ALUMRISE

ALUMRISE Guest blogger Tanya Mehta is President and CEO of Transverse Leadership LLC. A leadership coach and consultant specializing in executive development, Tanya has special passion for coaching early career professionals looking to accelerate their leadership trajectory as well as women returning to the workforce.  Her 10+ years of expertise span talent development, succession planning, corporate training and executive education at leading corporations including Sun Microsystems, Hilton Hotels (the Waldorf-Astoria), The Walt Disney Corporation and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. Prior to founding Transverse, Tanya held the role of Director, Business Development at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (Executive Education) where she consulted with senior Fortune 500/Nasdaq 1000 leaders on a broad range of executive education needs for their senior teams and high potential leaders.

In this, the first part of a two-part series, Tanya explains how navigating career transition can be eased by answering 5 critical questions. Today we feature the two most critical questions for a professional to ask themselves.

NAVIGATING TIMES OF TRANSITION EFFECTIVELY
Critical Questions To Answer

Are you going through a tricky patch on the career front?  Don’t despair – what follows are some key questions you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself. Answering them with brutal honesty can very well help you get back on track sooner than you expect and perhaps even take your career in a direction that is more personally fulfilling and to heights you never imagined.

 1. “Do I really know what makes me tick?”
 
Anyone laid-off, on boarding after maternity leave or trying to break into a new industry can identify with the rollercoaster of frustration, exhaustion and (hopefully) eventual euphoria that major career transitions often bring with them.  If you can look past the tumult of these phases, one gift that emerges is that of time. A departure from the daily grind enables you to reflect and focus and presents a valuable opportunity to uncover what really makes you tick!  Now I don’t mean to make this sound simplistic because no one I have ever coached or worked with loves every aspect of their job.  However, the role to which you devote the majority of your waking hours has to provide some innate happiness and deep sense of purpose – you will never be really great or motivate others to be really great at something you are miserable doing.
 
You might have been working in the same industry for the last decade but what aspects of your work did you really love? What kind of role would make you feel fulfilled? How do you visualize your professional life 10 years from now? Have the audacity to dream about how you could earn a paycheck doing what you love.  Don’t despair if you feel like a totally blank slate when asking yourself the question of what really makes you tick.  Leverage the knowledge that close friends and colleagues have of your talents and strengths and test the waters through a range of short term projects.   For additional perspective consider taking a leadership assessment or working with a career coach.  It does take effort to uncover the answer — the operative point is to have the courage to seek it.  
 
 
2. “Do I have a clear sense of bridge jobs and mid range career goals?”
 
Winston Churchill once said “success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  Oftentimes people feel paralyzed by career transitions because their expectations are out of touch with the reality of their situation and the broader economic landscape.  Focusing on your vision is vital but you are not going to get your dream job as a fashion buyer right out of undergrad or your story on the front page of the New York Times because you are a stellar writer.
 
Every career path from medicine to management consulting has rites of passage – you have to have the patience and use critical experiences to learn and grow while keeping your eye on the ultimate goal.  Be proactive about figuring out what the key stepping stones to your dream or “destination” job are.  The best way to do this is to talk to as many people doing the kind of work you aspire to do and ask very specific questions.  How did they start out?  What did they wish they had known?  What were the most critical learning’s they had in their early roles?  Where do they think the industry is heading? Using this information, you need to develop a very clear set of actionable mid range goals and target bridge jobs. 

Look out for a follow up post next week, featuring three additional key questions on navigating change. You can check out a detailed spotlight on Tanya and her services at www.alumrise.com