We Navigate Our Careers Alone And Together

Embracing paradoxes is hard work, and it is so rewarding. Things that seem opposing and discordant often find harmony in the undefined zone in between. There’s richness in that tension, and so much learning to be found if you’re willing to peek into that liminal space.

The latest paradox I’ve been thinking about is captured in the title of this blog.

We navigate our careers alone and together.  

To start, and for the bazillionth time in my career, I’ll lean into Jim Collins for sageness and horrendously sound thinking to get us started.  Collins shows us that there is Genius in the AND, all the while removing the Tyranny of the OR in our thinking. We need to embrace the opportunity, creativity and openness that tags along when AND leads the way.

It sets the table for this: your career, your understanding of yourself, and your path forward is an amazing collaborative project if you’re willing to make it one. It’s formed in both the internal and external, each contributing something elemental. It’s a process of reflection and discussion, where the thinking and the talking get into a cool interplay with one another.

The Essential Alone

It’s easy to lose sight of the vision for our careers. Our self-awareness, understanding of our motivations, and our most important values can get lost in the wash of life. We need to be intentional through reflection, journaling, and alone time to reset our career compass. We need to have a clear understanding of our personal brand so we know the story we want to tell to the world. What that looks like will be different for every person. The most important thing is to create the time and elbow room in your life to do this primal work.

The Critical Together

The foundation of my thinking here (like many things) comes from Designing Your Life. When DYL came into my life in 2017, I had a strong bias (like many people) that figuring out the next steps of my career was a solo gig. I had the words of my old basketball coach Dave Hutchings rolling through my head: “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” 

But then DYL drew up a different play on the court. The concept that Bill Burnett and Dave Evans were talking about was called Radical Collaboration, and at the time it sounded pretty frickin’ radical! Sorting through all my ideas, fears and next steps was my work to do, and not something that I’d burden others with, let alone collaborate with them on. 

And then I found the other side of my bias and got to work. I had to think like a designer and get working with other people to share prototypes of my career thinking and sketched-out plans. In 2017, I built a distinct list of six colleagues that became my collaborators in Project Cmac. To a person, they couldn’t have been more generous, engaged and direct with me through the process. There’s no way I could have made the changes I did with any sense of confidence or conviction without this squad.

Recently, Bill and Dave have iterated on the Radical Collaboration idea and improved it through the concept of Formative Communities (which I wrote about here). Through the lens of today’s topic, Formative communities that bring people together on the topic of career and self for conversation, connection and collaboration are so powerful and needed. They are such a great use case.

Both Sides Of The Coin

On a deeper and more essential level, I was recently pulled into the writing of Courtney Smith, a leading coach who calls none other than Brené Brown one of her clients. Her most recent Substack post entitled Our Self-Help Error was a showstopper. She asks the profound question: Why do we assume the journey to self is an inside job?

Um, yeah. Why do we think it’s an inside job? Tell me more, Courtney…

“We have forgotten that the question of how to individuate and develop as a person, and the question of how to feel part of something larger than ourselves, are two halves of the same coin—and that the two questions are meant to be engaged with simultaneously.“

So how do we find that other side of the coin? Smith shares that it’s as simple as asking for the help you need in the community around you. Albeit, asking for that help requires a dose of vulnerability and openness that sometimes we aren’t willing to risk. But the odds are definitely stacked against you if you don’t connect to the energy and resource that’s all around you. You’ll be missing a key success factor for your future.

Perhaps the most important place this Together mindset is needed is during job transition. In this time of endless economic flux and flatulence, lots of really amazing people have found themselves displaced and out of a job in a heartbeat. Especially in transition like this, we need to be super wary of isolationalism. Feeling detached, disconnected, and discontinued is a compounding negative to what can be an already tough situation, especially for those that have never experienced the out-of-body experience of having your position eliminated. In times like these, there’s a million reasons and self-generated stories to retreat to the inside and ignore the connection to community. And they’re all wrong. Finding your squad and being intentional about time and attention with them is literally the most important ingredient in moving forward during big times of transition. 

So here we are, fully in the paradox. There is tension here. So what do we do with this tension?

We need space for personal reflection without noise so we can identify the signals. The dog walks, rainy 10K runs, and protracted transit rides create the conditions for getting inside ourselves and finding the edge pieces of our own puzzle. We need to discover our essence because the plan for our future is hidden in our purpose.

AND

We need to embrace the unstoppable human desire for connection and bring others into the amazing next and unwritten chapters in the story of our careers. We need other humans to some along for the ride and help us enjoy the whole journey. They will make the trip so much better.

How intentional are you today about tomorrow?

Where are you making space to hear the signals of your future?

Who are the collaborators that are waiting to join you on your career journey?