“If you believe you can, you can, if you believe you can’t, you’re right.”
Henry Ford
Most successful organizations have a business plan. It is sort of a roadmap that everyone in the organization can use to understand the mission of the company, gain alignment in executing that vision and to serve as a guide in evaluating and executing various strategies.
Business plans are a commonly accepted necessity. What about your own individual career? Do you have an overriding set of values to guide your development and a picture of what you would like to achieve when you reach the summit of your professional life?
Now, I don’t for a second believe that any of us will develop a career vision and expect it to unfold exactly as we “planned.” Of course, life doesn’t work that way. However, having a well- developed career vision will give you a clear focus on what is important to you, what you need to achieve that vision, and ultimately assist you in developing and executing sensible strategies to help you achieve interim goals and your ultimate vision. A career vision gives you a sense of purpose that should excite you and motivate you to work every day, even during the inevitable difficult times.
I work with many of my coaching clients in crafting a career vision. They always find it one of the most rewarding parts of our coaching relationship. Once you decide to move forward, it is essential to you be willing to dedicate some serious time to properly reflect and create your vision. Now, let’s move on and start crafting your career vision:
- Reflect on your core values. In my most recent post, I wrote about identifying your core values and prioritizing them. These should serve as the foundation of every decision you make, and help you determine what is really important in your life;
- Ask yourself a few questions. When you reach the ultimate summit of your career, what will that look like? How do you define success? What would you most like to achieve in your life?
- Be bold. Developing your picture of success is not a time to worry about the obstacles that get in the way. Create your picture without regard to financial issues, education or job concerns. What would you like your picture to look like if you could have anything you want?
- Go ahead and write. Much like an organizational vision statement, your career vision should be something that will be challenging and take time to achieve. If you reach your goal in one year, it is not strong enough. Your vision statement should be something that really gets you juiced about your future; and
- Take responsibility for making it happen. See the Henry Ford quote above. I’ll write more about goal setting and strategies for success in achieving your vision in the next couple of posts. Success is up to you. Refuse to accept anything less!
Having a clearly defined career vision should energize you and liberate you from the feeling that your career is just a series of never ending tasks. Your vision is a blueprint for a purposeful and meaningful life.
What does your career vision look like?
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