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One of the activities we don’t spend enough time proactively thinking about is our careers. We get busy and career planning kinda moves down on the priority list. Then when things aren’t going great, we find ourselves reacting to the environment around us. Which isn’t great when it comes to making career decisions.
So, I’m hoping today’s roundup of articles is a good reminder to schedule some time for yourself to think about your career and what you hope to accomplish in the months to come.
Career Planning: The Employee’s Role in Driving Their Success
While organizations are very involved in the process of career planning, that doesn’t mean they can drive all of the outcomes. Employees need to understand themselves and decide what they want their career to look like – both short- and long-term. It’s also the employee’s responsibility to communicate those goals to management. Ultimately, that’s how managers can support the employee and their future plans.
One of the qualities that employers want in an employee is curiosity. It’s defined as a “strong desire to know or learn something”. Curiosity can be incredibly helpful to employees and organizations. Especially when organizations want a lean operation. Think about how you can find your own answers – successfully.
Improve Your Business Acumen with These 10 Activities
I’ve come to realize that business acumen isn’t something you learn once and you’re done. Business acumen is changing all the time. Yes, it’s true that terms like profit and EBDITA haven’t changed. But now we have new terms like mattering, toggling tax, and productivity paranoia. If you want to be a contributor and effective business partner, then you must know how to continuously gain exposure to new business concepts and ideas.
You Must Define Your Own Work Life Balance
Work life balance is important, and it contributes to a person’s wellbeing. Unfortunately, I’ve seen people be less than honest with themselves about their work life balance and end up being stressed out and burned out.
Sometimes part of our career planning includes making a change. If you’re thinking that it’s time to start a career transition – whether that’s an internal move or an external one – here are a few articles that might help.
Quitting Is Not a Sign of Failure
There are lots of inspirational quotes and sayings that want us to believe that quitting is bad or wrong or a sign of failure. It’s not. Sometimes quitting is the absolutely right thing to do. Ideally, it’s good to quit with a plan, so we can learn from the experience. That’s why quitting isn’t a sign of failure. Because we learned something along the way.
Make Creating Change a Part of Your Professional Life
Anyone can be a change maker. Influencing change isn’t an “old person” thing or a “young person” thing. Give what you can when you can. That’s how change happens. That’s how we can make an impact in both our personal and professional lives.
If you’re looking for a new way to learn and contribute, volunteerism is a valuable experience both personally and professionally. But finding the right volunteer opportunity can take some time. That initial investment in research can offer huge benefits and lifetime rewards.
Keep Your LinkedIn Profile Current
Regardless of your opinions about social media, it’s still a part of our personal and professional lives. And when it comes to business, LinkedIn is still tops. That means managing your profile matters. There are lots of resources to help us create and maintain a positive social media presence.
How to Create a Quitting Plan (and Yes, You Should)
If we think about it, quitting is simply a form of change. And change is okay. We can use our skills in problem solving, decision making, change management, and goal setting to help us successfully quit and restart. This doesn’t mean quitting isn’t hard. All change is hard. Even the changes we plan for. But creating a plan can help us think about the steps we need to take and when we’d like to take them. Sometimes having that kind of control can make quitting and changing a lot easier.
We spend a huge amount of time working which is why we owe it to ourselves to give our professional lives the time and energy it deserves. Schedule some time to think about your career and what you want to accomplish. List your goals and be able to articulate them. I’m not saying that everything will happen exactly the way we want it to, but taking the time to have a career plan keeps us focused on the things that matter.
Image captured by Sharlyn Lauby while exploring Walt Disney World, FL
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