About movement and new destinations
People come by my office because they seek fresh possibilities for their professional life. They want to switch careers, enroll in a new course, or transform their way of managing people. Their search does not strike us as odd; the market today is characterized by novelty and movement.
Flexible work, the gig economy, portfolio careers, learning for a living — even for those who follow traditional careers, such trends present themselves as actual possibilities. They require choice.
I advise clients in several situations regarding their professional life:
Careers Switching
Vocational Questioning
Conflicts at Work
Ideas and Projects
Crisis related to the professional life
These ventures might be carried out in a tranquil moment of structured career planning. But they are frequently triggered by a vocational crisis, dissatisfaction at work, lay-offs, promotions, or other events that require thinking more actively about professional life.
People come here with a variety of demands:
“You take a look at my CV, and I just can’t hide that I have been all around.”
“I have tried this career move before, but it has never worked out.”
“I still haven’t found something I actually want to do.”
“Leading the team has been so challenging…”
“My career is going well, but I need to better plan my next steps.”
“I have this idea for a startup… but I am not sure if I should try…”
Thinking about such issues and transforming them into dreams, plans, and actions: this is that we can do in career projects.
What have you done so far? What do you want to do now?
How does that fit into a bigger project?
Where does your story lead you?
A little about my own story with careers
Around ten years ago, I came across two excerpts that really spoke to me. The first one I found when I was reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road:
I like too many things and get all confused and hung up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion
By then, I was a business administrator feeling intense vocational questioning — that was my own big confusion that I shared with friends, bosses, and analysts.
Like Kerouac’s character, I liked too many things (literature, psychoanalysis), but they all seemed unattainable, far from my real life at that time.
From investment banking to consulting to multinationals, I had tried it all. And while I enjoyed many of these experiences, I had a strong sense that those careers were not for me.
Some people have clear callings that present themselves very early on. They can easily navigate the professional world. Others have difficulty creating an enjoyable and fulfilling professional path for themselves. I didn’t find it easy to spend time in this second group.
The second passage that I found was in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth:
Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions,
and the mean ones truths?
At that moment, I started making important decisions: I went from the business world into clinical psychology, while also covering the possible bridges between these two fields.
I could see that people do not need to fulfil Edith Wharton’s cynical prediction, that they can learn to see their generous ideas as actually feasible. Unlike Kerouac’s characters, I discovered that we can present to others more than our own confusions, making our professional inclinations compatible with what the world has to offer — and we can create the opportunities that it does not offer yet.
I myself did it. I went from building financial models to studying Freud, seeing patients in a hospital, and setting up a clinical practice in my consultation office. And I help people reach their academic and professional goals, applying the skills I nurtured during my time in business.
Career is a path. It is marked by footprints, weight, and pressure. We travel over it, stepping on it — it hurts, but the career only exists because of our walk.
My work is to provide room for reflection so that people, on their walk, can move to new positions that feel more gratifying to them.
If career is a path, how to put yourself in motion?
My work with careers varies in format, duration, and content, as each client brings specific questions and explores them in their unique pace.
For each client, I draw a project.
Usually, we begin with a diagnosis of the situation. We must understand what the big questions are, what is going well, and what isn’t. We must outline goals that will guide our work together. After that, I design a project to tackle the specific issues brought on by the client. We then go through a structured process to examine possibilities and define possible directions.
the step-by-step process includes:
1
Diagnosis
We must understand your situation, sources of dissatisfaction and the professional challenges that you face today. We will also think about how you manage your career, as well as relations and issues at the workplace.
This is an opportunity for me to assess your moment, and also for you to see how our work together will be carried out.
2
Setting
of Goals:
We will outline your objectives regarding your career or the professional concerns you currently have.
We will draw a map of all your aspirations regarding opportunities and abilities you want to develop.
We will also discuss your expectations regarding our project and what you expect to reach in the short and long term.
3
Project
Design
Based on what we will have discovered so far, we will draw a project that meets your specific needs.
It will be customized. A project involving career change is different, for instance, from a project targeting managerial skills.
Here you will also see what we have planned for each of our next sessions.
4
Project
Execution
Throughout the project, we will:
Analyze in detail each of the opportunities you envision.
Assess your strengthes, weaknesses, qualifications and abilities.
Draw your next steps.
Follow up on the execution of some of those next steps
We will also make use of tools and activities that you will complete throughout the week, which will help us in session. We will discuss your insights and conclusions, bearing in mind the next phase of our project.
5
Decision
making
After analyzing the opportunities you have discovered, we will assess your ability to choose.
What do you gain or lose with each opportunity?
How do your decisions contribute to a bigger career plan?
How do you cope with decision making?
6
Building a
long-term plan:
Our project regarding your career must be transformational.
The ideia is that you develop autonomy to pursue your objectives after we finish our sessions.
So, we will outline your long-term goals and actions, giving special attention to your career plan as a whole and the meaning it carries to you.
Some projects are carried out in 7 sessions; others require 15. The entire process is planned and executed together. There are clear directions, but also flexibility to adapt to new goals as they come up.
I remember what it is like to work in the financial or operational side and think that people-development initiatives are not very useful or transformative.
My commitment is to make sure they are.
Career management must be an authorial process.
Each professional must develop ownership about understanding their situation and finding solutions.
Filling out several tests, as is common in some coaching processes, might quickly address anxieties and produce simple answers.
But as Freud said,
when singing in the dark, a traveler might deny his fears, but he will not see any brighter.
The idea here is not to deny your fears or eliminate anxiety.
I would rather act as a thought provoker, using your concerns and motivations as fuel.
For that, I have created a method based on different experiences:
As a business manager: I have learned to analyze problems in a structured approach and build step-by-step plans to solve them collectively.
As a psychoanalyst: I have discovered a method to listen to people, shed light on their conflicts, and get them involved with their concerns.
In my ventures in career management, I have gathered the methods that seemed to me more capable of producing reflection and change.
We can formulate what the big question is for you and sketch some answers, but we must pay attention to what new questions arise — opportunities often pop up in the empty spaces around them!
Thinking together to get you in motion: this is my role beside you in career interventions.
© 2018 MO Admissions and Careers
