A few years ago I went through an exercise of reassessing my career choices. I felt I had arrived at my current point through a series of small decisions in reaction to the the situation of the time, and not because of any grand plan.
I left college with a science major, but jumped into a career in accountancy. I had selected accounting after a rigorous investigation during my final year at university: I picked up a book with a cover picture of a big fluffy dog in the lotus position, the book was called “Knowing Yourself.” I moved through the pages of the book, conducting my own self-analysis, asking friends and family what they saw as my strengths and weaknesses, and then I went through an enormous book of jobs looking for matches.
I settled on a small number of options and then, as an insurance policy, took a career quiz to cross-check my answers. I emerged from the whole exercise with two options: I could go into management consultancy, or I could go into accountancy / auditing. Truth be told consulting appealed more than accounting, but I had a vision of myself as snotty graduate with a few months of bookshelf knowledge under my belt telling a person whose been running their business for over 30 years how to do it better. I didn’t have the nerve. That may or may not have been how things would have panned out if I had moved down the consulting path, but I couldn’t shake the image, and so I opted for accounting, with the longer term aim of going into consulting after earning my stripes in the world of debts and credits. That was the last time my career path had felt like a considered choice.
My work journey thereafter was a zig-zag affair as I reacted to the opportunity of the moment, shaped by my circumstances, fears and desires of the time. Each decision was a conscious choice in and of itself – the decisions we don’t make are the ones that are made for us – but my vision of a pivot into consulting a few years down the line came and went. There seemed no grand vision any more, if there ever was one to begin with. Over two decades later I found myself commencing the kind of detailed assessment I last undertook at college.
Over twenty years later the tools at my disposal had become more sophisticated, and I was able to ask better questions as I sought clarity on my strengths:
- What activities do I turn to when I need to replenish my energy levels?
- Which activities come so naturally to me that I can do them not only without effort, but sometimes without even realizing?
- When a friend or colleague is stuck, when and why do they turn to me before others?
During the exercise I realized there was something I had completely overlooked until that point. I had looked at strengths and weaknesses, and tried to match these to a job, but I hadn’t factored in the nature of the employer. You can be the same person, doing the same job, according the same principles, and find yourself thriving in one situation but withering in another.
Imagine an environment populated by egotistical and self-promoting people who seize credit for work that is not their own. Now imagine another in which the culture is egalitarian, operating as a true meritocracy. If you have a management style that is soft, congenial and collaborative you may think management is not for you if you only ever knew the first environment.
The world seems to be one big matching exercise: the right person for the right job, the right person for the right person, Uber matching drivers with ride requests, Airbnb matching accommodation providers with people who need a place to stay. We seem so hell bent on finding ourselves, or changing ourselves, or growing in order to battle difficult situations. None of these are necessarily the wrong tactic, but maybe only one thing needs to change, and that is the place in which you are being you.
