Know yourself – why is it important in career transition?
When you are unhappy in your career and want to do something about it, stop for a while to think about how your current work matches with your skills, desires, values or motivation. Experts, leaders and managers with a well-established career in the same field or even in the same company may not have ever thought about their strengths, skills, values or sources of motivation. They have always been well-known and respected in their working environment and their career has been a steady path upwards or sideways. Until the moment of change – either internal or external – comes. This is a good moment to start getting to know yourself, to take a look back at your career and identify what you liked and disliked, what you were happy about and what was disappointing.
Recognize alternatives, put them in practise and reflect
Very often professionals with a long career behind them know exactly what they don’t want to do anymore, but have little or no idea what they really want to do and where to start. Self-exploration helps in recognising alternatives and gives ideas where to start looking. The classic plan-and-implement approach, where you start with self-discovery and the outcome then decides where to go does not work in career transition. You cannot discover yourself by just looking at yourself. Instead the test-and-learn approach generates more self-knowledge because in change the knowledge we require is personal, situational and related to context and can be only required by taking action.
Doing comes first, knowing second
During the transition phase self-reclection has its place after you have tested alternatives in practise. The best way to increase self-awareness is to put even vague ideas in test and try them in practise. “What we do is tightly connected to who we are. By practise we know best” says Herminia Ibarra - professor, author and an expert in professional development and executive leadership - in her book Working Identity.
Practise can be just a small effort: talking to people in the field you find interesting, taking a course or volunteering. The most important part is to reflect on all what you learned in your testing phase. What you make of events is more important than the event itself. We learn through our actions.
Ibarra also talks about Possible selves, identities that exist not only in the past and present but also in the future and live both in our minds and acts. Not who you really are, but who you want to become.
Knowing yourself increases your courage
Career transition to a completely new field usually takes longer than expected, may have many phases, ups and downs. Knowing yourself gives you courage to start the journey and confidence in the middle of the transition.
Self-reflection in career transition:
Helps you understand what you need in your work
Reveals what you liked and disliked
Makes it easier to decide where to start. People usually know what they don’t want to do anymore but have no idea where to start
Helps in identifying possible directions and testing them in practise. What we do is tightly connected to who we are
Gives you courage to start the transition journey and confidence in the middle of the process which may take longer than expected