Career Exploration

The Story of A "Career Resilient" Businessman

In a workplace where there are few certainties and even fewer guarantees, learning to be a ‘career resilient’ worker may be the only sound strategy. Career resilience implies taking greater responsibility for present and future employability. What is career resilience? It means understanding what you are good at doing, what you want to do and then communicating your skills, abilities, values and goals to the companies you work for.

Two years ago, Mark Schwartz found himself in a dilemma familiar to many people in today’s corporate work world. He was working for a international computer company. After 10 years with this company, he began to question whether his personal goals and the goals of the company were in sync.

“I thought I liked what I was doing, I liked my co-workers and clients, the company had been very good to me. I just felt this restlessness and uneasiness I couldn’t put my finger on.”

These feelings are pretty common for most people Mark’s age. At 33, he was passing through what is called the Age 30 Assessment - one of the 6 Turning Points individuals regularly go through as part of natural growth and development in the adult life cycle. The priority at this time is to evaluate events up to this point and decide what kind of course to set for the next phase - usually the next 10 years.

Mark paid attention to the dissonance he was feeling and decided to be proactive. People confronted with one of life’s critical Turning Points typically handle change in one of three ways:

Group 1: Hold the road. Endure.
Group 2: Change anything and everything. Now!
Group 3: Take time for careful introspection, develop a long range plan, implement.

Mark Schwartz took the path of people in Group 3. “Like a lot of people, I guess, I had never taken the time to sit down and focus on “me” – what I really care about doing, the skills I enjoy using, the pace, the setting, the kinds of people I like to be around.”

“I came in with an open mind about outcomes. I did not want to force any agenda. I just wanted to see what came out at the end of all this work.” What Mark discovered was that, “I was doing the right kind of work, but in the wrong environment for me. My innate abilities revolve around creative problem solving, strategic thinking, and written and verbal communications. I’m a big extrovert and I place a very high value on building long term, added-value relationships. I really like creative approaches to solving problems.”

Mark is now with another high tech company in sales, but he feels the fit is much more in line with his vision of himself and his career goals. “We are a younger, entrepreneurial company. I am able to structure programs and solutions for my clients using my innate creative skills. My clients are happy, and I get to play from strengths and my love. It is truly a wonderful fit.”

Our experience shows that people who approach life’s Turning Points with a blueprint do measurably better. The blueprint should show what they are looking to attain and a plan on how to get there. In the critical areas of satisfaction, balance, and success, the people with a blueprint have a clear and marked advantage over those who either hunker down and gut it out, or those who throw their lives up in the air and attempt to change everything all at once.

Re-Energizing Your Career

Can you have a wonderful career but still feel that something is missing? Karen Eckert graduated from college with a degree in Home Economics/Consumer Services and a desire to be of service to others. After college, she took advantage of an excellent offer at a major power company, thinking that it would be a short-term position while her husband finished school. But the opportunities for growth continued, and Karen decided to stay with the company-– and stay she did for the next 18 years!

In a meteoric career, Karen moved from a position in consumer education and product development, to a supervisory position, to the job of Branch Manager. She was the first woman in the company to achieve that level. She went on to become a Vice President and, ultimately, Chief Communications Officer. Unfortunately, each step up in Karen’s career came at a cost to her. With each promotion, Karen moved farther from her core values-– her family, her husband, her community and her true inner self. She had lost the balance that would lead to fulfillment and satisfaction. She began feeling restless at work. She admitted, “Although I embraced each promotion, I realized that it took me further and further from the customer interaction that I enjoyed so much.” At the same time, her responsibilities provided her with fewer opportunities to use her creative abilities and her finely tuned entrepreneurial skills.

Karen participated in the Highlands process to reassess her own career development. It was an eye-opening experience. Karen commented, “The Highlands Program was an affirmation that I could make a dramatic career change and be successful at it. It was very helpful in pinpointing the right direction for me.”

As a result of the program and much soul searching, Karen left her company. She redirected her life and career and is now the president of a Foundation whose mission is to help develop the next generation of leaders in her metropolitan area. This position allows Karen to incorporate many of the values and abilities that had been lost to her – community service, direct contact with people, and a new opportunity to be creative and instrumental in development of an organization.

Equally important, Karen has been able to structure her new role to allow more time for her husband and children. She also has made time for outside activities important to her, such as becoming the President of the local Chamber of Commerce. The combination allowed her to re-establish a balance in the priorities in her life.

The whole process, according to Karen, has been re-energizing. “When I realized that I could turn loose the things that I had worked so hard to achieve without looking back, I gained so much more. My personal and professional lives have become one.”

Change at Midlife: Does it Have to Be a Crisis?

Tom, a marketing manager, was not dissatisfied with his career. “I simply wanted to evaluate the direction my career was taking and gain some insight into what would be the best fit for me and what would maximize my performance.”

Tom wasn’t drawn into his thoughts about a career change by external factors in the workplace-– not by downsizing, layoff, or re-structuring. He was simply coming to grips with the need for internal review and change that everyone goes through as he gets older. The sense that change may be needed can come rather suddenly and unexpectedly, and sometimes the reasons are not altogether clear. Relatively satisfied people can find themselves thinking about change-– sometimes major change.

First defined and researched by Daniel Levinson, Ph.D. at Yale, in the 70’s and 80’s and published in Seasons of a Man’s Life, there are six Turning Points in everyone’s career. These begin in the early 20’s and occur until the 60’s. Everyone, no matter how satisfied he or she has been with things, makes some kind of significant career or life change at each of these six points. Sometimes these changes are impelled from the outside. More often, there is also an internal component. These Turning Points come upon us about every ten years.

Tom was at or near what we call the Mid-Life Transition – probably the best known Turning Point in popular culture. This Point is significant because it occurs as people feel that some very large and important change is absolutely necessary. Often, people find themselves depressed or burned out. At a Turning Point, especially the Mid-Life Transition, the person is emotionally driven to seek change. One way or another, change is going to happen.

Levinson pointed out that those people who respond to the internal upheavals of the Mid-Life Transition by trying to buckle down and try harder at the same thing may run a significant risk of having their emotions take them by surprise.

Tom decided to take a more proactive approach to mid-life. “I participated in The Highlands Program to gain more knowledge and insight into my career and to plan ahead.” At the major career Turning Points, many people can suddenly begin to feel that their careers need a complete overhaul; this is often simply not the case. It is our experience that most people can feel significantly different and better about their careers and their lives with something closer to a 10% change than a complete overhaul. The difficult part is in finding the right 10%. The place to start looking is not “out there, somewhere.” Usually it is inside – within ourselves.

Donald Super, Ph.D., the father of career planning, said as long ago as the early 50’s that a good career decision should always involve several key factors: values, goals, abilities, interests, and personality. Super’s dictum is still relevant. The way to figure out exactly what needs to change is to understand what each of these factors means in one’s career, and then integrate them into a Personal Vision.

Tom had wondered about his career and why he felt like moving within the company so often. Sorting through his abilities and goals helped him make sense of it all. At the same time, it enabled him to position himself more accurately. “I realized that I have a number of very powerful abilities that allow me to solve problems quickly and intuitively. It means that I need a very fast-paced environment that involves a lot of quick problem solving. In fact, when it’s not very stable-- what a lot of people would call chaotic-– that’s when my real talents absolutely shine.”

By taking a proactive look at his career, and most importantly, by carefully sifting through and articulating each of the important factors in a decision about career direction, Tom was able to focus on exactly that part of his career that needed to change. And it wasn’t a crisis after all. In the end, mid-life wasn’t a crisis but an opportunity to gain new insight and strength.

This Career Would Never Have Occured to Me!

Three years ago Laura Appleby, then 29, managed a Fortune 500 account for an international ad agency – and she was “miserable.” “Advertising agency work was interesting, fast paced and lucrative. But the more I moved up in the hierarchy, the less I liked it. The research and problem solving used my abilities, but I just couldn’t stand the politics.”

“People in my family were lawyers, doctors, accountants and a few musicians. My view of careers was very limited. I got into advertising because a few Chicago ad agencies recruited on our campus and it seemed more exciting than banking, which I had been leaning towards. That’s about as much thought as I put into my first career decision.” Laura stayed in advertising 8 years, moving steadily up the ladder.

Then she took the Highlands Ability Battery and enrolled in a Highlands Program Personal Strategic Planning Seminar. “I entered the seminar because I knew I wanted something different but didn’t have a clue about how to get there. I was dead stuck.”

“The first thing Highlands did was give me incentive to think long and hard about what I really wanted to do. It took quite a few weeks of hard work in the seminar until I began to see a pattern emerging. I have always loved history and research. My true passion is genealogy-- the study of a person’s origins. I had traced my family’s and other relatives’ roots for years. It had never crossed my mind that I could combine these interests and fascinations into a career.”

“The Highlands Program planted the seed within me. I nurtured that seed a little bit at a time, mainly by continuing to be open to opportunities and keeping my dream alive. I referred back to my Highlands notes regularly.”

Two and a half years passed. Diana left the agency and ultimately moved out of the city. “I volunteered to teach a weekend workshop on genealogy. A participant in the workshop came from the Disney Institute. She told me that Disney hade been thinking of offering genealogy programs at its new resort. We set up a meeting and within a matter of weeks, Disney offered me a position as the Managing Instructor.”

“I cannot tell you what it is like to be here! Everyone here loves her work, whether the work is teaching culinary arts, rock climbing or storytelling. It is a very supportive and stimulating setting.”

“Without the Highlands experience I’m certain I would have never pursued my dream so purposefully. It would never have occurred to me that I could obtain a position that combined so many parts of what I do best and what I love.”

Time To Re-Evaluate

What happens when you reach a turning point in your career? What if you have been in a field for ten years and feel an urge to change? Tom Abernathy reached that stage at the tender age of 25. He started as a child actor, received a degree in drama and worked in the theater as an adult. Then he realized he needed a change. Tom wanted to use his creativity, but he also wanted to move into a field that had more practical promise.

“I had run out of options. I wasn’t doing anything wrong; I just felt it was time to re-evaluate. I needed to find out what was true about me. I almost hoped someone would tell me that I should be an accountant.”

Tom entered The Highlands Program and he wasn’t advised to be an accountant. Instead, he found out that he was in the right arena, but that he wasn’t using all of his abilities to best advantage. He discovered that he had the ability to solve problems in a well thought-out, logical manner and that he had an innate sense of how relationships work in the real world. These abilities, along with musical abilities, an eye for detail and a high vocabulary, all pointed to the role of a person who wants to write and direct productions rather than act in them.

Tom was delighted. “This quantified things that I had always intuited, and reinforced the general direction in which I had already been moving. I learned that I had been in the right ballpark but I needed to move toward something more sensitive to my abilities. All of my experience had been in theater; I didn’t know much about film. But I saw that by using my talents as a director or writer in film, I could apply what I really knew to a field that had more commercial promise.”

Determined to put this knowledge to use, Tom applied to several film schools, was accepted by the University of Southern California, and has received a Master of Fine Arts degree in film production. He has started using the surveying techniques he learned in the Highlands Program to implement his plan for the future. Tom has found an agent and written a screenplay which is being considered by a major film company.

What helped Tom the most was the realization that he could listen to his own feelings and ideas as well as the ideas of others in the Highlands Program seminar. He came up with several options and then used surveying techniques to determine which options offered the most promise. He found out that he “shouldn’t close the door on change when new options arise.”