What You Want – It’s Not What You Think

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This week Scott and Mark talk about determining what you want in your career.  They discuss several techniques you can use on your own to understand better what you want in your career — be warned, it’s not always what you think it should be!

What You Want

Often when people think of what they want, they think of it in terms of what they don’t want. In order to truly know what you want, you need to list what you don’t want, then use that as a starting point for what you do want. Follow this 3-Step Process to discover what you truly want:

Step 1: Get out a piece of paper, walk to a whiteboard or open up pages, word or google doc. It’s extremely important that you take the time to write this down. It makes it real and forces you to think through it at a different level

Step 2: Start with the things you don’t want. Write them down. Make a list. Go job by job, experience by experience with what you have done in the past and get on paper/board/digital screen each thing you don’t want. This serves two purposes, it is a place to start when thinking through what you want and serves to distinguish very clearly that these are not what you actually want.

Step 3: Once you have down all of those don’t wants open up a new screen, take a picture of your whiteboard and erase it, or get out a new piece of paper. This new writing surface will serve as a defiantly separate place to start forming what you want. In order to understand what you really want, you’ve got to do the “hard work”.  When you think you’ve answered the question, go two steps further than you think you need to.

Find an accountability partner–or a 3 year old to push you.  Someone to ask you “Why” until you get to the real things you want out of your life and career.

On the podcast Mark tries this technique live! If you think this technique is useful, you’ll definitely want to sign up for our upcoming free email course!!!

SIGN UP FOR OUR UPCOMING EMAIL COURSE HERE!!
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10 Questions About Your Past That Lead to Your Future

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This post is Day 2 of the Figure It Out – 8 Day Email Course. If you haven’t already signed up to get access to all the days, you can do that here. If you’re already signed up and loving this free resource, share it with someone else who needs it 

Is reflection on the past Your key to career Happiness?

The short answer is “H-E- double hockey sticks to the NO”.

(mostly because I love hockey and a little because reflection is not the magic bullet alone!)

But what’s the longer more nuanced answer?

To be clear; reflecting on the past alone is not going to get you where you want to go in your career or your life. It will take intentional action to move toward work that fits you, your values, and your strengths (and even your income expectations). 

But what’s also true is that for the action to be intentional you must know exactly what you want. 

How do you do that? Let’s start by watching the video and completing todays exercise below! 

You can use your past as a platform for the future no matter what your past is like… Yes this is true, all those things that are rolled up in your past; successes, baggage, events, close calls, experiences, jobs, etc.

All of these can either help you move forward OR help you put up barriers for yourself to not move anywhere. It’s your decision!

Today we are going to choose to take steps forward, but before you going laying down on the psychologist’s couch, let’s establish that what we want to accomplish

I want you to have a productive inventory of the past that will help you evaluate your future.

The Questions (This is the Hard Work)

Below you will find 10 questions to help you evaluate what from your past you want to carry into your future.

Write down your answers to the questions… then dig even deeper by asking “why?”

1. What do I love enough to do for free?

2. What do I do that causes time to feel differently? What causes me to lose track of time?

3. If I had to teach something, what would I teach?

4. What do people typically ask me for help in?

5. What makes me feel great about myself?

6. What do I enjoy regardless of the opinions of others?

7. What are my favorite things to do in the past? What about now?

8. What has hurt in the past that you don’t want others to go through.

9. What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?

10. What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?

Bonus Question!

If you were to stop living TODAY, what would you regret not having done already? What would you want people to say at your funeral that maybe they wouldn’t or couldn’t right now?

Next steps

What Are Your Strengths Part II

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Strengths, Happen To Your Career, HTYC

This is the conclusion of the discussion that Mark and Scott had in Episode 26.

If you aren’t completely confident in what your strengths are, Go back and listen to Episode 26

Resources to validate your strengths

Disclaimer: These resources only work if you are completely honest with yourself!

Personality and Strength profiles simply validate what you already know about yourself.

Before you spend money on the following resources, lay the groundwork by asking yourself the questions that we outlined in Part I of this episode.  It will greatly accelerate your learning curve with these tools.

 StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

Mark will be writing a review of StrengthsFinder 2.0 soon.

[Tweet “”You’re really going to be successful when you focus on what you’re good at.””]

  • 35+ Different Strengths Categories. Helps you identify your Top 5 Strengths
  • Strengths like: “woo” (Mark calls it ‘boyish charm’), ideation, futuristic

Scott recommends narrowing down to your Top 2-3 strengths

Scott has all coaching clients take the StrengthsFinders test prior to coaching

  • Allows client to validate what they know and gives us discussion points with the client
  • Helps us cut past all of the “finding” time.  Allows us to provide greater value.

Click here to purchase StrengthsFinder 2.0

DiSC Profiles

Chris LoCurto discusses the DiSC Profiles in his HTYC interview

Listen here! 

Focuses on your personality and how you communicate and interact with other people.

Four areas:

D: Driver – In your face, blunt, very little detail, take charge

I: Influencing – Life of the party, social, interacting, consensus building, center of attention

S: Steady – Loyal, concerned about what others thinking, don’t like conflict, calm, don’t like to be rushed

C: Constant – very detail oriented, love Google and Excel Spreadsheets, need organization

Understanding the DiSC profile allows you to get along with others and understand others so you can focus on working in your strengths.

We recommend the DiSC Profiles offered by Dan Miller and the 48Days Team

You can purchase your DiSC Profile here

 The Passion Test by Janet Attwood

Helps you understand your passions and your strengths by using stories and mental exercises

The Passion Test allows you to put your strengths and passions in the context of your life

Click here to purchase The Passion Test

Why are we talking about this? 

Over and over again we get emails saying “I don’t know what I want to do…”

Mark and Scott are creating a free email course that will walk you through the process of determining what you want to do in your career!

This will be the first part of the HTYC One-Stop and will be prerequisite to utilizing any of the other One-Stop resources, tools or courses.

Stay tuned for more info!

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What are Your Strengths Part I

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Discover your strengths, HTYC, Happen To Your Career
What are strengths? How would you define strengths?

It’s a human tendency to devalue what you have to offer others

Matt McWilliams talks about how we devalue what we have to offer in Episode #006.  Listen to it here. 

In Episode #003, Farnoosh Brock defines strengths as “…the intersection of both skill and passion.”

Listen to Farnoosh’s episode here. 

Just because you’re good at something doesn’t necessarily mean that is what you should be doing.

How do you identify your strenths?
  • Look for those things you do enjoy doing.
  • Make a list of the things you like doing.
  • Examine your past – what did you like doing?

Then ask why? 

The perception of value comes from what others think of it…not necessarily what you think of it.

Our strenghts are those things where we feel that we are actually making a difference.

It’s OK to be good at things.. and it’s ok to admit that you’re good at things!

Be honest about what you are good at…and what you aren’t good at!

Being honest about your strengths and weaknesses is extremely freeing!

Knowing when you’re working in your strengths is foundational to getting to work that you love.

Key Lessons:

1. You can easily fool yourself

2. Write down what you think your strengths are

Click here to learn more about determining what your strengths are…

Tune in Wednesday to listen to Part II of this episode!

(Psst…. Click here to listen to the song Scott mentions in the outtakes of the episode…)

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Ready for Career Happiness?

What Career Fits You?

Finally figure out what you should be doing for work

Join our 8-day “Mini-Course” to figure it out. It’s free!

Discover your Strengths

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This post is Day 1 of the Figure It Out – 8 Day Email Course. If you haven’t already signed up to get access to all the days, you can do that here. If you’re already signed up and loving this free resource, share it with someone else who needs it.

MOST PEOPLE THINK THAT THEY KNOW THEIR STRENGTHS…

I hear them say things like “I learn fast” or “I’m good with people” but most people have not spent enough time or effort to truly understand what it is that they are great at or have the potential to be great at!

Maybe these are true, but these aren’t specific enough to really be what you are great at. What is it that makes you great with people, What is it specifically that you enjoy in the interaction with others, is it even the interaction at all, or maybe something else.

When I hear something as vague as “I’m good with people”, which I do in maybe 7 out of every 10 interviews with professionals, I immediately try to start digging to understand what they really actually mean.

It could be that they are great at: relating to others OR communicating with people OR helping people problem solve OR building relationships quickly OR about a million other possibilities.

What is a signature strength?

For our purposes here, let’s consider a “Signature Strength” to be the intersection of areas you’re great at, your enjoyment, and where you bring value to the world.

This means it’s not enough to be really good at something, in addition you must have some love or enjoyment of it too. This provides the basis for what we really mean when we say “do what you love”

We really mean, spending as much time as possible working with those things you are great at that you also really enjoy. When you get to do that on a regular basis, work starts to feel like play more and more, but you are also going to be getting superior results in your work compared to someone who’s time and activities are not well aligned with their strengths.

Making “discovering your strengths” Less Confusing

Over the years I’ve gotten feedback on my strengths from many people. They say things like “You’re great at having uncomfortable conversations.”

Awesome right? That must be my strength! (This is where most people stop!)

I had considered that a strength for a period of time. But when I looked a little deeper I realized there was more to it: I have always been someone who gets trusted by people very easily. It helped me to be successful in other jobs and helped me to build relationships and have a lot of information because people were willing to share with me. Because people trusted me so easily and so quickly it would often make me very comfortable with them just as quickly. This enabled me to say things that others wouldn’t normally say, or deliver difficult feedback to people, or to ask for something from them that could be kind of scary.

Doing this over and over again in sales situations and HR investigations, interviews and challenging situations where you have to earn trust and provide feedback caused me to get very good at having the courage to say things others wouldn’t normally say and to be far better at that as a skill than the average person. But the real Signature Strength here was my ability to genuinely connect with others very quickly in a way that caused you to trust me.

This enabled me to become very good at conventionally uncomfortable conversations and drastically raised my tolerance level for those conversations.

It’s like an iceberg: It’s not what everyone can see on the surface that is your strength, what’s under the surface that is far more important!

You will likely find the same thing for yourself when you start to unwind your own personal web of life events that lead to your Signature Strengths.

How to get more specific when trying to discover your strengths:

I’m writing this post in the hopes that I can help you break your strengths down into specifics (or at least more specific than when you started reading this)

There are many ways to do this but I want to give you several ways to go about discovering your strengths. The first way is what I do when I am interviewing others (many people don’t know their own strengths but I still have to figure them out in a short period of time spent with them during an interview)

Discover Your Signature Strengths Exercise

I start with what they really enjoyed in their last roles, previous jobs, current job, volunteering, hobbies (make a list of the couple of things you enjoy most in each one). Now which of those things would you consider yourself really good at? Which of those things caused you to be successful in other areas?

As you start to break down these lists, you will start to discover your strengths because some will surface to the top.

Ask yourself are these things that you are really good at? Are these what other people think you are great at? (sometimes what we think isn’t a big deal actually is, it just comes easy to us)

Actions to take Today:
  1. Get a piece of paper: List out all your past jobs and roles (here is a full breakdown of the past jobs exercise)
  2. What are the 2-5 things you most enjoyed about each of those  AND what did you find you were better than others at?
  3. Answer these questions: “What was it specifically that you enjoyed?” and “Why did you enjoy that part so much?”
Bonus Actions To take (for overachievers)

Clifton Strengths Finder: if you want to get really clear (and eerily accurate) verbiage to articulate your strengths, I would suggest purchasing the Clifton Strengths Finder Assessment for about $25 (or our video series to get a deeper understanding on strengths). It will help you get started down the road of identifying your strengths even more quickly. 

We use it behind the scenes with our Coaching Clients and Career Change Bootcamp students. Here’s an episode of the HTYC Podcast where we share audio from an actual coaching call with Bree Hunter from Australia (Take a listen. You’ll enjoy it. No other Career Coaches in the world actually share how they coach) – Also Bree gave us permission!

Creative and Strategic Ways to Show Your Strengths to Interviewers

Bert Purdy: Find What You Enjoy About Your Job @BertPurdy

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Berty Purdy, Scott Barlow, Happen To Your Career, HTYC

Bert Purdy is unique.  He loves his job.  It doesn’t matter how much you work or how much you travel. You can love your job. Bert’s goal is to help you achieve success in your job and enjoy the time you spend in it.  Bert is a certified public accountant (CPA), working for a top-tier public accounting firm. Bert focuses on helping people find a job, achieve success in that job and enjoy the ride.

Listen to his episode here or on itunes