Use This Framework To Define Career Success On Your Own Terms

Welcome to my series dedicated to helping you find your ideal job using my 5-Step Career Design Framework. This is the framework I used to go from stuck and frustrated in an unfulfilling legal career to feeling clear, confident, and fulfilled as an executive coach. You can download the Career Design Guide here. You can go to Part 1 of the series here.

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Are you struggling to figure out what you want to do next?

Do you find yourself overthinking and procrastinating trying to avoid making a mistake?

There is a reason why you feel stuck, why you don’t know what you want to do next, and why the fear of failure has you procrastinating rather than acting.

This lack of clarity and fear is a result of how little time you spend thinking about what you want and examining what holds you back. 

In this article, I want to introduce you to step 1 of my 5-Step Career Design Framework.

Step 1: Reflect

Step 1 Reflect is about getting to know yourself better, reflecting on what is important to you, and defining success on your own terms.

When I was an attorney looking to make a career change, I made the common mistake of jumping into the job search without really knowing what I wanted. I started looking and thought I would just find it based on what was out there.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, I found a bunch of things that I didn’t want or wasn’t excited about or felt I was not qualified to do.

I had to rethink my approach and reflect on what I truly wanted based on my desires not what was on Google or LinkedIn job boards. I had to start from the inside out rather than the outside in.

I read several books to help me with this internal reflection process and they all pointed to this idea of aligning your values with what you want to do. This approach intuitively felt right to me. 

Rather than chasing someone else’s idea of success I had to get clear on my own definition of success.

I reflected on my values, interests, strengths, and desired impact to point me toward what I wanted to do. I had to stop looking outward at what society said I should want and start looking inward to define success for myself.

Once I reflected on what I wanted I was able to cut out all the distractions and focus on careers that felt right to me. This was when I started to make progress in my job search and things started clicking.

VISI Framework

The VISI Framework uses four fundamental factors that contribute to meaningful work: Values, Interests, Strengths, and Impact.

Use these questions as a brainstorming exercise:

Values – Why do you do what you do? What motivates you?

Interests – What problems do you care about solving? What industries do you find most interesting?

Strengths – What are you good at and enjoy doing?

Impact – What kind of difference do you want to make?

The answers to these questions provide a great starting point to help you discover what is important to you, what you enjoy doing, and what might feel fulfilling.

To get more helpful VISI questions and learn the rest of the steps in my framework download the 5-Step Career Design Guide.

Follow my career change journey and learn about Step 2 Connect, how to use your network learn about different career options.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mo Chanmugham, Esq., ACC is a former entertainment lawyer turned executive career coach and the founder of MGC Coaching. He helps ambitious, purpose-driven professionals who are feeling stuck gain the clarity and confidence they need to find better jobs and become better leaders.