Ask-a-Career-Coach: How to Choreograph Your Career

Contributed by executive coach Ann Daly, Ph.D.

A young client’s mother recently asked her what she had learned in our first few coaching sessions. “Always be looking for a job!” was my client’s instant response. This was a hard-won lesson for Mary (not her real name), who had been laid off unexpectedly after a few years at her first job. She had spent those years so focused on the work at hand that she hadn’t yet begun to consider her next job, let alone her long-term career trajectory.

Mary is hardly alone. We tend to get so concentrated on the daily grind of our immediate responsibilities—especially in this job market—that it’s a challenge to visualize, let alone steer, the full arc of our career.

“Always be looking for a job!” was Mary’s enthusiastic reduction of our first few conversations. She and I continue to explore the distinction between a job and a career. It’s like the distinction between an enduring mission and a current tactic. Mary’s mission is to improve the health of her community. Her current job in event fundraising is just her current tactic. It is a means, not an end. Tactics are necessarily provisional; in order to remain effective, they must continually adapt to changing conditions. No job lasts forever, nor should it.

That means you’ve got to look up, look around, and look ahead, keeping attuned to what’s happening within you (ie., goals, strengths/weaknesses, priorities) and aware of what’s happening around you (ie., industry trends, workplace politics, social/political/economic forecasts).

Yes, this means a considerable investment of your time, energy, and focus. But consider the potential return. Better yet, consider all those women who are stuck in middle management because they didn’t actively manage their careers. If you want to choreograph a career that will carry you the distance, start paying as much attention to your career as to your job:

Imagine it. Consider your ultimate career goals. What is it you want to have, do, or be by the time you retire? Who do you want to be? How do you want to be? Can you visualize yourself at your peak performance?

Research it. Don’t get caught by surprise the next time your department, company, or industry takes a hit. Keep abreast of all the conditions that affect your future, the opportunities as well as the threats. That means getting vigilant about gathering information both formally (from business media, professional organizations, and the like) and informally from the contacts in your killer rolodex. (No killer rolodex? Start one today.)

Model it. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Find out how your role models have developed their career pathways. Learn from their mistakes and successes. Ask one or several of them to mentor your career strategy.

Map it. What do you need to do, be, or have in order to get from here to there? More training or education? Particular experiences, or assignments, or clients? The right connections? Identify your strategies, organize them sequentially, and commit them to a timeline.

Say it. Let people know about your career goals. I learned this at Mary’s age, when I quit my first job as a daily newspaper feature writer to go to graduate school, because I wanted to learn to write dance criticism. When I submitted my resignation to the managing editor, the first thing she said was, “Did you tell your editor that you wanted to write dance criticism?” I took her point to heart and wondered: if I had been more vocal about my goal, could I have found an alternative pathway to it while staying on at the paper? No one can help you move ahead if you don’t tell them where you’re headed.

Ann Daly, Ph.D., is an executive coach, speaker, and author devoted to the success and advancement of women. Before reinventing herself as a coach, she was a journalist and then women’s studies professor. Dr. Daly is the award-winning author of six books, including Clarity: How to Accomplish What Matters Most and Do-Over! How Women Are Reinventing Their Lives. She has been featured in ForbesWoman.com, WomenEntrepreneur.com, Houston Woman magazine, Australian Financial Review, and Oprah & Friends’ “Peter Walsh Show.” Do you have a career question you’d like Dr. Daly to answer? Click here to email your career question to Dr. Daly.