As I work, my attention often meets a photo of my Father-in-Law, taken more than 30 years ago. Irv Weinberg is sitting behind the only desk he ever knew. Irv was a civil engineer who spent his entire career working for the Department of Highways (now The Ministry of Transportation). I love this photo because it captures a moment in history that I’ll never know. Long gone are the days of dedicating one’s entire professional life to one organization.
Where are we now?
The world has changed so monumentally since this smiling picture of my Father-in-Law was taken. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how much change we experience. We are living in such uncertain times; for many it feels like the sands are constantly shifting beneath their feet. Since the year 2000, 52% of all Fortune 500 companies have disappeared. Eighteen, billion-dollar companies including Twitter, DropBox, FitBit and Spotify didn’t exist ten years ago. According to the Deloitte 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report, you are looking at up to 13 different jobs within your 60-year career span. So many of us will never return full time to an office. Many others will float from hoteling station to hoteling station as companies cut back of offices, even for those who are no longer working remote.
Globalization, automation and technology are reshaping all jobs in all industries, but with the most significant impact in production, food services and transportation. These seismic forces forge new career paths ranging from artificial intelligence engineer, drone mechanic, apps designer, 3-D printing operator, cybersecurity analyst, social media manager, data protection officer and if you live in Canada, who would have imagined even just a few years ago, sitting down at a family dinner to announce, “Mom and Dad I’m going to be the new marketing manager for a leading cannabis company!”.
The sum total amount of the world’s knowledge, known as the Knowledge Doubling Curve, has been doubling every year since 2000. Today our world knowledge is doubling daily.
A consequence of this data tsunami is the precipitous drop in in the time it takes for a learned skill to become irrelevant. Depending on your industry and profession, your work skills will be out of date inless than ten years. If you’re a software engineer, your current technical skills are only marketable for two-four years.
According to a survey conducted by The Society for Human Resource Management earlier this year, the lack of technical and soft (people) skills are two of the most frequently reported reasons organizations aren’t able to find suitable job candidates. The survey revealed that the most common competency gaps were: Communication skills, the ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity, problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation and creativity.
Many of my clients are concerned about their ability to remain competitive in the ever-evolving job market. I recently had a senior-level client who was so concerned that he couldn’t remain competitive in his field that he was convinced he’d become irrelevant in the time it took him to eat breakfast. While I appreciate that these fears are valid in these turbulent and complex times, I don’t agree that the sky is falling. Professionals often struggle in this new world of work because their brain is continuously seeking predictability, which is opposed to our reality. As NYU Professor, Arun Sundararajan describes, “There’s far less structure, there’s far less predictability” when it comes to our careers”.
You can reconcile this conundrum between your need for predictability in an uncertain world by owning your career.
Here are four strategies to remain relevant, resilient and happy in your long and meaningful career.
1. Leverage your Inherent Strengths.
Strengths are inherent positive traits that shape how we think and feel and act. Strengths come easy to us and are self-reinforcing, making them highly enjoyable and engaging. According to psychologist and author Shaun Achor, “A positive and engaged brain is the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy”.
Gallup, who has long been publishing data on strengths reports that employees who use strengths regularly are six times more likely to be engaged at work. Those who commit to using their strengths experience higher workplace productivity and performance and experience greater well-being. Moreover, strengths-use will protect you against the negative impact of worry, stress and even anger.
Identifying your inherent strengths is the first step to greater well-being at work. My go-to strengths assessment is the VIA. It’s scientifically reliable and validated and a complimentary, on-line, self-assessment. In twenty minutes, you’ll have greater clarity into how to leverage what makes you tick. Once you know what your inherent strengths are, you are poised to take full advantage of this valuable new information. Look for novel ways to engage your strengths daily to get the most out of this strategy. Professors Tayyab Rashid and Afroze Anjum, from the University of Toronto, describe 340 ways you can make the most of your unique character strengths. Choose even just a couple from this list and watch your engagement, productivity and well-being soar.
2. Express Gratitude.
It’s all too easy to focus on your faults, what isn’t going well at work or where you aren’t making headway. Shifting your focus to what is working can have impressive positive results. Research has shown that gratitude is the quickest way to create a positive brain state. Employees who exercise gratitude are more highly motivated to achieve their goals, experience greater workplace satisfaction and have better workplace relationships than their non-gratitude exercising colleagues, have fewer health complaints, lower levels of stress and take fewer sick days.
Gratitude is a simple habit to develop. One of the easiest and best researched gratitude tools comes from the Father of Positive Psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman. He recommends at the end of each day for a week writing down three things that went well that day and reflecting on the role you played in making those good things happen.This is a powerful tool that can help you see resources and gifts that are all around you. Some of my clients start meetings with a minute or two of gratitude, with strikingly positive results. Teams that were previously negative and stuck quickly became supportive and collaborative through this quick and easy gratitude practice.
3. Hone your Back-Pocket Stories.
Once you’ve identified your strengths and you are humming along with gratitude, you’re ready to weave those attributes into your professional narrative in the form of what I call “back-pocket stories.” These are the stories that you can share at company events, networking functions, or at job interviews, as ways of meaningfully drawing others into conversations while highlighting your unique abilities.
I once had a coaching client, who I’ll call Keith, who told me that when he was in his twenties, he had all of his personal possessions (including his wallet and passport) stolen while he was traveling solo in eastern Europe. To make matters worse, he had a plane to catch in less than 48-hours; a flight that was going to take him around the world. He shared with great pride that through his resourcefulness and calm demeanor he managed to make all the arrangements he needed to get his passport in time to make his flight. Keith beamed when he shared this story, admitting it was one of his greatest achievements.
Who wouldn’t want to hire or promote someone with that kind of tenacity and industriousness?
Craft two or three of these back-pocket storiesthat you can tell in just a few minutes. Your accounts need to be true, but they don’t need to be heroic.
4. Hire an Executive Coach.
Executive coaching is one of the most effective ways to take charge of your career. Coaching is a rare opportunity to take time from your packed schedule to reflect, recalibrate and plan in a confidential and safe environment. A coach can help you make the most of your career by helping you develop your people skills, create a career plan, clear away potential challenges and help you achieve your goals all in service of you creating greater meaning, satisfaction and impact in your work.
One can only imagine what the world of work will look like in the next 10 years. Will we still commute to work in offices in a nine-to-five world? How will our work be integrated into an AI world? Will your picture be sitting on someone else’s desk as a source of inspiration? Own your career now and reap the benefits of work and a life well-lived, no matter what the future brings.
