Self-Directed Career Choices – Finding your motivational patterns
The idea behind this series of blogs was not to create a how to do it (if you thought it was, its likely you’ll be disappointed by now!) rather to find possibilities that fit for you.
What seems imperative is to find some ways to closely and honestly look at yourself and the options available to you. It is also vital that you find someone with whom you can share this part of your journey of discovery and action planning.
The last paragraph was lifted from one of our 1996 publications and unlike many things is as true today as it was then.
Whilst this blog is entitled self-directed career choices don’t confuse that with doing it by yourself. In our view, other people are the key to development, much more than written information. It is the model who inspires, the mentor who guides and influences, the example who makes us reconsider, the coach who helps us access our inner voice, the maven who connects us, the colleague who supports and challenges, who are the driving force in development. Career development especially benefits from joining with others in partnership, or small discussion groups, and we urge you to invite someone to join you in this process, to bounce ideas off and provide a sounding board. However committed you are, and you are the essential ingredient, if you do this entirely on your own, you will have a critical dimension missing.
So let’s move to motivational patterns. We all have them. Essential ways of working that we seek to repeat in variations of work and life. We are motivated to move toward key rewards and away from other stimuli. Motivation is not simply a black box of good and bad, but a complex inter-relationship. However we each seem to have underlying and enduring patterns of motivation and some very strong needs that we seek to fulfil.
We are often told by others what our motivations are, when I was younger I was told you’ll enjoy engineering because you like maths and physics – needless to say they were wrong. I respect engineering but it doesn’t motivate me. Being told whether by a person or by a profile can make us doubt and remain uncertain of taking our own responsibility to choose.
As a way of helping you find your patterns you might try this.
Identify six significant experiences you have had from any time in your life that are strongly related to the theme of your development theme or question. Select one from childhood, one adolescent, and four others that had real value and significance to you, both at the time and in retrospect. From these six pick four.
If working alone identify the key elements that emerge from each – don’t try and find them, see what comes. If you are working with someone, take 4 x 10 minutes to work with each and explore the similarities and differences that emerge and notice any patterns.
Do the above before moving to and reading the next section.
Consider:
· What part you played in initiating these situations, or not
· What setting was involved – aspects of the context?
o For instance, stable or unpredictable, varied or similar, is the context vital or incidental?
· What materials or resources were involved?
o Were the situations equipment dependent, did you control availability, were you self-reliant or dependent on others?
· What was so satisfying about each example?
o Preparation, aftermath, sense of achievement, others people involved, leading or following, etc?
· What else made it worthwhile?
· What feeling/s were associated with each example?
· Where else do you experience the same feeling?
o Other places, times, people, activities?
· What skills were being used?
This exercise may help you have an inkling of your motivational patterns, remember our pattern of motivation has a strong tendency to:
· Be enduring
· Remain essentially the same throughout life
· Be an internal force
· Control behaviour
· Influence how we do what we do and not the job description
· Be irresistible
Use the information to consider:
· Skills you like to use
· Settings or environments you like to work within
· Materials we like to work with
· A unique flavour of how we do things and interact
· An end result that rewards us
Until next time – travel light and be well. Next Insight - Exploring the latter phases of life and career development
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