The Nature of Leadership and Career

read time 6 minutes

The Nature of Leadership and Career, is a weekly newsletter where I provide 1 illustration and ~3 ideas to help you connect to your career, leadership, or work journey in a more natural way.

Today at a glance

• Illustration of the week

  - Are goals lifting you up or weighing you down?

• Launches

  -Watch-it!

  -Book-it in!

• The Nature of Career

  - “Capitalize on a good day”

  - When are SMART goals helpful in our career transitions?

  - Why SMART goals might be hindering your career transition

  - What to do instead

  - What is 2024 your “Year Of”

Illustration of the Week

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Watch-It!

I have launched a new Instagram channel for bite-size video advice

and an Instagram for illustrations.

These are great bite-size versions that are complementary to the newsletter.

Book It-in!

February 28 will be our first session of the Women Wonder Book Club Interested? - sign up here.

Our first book will be Reimagine Inclusion by Mita Mallick.

This will occur once every 2 months and is part of the regular Career Soul Sessions group.

The Nature of Career

I can’t stop thinking about two lessons from this excerpt from Rich Roll’s podcast with Sean Conway.

The first lesson I love - “A bad day today doesn’t mean a bad day tomorrow.”

In the second lesson, Sean talks about settling for his goal of approx. 200 miles a day which is specific, measurable, achievable yet challenging, realistic, and time-bound, even when he had more left in the tank due to great tailwinds. Then on a day with high headwinds, he struggled to meet his SMART goal.

I can’t stop thinking about this in relation your our career transitions:

1. When do SMART goals help us?

2. Are SMART goals holding us back?

3. How do we account for changing external conditions in our career goals?

4. How hard do we know when to push toward a goal? **

5. How do we know when to pull back because pushing harder paradoxically stops progress? **

** We will explore these two questions in the next issue.

When are SMART goals helpful in our career transitions?

Decades of psychology research suggest that goals are beneficial because goals energize us as they increase our focus on a task, energize us, increase our performance, and boost our sense of self-mastery and confidence (Locke and Latham, 1991).

If your career transition is linear e.g. promotion, then using a linear setting framework e.g. SMART goals might be well suited.

Why SMART goals might be hindering your career transition

However, our career aspirations and trajectories are rarely linear.

Locke and Latham (1991) suggest that goal-setting hinders us if we use the wrong goal-setting approach for the wrong situation. 

So using linear goal-setting models such as SMART goals is inadequate to navigate your multi-pathway journey during a career transition.

• Specificity Challenges: Pinning down specific goals amid career uncertainty is no easy feat.

• Subjective Achievability: Lower self-confidence can lead to setting goals that are too conservative. A scarcity mindset can impact whether we set goals that are too easy or not challenging enough.

• Realistic Goals are Subjective: External influences such as our family, friends, colleagues, and cultural norms can skew our perception of what is realistic.

• Time-Bound Dilemma: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work in the Planning Fallacy suggests that as humans we are extremely poor at estimating time. Time-bound goals also don’t take external changing conditions into account just like Sean Conway’s changing headwinds and tailwinds.

In navigating career transitions with diverse pathways, you require an approach that allows exploration without the constraint of a specific goal.

This method should also alleviate any feelings of guilt or perceived lack of productivity when not strictly adhering to goals.

So what’s the alternative?

1. Set a theme

2. Run experiments

Step 1: Set a theme

Burnett and Evans suggest that where we are going next in our careers can most easily be clarified by asking ourselves “What problems do I want to solve?”

Based on your exploration of these questions, you can build a theme for your career for this period and or a list of problems worth solving. 

Examples:

• Theme - Disruption

• Theme - Growth

• Theme - Stability

• Problem - Helping social enterprises accelerate how they meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals

• Problem - Building Community in tech start-ups

• Problem - Creating equitable outcomes for employees

Step 2: Run experiments

Move away from either-or decision in your career transitions. 

Either-or decisions intensify the fear of getting it wrong. 

Either-or decisions set us on a path of searching for “the right answer” through thinking or logic only.

One of the best ways to “get it right” is not by searching for the right answer or setting arbitrary goals. 

The best way is to run experiments on our career options.

Here’s how:

Example scenario: Helping social enterprises accelerate how they meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

1. Come up with a list of options to address your theme / problem you want to solve from step 1

You might not have any more specificity at this stage you might not have a lot of experience in the “how” and that’s fine!

Instead of doing more and more research to set a SMART goal. Get stuck into doing: 

Build-measure-learn.

Start by asking yourself what you want to learn:

e.g. Learning metrics:

• Am I enjoying the work?

• If and how I am making an impact

• What emotions am I experiencing? What are these emotions signaling to me?

• What skills am I utilizing? What skills do I need to develop?

Set a clear way that you will measure each of these.

Examples:

• Regular self-reflection

• Feedback from others

• Metrics from your project / product  

2. Build a list of options and corresponding light experiments you can run to help you learn more and de-risk choosing an option that may not suit your learning and growth needs.

Example scenario: Helping social enterprises accelerate how they meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

 ✅ Option 1. Get a degree in sustainability

🧪 De-risk experiment: Sit in on a few classes or guest lectures.

🧪 De-risk experiment: Ask to speak to students who have done capstone projects. Understand if you want to run similar projects in your current/future workplace. 

✅ Option 2: Work directly with a NGO

🧪 De-risk experiment: With the skills you currently have, reach out to an NGO and do a short piece of pro-bono work for them. 

✅ Option 3: Find someone doing a future role you want to have 

🧪 De-risk experiment: Network with cold or warm connections to see if you can shadow them in their work for a day or ideally for a week. 

3. Measure your desired learning outcomes.

You can run the experiments one by one or in parallel depending on your capacity.

By running this approach you end up learning more about yourself, your passions, and your work without the pressure of meeting a goal.

Paradoxically you will likely get closer to your deeper desires and goals for this current phase of your career.

Have questions? Feel free to contact me.

Whenever you’re ready here are 3 ways I can help

#1 Gain clarity and confidence in your career transition

#2 Join the free weekly Career Soul Sessions for women in tech and sustainability. A safe space to share your thoughts, and feelings on all things career.

#3 Follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram for more Career + Leadership tips to help you thrive.