Happy New Year! I hope 2025 offers great opportunities for your development and career success.
Career Management is an ongoing process. You will likely experience multiple career transitions and many job changes in your lifetime. Women experience more frequent career disruptions for many reasons but especially due to familial status when caregiving for younger or older relatives. You can make your career transitions smoother by taking yourself through the A.S.T.E.R. Career Model as soon as you recognize that change is on the horizon. This could be rumors of an impending company reorganization or realizing that your current role no longer serves you.
This is the next to last blog of a series addressing each chapter of The Purple Parachute: A Woman’s Guide to Navigating the Winds of Career Change.
If you want to start from the beginning, this link will take you to the first one.
CAREER TRANSITION IS A REPEATABLE PROCESS
Chapter Twelve, titled Repeat The Process, is short but very important. It focuses on transition because that is the process that reoccurs. With this Chapter, we have come to the last letter of the A.S.T.E.R. Career Model acronym. The “R” stands for Repeat because you may need to revisit this process often during your career.
As William Bridges teaches us in his influential book Transitions, there is an event and your experience when you go through any transition. The event could be a layoff, divorce, or something else. The experience is how you emotionally move through the transition. No matter the event, it’s important to let yourself grieve and embrace this ending to begin anew. In between the end and the new start is a thing called The Neutral Zone, which is a necessary but uncomfortable step in the transition process.
Another well-known figure in the field of career development is Nancy Schlossberg, and her Schlossberg Transition Theory can easily be applied to career transitions. The major thrust of her model involves the 4 S’s that need to be addressed when someone is going through a transition: situation, self, support, and strategies.
Beyond these two useful theories, general guidance suggests you should seek support, practice self-compassion, and take time to reflect during any transition process. The act of contemplation is where The Purple Parachute begins. Taking stock of your V.I.N.E.S. (Values, Interests, Natural Disposition, Exceptional Strengths, and Skills) starts your assessment phase to grow self-awareness about what future possibilities feel right as the next step.
ONGOING CAREER MANAGEMENT
Often change happens faster than we wish but if you feel career change is happening too slowly, ask yourself these five questions:
1) Am I getting bored with the skills I constantly use in this job?
2) Am I fulfilled in my work role? If not, what is missing?
3) Are there more career experiences I would like to have in the future? What are they?
4) Am I contributing to a mission I believe in? Am I being recognized for my contribution?
5) Do I have purpose in my work?
It’s a good idea to periodically ask yourself questions about where you are in your career.
This Chapter shares nine questions to ask yourself when dreaming about your professional future and ongoing career management. Chapter Twelve also outlines twelve steps to increase your career resilience.
Another main constant of good career management is always making time to network. Next time, we will cover Chapter Thirteen on networking. This important topic is covered in the last chapter of The Purple Parachute and will be the focus of the last blog in this series.
P.S. Coming soon: in February, I will share some big news about Brand Career Management. Also, if you haven’t heard, The Purple Parachute is now an audiobook on Audible and recently won the Silver eLit Award for digital excellence in the category of self-help.
