Making a Career Change: Step 6 Looking to Others

Previously: Step 5: Looking in the Mirror

It's amazing how good an exercise routine can make you feel isn't it? Especially after Thanksgiving!!

Making a career change is very much about putting yourself out there. In order to do so effectively you need to know how others see you and the best way to do that is to ask those around you.  Your colleagues are your best resource when it comes to understanding who you are and how you present yourself because they are the ones who see your personal and professional interactions from the outside.

Step 6: Looking to Others
Pick 3-5 people whose input and feedback you trust. Be sure not to pick all of your friends. It's OK to pick one friend but it will be infinitely more helpful if you are able to get the objective feedback of colleagues, supervisors, clients, customers and other people who have no vested personal interest.

Set up a time when you can have a conversation. Perhaps it's over lunch, coffee, after hours, or before work during breakfast. Just pick a time outside of the craziness of the work day so you won't feel rushed. When it comes time to have these conversations thank the person for joining you and then provide the framework for the conversation to take place by saying something like:

"I am trying to learn how others perceive me in the work place so that I can get a better understanding of what I do well and what areas I need to work on and I thought you might be able to help me."

From here you do not want to steer the conversation too much by asking specific questions. Just allow the conversation to happen and see where it goes. You want to hear the person's initial response and then perhaps ask followup questions for clarification. If they only speak to your strengths, after a while thank them and then ask for a few things you might be able to improve. Same goes for the reverse. Remember, this is just a conversation and not an interview. You are trying to learn how others perceive you so you need to allow them to communicate that perception.

It is likely that you will find that the hardest part about this process is to strip it of emotional and objectively listen to what the person is saying . You may need to fight the urge to rebut "I am NOT like that!" Remember, you've asked someone you trust for honest feedback. There are reasons they are saying what they are saying and it is up to you to figure out why. If you don't like what you hear, now is the time to change it but first you need to learn what "it" is and the person speaking to you is doing you a favor so don't argue with them.

After the meeting, write the person a thank you note (email is fine but I prefer hand written) and then head to your notebook and document the conversation. Note what strengths and areas for improvement came up. After you have had a few of these conversations look for trends and patterns.

Up Next: Step 7: Putting It All Together

Career Management Is a Personal Journey

No one is going to just hand us what we need to succeed on a silver platter so it is up to us to seek out those things. I am very much interested in the personal career journey we are all on and providing thoughts, resources and inspiration to support that journey and thus the needs that arise from it. 

Shortly (probably when my power is restored and I can take the time to think about it instead of worrying about staying warm) I will turn my attention towards finding our niche, which can be the impetus for turning everything around.  Until then, I've summed up the topics I've addressed thus far to give you a one stop shop for finding the spark you need to get through the day, week and month. 

5:15 Is The Crack of Dawn
Getting it all started.

7 Career Obstacles and How to Overcome Them
Advice to keep you and your career on track.

Get In the Game
Career Changes can be hard and are a great starting point for a discussion. I went through a very difficult one.

Road Map for the Blog
Laying out some future topics.

My Left Brain vs. My Right Brain: An Epic Battle
Our internal dialogue is often the single most important factor in our personal and professional lives. Learn to listen to yours..

What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?
The career and professional landscape has changed dramatically and you don't want to be left behind because you've failed to find your niche.

To Be or Not To Be...Motivated During a Career Change
Having the proper support network underneath you makes all the difference.

Hitting the Wall
Just when you think you can't go any further, have faith that something or someone will intervene.

Responsibility to Yourself and Your Employer
Being unhappy on the job can leave you in a bad place. Don't let it happen to you.

It's Been a Week
What I've learned in the social media universe.

When Your Responsibilities Conflict
An example of how to tell when you or someone else is unhappy on the job.

Failure
Failure is not something that is often talked about yet is is something that is constantly thought about. I decided to talk about it!

Yesterday Failure...Today Risk
If I'm talking about failure I'd be doing a disservice to not address risk.

Avoiding Social Media Errors
Putting yourself out there requires an awareness. Don't be the one who makes mistakes.

Failure and Risk
Doesn't success play a role in there somewhere? See how.

7 Steps For Dealing With Crisis On The Job
Whether you are playing it safe or taking risks it is important to be prepared when problems arise.

Still no power...still reflecting on adversity...
Inspirational words from others regarding adversity.

To Be or Not To Be...Motivated During a Career Change

(Wow! Was that a cliche title or what??!?) Make no mistake about it, the career change I went through when I left the theatre was an incredibly hard and humbling process: admitting that I needed to make the change was excruciating, figuring out if and how my skills were transferrable, being intimidated by the wide expanse of the unknown, hiring the career counselor and then ultimately putting myself out there. Today's Careerealism.com post How To Know When a Career Shift is in Your Future by Lisa Lambert Snodgrass does a terrific job of succinctly distilling the nuts and bolts of determining if such a change is right for you.

There's a lot in there to digest. Each one of those bullets might take you hours to address so don't think this is a made for TV reality show makeover kind of process because it's not. It's going to take a lot of time, courage and perseverance.  Part of you is going to have to embrace the unknown because you never know if, when or how your next break is going to materialize.

Speaking from experience, the most important point Ms. Snodgrass makes comes in the second to last paragraph: you shouldn't go at it alone. Luckily I didn't have to. The most instrumental person involved in my career change was not me, the career counselor nor the knight in shining armor Associate Director of Human Resources who ended up finding me my next job. It was my wife. She kept me from getting down and picked me up when I was. This is particularly true of her in general but even more so during this process.  She held me accountable and made me focus. She made sure I stayed on task and redirected me when I wasn't. She used to leave little slips of paper around our house with inspirational notes, quotes and sayings. I'd open my underwear drawer be greeted by a quote from Shakespeare, open a cabinet and find words from Martin Luther King Jr., reach under my pillow and find a note reminding me that she believes in me.  These little notes kept me going. All of the other things about this process were under my control from the decision making to the question answering to the hand shaking to the email writing and interviewing, but the will and drive to persevere and stay motivated when times got tough was not. (cue Joe Cocker..."Love Lifts Up Where We Belong"...) Thanks to her though, I always had the support to keep my head up and my focus on the ultimate goal. (..."Where eagles cry, on a mountain high"...)

The best advice I can give to you is to of course seek out the necessary "How To" career change resources and get started. But even more important than that is to make sure you are not even contemplate going through this process alone. Use your friends, use your network, use your family or heck you can even use me (!) to pick you up and keep you there because even though you may not know it you are going to need it.