I’m lucky that through my coaching and training work, I hear about the career advice people have received. Sometimes it’s that golden nugget that spurred someone on to achieve some new, or sadly, it can be that misplaced advice that stopped someone from chasing their dreams.
Career advice, both good and bad, shapes our professional journeys. It has the power to inspire, guide, or sometimes mislead us onto unexpected paths. This week I’d like to reflect on these moments that influence our choices and talk about how we can set ourselves up to make the most of any advice we are given.
The Worst Advice: When Dreams Hit a Detour
We’ve all encountered well-meaning guidance that missed the mark. For me, it came from my secondary school career guidance teacher. She told me in no uncertain terms that pursuing my dream of becoming an architect was a lost cause. Why? Because no one in my family had done it before, and it would be impossible for me to get a job in this area without any contacts.
It sounds ridiculous now, but I bought into it. This was a person who I thought had all the inside info on what careers to choose. I diverted my academic course toward IT. While this led to valuable experiences and led me to where I am now, I often ponder what might have been had I embraced my initial dream.
Clients come to me all of the time with similar stories; concerned parents who steered them toward ‘stable or steady’ jobs in which they are now miserable, or well-meaning relatives who encouraged them to join family businesses instead of pursuing a different path.
I believe the lesson here is clear – advice rooted in familial or societal expectations should be scrutinised, and the pursuit of one’s passion shouldn’t be undermined by preconceived assumptions about certain roles. Plus the jobs market changes so frequently that what could be considered stable or prestigious now, might be considered different in 10 years.
The Best Advice: Networking or Not-working?
On the flip side, there are golden nuggets of advice that help us grow at work. A turning point for me was guidance from a former manager at Google. Struggling with the intricacies of networking for career advancement, I viewed it as a self-serving task. However, she flipped my perspective, urging me to see networking as an opportunity to help others and see where I can add value to work relationships.
This shift transformed networking from a transactional exchange to a meaningful connection-building exercise. Focusing on mutual benefit and adding value to professional relationships became my mantra. It led to me successfully positioning myself for a promotion at Google where I had a network of people happy to vouch for my ability and even today, this advice remains an integral part of my relationship-building approach.
Confidence Is Key:
So, how can we position ourselves so that we can act on the great advice that might come our way? One recurring theme in navigating career advice is the pivotal role confidence plays. When armed with a clear sense of direction, bad advice loses its potency. Being sure of your goals allows you to extract the valuable insights that propel your career forward and the rest becomes background noise. Over the next few months I plan on sharing tips and advice that can help us improve our confidence and help us get more clear on our career intentions.
Your Turn:
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever gotten? Did it spark a eureka moment? And on the flip side, what’s the worst advice that left you scratching your head? Hit reply and let’s swap stories.
