Be the CEO of Your Career
Posted on December 06, 2024 by Becky Bortak, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
How to take charge of your career by knowing yourself.
When it comes to your career, there is no one who is going to care about it more than you, which is why it makes sense that you should think of your career like you are running your own business. Just like any good business, you need to do four things to achieve your goals.
1. Understand your assets.
2. Communicate your brand.
3. Create a Board of Directors
4. Take action.
In this four-part series on Be the CEO of Your Career, I will cover each one of these topics. The first, and most important, is to understand your assets by knowing yourself. After all, if you don’t know where you’re going, then it doesn’t matter what road you take to get there.
Knowing yourself includes building an understanding of your strengths and values so you can have a clear vision for where you want to head in your career. Strengths are different than skills and experience. Your strengths tell you not only what you are good at, but also what you enjoy doing. Often our strengths come because of things we naturally do without even thinking about it, and they can be hard to recognize because we have been doing them well for so long.
There are many ways to find your strengths. You can ask a trusted, manager, co-worker, or friend to share the top five strengths they see in you. You can do some self-reflection and think about the times when a task feels easy, and then identify what you are doing in that moment to find your strengths. You can also take an assessment called CliftonStrengths through Gallup. This assessment will give you your top five strengths of the 34 CliftonStrengths in a detailed report.
The other thing you will want to understand as the CEO of your career is your values. Your values tell you what is most important to you. They include things like feeling challenged, time for family, financial security, integrity, etc. While your core values do not change, the priority you place on your values will change based on your life circumstances. Understanding which values are most important to you now, will help you make decisions about your career. Contact me for a free Values Assessment.
So, before you start to think about what your next step is in your career, take some time to understand yourself first. You probably spend a decent amount of time deciding on big purchases such as a new car or appliance, so spend an equal amount of time getting to know yourself. Once you understand your strengths and values, you will have more clarity on where you want to head in your career.
