View on Careers - Spring Fever -Minto Roy
Spring is a time for new growth and fresh starts – ideally for seeds that were planted a long time ago to break through the cover of ground and reach for light and life.
If you want to experience a beginning, you must begin. If you want to get more or have more, first you must give. Our career experts say if you want to advance in your profession, your best bet is to go first. Jump in. Don’t hesitate, equivocate or even negotiate at the start.
Minto Roy:
I deal all the time with people who know they want a change but they don’t know what their change looks like. No matter how hard you work, if you have no clear destination, you are pretty much guaranteed to wind up some place else. “More” and “better” are not specific enough as either goals or motivation. So we probe and prod and ask hundreds of clarifying questions and even evaluate assessments and psychometric tests to help people achieve focus. And when they get some clarity, more often than not, people say things like: I want to work for a large, reputable and rapidly growing company where I have my own office and can choose and manage my projects without interference. I want $80,000 per year, RRSP matching, extended benefits, flex time, paid professional development, five weeks vacation and a car allowance. I want to be able to work at a creative and strategic level and not get bogged down in paperwork and other mundane details and I want a relaxed workplace culture where there are no politics or games and we all just enjoy each other doing good work.
Sounds good, right? Sounds great! Problem is, it’s only half the picture. When you only visualize what you’ll get and not what you are willing give, you are a cost to an employer, not an investment. From a business perspective, you’re a bad risk. Worse, you have no strategic action plan to achieve your goals. Bottom line, you don’t have a vision of your future; you have a fantasy you’ll likely never achieve.
Pony up the other side of the image and you can maybe paint a picture you’re going to want to live in.
Minto Roy
President
CareersToday Canada
www.careerstodaycanada.com
www.mintoroy.net