Creating a Successful Life/Career for Self and Others

[fusion_text]Career definition: an occupation or profession followed as a life’s work; a course or passage.
 
Life: a way of living; the physical and mental experiences of an individual; a specific phase or period
In the past, career professionals have suggested that we have a work or a career life and a home life and that we should consider them to be separate units.
 
I agree, however, with the assertion of a colleague Dr. Alan Weiss that we don’t have a separate work life and a separate home life; we simply have a life! In today’s society, drawing a line between work and home is no longer valid. I suggest that we no longer try to separate them.
 
The concept of working or earning a living to help fund what you really want to do is flawed. At some level, most, if not all of what a person does in life should be linked to his or her natural gifts, talents, interests, passion, and purpose. Rather than thinking about life in the context of a career path, we need to shift our thinking to our purpose in the context of our current stage in life and our desired lifestyle.
 
A New Mandate for Career Development Professionals
 
What’s the mandate of career development professionals? In the past, job titles and job descriptions drove the conversations between career development professionals and their clients. At Consulting Resource Group (CRG), we suggest that individuals are far more unique than what Standard Industry Codes (National Occupational Codes) offer and that our lives are far more organic than the SI process.
 
Another strategy in the profession is the practice of using a battery of psychometric tests to determine the characteristics of the client, including who and what he is and what his interests are. This practice has limited use in the context of career development or career choice.
 
To emphasise this point I would strongly suggest that any use of interest inventories is dead. First no assessment or tool can capture today’s diverse opportunities. In the North America alone, there are over 40,000 job titles, and the jobs that my kids (both in their late teens) will do are not even invented yet.
 
Norms that are part of the psychometric process typically apply only to the specific group where the standardisation was created. This means new norms should be quantified in EVERY unique user group. That process quickly becomes impractical for most organisations and typically results in a co-dependent relationship because it ALWAYS requires qualified and certified practitioners to interpret the results.
 
Career development professionals should not be telling the client what he/she should be doing, but rather facilitating a process to assist the client in self-discovery.
 
The new mandate for career development professionals is to provide processes, systems, and experiences so their clients are equipped to make confident, independent, and intentional life decisions. Our responsibility is to help individuals discover their purpose. Discover means uncover, not create.
 
Did you know that Bloomberg predicts that over 50% of all jobs in the US by 2020 will be short term contracts from a couple weeks to 2-3 years?
 
As individuals we bring expertise and skills sets to the marketplace that will be used in numerous applications and contexts. Forget the idea of career as you know it. We are going back over 100 years ago, when the majority of the population were entrepreneurs and they had expertise for hire. So now more than ever – we all must be clear about who we are and what we want to do and that rarely happens by accident.
 
Strategies to Successful Career/Life Development

1. Think of creating and fulfilling an overall lifestyle, not a separate home life and work life.
2. The intent of the career professional is to equip the client to be independent in the future. Whenever possible, avoid any co-dependent process that requires professionals to interpret the results.
3. Establishing a person’s overall passion and purpose in life is one of the highest priorities. The Quest for Purpose a CRG resource, is one process available to help confirm and document passion and purpose. We also want to help individuals understand that the pursuit and fulfilment of passion and purpose are ongoing processes throughout life.
4. We suggest that you stop testing and start using quality communication tools and assessments. Most tests are best used as screening tools, not career development. Good examples of quality communication tools include CRG resources such as the Values Preference Indicator, Personal Style Indicator, Stress Indicator and Health Planner, and the Self Worth Inventory.
5. Engage the participant in the discovery processes. Design it in such a way that the process can be used independently by the participant on an ongoing basis. Example: Richard Knowdell, Founder of Career Planning and Adult Development Network, and a 25 year partner with CRG, created a powerful yet simple Motivated Skills Card Sort. The participant is part of the process that once learned, can be revisited and completed an unlimited number of times.

1. Richard Knowdell uses his card decks and the Personal Style Indicator as part of his career professional certification process and program.

1. Avoid shallow processes. Many career professionals have told us that they are using certain resources because they are cheap and easy to use, not because they provide in-depth results and a quality experience. Career professionals justify this by saying it gets their clients started and it’s better than nothing. We disagree. Our suggestion is this: Rather than confuse participants with incomplete experiences and content, avoid the use of inferior resources altogether.
2. Acknowledge that principles and practices are far more powerful to the client than the recommendation of a specific career. Values identification, personal style awareness, interest confirmation processes (not inventories), and confidence-building methods equip the individual for the future.
3. Finally, if you are a career coach who is not on purpose and passionate about your life, then you have not earned the right to help others in their life/career planning process. Authenticity is critical and required for helping others in their life plan.

 
With individuals now having over eight jobs in their lifetime on average, it is possible that the concept of a career is an anachronism. As mentioned previously, many of the responsibilities and jobs you or your clients will engage-have not yet been invented. Therefore, it is necessary for you and your clients to be grounded in your interests, your core values, your passion, and your purpose. That is far more useful than any industry job code.
Credit Source:
Ken Keis, MBA President of CRG, is considered a global authority on the way assessment strategies increase and multiply your success rate. In 25 years, he has conducted more than 3000 presentations and 10,000 hours of consulting and coaching. Author of Why Aren’t You More Like Me? Discover the Secrets to Understanding Yourself and Others, Ken has co-created CRG’s proprietary development models and written over 3.5 million words of content for 40 business training programs and 400+ articles. Ken’s expertise includes assisting individuals, families, teams, and organizations to realize their full potential and to live On Purpose!  Contact Ken at 604 852-0566, info@crgleader.com, or through www.crgleader.com/IIC

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