The world is operating under a new norm. Working from home, flexible employment, organization re-structuring…… topics like these bring unprecedented change to our work-life. How to take control and manage your own career becomes relevant, perhaps more so now than ever. This article brings an overview of what behaviors we usually adopt to self-manage our career.
The idea of career self-management regained popularity in the psychology literature since the beginning of 21st century. In the broad range of researches around this topic, it became apparent that people do not have full decision power over their own desired career outcomes. Achieving the desired career outcomes depends on decisions made by certain influential people called gatekeepers. For instance, your manager appraises your performance, which is an important factor in promotion decisions or whether or not the company invests in your further study.
It seems like gatekeepers' decision-making is out of our control. The good news is, we could use a range of adaptive behaviors to influence the gatekeepers, and such behaviors are well-studied in the field of organizational psychology. Such behaviors are what we call "career self-management". When you read through the following, you would notice that you may already have adopted them without much conscious effort.
Positioning behaviors
These are behaviors we adopt strategically to ensure we have the necessary skills, experience and network to achieve our desired outcomes. We could be strategically choosing a mobility, including job moves, or accepting a promotion or new assignment. Another common one would be to strategically invest in our human capital. For example, many people choose to study an MBA when they want to prepare for a next step; Specialized professionals are motivated to get a professional qualification in order to be considered an important role. Some people choose to actively develop professional network, in order to build connection with influential people who could also be their gatekeepers. The last behavior would be job content innovation, where people changes the methodology used in job in order to learn new skills, gain expertise, or enlarge the circle of influence.
Influence behaviors
Influence behaviors are adopted in the attempt to influence the decisions of key gatekeepers. A common one would be self-promotion, where a person presents self in the most favorable and competent manner. This is a common behavior when decisions are largely based on the individual's claim without much objective data, for example during job interviews. We may also try to influence gatekeepers through ingratiation, attempting to make ourselves more attractive to gatekeepers. This is one of the motives behind people's social networking behaviors in the modern context, appealing to potential gatekeepers' personal preference. Since gatekeepers are usually more senior than us, upward influence is also an effective strategy. It could be in the form of revealing career expectations during one-to-ones, or negotiation of working conditions during the pandemic to balance the needs between work and personal life.
Boundary management
Career self-management is not purely limited in the professional side of us, gate-keepers could also be in our personal lives too. For example, working couple are often required to discuss, or even negotiate, with the partner on childcare needs. This kind of behavior is considered as boundary maintenance and the partner is the boundary gatekeeper. We also use role transition behaviors to help us shift between different "modes" of our lives. It could be reading the business news over breakfast, listening to music after work before getting home, etc. These behaviors help us withdraw from the work boundary, and move into the boundary of private life.
While we may already be adopting some of the above behaviors without much awareness, note that the key is how active and strategic we are when adopting them. It would be useful to reflect on our behaviors to see if we are using them effectively in order to achieve our desired outcome. An analysis of the environmental and personality impact on the behaviors could also give you insight on what are the drivers and barriers of your career self-management.
Project Timeout provides personal coaching service that focuses on the effectiveness of your career. With the help of personality assessment tools, we help you analyze what impacts your career self-management, and what behaviors help you manage your career development.
Reference
King, Z. (2004). Career self-management: Its nature, causes and consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 65(1), 112-133.
Lent, R.W. & Brown, S.D. (2013). Social Cognitive Model of Career Self-Management: Toward a Unifying View of Adaptive Career Behavior Across the Life Span. Journal of Counseling Psychology. 60(4), 557-568.
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