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- Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
BEYOND MID-CAREER - Redefining Success, Generating Legacy is a practical and reflective guide for mid-career professionals seeking clarity, purpose, and growth. Exploring eight key dimensions of career evolution, it offers actionable strategies and exercises to navigate transitions, deepen professional identity, and craft a meaningful professional legacy.
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Seitenzahl: 680
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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To my clients, past and present,
Thank you for trusting me with your journeys of growth and reinvention. Your courage to adapt, reflect, and align your careers with your values inspires everything in this book. This work is a testament to the resilience, creativity, and impact you embody every day.
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. - Pablo Picasso
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
BEYOND MID-CAREER
Reframing Success, Generating Legacy
1.
PERSONAL FOUNDATIONS
Rediscovering Strengths, Values and Purpose
1.1 Defining Successs
1.2 Career Values
1.3 Strength-Based Reflection
1.4 Learning from Experiences
1.5. Transferable Skills
1.6 Industry Expertise
1.7 Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
1.8 Professional Reputation
2.
IDENTITY AND CAREER TRANSITIONS
Embracing Change and Redefining Purpose
2.1 Evolving Identity
2.2 Navigating Liminal Spaces
2.3 Expand Your Growth Zone
2.4 Shifting Identities
2.5 Bridging the Old and the New
2.6 Career Visioning
2.7 Addressing Career Setbacks
2.8 Transformative Change
3.
CAREER SHAPING CONTEXTS
Navigating External Influences
3.1 Expectations and Norms
3.2 Charting Industry Trends
3.3 Coping Economic Unrest
3.4 Embracing Technology
3.5 Organizational dynamics
3.6 Career in a Globalized World
3.7 Ethical Decision-Making
3.8 Adapting to Uncertainty
4.
VOCATIONAL MASTERY
Deepening Expertise for Long-Term Growth
4.1 Reflecting the Journey
4.2 Leveraging Career Capital
4.3 Driving Career Momentum
4.4 Strengthening Resilience
4.5 Crafting Visibility
4.6. Strategic Networks
4.7 From Expert to Leader
4.8 Designing Lasting Impact
5.
PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY
Aligning Roles with Your Authentic Self
5.1 Identity and Transition
5.2 Leadership Identity
5.3 Unveiling the Inner Mind
5.4 Leadership Authenticity
5.5 Identity Integration
5.6 Rewriting the Narrative
5.7 Leadership as Identity
5.8 Sustaining Identity
6.
ACTIVE SELF-LEADERSHIP
Essential Tools for Career Mastery
6.1 Focusing on Essential
6.2 Meaningful Milestones
6.3 The Power of Choice
6.4 The Art of Attention
6.5 Doing More with Less
6.6 Building Momentum
6.7 Existential Resilience
6.8 Thinking Tools
7.
STRATEGIC CAREER TOOLS
Staying Relevant and Achieving Success
7.1 Redefining the Game
7.2 Aligning Goals with Vision
7.3 Mapping a Career Strategy
7.4 Defining Your Why
7.5 Crafting Your Narrative
7.6 Strategic Foresight
7.7 Personal Branding
7.8 Professional Framework
8.
YOUR PROFESSIONAL LEGACY
Purpose, Influence, and Lasting Contributions
8.1 Your Professional Legacy
8.2 Value Beyond Roles
8.3 Intellectual Courage
8.4 Credibility as Your Asset
8.5 Visionary Storytelling
8.6 Evolving Networks
8.7 Lifelong Learning
8.8 Reflections on Your Legacy
EPILOGUE
The Next Chapter
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
BEYOND MID-CAREER
Redefining Success, Generating Legacy
Every career tells a story. For some, the narrative feels vibrant and purposeful, marked by momentum and growth. For others, it carries undertones of stagnation, burnout, or dissatisfaction. And for many, the story unfolds in transition, with external shifts prompting internal recalibration. Wherever you find yourself, the reality remains: careers are dynamic, evolving journeys rather than fixed trajectories.
This book invites you to consider what lies beyond mid-career. Mid-career – defined here as having over a decade of professional experience across diverse roles – is a pivotal phase marked by achievement, identity exploration, and new aspirations. But the question emerges: What comes next?
Moving beyond mid-career isn't just about accumulating titles or milestones. It's about addressing deeper questions:
How do you define success now, compared to the early days of your career?
What legacy do you wish to create, and how can your work reflect those aspirations?
How do you thrive in an environment that demands continual growth and adaptability?
For mid-career professionals, this stage often brings a unique interplay of opportunity and complexity. You're balancing accumulated expertise with evolving roles, striving for relevance in rapidly changing industries, and reconciling personal values with external expectations. This book provides the tools to address these challenges, offering a pathway to clarity, purpose, and influence.
Moving Beyond Mid-Career
The impetus to move beyond mid-career arises from a variety of factors – both external and internal. For some, the spark is a personal realization of misalignment or the need for growth. For others, external circumstances create a push toward reinvention. Whatever the trigger, the journey is highly individual yet marked by common themes.
1. Internal Reflections and Realizations
A sense of plateauing often prompts professionals to question whether their achievements truly align with their aspirations. Even those on a positive trajectory may feel that their work lacks deeper meaning. These reflections lead to a desire for alignment – to integrate values, actions, and legacy into a cohesive narrative. Professionals begin asking themselves, "What do I really want to be known for?" and "Is this the impact I want to have?" This internal recalibration is accompanied by an emerging awareness of legacy – a focus on contributions that resonate beyond immediate successes.
2. External Triggers
Disruptive forces such as industry shifts, technological advancements, or cultural changes often necessitate reevaluation. Burnout, whether physical or emotional, pushes individuals to reconsider priorities, emphasizing well-being alongside professional growth. Unexpected events like layoffs or personal crises act as inflection points, prompting a reassessment of long-term goals and aspirations.
3. External Validation
External validation often acts as a powerful driver for professionals ready to shift beyond mid-career. Promotions, recognition, or new leadership opportunities can serve as affirmations of expertise and capability, motivating individuals to embrace new challenges. For some, these moments of validation confirm that it's time to step into roles of broader influence – leading teams, shaping strategies, or mentoring the next generation.
However, validation is not limited to traditional markers of success like titles or accolades. It can also come in the form of trusted colleagues or mentors recognizing potential and encouraging professionals to take bold steps. These nudges often lead to breakthroughs, helping individuals see themselves as capable of navigating uncharted paths.
These catalysts create opportunities for reinvention and growth. Some professionals leverage promotions to broaden their influence, while others use periods of transition to refocus their efforts on purpose-driven work. The spectrum of opportunity lies in reframing challenges as avenues for personal and professional transformation.
While the journey beyond mid-career is deeply personal, professionals often fall into one of four broad categories based on their current state. These categories provide a lens for understanding where you stand and what might come next.
Career Thriving
You're confident, growing, and building momentum. Your career feels meaningful, and your efforts are paying off. However, thriving comes with its own set of challenges, such as burnout risk, fear of stagnation, or future-proofing (anticipating and adapting to changes).
Career Jammed
You feel stuck – whether due to internal barriers, external constraints, or both. Progress has slowed, and you're searching for tools to move forward. Your current tools or knowledge may be insufficient, you have reached a ceiling with little room for development, or you are overwhelmed by workload and competing priorities.
Career Dissatisfactory
You sense a deeper misalignment – a disconnect between your current work and what truly matters to you. This can feel like a void, leaving you searching for purpose, meaning, or new professsional identity.
Career (In) Transition
Sometimes, recalibration is driven by external shifts or proactive personal choices. Answering or anticipating disruptions, pursuing passion-driven path, or moving into a role enabling to build a legacy are common reasons for transition.
Defining a Distinct Group
Not every mid-career professional is poised to embrace this shift. The audience for this book shares key characteristics:
1. They are achievers
Having spent over a decade building expertise and achieving success, they're now seeking something beyond incremental progress.
2. They are at a crossroads between ambition and meaning
Whether climbing or pivoting, they desire careers aligned with fulfillment and legacy.
3. They are ready to reflect and change
Unlike early-career professionals reacting to opportunities, this group proactively engages in self-reflection and long-term planning.
4. They possess a broad lens on their careers
High achievers want to convert success into significance, while those facing challenges seek to realign and reignite their careers.
5. They are ready to lead and mentor
Moving from technical expertise to thought leadership, they aim to inspire and leave lasting impact.
This group embodies both the complexity and potential of this phase, striving not just to succeed but to thrive in ways that resonate deeply with their values and aspirations.
The Importance of This Phase
The concept of moving beyond mid-career resonates because it is often overlooked. Most career books target early success or retirement planning. Yet, for those in their mid-to-late career stages, the focus shifts to redefining purpose, recalibrating goals, and shaping influence. This isn't about planning an exit – it's about crafting a meaningful next chapter.
For those climbing the ladder, it's about converting success into significance. For those reevaluating their paths, it's about rediscovering purpose and authenticity. Beyond mid-career recognizes that professionals at this stage aren't just contributors -they're leaders, mentors, and changemakers.
Why This Book Matters
The transition beyond mid-career is both a challenge and an opportunity. For professionals climbing leadership roles, pivoting toward fulfillment, or refining their impact, the stakes are higher than ever. This book helps you:
Reframe Success
Redefine fulfillment and achievement for this stage of your career.
Generate Legacy
Explore how your work can create lasting value.
Cultivate Resilience
Equip yourself to navigate transitions with clarity and confidence.
The goal is to endow you with the clarity, resilience, and foresight to navigate the complexities of mid-career and beyond. Whether you're a leader, expert, entrepreneur, or professional in transition, this book invites you to see your career not as a destination but as a dynamic, evolving journey.
The Compass: A Framework for Career Navigation
At the heart of this book is the concept of the compass, a tool for navigating the eight dimensions of mid-career growth. Each main chapter reflects one of these dimensions, and every chapter contains eight subchapters to explore the theme in depth. Just as a compass points the way, this framework provides direction and clarity, ensuring you're covering all critical aspects of your career evolution.
The Eight Dimensions of Career Growth
1. Personal Foundations
Rediscover strengths, values, and experiences that ground your professional self.
2. Identity and Transitions
Adapt to shifts with resilience and clarity, embracing change as an opportunity for growth.
3. Career Contexts
Harness external forces such as industry trends and organizational dynamics to shape your trajectory.
4. Vocational Mastery
Deepen expertise and leadership, positioning yourself as a trusted authority in your field.
5. Professional Identity
Align roles with authenticity and aspirations, integrating personal values into leadership.
6. Active Self-Leadership
Cultivate habits, mindsets, and strategies for purposeful action and sustained momentum.
7. Strategic Career Tools
Map and future-proof your career using tools like foresight, branding, and storytelling.
8. Your Professional Legacy
Reflect on contributions that create lasting influence, building a meaningful legacy.
These dimensions form the framework for this book, offering a comprehensive approach to navigating the complexities of mid-career and beyond.
A Layered Approach to Career Growth
As you navigate this book, you'll notice that certain themes – like resilience, identity, and professional mastery – are revisited across different chapters and dimensions. This isn't repetition but a deliberate layering that allows each concept to evolve as the discussion deepens.
This approach mirrors the reality of mid-career growth: the challenges we face and the skills we cultivate often recur in progressively nuanced forms. By revisiting these ideas, the book offers fresh perspectives and practical strategies tailored to where you are in your journey.
Think of the structure as a spiral staircase – each turn revisits familiar ground but from a higher vantage point. This ensures that no matter where you begin, you'll find insights that resonate and tools that empower you to align your career with your evolving aspirations.
A Journey Worth Pursuing
Moving beyond mid-career is not a singular path but a rich, evolving journey. This book equips you to navigate with clarity and purpose, offering tools to craft a career that reflects your authentic self.
Take a moment to reflect on where you are in your career. Are you seeking greater alignment, pursuing new aspirations, or reevaluating your direction entirely? Wherever you find yourself, the next chapter is yours to shape.
Take a moment to revisit the diagram in this chapter. Where are you in your career today? What state resonates most? Keep this question in mind as you journey through the book. Whether you're thriving, jammed, or contemplating reinvention, this is your opportunity to recalibrate, realign, and leave a legacy that matters.
PERSONAL FOUNDATIONS
Rediscovering Strengths, Values, and Purpose
Mid-career is a pivotal time – a natural juncture to pause, reflect on the journey so far, and envision what lies ahead. Early in your career, success often centers on external achievements like promotions, titles, and financial gains. However, as your career evolves, the definition of success deepens. At this stage, it becomes more about aligning your work with your values, aspirations, and identity.
This chapter initiates the journey of rediscovery by revisiting the foundational elements that sustain and propel your professional self: strengths, values, and experiences. These elements form the core of a fulfilling and adaptable career, providing the clarity and resilience needed to manage the complexities of mid-career and beyond.
We begin by redefining success – what it means to you now and how it aligns with your long-term vision. Next, we delve into your values, the principles that guide decisions and provide purpose, ensuring they remain at the heart of your professional choices. Understanding and leveraging your strengths – the innate abilities that differentiate and energize you – opens new pathways for growth and fulfillment.
Your past experiences, including both triumphs and challenges, offer invaluable lessons. Reflecting on these moments uncovers transferable skills and insights that prepare you for future transitions and opportunities. This chapter also emphasizes the importance of resilience and honing industry expertise, equipping you to remain authentic and relevant in a rapidly evolving professional landscape.
Personal Foundations invites you to reconnect with what truly matters and build a career that reflects your evolving identity. By grounding yourself in your strengths, values, and experiences, you create a purposeful professional journey.
DEFINING SUCCESS
Aligning Identity with Career Growth
For many professionals, early success follows a precise formula: promotions, recognition, financial milestones – measurable achievements that validate effort and ambition. Yet, as you approach mid-career, the definition of success shifts. What once motivated you may now feel hollow or incomplete. The challenge becomes redefining success in ways that align with who you are now and what you value most.
Success, at this stage, is no longer a static concept. It evolves with you, reflecting the changes in your identity, aspirations, and priorities. Instead of focusing solely on external markers, mid-career success emphasizes internal alignment: finding meaning, balance, and a sense of purpose in what you do.
Redefining Success Beyond Traditional Metrics
Titles and rewards often dominate the early stages of a career, providing clarity and direction. But mid-career professionals increasingly ask: "Does my work still reflect who I am?" The shift moves from "What have I achieved?" to "What impact do I want to create?"
Success at mid-career often takes new dimensions:
Autonomy
Professionals seek more control over their time and work-life balance, valuing autonomy over traditional measures like climbing the corporate ladder.
Purpose
Some may want to leave a lasting impact through mentorship, contributing to social causes, or building a meaningful legacy within their industry.
Balance
The relentless drive for promotions may lead to a desire for better integration between personal and professional life.
This evolution is natural – and necessary. As psychologist Daniel Levinson noted, mid-life offers a pivotal moment for reassessment, where career identity aligns more deeply with life's broader meaning. Similarly, Donald Super's career development theory describes this phase as a process of renewal and redirection, where growth arises from reflection and intentional action.
Life Structure and Career Development
Daniel Levinson, a prominent psychologist, provided one of the most influential models for understanding adult development and career transitions. Levinson's theory emphasizes that mid-career is a natural period of reflection and reassessment. He introduced the "life structure" concept: how individuals organize their lives around careers, relationships, and personal growth.
Levinson's life structure theory posits that our lives are composed of distinct stages, each marked by transitions and shifts in focus. Mid-career represents one of those critical reflection points where professionals reassess their identity, goals, and what truly matters. It's a period where many ask: What have I accomplished? What's next for me?
Another framework complementing Levinson's approach comes from Donald Super. His career development theory suggests that career development is cyclical. Rather than being a straight path toward a singular endpoint, career development involves continuous reassessment, renewal, and sometimes, redirection. Mid-career professionals often redefine success through internal satisfaction rather than external validation. It's not uncommon to see individuals move away from seeking promotions or pay raises and instead focus on achieving a sense of balance, purpose, or legacy.
This simplified diagram drawn from Levinson's framework illustrates how the perception of success changes throughout different career stages. Early in your career, success may be focused on tangible achievements, while mid-career often brings a shift towards personal values, life satisfaction, and meaningful work.
The age 30 transition occurs in the late twenties to early thirties. It means evaluating the choices and solutions made and considering changing the structure of life. At that time, seeking the foundation for a good life dominates. Key issues are work, family, children, friends, established hobbies, and seeking financial security. Some people of this age experience a crisis, due to which their life structure may change substantially, while some continue their lives in the same direction, consolidating their choices.
Settling down (age 33-40) means investing in things we see as vital to ourselves (work, family, friends, free time, the surrounding community, and society) when we strive intensively to realize our goals for life. In this phase, the focus is on raising our performance levels.
In the transition to middle adulthood (40-45 years old), values relate to the relationship between ourselves and the rest of the world: what I want, what price I am willing/have to pay. Although the complex need to manage several roles characterizes this phase, work still most fundamentally defines identity. Interestingly, this age is a kind of milestone in almost all life cycle and life course theories, at which the structure of life essentially changes.
In settling down to middle age (45-50 years), we typically face big choices and encounter various crises, such as marriage, family life, and friendships. What is distinctive is the effort to improve life and seek a satisfactory life structure.
Four features characterize this phase:
1. waking up to the fact that what was previously considered satisfactory is now inadequate,
2. a change in time perspective,
3. a reassessment of personal goals, and
4. reinterpreting the future to achieve new, important things.
Career success is a subjective issue. Personal values, life experiences, and aspirations shape each individual's definition of success. For some, it might mean achieving a high-ranking position within a prestigious organization; for others, it might involve making a meaningful impact in their community. By embracing this subjectivity, we can pursue careers that resonate with our true selves, fostering a sense of fulfillment and authenticity in our professional lives.
Mid-career is a natural time to redefine success and align your career path with personal values and evolving life circumstances.
Aligning Identity and Success
Success at mid-career often requires a deeper understanding of your core identity. This alignment between who you are and what you do becomes essential for achieving lasting fulfillment. Our roles, relationships, and experiences have often shaped us as professionals. Mid-career allows us to actively direct our future by reflecting on our identity.
Here are three critical aspects of aligning identity with success:
1. Internal Alignment
Ensuring that your day-to-day work resonates with your core values and beliefs.
2. Personal Growth
Recognizing that success is not a fixed point but a continuous personal and professional development process.
3. Career Fulfillment
Moving beyond titles and financial rewards to seek fulfillment in how your work aligns with your sense of self and long-term goals.
This alignment allows for a more sustainable form of success, one that is rooted in personal satisfaction and professional growth.
The following exercises offer practical ways to explore what truly matters to you at this stage of your life and career. These exercises encourage deep introspection, helping you uncover the connections between your identity and how you define success.
EXERCISE 1. SELF-REFLECTION FOR IDENTITY ALIGNMENT
Self-reflection is a powerful tool for examining how your evolving identity aligns with your definition of success. Consider the following reflective questions:
How has my definition of success changed over the past decade, and what aspects of my identity have influenced this shift?
Which achievements or experiences, both personal and professional, have brought me the most significant sense of fulfillment?
What values or beliefs have become more important to me, and how do they shape my career decisions today?
What legacy do I want to create, and how does that align with my authentic self?
In what ways can my identity drive my future career growth rather than external measures of success?
You can identify patterns in your values, priorities, and goals by writing down your responses to these questions. This process of reflection helps clarify how your identity and success can be in balance, ensuring that your career reflects who you fundamentally are.
EXERCISE 2. THE CAREER SUCCESS SPECTRUM
The Career Success Spectrum helps visually map where you fall between objective success markers (like income and promotions) and subjective success markers (like fulfillment, flexibility, and personal growth). Plot yourself on this spectrum today, then project where you want to be. Reflect on what changes.
EXERCISE 3. THE FUTURE SELF-PORTRAIT
Another reflective tool is a future self-portrait – a description of how one envisions their life and career in the next decade. Self-portrait is an effective tool for holistic visioning and goal setting. Merely setting career goals leaves many vital areas of your life untouched. While considering all aspects of life, tools like Vision Board or Treasure Map have become popular in self-help literature. Self-Portrait is a variation of these tools with one fundamental difference: it emphasizes the emotional aspect. The graphic has a heart icon to remind us of this.
Use a large piece of paper (a flipchart will do fine) and markers in various colors. Some people prefer to cut pictures from magazines, but I recommend drawing them. Imagine yourself five to ten years into the future. Think about where you are in your career, your personal life, and your overall well-being. Pose the following question: What do I want to bring joy into my life in the targeted year? Or another one: What will I be proud of in the targeted year?
Usually, the picture incorporates things like health, family, friends, home, recreation, work, etc. Sometimes, people add in possessions and finances, too. However, to raise this tool to the next level, you should add new layers, such as experiences, skills, knowledge, capabilities, achievements, learning, and surprises.
Next, articulate what success means to you in this future scenario. How does it compare to your current definition of success? To balance your plans with reality, reflect on the steps to move closer to this vision of success. What changes might be necessary to achieve it in your career or personal life?
Success in mid-career is not just about external accomplishments but also aligning your career with your identity. By reflecting on your core values, beliefs, and longterm aspirations, you can redefine what success means for you at this stage. This deeper alignment between who you are and what you do leads to a more meaningful and satisfying career.
In the next chapter, we will explore how understanding your career values can guide you toward making more informed and purposeful decisions, helping you shape a career aligned with what truly matters to you.
CAREER VALUES
Guiding Forces of Your Career Path
Your career values are the principles and beliefs that guide your professional decisions, shaping how you approach opportunities, solve challenges, and define fulfillment. These values are not static; they evolve, reflecting priorities, personal experiences, and professional growth shifts. At mid-career, this evolution often prompts a more profound reassessment of your goals and aspirations, offering an opportunity to realign your work with what truly matters to you.
External achievements, such as promotions or financial rewards, may have been key motivators earlier in your career. However, as priorities shift, values like autonomy, creativity, or making a meaningful impact often take center stage. This transition reflects a growing desire to connect professional success with personal authenticity. Failing to recognize and act on this alignment can lead to dissatisfaction or burnout. When values and work are misaligned, day-to-day tasks may feel hollow and disconnected from your larger purpose.
This subchapter will explore how to uncover and articulate your core career values. You'll examine how these values influence your choices, behaviors, and overall satisfaction. Through reflective exercises, you'll identify the gaps between your current role and your ideal alignment, uncovering opportunities to bring your work closer to your principles.
Aligning your career with your values isn't just about feeling good; it's a compass for pursuing meaningful growth.
Core Values as Guiding Forces
Understanding the role of values becomes especially important at mid-career when professionals often seek deeper alignment between their work and personal beliefs. Your career values are guiding forces: principles that shape your decisions, behaviors, and aspirations. Shalom Schwartz's Theory of Basic Human Values highlights how these core beliefs drive choices across all aspects of life. Whether you prioritize self-direction, security, achievement, or benevolence, values serve as internal benchmarks for satisfaction and growth. Edgar Schein's Career Anchors provides another perspective on career values. These perspectives reveal how values serve as a foundation for personal and professional fulfillment, giving clarity for handling complex career decisions.
Theory of Basic Human Values
The theory of Basic Human Values identifies universal values that drive human behavior. At the heart of the theory is that values form a circular structure that reflects each value's motivations.
The value theory states that six main features are implicit in all values. What distinguishes one value from another is its type of goal or motivation.
1. Values are beliefs linked inextricably to affect.
2. Values refer to desirable goals that motivate action.
3. Values transcend specific actions and situations.
4. Values serve as standards or criteria.
5. Values are ordered by importance relative to one another.
6. The relative importance of multiple values guides action.
Values influence our decisions, interactions with others, and approach our careers. At mid-career, professionals often see shifts in which values take precedence, with self-direction and benevolence usually becoming more prominent.
Schwartz's framework allows you to reflect on your evolving priorities and align your career with what truly matters. Further, by understanding your value system, you can make more informed and satisfying career choices. For example, if you highly value self-direction, you might prioritize roles offering autonomy and creativity over positions in rigid hierarchies.
Recognizing Your Career Anchors
According to Edgar Schein, every individual possesses specific and unique 'anchors' – their perception of their values, talents, abilities, and motives, which form the basis of individual roles and development. These anchors include
1. Technical/functional competence
2. General managerial competence
3. Autonomy/independence
4. Security/stability
5. Entrepreneurial capability
6. Service/dedication to a cause
7. Pure challenge
8. Lifestyle
Career Anchors is a valuable concept for mid-career professionals. At the same time, it guides you to align your professional goals with your innate motivations and provides clarity and direction during a critical stage in your career. Understanding your primary career anchor helps you align your future career moves with what truly motivates and fulfills you, rather than just following external opportunities or pressures. This knowledge is invaluable for making informed decisions, ensuring long-term satisfaction, and increasing resilience in an ever-evolving job market.
At mid-career, these theoretical perspectives suggest that individuals are more likely to seek out roles, environments, and paths that align with their deeper values. This shift helps explain why many professionals pivot in their careers, taking on positions less lucrative or prestigious but more aligned with their meaning and purpose.
Aligning Career with Core Values
At this stage in your career, it's critical to ask yourself: What are my core values today? How have these values shifted from when I started working, and how can I align my career to reflect these evolving priorities? For some, the values that once dominated – such as financial success – may now hold less significance. Instead, values like autonomy, creativity, or contributing to a more significant cause might rise to the forefront. These shifts often reflect broader life changes: the desire for work-life balance, greater flexibility, or a drive to make an impact beyond traditional job roles.
One of the key challenges for mid-career professionals is ensuring that their daily work aligns with their values. Misalignment can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction, disengagement, or even burnout. For example, if creativity has become a dominant value but your role confines you to rigid structures, it may be time to reconsider your position. If service or helping others is now more critical, you might find more satisfaction in a non-profit or mentorship role.
Realigning your career with your core values may require minor adjustments – taking on new projects or changing the focus of your work. In other cases, it could involve a more significant career pivot – moving into an entirely new field that better resonates with your values today.
Identifying your core values isn't always straightforward, significantly if they have shifted over time. The following exercises help you reflect on your professional experiences and clarify the most resonating values. By prioritizing what truly matters, you can ensure that future career decisions are guided by a clear understanding of your values, fostering alignment between your work and personal beliefs.
EXERCISE 4. CORE VALUES ASSESSMENT
Start with a core values inventory. This exercise helps you identify which values you prioritize. A brilliant British career coach, Helen Dunnett, introduced this exercise to me. As far as I know, it stems from Marc Steinberg at Creative Consciousness.
First, what do you spend your time doing? Look at your day, week, month, year, and last five years. How do you prioritize your life? Make a 2-column table, and to the left column, write down your actions.
After completing this, to the right column, write down what value(s) each action represents. When you have done this, stop for a moment and review any insights thus far.
Second, imagine the following scenario. You receive a message that you will be miraculously, non-negotiably, transferred to a deserted island to stay for the rest of your life. However, you must choose five people you can take with you (five – no more, no less). Who would you choose? You are entitled to select anybody, alive or passed, known or unknown, politicians, celebrities, artists, saints ... anybody. Again, make a 2-column table, and list those five people in the left column. Then, to the right column, identify a single attribute that made you choose this person. Do that for all five people.
Third, go back to part one. That list identifies your conditioned values. Compare them to your actual values identified in part two. Consider possible discrepancies.
Write down your top five values, then reflect on whether your current work aligns with them. For example, you may feel stifled if autonomy is a top value, but your role requires constant supervision and micromanagement. Alternatively, if creativity is a core value, you might seek opportunities for innovation and idea generation within your organization.
EXERCISE 5. VALUE-BASED DECISION-MAKING FRAMEWORK
Implement a values-based decision-making filter to ensure your career decisions align with your values. Before making any significant career choice, use your own variation of the next diagram as a framework, asking yourself:
How does the solution (or decision) unfold if I prioritize [your choice] perspective? Do this for each value. Consider the outcomes.
This tool helps ensure that your decisions reflect the values that matter most to you, even when faced with complex trade-offs. In the diagram, the values are an example of my value assessment from a few years ago.
EXERCISE 6. CAREER ANCHORS ASSESSMENT
Career Anchors are another valuable tool for mid-career reflection. Take a career anchor assessment to determine which driving forces guide your career choices.
Edgar Schein's "Career Anchors: Discovering Your Real Values" (4th Edition) contains the original assessment. Some websites provide a basic Career Anchors quiz based on Schein's framework. Although these versions may not be as comprehensive as those in his book, they give a helpful introduction. You can find a simplified online version of Skills You Need. Use the results to evaluate whether your current career aligns with your dominant anchor.
Reflect on how your top career anchors align with your current job. Does your role offer the autonomy, creativity, or security you value most? If not, consider adjusting your role or exploring new opportunities that align more closely with your core values.
Aligning your career with your core values is crucial for long-term satisfaction and fulfillment. As your values evolve, regularly reassessing how your work aligns with those values can help you stay on track and avoid burnout or dissatisfaction. You can create a career that resonates deeply with your core beliefs through reflection, self-assessment, and careful decision-making.
In the next chapter, we'll explore how personal strengths complement your values and how to leverage those strengths for continued career success.
STRENGTH-BASED REFLECTION
Leveraging Your Strengths
Mid-career is when accumulated skills and experiences should propel us forward. Yet, many professionals find themselves stuck – not because they lack talent, but because their strengths are underutilized or misaligned with their current roles. This subchapter explores how to harness the full potential of your strengths to overcome these challenges and create opportunities that align with your values and goals.
Strength-based reflection shifts the focus from addressing weaknesses to amplifying what you do best. The tools in this subchapter will guide you in identifying and refining your core strengths – those unique skills and abilities that set you apart. Drawing from positive psychology and career development frameworks, we'll examine why leading with strengths fosters resilience, engagement, and long-term growth.
This subchapter delves into the "signature strengths" concept, providing practical exercises to uncover and articulate them. You'll also explore strategies for aligning these strengths with your career aspirations, using them as a foundation to navigate transitions, tackle challenges, and seize new opportunities. Real-world examples and reflective tools will help you map how your strengths have contributed to past successes and how they can shape your future trajectory.
Harnessing your strengths doesn't just enhance professional performance; it energizes you, building a feedback loop of confidence and accomplishment. By the end of this subchapter, you'll understand how to integrate your strengths into your career development plan, empowering you to move forward with purpose, clarity, and renewed motivation.
Strengths and Positive Psychology
Focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses gained widespread attention through strengths-based leadership models. Gallup's StrengthsFinder approach revolutionized how professionals think about their development, encouraging them to maximize their natural talents rather than overcorrecting their weaknesses. You can become a more effective leader, team member, and professional by identifying and developing your strengths. StrengthsFinder helps mid-career professionals move away from the mindset of deficiency and toward building on what they already do well. This is particularly relevant for those in mid-career transitions, as it clarifies where to focus energy and resources.
For mid-career professionals, understanding and cultivating strengths isn't just about better performance; it's about engagement and fulfillment. Research conducted by Gallup shows that employees who leverage their strengths daily are significantly more engaged, productive, and satisfied with their work. Mid-career professionals may be shifting roles, industries, or career paths; using the StrengthsFinder assessment allows them to identify areas where they can thrive rather than merely survive. If a mid-career professional has a strength, e.g., in relationship-building, they might seek roles emphasizing team leadership or networking.
This approach also helps mid-career professionals avoid becoming stagnant or disengaged in their careers by aligning their day-to-day responsibilities with their natural talents, thus maintaining long-term career momentum.
Seligman’s PERMA Model: Redefining Fulfillment
Martin Seligman's PERMA Model offers a broader perspective on success, emphasizing well-being alongside professional achievement. Developed within the field of positive psychology, PERMA outlines five key elements of lasting fulfillment:
Positive Emotions
Finding moments of joy, gratitude, and contentment in your work.
Engagement
Immersing yourself in tasks that leverage your strengths.
Relationships
Building meaningful connections that foster collaboration and growth.
Meaning
Aligning your work with a greater purpose or sense of contribution.
Accomplishment
Celebrating achievements that matter to you personally, beyond external markers.
For mid-career professionals, the PERMA Model highlights the importance of balance: work is no longer just about "success" but about creating a life that integrates purpose, growth, and well-being. By applying the PERMA principles, you can reframe your career journey to prioritize what truly sustains you – personally and professionally. For example, if meaning becomes a primary motivator, you might look for roles that allow you to contribute to social causes or mentor others, even if those roles don't come with traditional markers of success.
Both approaches suggest that professionals who understand and capitalize on their strengths are more likely to achieve their goals and find fulfillment in their work. While it's natural to work on areas for improvement, prioritizing strengths gives you a competitive edge, as these qualities make you unique.
Applying Your Core Strengths
For many professionals, the mid-career stage challenges understanding how to use their strengths to align with evolving career aspirations. Recognizing what you're good at is just the beginning – the key is to seek out roles and opportunities that allow you to apply these strengths meaningfully.
Reflecting on past accomplishments can help you uncover patterns in your strengths. Consider moments of achievement that have satisfied you: What abilities consistently contributed to these successes? Identifying these core strengths can reveal the unique blend of skills that sets you apart and drives your best work.
Once you've clarified your strengths, consider how you might adjust your current role or responsibilities to emphasize them. Try to prioritize tasks matching your natural abilities or seek projects that make you feel engaged. Align your daily work with these core strengths for a greater sense of purpose and professional impact.
Finally, look ahead for opportunities where your strengths can truly flourish. Pursue projects, collaborations, or roles that maximize what you do best. Working from a place of strength, you're more likely to find both satisfaction and long-term career alignment, building a fulfilling path forward.
Strength-Based Reflection
To fully leverage your strengths, use the following exercises to reflect on past accomplishments, identify your signature strengths, and strategize ways to apply them to future career opportunities. These exercises will help boost your confidence and ensure your career goals align with your natural talents, fostering a path that feels both fulfilling and impactful.
EXERCISE 7. SEVEN SUCCESSES
This exercise helps you reflect on your past successes and identify the strengths you utilized in those moments. Draw a 7-column matrix. List seven successes, one in each column. They can be personal or professional. In each column, list five key issues that made this success possible. In the diagram below, most of the attributes listed are not straightforward skills but more like characteristics. However, they are relatively easy to operationalize into skills.
A few examples:
having a good teacher ⇨ ability to find the right people [for specific tasks]
systematic writing process ⇨ ability to build up systems that contribute to effective execution
rich theoretical background ⇨ ability to well-grounded decision-making based on multidimensional research
For each success, ask yourself:
What strengths did I use to achieve this?
How did I overcome obstacles or challenges using my unique abilities?
This exercise should unveil some skills you usually wouldn't notice or recognize. If you have some luck, you will see recurring issues in your matrix. Those are your best strengths, and you should craft them carefully. They are valuable, mainly because they come from inside of you and (may) have, therefore, a deep personal touch that is hard for others to copy.
EXERCISE 8. SOAR
The SOAR model is a positive and strengths-based approach to personal development, standing for Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results. This exercise builds on your identified strengths by helping you focus on using them to create opportunities and achieve meaningful outcomes.
Strengths: What are your greatest strengths? Consider the results of your Seven Successes exercise.
Opportunities: What opportunities exist that allow you to leverage these strengths?
Aspirations: What are your long-term career aspirations, and how do your strengths align with them?
Results: What tangible results will you achieve by focusing on your strengths in the opportunities you identified?
Write a SOAR analysis that connects your strengths to specific opportunities, aligning them with your aspirations. Identify the results you aim to achieve by strategically using your strengths in these areas.
EXERCISE 9. STRENGTH-BASED REFLECTION
This exercise encourages you to reflect on recent successes and identify the specific strengths that contributed to those achievements. Unlike the Seven Successes exercise, which takes a broader view, this exercise focuses on immediate, day-to-day successes and how they are leveraged for long-term growth.
Reflect on a recent project or task you completed:
What strengths did you rely on to succeed
How did these strengths help you navigate challenges or obstacles?
How can you use these strengths more intentionally in future projects?
Write a reflection identifying the strengths that led to that outcome. Use this insight to leverage these strengths in upcoming tasks or roles.
Identifying and leveraging your strengths is one of the most powerful ways to find fulfillment and success at mid-career. By focusing on what you do best rather than what you lack, you can align your career with your natural talents and create greater opportunities for long-term growth. Your strengths are not just the skills you've acquired but also the personal attributes that make you uniquely capable.
In the next chapter, we'll explore how your past experiences shape your current and future career development, providing insights into how you can apply lessons learned to create even greater success moving forward.
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCES
Reflecting on Past Experiences for Future Growth
By mid-career, your professional journey unfolds as a combination of successes, challenges, and setbacks. Each experience, whether positive or negative, holds valuable insights. However, the actual value lies in experiencing these moments and reflecting on them to extract lessons for the future.
In the busyness of professional life, it's easy to overlook this reflection. Yet pausing to analyze your career history allows you to identify patterns, understand your responses to challenges, and recognize the factors that contribute to your success. Through structured reflection, you can uncover both strengths and areas for growth, enabling more intentional career choices moving forward.
This section introduces tools to help you systematically reflect on your professional journey. We'll explore structured frameworks that transform experiences into actionable insights, ensuring that each phase of your career contributes to informed decisions and continued development.
To better understand how reflection can enhance career development, we first turn to David Kolb's experiential learning theory, continue with Donald Schon's reflection-in/on-action model, and finish with Gibbs' Reflective Cycle.
Experiential Learning and Career Development
Kolb's model of experiential learning describes a cycle that deepens understanding through a sequence of stages:
Concrete Experience involves direct engagement with a situation or task. Learning begins with personal involvement: a specific challenge, project, or new skill you tackle firsthand. By immersing yourself fully in the experience, you gather raw insights that lay the groundwork for deeper understanding.
After the experience, Reflective Observation calls for introspection. Reflect on what happened, examining what went well, what didn't, and why. This observation period encourages you to explore the nuances of your experience, helping you uncover valuable insights that might otherwise go unnoticed.
In Abstract Conceptualization, you move from reflection to theory-building. Drawing conclusions and identifying overarching lessons, you develop principles or mental frameworks. This conceptualization enables you to make sense of the experience in a structured way, forming ideas that you can apply to future situations.
Finally, Active Experimentation prompts you to put your insights to the test. Using what you've learned, you adjust your approach, experimenting with new actions or decisions. This stage brings the learning cycle full circle as you apply your understanding to real-world scenarios, allowing your growth to continue through ongoing, iterative learning. At mid-career, you have a wealth of experiences to reflect on. Kolb's cycle emphasizes that learning from experience demands thoughtful reflection and deliberate application of what you've learned.
Think about a mid-career manager assigned to lead a new product development project for the first time (Concrete Experience). After completing the project, she reflects on the challenges she faced, such as managing team dynamics and meeting tight deadlines (Reflective Observation). She then identifies key lessons, such as the importance of clear communication and stakeholder alignment (Abstract Conceptualization). In her next project, she applies these insights by setting clearer expectations from the start, improving collaboration and efficiency (Active Experimentation).
Adapting and Learning in the Moment
Donald Schön’s reflection-in-action model underscores the importance of real-time reflection. Instead of waiting until after an event has passed, reflection-in-action encourages professionals to adapt and adjust in the moment. This approach is precious for problem-solving and creativity, helping you course-correct as you navigate challenges.
Reflection-in-action encourages continuous learning. At mid-career, this is crucial for professionals to stay competitive and relevant. Regularly reflecting on their actions and outcomes ensures they are constantly evolving, improving their practice, and staying ahead in their fields.
Imagine an executive during a high-stakes client presentation realizing that his prepared slides are not resonating with the audience. Instead of pushing through, he adapts in real time by shifting to a more conversational approach and addressing the client's concerns directly (Reflection-in-Action). This adjustment helps regain the audience's engagement and results in a successful negotiation. By staying flexible and thinking on his feet, he turns a potentially failed pitch into a winning opportunity.
Structured Reflection for Deeper Insights
While Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle emphasizes the importance of reflection as part of the learning process, Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle is a structured framework for deep reflection.
For mid-career professionals who have accumulated a wealth of experiences, Gibbs' model offers a practical tool to unpack past events systematically and derive clear lessons that can be applied moving forward. Gibbs' cycle consists of six stages:
1. Description
What happened? (Objective recount of the event)
2. Feelings
What were you thinking and feeling at the time? (Emotional reflection)
3. Evaluation
What was good or bad about the experience? (Assessment of positives and negatives)
4. Analysis
Why did things happen this way? (Understanding the reasons behind the outcome)
5. Conclusion
What else could you have done? (Reflecting on alternative approaches)
6. Action Plan
What would you do differently if the same situation arose again? (Concrete steps for future improvement)
Gibbs' cycle encourages you to examine your past experiences more deeply, going beyond a surface-level analysis. This approach can be precious when reflecting on setbacks or challenging career moments. For example, suppose a team leader launching a new workflow automation system and find employees struggling to adapt (Description). He initially feels frustrated, questioning whether the change was worth the effort (Feelings). Upon evaluation, he realizes that while the system has potential, insufficient training led to resistance (Evaluation 8 Analysis). He concludes that a phased approach with hands-on support might have worked better (Conclusion). For future implementations, he develops an action plan to include interactive training and feedback loops to ease transitions (Action Plan).
You can benefit from a comprehensive learning and reflection process using both Kolb's and Gibbs' models. Kolb's cycle focuses on active experimentation and continuous learning. In contrast, Gibbs' cycle deepens the reflective process by helping professionals analyze their experiences more holistically – addressing emotional responses and planning for future improvement.
Analyzing Your Professional Journey
At mid-career, you've likely encountered defining moments – events that have shaped your trajectory, challenged your assumptions, or unlocked new opportunities. These moments offer invaluable insights into who you are as a professional and where your career might lead next. Reflecting on high and low points can reveal the essential experiences contributing to your current position. Often, successes and setbacks provide the most valuable lessons; reframing failures as learning opportunities is a powerful driver of future success.
One of the most impactful exercises at this stage is recognizing patterns in your journey. Particular strengths, challenges, or circumstances may have emerged repeatedly throughout your career, and identifying these patterns can help you understand where you excel, where you struggle, and how you can make more strategic decisions moving forward. Consider these questions as you reflect:
What have been your most significant achievements, and what patterns of strength or behavior contributed to them?
What challenges have recurred in your career, and what lessons can you draw from them?
How have setbacks shaped your growth, and in what ways did you adapt to overcome them?
By reflecting on your professional journey, you'll uncover recurring themes and patterns that have shaped your career, providing clarity for future decisions. The following exercises help you extract maximum value from these reflections, guiding you as you identify patterns and insights that can inform your next steps.
EXERCISE 10. CRITICAL CAREER REVIEW
Critical Career Review is a story you tell yourself (and others) about how your professional life has unfolded. It's a starting point when you create your career goals.
Take a larger piece of paper (a flipchart works best) and make a timeline portraying your working history: where you have been, titles you have held, tasks you've done, issues you've tackled, etc. The diagram on the next page illustrates how you can proceed from tangible facts to interpretative issues.
Then, you add details and perceptions to your timeline. You might add your views about
specific tasks that have been springboards for you
beneficial attributes you gained
value-adding or transferable skills or knowledge you obtained
lessons you learned and setbacks you won through
stakeholders and professional communities you got involved
more delicate issues like defining hours, unfreezing events, and moments of insights (for these, you might need someone to help or coach you), and so on. You get an even richer picture if you draw a parallel timeline of your life narrative, including your personal life, experiences, turning point incidents, and anchoring events. "Narrative me" is not constant; experiences, setbacks, changes, and surprises shape it.
What do you get from doing this exercise?
First, you form a rich picture of your professional and career development, which is a bedrock for further career aspirations. You may have noticed, e.g., specific patterns typical for your career.
Second, you get a vehicle to communicate your understanding of your professional value.
Third, this helps you make sense of your career thus far and enables you to figure out your work domain better.
EXERCISE 11. CAREER TIMELINE
A Career Timeline helps you assess key milestones, challenges, and achievements. The goal is to create a timeline of significant career events and reflect on the lessons learned from each experience.
Start by listing the most critical moments in your career. These could include promotions, project successes, job transitions, or significant challenges and failures. For each event, ask yourself:
What did I learn from this experience, and how has it influenced my growth?
How did this experience shape my career decisions or trajectory?
What strengths did I rely on, and what weaknesses became apparent?
How did this moment impact my confidence or sense of purpose in my work?
In what ways did this experience change my approach to future challenges?
Are there recurring themes or patterns that link these key moments?
This review will help you extract insights from your professional journey and recognize how past experiences have contributed to your growth.
EXERCISE 12. PATTERN IDENTIFICATION
Once you've completed a Career Timeline, it's time to dig deeper and identify recurring patterns in your career. These patterns could be related to your strengths, challenges, or external factors that have influenced your professional path.
For example, you might notice that you excel in leadership roles or thrive in creative problem-solving situations. On the other hand, you may find that particular challenges – such as navigating complex office dynamics – have surfaced repeatedly.
Reflect on five key moments from your career and identify any patterns or themes. Write down these patterns and consider how they can inform your decisions.
In this chapter, we've touched upon the role of setbacks in shaping your career path. Since career setbacks are a significant theme, we'll explore them in greater detail in Chapter 1.7. There, you'll find exercises to help you reframe challenges, draw valuable lessons, and turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.
Reflecting on past experiences is essential for mid-career growth. By thoughtfully analyzing your successes, setbacks, and career-defining moments, you gain insights that will inform your future choices and help you confidently navigate new challenges. Your career journey is not just about moving forward – it's about learning from where you've been and applying those lessons to create your desired future.
TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
Bridging Multiple Roles
At mid-career, your accumulated skills represent one of your most valuable assets. These transferable skills – abilities such as problem-solving, leadership, communication, or adaptability – transcend specific roles or industries. They are the foundation that allows you to move between contexts, take on new challenges, and reinvent your career when needed.
Whether navigating a role change, transitioning into a new industry, or seeking growth in your current position, recognizing and leveraging your transferable skills ensures your accumulated experience remains relevant and impactful. The key lies in identifying which of your skills have the greatest flexibility and aligning them with future opportunities.
Career Fit Through Skills and Personality
We can understand transferable skills through the lens of Transfer of Learning Theory, which refers to how skills, knowledge, and behaviors we have learned in one context can be applied to another. Edward Thorndike developed the Theory of identical Elements in the early 20th century, emphasizing that transfer occurs when there is a similarity between the learning context and the new situation. Transfer of Learning is a foundational concept in educational psychology. It is particularly relevant for mid-career professionals adapting to new roles, industries, or career paths. Transferring knowledge from one experience to another is a crucial skill that can make you more agile and resilient in the face of change.
As you progress through your career, you accumulate many experiences and skills. However, the key to career longevity and adaptability is recognizing transferable skills and applying them in different contexts. Transfer of Learning becomes a strategic tool to leverage your previous experiences effectively in new scenarios. It reduces the learning curve and allows you to bring added value to your new roles.
Aligning Role with Personality
John Holland's Career Theory, also known as the RIASEC model, posits that people are more satisfied and successful when they work in environments that match their personality types. Holland identified six personality types that influence career choices:
1. Realistic (e.g., engineering, mechanics).
2. Investigative (e.g., scientists, researchers).
3. Artistic (e.g., writers, designers).
4. Social (e.g., counselors, teachers).
5. Enterprising (e.g., entrepreneurs, managers).
6. Conventional (e.g., accountants, administrators).
At mid-career, professionals often re-evaluate their career satisfaction and may begin questioning whether their current roles align with their personality type. Holland's theory helps you identify environments where you will likely thrive based on your interests and characteristics and can guide you to
1. Align Roles with Personality
Understanding which of the six categories best fits your personality can help you match your career paths with environments that provide greater satisfaction and engagement.
2. Make Informed Career Transitions
Holland's theory can guide you to roles and industries that align more closely with your strengths and preferences as you seek new opportunities. By recognizing your personality type, you can avoid roles that may offer financial rewards but don't align with your intrinsic motivations.
3. Improve Career Satisfaction
Using Holland's model to assess career fit, you can better identify roles that suit your natural tendencies and interests, leading to greater long-term career satisfaction.
Holland's Career Theory is a self-awareness tool that helps you align your personal characteristics with your professional environment, leading to genuine career success, fulfillment, and engagement.
Leveraging Transferable Skills
Your transferable skills – horizontal or vertical – allow you to transition smoothly between roles and industries without starting from scratch. You can apply these skills in several ways:
Horizontally: Transferable skills can be used when moving from one role to another within a similar job family. For example, leadership and project management skills are highly relevant, whether managing teams in a tech company or a marketing agency.
Vertically: As you advance into roles with more responsibility, skills like strategic thinking and team management become even more valuable. As your career rises, these transferable skills allow you to oversee larger teams, manage complex projects, and contribute to broader organizational strategies.
Across industries: Transferable skills are essential when moving from one sector to another. For example, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving are just as important when managing a team in healthcare as they are in finance or technology. These skills transcend industry boundaries, giving you agility and adaptability.
Consider a professional moving from marketing to product management. The transferable skills – such as project management, team collaboration, and strategic planning – allow them to thrive in their new role. Similarly, moving from a technical to a leadership role will require transferable skills like decision-making and communication, which are universally applicable.
Understanding and developing transferable skills can be a powerful way to bridge multiple roles and adapt to new career opportunities. The following exercises guide you to reflect on the skills you've gained across different experiences, identify the most adaptable, and strategize how to apply them effectively in new contexts.
EXERCISE 13. TRANSFERABLE SKILLS SELF-ASSESSMENT
The first step in leveraging transferable skills is to identify them. Create an inventory of your transferable skills. Identify all you have used in different roles or industries and consider how they might apply to new contexts. This inventory helps you understand your current skills and how to apply them across different roles or industries.
