CHAPTER 5: CREATING CAREER OBJECTIVES
You are now halfway through this book and I hope that you have a clearer picture of who you are, where you’ve come from and how you’d like your career to develop.
In this chapter, you’ll have the chance to create short- and longer-term career goals. This will help you formulate a plan for taking the first steps in your career development. The subsequent chapters will help you to put your plan into action.
Self-coaching questions
On the following pages, there are some self-coaching questions. They are designed to help you reflect on and set career goals and action plans.
There are no right or wrong answers. If you can’t answer a question, skip to the next one. Or think about what question you should be asking yourself here.
The purpose of the exercise is to help you set objectives and reflect on potential strategies to achieve these. You may find it helpful to write down your responses.
Aim
• What would you like to achieve overall in your career?
• Specifically, what would you like to be different?
• By when do you want to see a change? (Ensure this is a realistic time frame.)
• Given your overall goal, what is an achievable short-term career objective?
• What is a realistic timescale for achieving this?
Situation
• What is happening right now?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, where are you now in relation to your short-term career objective?
• How is this impacting you? In what ways?
• Who else is involved and what is their opinion of the situation?
• What else is relevant?
Experience
• What have you already tried to tackle the issue?
• What experience do you have of similar situations and how have you tackled them in the past?
• What lessons have you learned about obtaining your career goals?
• What have you seen others do in similar situations?
Strengths
• What strengths do you have to help you achieve your objective?
• What qualities do you have that you could use?
• Who or what can you turn to for guidance and support?
• What or who can inspire or nourish you?
Options
• What strategies could you adopt to achieve your objective?
• What other ideas and perspectives are there?
• If you were being the best you could be, what would your instinct tell you to do?
• If you could wave a magic wand, what solution would you come up with?
The way forward
• What different perspectives have you gained from this exercise?
• What specific actions can you now take?
• What is the very first step in achieving your objective?
• When and how will you take this?
• Who do you need to inform and when will you do this?
• What support do you need?
• How and when will you get that support?
Reflection and action points from this chapter
The process of self-coaching can help you clarify your overall career goals and set specific objectives. By imagining the first steps in the process of your plan of action you are more likely to start your journey to a future career.
Write down the actions you have decided on and set a calendar reminder to review your progress.