Mistakes You Need to Avoid to Make Your Career Pivot A Success
From experience (3 career changes over the last 5 years, as well as having coached over 300 professionals), I know a thing or two about a few mistakes that can make such a significant career move— a disaster.
But it doesn’t have to be like that! Like the saying goes: if you are smart, you learn from your mistakes. If you are wise, you learn from other people’s mistakes. So here are some of the learnings over the years that will help you frame your mindset and redesign your strategy:
Focus on process, not results
Many confuse wanting the result with wanting the lifestyle. Results come from taking actions, over and over again to get results. If you don’t enjoy the process to get you to the results, it doesn’t matter how much achieve, you will not be happy as it will feel like pushing and hard work rather than excitement to get there.
Results are not fixed and situations don’t always go as planned. If you are so focused on what you’ve set up for yourself, you won’t be able to welcome much bigger outcomes that are far from your vision. It only makes sense to be enjoying what you are doing in the present, and be clear about what’s important to you to make it work.
Personality and values mismatch
Focusing on results may also land you a role or a career that is a complete mismatch from your personality and your values. You might be so engrossed chasing shiny things and overlook that the job you chose requires you to work against what you uphold.
Key is to be clear about what is important to you, and ask the right questions:
What does your ideal day look like?
What do you do first thing?
Who are you spending time with during the day?
Are you inside or outside?
Are you in front of people or alone?
Are you writing, listening, analysing, talking?
Get very specific on each of those aspects that form your ideal day and how it makes you feel.
Being clear about what's important to you will help you in identifying when the right opportunity comes up. It will also make it easy for you to decide what to say yes and what to say no to, because saying yes to one thing means saying no to another, and you want to make the right choices.
The case of being multi passionate
Marketing, Fitness, Nutrition, Mindset, Branding, Coaching, Teaching, Training, Yoga, Long Blacks, Game of Thrones, Career & Economics, Personal Development, Technology, Consumer Behaviour, Social Media…
Just to name a few of my passions. “But everyone needs a niche!”
If the lists of my all over the shop interests look similar to yours, then we’re both multi-passionate. And here’s the thing with being multi-passionate:
It's not about pin pointing what the one thing is. It’s the one thing that brings it all together.
Mark, one of my clients has gone through my coaching program and made a Career Pivot not even 10 weeks after we started. He didn’t just land a job, he landed one that he created. How? By simply being able to communicate his high performance zone to the CEO in a way that creates urgency and desire, being able to articulate the value he can bring and being able to negotiate a decent salary increase whilst still sounding like a bargain.
Being clear about areas you are passionate about, how your strengths can be at play, and how these are stitched together to add value to others so you get paid well for it, will help you achieve the same.
Not seeking the right support
“Don’t ask directions from people who have never been down that road.” Old but gold saying.
Career pivot or career changes are always significant and risks are always involved, as well as a good amount of doubt that comes from you and from the people around you. However, if you start engaging with those who don’t understand what you are going through and your vision, you will have a hard time moving in the right direction.
Look for opportunities to be mentored, coached, or volunteer. The experiences you will have and learn will be invaluable in the long run.
Vanessa, one of my clients initially came to me for coaching to work on her career. Despite being already very successful and in a senior role, she has been facing a lot of rejections for promotions, missed out on a pay rise not just once but two times and couldn’t get onto a project team that she desperately wanted to join.
Turned out that she was her own obstacle to progress as she lost complete confidence in her abilities because she was in a toxic environment for years. She underestimated herself for a long time, and it took a toll on her career and well-being.
Part of the equation of a successful Career Pivot is being in an environment where you can thrive and not just survive. We know that so well that in our coaching programs, we included effective and efficient ways to build relevant network and maximizing relationships as part of it.
Having the right support from people who have been in your shoes, or treading the same course, or are already where you want to be definitely makes all the difference in the journey.
If you’re thinking of making a Career Pivot or wanting more growth in your career, we have an array of services that can help you achieve this with great success. Join hundreds of our coaching clients who have pivot successfully, send us a message today and we’ll get in touch to know if you qualify for the programs.