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Every position you hold will have something important to teach you. As such, you will need to reflect on the skills, education, and knowledge your current role affords you and how these will be of value in your next career transition. This is part of your pre-shift work. You will need to be clear on how your current position adds to your unique value proposition and how it builds on your strengths. This might include gaining enough experience in a specific area to show that you have the pre-requisite skills for your next position or it might entail the acquisition of specific courses or credentials. Whatever it might be, it is important to be clear about how your current role might springboard you into your next position. It might also assist you in completing your current transition such that you can focus on making the right transition at the right time and for the right reasons.
You will also need to consider what you want to achieve in your current position. This is not as straightforward as it might seem, as it can be hard to determine what this looks like. This relates to the footprint you want to leave within an organization. You will need to be honest about what you can hope to achieve. This means you will need some idea of what projects are in your realm of responsibility or scope of influence and the anticipated timelines for completion. Often project timelines and change management initiatives do not follow a straight line and there will be unanticipated obstacles in terms of finances, resourcing, and adoption of change initiatives. The scope of a project may change or people may leave or come into the organization, resulting in a change in team dynamics. What may have initially seemed like a small project with firm timelines for success might mushroom into a multi-year initiative with limited resources and waning interest and priority from executive leaders. Another consideration is that the project might require someone with a different set of skills to bring it to completion. Further, you might be better able to bring a project to completion in taking on a new and different position. The complexity of some of these considerations means you will need to speak to others and define what your role might be in important projects you are involved in or leading.
When it comes to transitions and pre-shiFt work, thinking about what you can learn in your current position and what footprint you want to leave in the organization are important considerations.
I look forward to any insights you might have!
Listen to She Knows ShiFt Podcast Episode Five: Have you learned or achieved enough to transition? now!
Don’t miss the last episodes on the She Knowns ShiFt podcast:
