Originally posted on WIL Alberta January 21, 2024
If you are like me, you made career goals when you were a kid. You refined or changed them when you finished college or university, and tweaked or overhauled them as you gained experience. Did you stay true to the plans you set for yourself? I often mentor and coach people who have this goal and are highly uncomfortable moving away from it. What do I mean? Think of a time-based goal to reach a certain level in an organization. What happens if you do not hit that goal? Is it a failure on your part, or maybe you’re not good enough? I doubt it, but you most likely felt the effects of the four reasons below.
Reason #1 – Causes us to have a narrow focus
When you remain narrowly focused on a career goal, you can experience tunnel vision and may overlook broader opportunities. Did you even know you missed a career opportunity that could have skyrocketed your career? Most likely not. Many people chase a job title and the advancements they expect in their field, but what most people don’t consider is that organizations flatten, making those coveted titles and promotions even harder to obtain. Suppose you can expand your focus on experiences that enable growth. In that case, those titles and promotions will come when you are ready for them, not when you think you are ready.
Reason #2 – Causes rigidity in our planning
Having a specific set of goals can make you less flexible, not just in direction but also in how you think and work. As organizations grow, morph (e.g., through mergers or acquisitions), and prepare for the future (e.g., through organizational changes), your inflexibility might make you resistant to change. Additionally, when your current path no longer makes sense, you might resist adapting and shifting, causing you to be susceptible to workforce reductions or remaining in a significantly lower role than you had planned for yourself.
Reason #3 – Causes us to over-emphasize short-term wins
Being focused on the next step in your career ladder, you might lose sight of your broader career vision. Time-bound goals might be easy to achieve earlier in your career, but not having a long-term vision of what success looks like or when you know that it is time to switch roles, companies, industries, etc., will be hard.
Reason #4 – Can cause us stress and burnout
We have all experienced stress and burnout in our careers. When you put undue pressure on yourself to be at a certain level by a specific timeframe, you may take on so many above-and-beyond responsibilities that you burn out. Getting burnt out has mental and physical implications; realizing you brought it on yourself is never a great experience.
My experience happened when I started my MBA and continued working full-time. Doing school and work, never wanting to let either down, I put undue physical stress on an already bad back. After many months of therapy and back surgery, I realized that I had brought the stress upon myself. No one else pushed me to keep working full-time and do school full-time, and the burnout was real – and it was my fault. I had a title I was striving for, and I became so narrowly focused on achieving that short-term win that I burned out.
What did I learn to keep the bigger picture in sight on my journey?
My own experiences certainly played out to varying degrees throughout my career. I initially narrowed my focus to a specific specialty and was great at it. I have worked in eight industries and switched with purpose. I had areas I needed to learn, and my current organization could not provide those growth opportunities, at no fault of their own, that would lead me to be a unicorn in my space. I enjoyed many short-term wins but always kept that bigger vision in mind. It wasn’t until I joined my current organization that I could expand beyond my original career vision. I never knew what I was missing until my leaders knocked me over the head (metaphorically speaking). Completing my MBA changed my long-term vision of where I hope to end up at the end of a great career. I needed to tackle the first three reasons regularly, and where I am in my job today is not what I envisioned for myself – it’s so much better.
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