Career Success

Kaushik left a comment on my previous post about Career shaper research with CCL's research on Career Success.

I would refer to one of CCL's research (very old, but still valid) on Career Success Maps (CSM). Its a unique way which combines choice of careers and being successful in them. As a summary, it highlights 5 different CSMs :
1) Free : people chosing professions that provide them the freedom to be creative and effective. Eg: Ad agencies and consultants (like me;))
2) Ahead : People seeing substantial value in hierarchical growth and regard levels as a strong motive in the choice of careers. Brand is very important for them. eg: People seeking to work in large corporates
c) High : People who love excitement, who really dont care about beurecracy, structure, growth as long as they get to do exciting stuff. They usually figure out where the action is and land up there. Eg: some research organizatons
d)Secure : People who seek security in their job. Dont really care if theres no growth, no excitement etc.
e)Balance : For these people job is just one element of their larger life. They are usually good in all their roles as an employee, spouse, friend, social contributor etc

It's interesting to also compare CCL's research with Butler and Waldroop's earlier work on "job sculpting" (Nimmy's also blogged about it here)

Of the following eight life interests, 1-3 usually emerge as motivations at work -- and sources for job satisfaction:

• Application of Technology These people love the inner workings of things.
• Quantitative Analysis These people gravitate toward the numbers and use them creatively to analyze data. They excel at analyzing ratios, customer research data, etc.
• Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking These people love nothing better than relating concepts to pursue higher levels of understanding.
• Creative Production These imaginative, out-of-the-box thinkers love to start things when there are lots of unknowns and they can make something out of nothing. They thrive on newness, whether it�s a product or a process.
• Counseling and Mentoring For some, nothing is more enjoyable than teaching. Whether they do it because they enjoy watching others succeed, or because they want to be appreciated, they see social value in their cause.
• Managing People and Relationships Wanting to manage people is different than wanting to counsel and mentor. The focus here is on outcomes, and these people enjoy working day-to-day with others. They like to motivate, organize and direct.
• Enterprise Control These are the go-to people who love being responsible for the direction of a team or project. They specifically like being in charge, although they may not like managing people. Their main thrill is in "owning" the transaction (i.e. being accountable).
• Influence Through Language and Ideas These people enjoy storytelling, negotiating and persuading just for the sake of it. They are most fulfilled when they are communicating (speaking or writing). Even if no one is listening, they are practicing their skills through self-talk.

Career Success and Life Interests. What a heady combination. By the way, regular readers of this blog can surely point out my life interests I guess :-) !