Welcome to the third edition of The Inbox Coach, a monthly email to bring you a little bit of coaching to your inbox and help you to make time for your personal development.

I used to think that you had to have a detailed career plan to be successful at work. That you needed to know where you wanted to be in five years’ time in order to plot out every move you needed to make to get where you wanted to be. While a very detailed plan might work for some people, I think for many people what it tends to look like is a less rigid or informal approach. I always felt like an imposter for not having a “career plan” despite taking charge of my career. When I think about it, I did have plans for my career, they just weren’t as specific and didn’t have all of the answers I thought they needed to have. I think a lot of people have a bit of an idea about what they want to do in their careers, but just aren’t sure quite what that journey will look like or when it will happen. They might have a few months planned out and a next move in mind, but nothing as formal as a plotted-out path to career success. 

To plan or not to plan?

I’m a big believer in having a plan, but I also recognise that plans can change and being flexible and open to possibility is also important. I like having a plan, mainly because in putting it together I have to get clear on what I want, and it highlights the things I don’t yet have the answers for so I can think about them. It also gives me a structure to follow and when things change, I only need to revise my plan rather than start from scratch. What I’ve learnt about having a plan is that you don’t have to have everything figured out, and the further away in time your goals are, the less detail you need to have. Plans can change, and as you work towards your goals you will get new information that you can add into the plan, tweaking what you want to do or creating a whole new plan. I class a successful plan as one which gives me some direction for the immediate future, helps me to work out what is important to me so I can spot new opportunities and one that can be changed as I learn more about what I want from my future career.  It doesn’t have a specific format and it is personal to me. 

Short, medium and long-term goals

A helpful way to think about your career goals is to break them down into short, medium and long-term goals. Short term goals are things you are working on at the moment, perhaps a project or promotion. Medium term goals are where you want to be in 9-18 months’ time, you will probably be quite specific about what these things are, and your short-term goals will be working towards them. Your longer-term goals are about the direction you want your career to take. You don’t have to have figured out exactly what this looks like but deciding on the parameters of your goal can be helpful to decide what the short and medium term looks like. For longer-term goals, it is worth remembering that the opportunity may not even exist yet. As the world of work changes, new technologies and companies are created, as we change as people, the chances are that the role you have in 5 years’ time won’t look quite the same as it does today and it might even be something you had never considered for yourself. 

Trust the process

Sometimes, just having a vague idea about what you want from the longer term can help with your immediate thinking about what you want from your career. You don’t have to change what you are doing straightway or be actively working towards it, but you might find that you start to make choices and focus on things differently when you are considering the future.

I first started thinking about making coaching my career in 2013 when I did an introduction to coaching course. I knew then that I wanted to pivot my career to coaching, but it took three more years for things to fall into place to do a coaching qualification and another two to start my coaching business. In all that time I was researching coaching, taking opportunities at work that gave me coaching experience and being open to new ideas. I didn’t plan my journey from there to here, but by having coaching as a longer-term goal I was able to grab the opportunities that have led me to where I am today. 

Reflection

*If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when are going to do it and add this email to your calendar

Before thinking about specific career goals, start by thinking about where you are today and what you want from you want from your career. These questions are prompts to help you to think about what you have done so far and what is working for you. Feel free to add in your own questions or journal more freely if that is useful. Ask yourself…

What has been my career journey so far?

What have been my career highs?

What tools and techniques (if any) have I used to plan for my career?

What has worked best for me?

When have I felt my best at work?

What are the things that I am good at, enjoy doing and can make a living from?

What are my current dreams for my career?

Write your answers down in your journal and spend some time thinking about how you are feeling and why your goal matters to you. 

Action

When it comes to setting a longer-term goal, it can be hard to be specific about what you want. I find it helpful to start by thinking more broadly about what you want from your career and then start to narrow down to what this might mean for a specific role. 

Task

Write down a list of criteria that are important to you in your career, these might be practical things (location, salary, hours worked, team size etc.) work specific things (running a specific project, in charge of a specific area) or how you want to feel at work. You can also think about what you want your career to allow you to do outside of work, whether that is hitting a financial goal or allowing you the time to do other things.

Use your list to create a vision board of your future career. You can either cut out pictures from a magazine or find pictures on the internet. Choose pictures that represent for you the things that are important to your future career.

When you have created your career vision board, write down one or two sentences that sum up how you want to feel in 5 years’ time. It doesn’t matter if you have some blank spaces, it’s just a starting point.

If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when are going to do it and add the prompts in this email to your calendar.

Inspiration 

“Other people tend to value you the way you value yourself” - Lee Miller

I always thought that your career had to be linear, you start at the bottom of a profession and work your way up to the top, and if you wanted to make a change that meant going back to the bottom. It took me a long time to realise that success in my career could be whatever I defined it to be, and not what I thought it had to look like. Once I realised that I could make up the rules, there were suddenly a whole lot more possibilities for what shape my career could take.

When I first thought about choosing coaching as a career path, I felt equal parts excited that I’d found something I loved but also concerned that my previous jobs had been a waste. The first Unconventional Mentor I featured in the project was Lee Miller. She started her career as a model, but she went on to become a photographer, a war correspondent, and a cookery writer. Whilst there are some connections between the different careers she had, what I loved about Lee Miller’s story was the way she was prepared to leave one thing behind and start something new if that was what was going to work for her in that moment. Reading about the changes she made inspired me to make a career change and I’m so glad I did. You can find out more about Lee Miller and the advice I take from her here. 

Creating and working towards your career goals isn’t something you can cover in one email, but you can make a start and that is what I hope this email has done. Over the next 3 weeks I’ll be sharing more thoughts from the world of coaching to help you to take charge of your career goals. 

See you then

Laura