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Discover How Supportive Your Significant Others Are Of Your Job or Career Change

29.07.2009

This exercise will help you to clarify what others close to you want you to be, to do or to think in respect of your work life. This will help to identify what you really want and expect from yourself. Once completed, it will be easier to determine what is your own thinking and what is 'inherited' from others and needs to be identified as such.

We all have significant others in our lives. Significant others can be supportive of our endeavour to redesign our career or inhibit it, even protest against any planned change.

Significant others will have to accommodate the changes we may make when implementing plans for new directions. Sometimes significant others can be more supportive if they are allowed by you to contribute to the exploration activities of the transition and the decision making that will be required at several points along the way.

But sometimes we mirror what other people require of us. There is a danger that in the career planning we do what others expect or appear to demand of us. Acting a part, rather than being our real self, may take over. We may consequently make wrong decisions because we have not considered choices in our own terms or deeply enough. To avoid this, you could ask yourself:

• Who influences my values and self-concept and how much?
• Who are the significant people in my life and what do they expect of me in terms of my life management?

The chart which follows may reveal to what extent others affect your work life planning and implementation of new plans and whether in positive or negative ways.

This will help to identify what you really want and expect from yourself. When completed, it will be easier to determine what is your own thinking from what is inherited from others and needs to be identified as such.

Exercise:

• In each of the six blocks, record the name of the person who fits the description.
• Record at least three expectations you believe each person wants you to value. Complete each box except Me before the next step.
• Underline each expectation that you also want for yourself.
• Transfer the underlined expectations into the circle headed Me.

Consider:

• How do others close to me feel about my next action step with my career?
• Who will notice changes in me? What would I like them to notice?
• What are my risks in these relationships if I delay implementing my plan?
• How helpful would it be to set up a meeting to discuss it?

Author

Paul Stevens, B.Bus., founded The Centre for Worklife Counselling in Sydney in 1979 following a 21 year career in Human Resources Management and The Worklife Network - a national and international affiliation of adult career specialists - in 1986. He wrote his first published contribution to adult career development in 1981, Win That Job!, closely followed by Stop Postponing the Rest of Your Life. Over 35 further titles, booklets and career assessment instruments have been published since, the latest being A Passion for Work: Our Lifelong Affair and My Third Age: Work & Life Choices. Paul Stevens is a regular contributor and author for Six Figures www.sixfigures.com.au the executive site for jobs, news and services.