Your Career Sweet Spot

Domain: Self Awareness - Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

What do you do when someone on your team is looking for support in navigating a career transition?

It happens more than you think. Or at least, more than I expected before I got into management.

It turns out, when you actively support your teams development for long enough, you are inevitably going to be helping people navigate aspirational career changes.

Even as an executive coach, I have some clients whose primary focus is navigating a serious career change.

Whether you're a coach or a manager (or both), it's not uncommon for the individual you're supporting to have little insight on what that change looks like.

This is where I like to leverage a career sweet spot model. This model goes beyond the well-intentioned but shortsighted advice to "follow your passion" to also consider your strengths and the needs of the market. I find this to be a more practical and approachable direction for most professionals.

Whether your navigating a change yourself or helping one of your employees, here's what that model looks like…

What you like

The first element of the trifecta is to find things you enjoy doing. Don't limit this to just your ultimate passion. Aim to create a list of 5-7 things you genuinely enjoy doing. These can be personal values, hobbies or long-time interests.

Focusing only on your passions is poor advice. It's also a privilege that many people don't have access to. With that said, we spend so much time at work that doing something we actively dislike can lead to a number of mental health problems.

Instead of following your passions, create a list of things you enjoy and start from there. We want options here as we are going to cross-reference them with other criteria…

What you’re good at

Next, you'll want to create a list of your strengths. These are the skills and/or areas in which you excel. What are your routinely recognized for? What are the skills for which other people seek you out? Once again, we're looking for a list of 5-7 things that truly stand-out.

No matter how much you enjoy something, if you're not skilled at it you're going to have a hard time getting paid to do it. If you have your heart set on something you're not skilled at, then it might be time to begin training and developing that skill as a long-term goal.

What the world needs

The last component is a practical one. Maybe you've found what you love and maybe you're great at it…but if society doesn’t' value the thing, it's just a hobby. If you're going to make a living doing something you enjoy and are good at, there needs to be a market for it.

The good news is that globalization has made it easier than ever to find or create a market. It might just require a little creativity. I used to use the example that nobody would pay you to play video games, but that's simply no longer true.

So the question becomes, how realistic is it that you can sell or market this skill? Most college football players love the game and are good at it; however, less than 2% get drafted to the NFL.

Combining it

At this point you've probably guessed the next step. You are going to find the overlap, or sweet spot, between all three categories. What are the things that you enjoy, are good at and are in a reasonable position to be compensated for?

But just identifying that overlap isn't enough. Everything to this point has simply been a thought experiment. The real revelations appear in the doing. This means find small ways to test your theories. Can you pick-up a side project at work, a freelance gig or even a volunteer opportunity to test this new career direction?

If you're lucky, maybe you've found your next ideal career. More often, this experimentation is a strong first step that reveals additional calibration. Either way, you've identified a direction and taken definitive action towards a more fulfilling career.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please reply to this email.

If you are interested in exploring one-on-one coaching to transform your leadership, email me at [email protected] and we’ll coordinate a free, one-hour discovery session.

This week’s action items:

1. Make a list of 5-7 activities, passions or topics that you really enjoy.

2. Make another list of your top 5-7 strengths.

3. Identify which of the items from both lists you could also reasonably expect to be compensated for.

4. Identify one small, low-stakes way to test one of the opportunities you identified through the exercise.