A career resolution is exactly what it sounds like: a resolution for your career intended to help you grow into a better professional. At Work It DAILY, we believe that you need to work on your career every day (yes, you do, in fact, need to "work it daily"). So, everyone should make a career resolution or two along with those other ambitious personal resolutions. They can be little things like learning a new skill or growing your professional network, or bigger goals like landing a promotion or getting a new job.
But how do you know what kind of career resolutions to make?
You can begin by asking yourself, "Am I where I want to be in my career?" If your answer is "no," you need to take a closer look at your career goals.
Here are five more career questions you should be asking yourself this new year to figure out how to grow your career and become the professional you know you can be.
1. Am I Proud Of My Job Title?
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You could be a janitor or a neurosurgeon, it doesn't matter. If you aren't proud of what you do for a living, there's something missing: passion and purpose.
Career burnout is real, but sometimes it's deeper than that. Our passion at 25 won't necessarily be our passion at 40. And that's okay.
When we are passionate about what we do, we are proud because we are doing what we think is important, what we love doing. We feel a sense of purpose. We are adding value to and making a difference in this crazy world—in a small, but significant way.
Every job is important. No matter what your job title is, if you aren't proud of it, and don't feel like you can leverage your strengths as a professional in the position, you should absolutely change that. Identify that one problem you want to find a solution to and go after it. What are you waiting for?
Remember, the only bad job is the one you aren't passionate about, the one that isn't allowing you to leverage your professional strengths and reach your potential.
If you don't know what your professional strengths are or what kind of work you'd find purposeful and fulfilling, we recommend taking our free career quizzes.
Take the quizzes now to learn your unique combination of professional strengths and how they can help you get better career results so you can be proud of what you do.
2. Do I Feel Secure In My Career?
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This is a bit different from job security. Actually, job security doesn't exist. Every job is temporary. Think you can stay in the same job for decades and then retire? Think again. While that may have been commonplace for past generations, today's workforce and job market are completely different than what they were a decade or two ago.
So what does it mean to feel secure in our careers? When we believe as professionals that we can add value wherever we are.
You are a business-of-one. A company won't want to invest in you if they don't know the kinds of services you provide, the kind of value you could add to the organization, and the problems you could solve for them. Here are some examples of questions that will help you determine if you're secure in your career:
- Are you adding value at your current job?
- Are you honing your skills, expanding your network, and building your personal brand?
- Do you feel confident that if you lost your job, you'd be able to find a comparable one in the same field?
- Do you feel confident you'd be able to demonstrate to potential employers how you add value?
Since every job is temporary, it's extremely important to constantly work on our careers and ask ourselves these questions frequently so we always feel secure in our businesses-of-one.
3. Will I Be Able To Achieve Wealth?
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When most people think of "wealth," they think of dollar signs and anything that you can attach a monetary value to. Our jobs help us build wealth. We're not going to tell you that money isn't important. Of course it is! It allows you to live the life you want to live. In many ways, money equals freedom.
But the truth is, there are other forms of wealth that are more important that you can't attach any monetary value to.
Real wealth comes in the form of family, friends, hobbies, experiences, knowledge, and community. If you don't have these things, money will never fill that void.
So, is your career allowing you to build this type of wealth? The intangible kind? Or are your relationships suffering because of your job? Is your work-life balance nonexistent? Do you have any time to pursue hobbies, learn, or volunteer?
Your career should never inhibit you from achieving real wealth. The best job isn't the one that pays the most. It's the one that pays the bills and gives you enough time to live, too.
4. Do I Have Any Regrets?
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Just asking ourselves this question can be difficult because maybe we don't want to know the answer. Acknowledging that you regret something in your life is the first step to making a change. Guess what? There's still time to chase your dreams!
If you do have regrets, that doesn't mean you haven't been a successful professional. That also doesn't mean you haven't had a good career. You could be the most successful person, but if you never got up the courage to start that business, make that career change, or go back to school, you'll most likely think, "What if?" for the rest of your life.
You'll never know if you don't try. Don't be afraid of failure. Life is just one big experiment, and it's your job to learn from those experiments. That's how you discover what works and what doesn't. That's how you discover what's possible.
And even if you do "fail," that's an incredibly more valuable experience than waiting out the clock on a mediocre career. So, don't give up on your dreams just yet.
5. Can I Reach My Full Potential In This Role? In This Career?
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When we feel like we have more to contribute to society, that's a sign we haven't yet reached our full potential. Do you feel like you're wasting your potential at your current job? Do you think you'd reach your full potential in another career?
Really think about what you want your professional legacy to be. It's a lot harder to get up in the morning when you don't find fulfillment in your work. When it comes time for you to retire, are you going to look back on your career and feel like you could have accomplished much, much more with those 50 years?
Everyone has unique gifts, skills, and expertise. When we focus on developing ourselves as individuals, as businesses-of-one, it's a lot easier to share those things with the world. Give yourself a chance to reach your full potential. If you haven't taken our free quizzes yet, your results will help you do just that. You may be surprised by what you can accomplish.
Before you get back into the same routine at work this year, we hope you take a few minutes to ask yourself these career questions. Listen carefully to how you answer them. You may need to make a career resolution or two.
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Not so long ago, I was asked to come in and help with the corporate personality, or culture of a company who was experiencing 75% annual turnover. Upon assessment, I found the employees to be feeling pretty depressed and helpless - the way a lot of workers are feeling right now. This is bad for business. When employees are depressed, facts show they are less productive too.
When an entire company becomes depressed, it's often a result of circumstances that management was unable to predict or control. For example, layoffs are affecting lots of companies right now, but I can tell you some will rebound quite easily, while others will fall apart. Here's why...
Every company has a corporate culture that creates a personality for the organization. Some companies actively try to create the personality, while others ignore it and let the personality form itself. And we all know every personality has its strengths and weaknesses. In times of stress, the companies who let the ugly side of their personality control the environment don't do so well. However, those companies that recognize their corporate personality's weaknesses and opt to alter them do much better. So, I ask you: Is your company's personality hurting their ability to bounce back in this economy? To help you decide, let me explain the four corporate personalities at their worst:
Commander: Intense and deadline-driven, work is no place for emotion and there is no such thing as appreciation. Their motto, "I don't care what you did for me yesterday. What can you do for me today?"Energizer: Overly-optimistic to the point of being insincere and insane. Their motto, "Everything is fine, it's great. Just think happy thoughts, be super-positive and we'll mentally will our company to improve. Now, let's do a team cheer!"Empathizer: Reeling in self-pity, everyone is gossiping doom and gloom, including management. Their motto, "I would get your resume out there. This is so bad, get out while you can!"Contemplator: Secretly horrified, but doesn't want the world to know, nor do they want to do anything rash or stupid. Their motto, "Let's put our heads down and work. The less we talk about it, the better."
If any of the above personalities sound like your place of employment, then your company could use some help getting back on track. In fact, maybe you even see all four types within your management team - multiply personalities in a corporate culture can exist too. So, what can be done?
The secret lies in knowing how to implement strategies that can pull the corporate culture out of its funk. It's done using a Ying & Yang Approach. Simply put, companies implement some things that are opposite to their personality as a way to pull the culture out of its tunnel vision and restore balance. Let me share an example...
The company I mentioned above had a Commander personality. They were deadline-driven, intense high achievers who prided themselves on hiring the best and the brightest that delivered unbelievable results. Unfortunately, they had a couple of setbacks with the loss of a few key clients that left them reeling. So, instead of stepping back and taking the pressure off, the stepped it up and put the pressure on the staff - the result was top talent leaving in droves. So, how did we fix it? We went 180 degrees on the staff.
We instituted some programs that went completely against the personality of the company. Employee appreciation programs and some changes in rules, along with some staff training to help close knowledge gaps and easy pressure to perform. (I must NOTE the only reason it worked is because the executives of the company were on board and willing to recognize they needed to change the strategy in order to change the results.) But it did work, turnover dropped dramatically, and they got back on track.
In summary, I know there is a lot of corporate anxiety and fear out there right now, and that brings out the worst in corporate cultures. However, employees AND companies need to move past this. The best way to do it is with some innovative approaches that help the personality of the workplace get back to a good place as quickly as possible. Understanding how your corporate culture needs to change is the key. My advice to managers - don't wait! There are plenty of low-cost ways to bring your culture back to a calm state. Just be sure to implement some so your company's personality doesn't get the best of it.
Do you know how managers and co-workers view you at work? More importantly…want to find out? Click here » to take our FREE career personality test.
[This article was originally posted on an earlier date]
J.T. O’Donnell is the founder of CAREEREALISM.com and CEO of CareerHMO.com, a web-based career development company.Photo credit: Shutterstock
