidance throughout your career exploration. By completing a thorough self-assessment, you will be better able to determine the opportunities, environments, and career direction that will best fit you and your needs.

We will begin with MatchPoint, an assessment that you can use to help you identify your personal interests, what you like to do.

Do you like to build, organize, solve practical problems, and work with things? Or do you find selling, persuading, and motivating appealing? Of all the things you do, what gives you the most pleasure? You spend more waking hours on the job than doing anything else
in your life so why not enjoy it.

The next two assessments, CenterMark and Working Styles, deal with personality characteristics and behaviors. These assessments will provide you valuable insight into your individual preferences, behaviors, and help you better understand and communicate with your colleagues, manager, and customers. The insight will also help you gain a better understanding of how others perceive you.

The fourth assessment, ValueBase, is designed to help you identify your values and establish the important priorities at this time in your career-life. Understanding your values and priorities give you a foundation for evaluating your career options. This knowledge will help you decide whether the next phase of your career will be an all-out push for income and professional growth, for example, or time for family and personal satisfiers.

The Skills Portfolio Audit will assist you in determining your favorite skills – the skills you like to use and are important to you. It will assist you in discovering your inherent skills – those skills you have an aptitude for but have put on the back burner. And, it will assist you in defining your portfolio or transferable skills – those you can apply in a range of contexts.

This module will help you:

•	Create a strong sense of identity and direction.
•	Give you more information about the assessments—MatchPoint, CenterMark, WorkingStyles, and ValueBase—to help you clarify your results and apply the insights gained to make your work/life more effective and meaningful.

MatchPoint

People search for environments that will let them exercise their skills and abilities, express their attitudes and values, and take on agreeable challenges and roles. One of the most important challenges facing any organization is helping its members find the type of work that maximizes career satisfaction and productivity. Career satisfaction has been related to satisfaction with life in general, the turnover rate within the organization, and productivity. Individuals who are well matched to their jobs are more likely to be effective in what they do and more likely to enjoy their association with the organization.

The objective of MatchPoint is to:

•	Support you in your career planning and increase your potential for job satisfaction.
•	Help you better understand your values and goals, world view, professional contributions developmental needs and potential pitfalls.
•	Assist you in identifying where within the organizational structure you might find the best match with your interests.
•	Discover alternative approaches for dealing with others in your organization with work styles that are different from your own, aid you in managing and utilizing people effectively by taking into account how individuals like to be managed, how they like to manage and delegate to others, and how they prefer to interact with their peers.
•	Serve as a catalyst in job/career discussions between you and your manager.
•	Reduce work-related stress by assisting in identifying a better job-person fit.

 

“It is the first of all problems to find out what kind of work you are to do in this universe.”                                                                                                                          – Thomas Carlyle

Understanding Your Working Styles Report

Working Styles identifies four preferred behavioral styles (Expressive, Amiable, Driver, and Analytical) that measure important aspects of people's behavior such as:

•	Characteristic Behavior: Actions that people can see or hear
•	Emotional Expression: Degree of emotion expressed in behavior.
•	Assertiveness: Degree of forcefulness expressed in behavior

Remember, although we all have a favorite style, a behavior we are comfortable with, we display characteristics of all styles to some degree.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that one style is better or more desirable than another. Everyone expresses himself/herself differently. Working Styles will help you better understand and appreciate these differences and provide you with tips on how to “read” the situations and needs of the people with whom you work.

You are different from others of your style. People of a given style are similar to each other in important ways, but they are far from identical to one another. Be sure to look for, and appreciate the individual differences that exist within each style.

Your acceptance of each of the styles will help you make the model work for you. Robert and Dorothy Bolton, authors of People Styles at Work, explain acceptance as, “Acceptance means recognition of a style’s worth without implying approval of its limitation. You give balance to strengths and weaknesses. When you accept the other styles and celebrate their strengths, you are able to build productive relationships with people very different from yourself.”

It takes all styles to make an effective organization. Peter Drucker, the organizational analyst, wrote, “The top-management tasks require at least four different kinds of human beings: the ‘thought person (Analytical), the ‘action person’ (Driver), the ‘people person’ (Amiable), and the ‘front’ person (Expressive).”

The focus is to understand the behaviors of the four styles, the advantages and disadvantages of each style, and how the styles affect each other. This understanding will help you negotiate an interpersonal relationship so that both parties achieve mutually satisfactory goals.

ValueBase

Values and guiding principles are at the very root and base of our belief system. They are what is important to you and what affects the way you act. Your ValueBase is the aggregate expressed in your behavior, attitude, relationships, and goals you believe are important.

How important you consider the value to be arises from the influence of a number of sources: parents, peers, organizations to which you belong, logic, emotions, and observations. Your values are developed over a lifetime of experiences or may be affected by your immediate situation.

What is important to you? What do you value above all else? Like most people, you spend considerable time in the workplace. What kind of working environment is worth so much of your valuable talent and time? Do you know? When was the last time you clarified and prioritized your values?

Groups as well as individuals tend to develop sets of values. An organization’s values can be influenced by a number of factors, including the values of the founder, the priorities expressed by leadership, the examples set by those in charge, shifts in age, diversity and gender distribution and external factors such as competition and customer buyer values.

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