A letter to your future career
Happy New Year from the team at Pursuit! You’ve made it to the end of the first official working week of the year.
How did we get here, 2022? The last two years have flown by under a cloud of uncertainty, and it seems that we’ve spent this time in a waiting room called waiting for things to go back to normal.
We’re not doing that anymore.
This year we’re ‘emptying the clip’.
The Question
What would your career look like if there were no barriers? What would it look like if you knew you wouldn't fail?
What’s the ultimate job title you’re aiming for at the end of your career?
What companies are on your top 5 hitlist?
What compensation are you seeking in the next 12 - 18 months?
For entrepreneurs, can you envision your start-up/business?
Spend some time this weekend writing down your wildest career dreams.
The Letter
I invite you to write a letter to your future career. A letter to the path - professional, creative or entrepreneurial - that you’ve always wanted to forge but have been afraid to do so. Perhaps fear isn’t holding you back, but a lack of focus is. Or, you’re doing everything right, but you’re still not there, and a behaviourial change is required. What’s stopping you from leaning fully into the career of your dreams?
Write a letter to your future self using https://www.futureme.org/ , addressing yourself with the title, business, passion et al. that you want to achieve.
Dear Future CFO of a FTSE 100 company,
Hey girl hey, so glad that you see you! I’m so happy we sat down and made a shortlist of things we could do in the next 12 months to push us further to being CFO.
I’m so glad we reached out to that CFO and asked them to be our mentor.
Deciding to leave our old role was a risk, but it brought us to this one.
The research we did on people with similar profiles and their career path gave us an idea of success as a CFO.
Taking that VP role in a smaller business gave us the operational experience needed.
The secondment to Russia worked out though it was hard.
The sabbatical was exactly what was required to reset and come back harder than before.
The Reflection
Self-reflection is necessary for growth. So we, you, us, all must ask ourselves the hard questions.
For 2022, what lesson has your career been throwing up repeatedly that you refuse or find uncomfortable learning? In the same way life will continue to bring the same or similar circumstances to us until the lesson is learned; the same can be said for our careers.
If you’re unsure what your lesson is, the following questions may help:
What development points have been consistent throughout your last 2 - 3 performance reviews?
Do you have a view of how senior management views you as a leader?
What feedback have you received from your team in the last 360 reviews?
Asking your line manager - would only recommend as a last resort and entirely depends on your relationship with them.
For example, if the lesson is lack of vulnerability and managing challenging people, here are some suggestions:
Investing in a career coach
Take a role or project where you manage a team, but you have to do the hard work
Reading and studying the topic (a few suggestions):
T A Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis
Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships
The Emotionally Intelligent Office: 20 Key Emotional Skills for the Workplace
Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent
The Walk & The Talk
If possible, complete this exercise with an accountability partner. Introduce yourself as your future self, “Hi, I’m Aly, Future CFO of xxx”, as many times as it takes for you to visualise yourself there. Schedule quarterly check-ins for your area of growth. How have you grown in this area in the last three months? Has this change been noticed by or reflected in comments from your team, co-workers, and boss? Do you feel and see a difference?
In 2022, we are naming and claiming the career of our wildest dreams and we’re doing the hard and necessary work to get us there.
Empty the clip sis!
Aprileen
Ps. if you’re interested in completing a fairly intensive career review exercise and you’re planning to make some major decisions, I highly recommend this framework. Kat Cole is an all-round badass in business and one of my favourite Clubhouse finds of 2020. As she always says, “You have to do the work”.
*originally published January 14th.