Asking for and receiving career advice can always be a tricky proposition. We often ask for help when we’re stuck in the muck or otherwise when we’re most confused. And then when we start collecting advice from people we trust or believe to be fairly smart individuals and we only get more confused. It shouldn’t be surprising though…everyone has an opinion, right? But what complicates things is what sits behind those opinions: motives. These motives can be positive (think about a parent who wants their child to succeed or a spouse who wants their significant other to be happy or a manager who wants their employee to advance their skills). And we all know examples of people who express motives that aren’t quite so well-intentioned.

The problem is that motives are often more focused on the desires of the advice-giver than the advice-seeker. That’s just human nature. Anthony Balderrama at CareerBuilder.com writes:

Of surveyed advertising and marketing executives, 58 percent say co-workers gave them bad career advice. Bosses didn’t fare much better, as 54 percent blame them for bad career advice. Parents and relatives are better career counselors, but 35 percent of surveyed executives received unsatisfactory guidance from them. Thirty percent of spouses and significant others are blamed for bad advice (and probably had to sleep on the couch at some point). Mentors have the best record for dispensing advice, as only 21 percent have the finger pointed at them.

He goes on to introduce some tips from Donna Farrugia, Executive Director of The Creative Group, who notes that it’s important to always evaluate the motives of the advice giver.

In addition to those tips, I’d also suggest a couple of other ideas:

1. I think there’s some wisdom to Chesterton’s approach. If not actually doing the opposite, then at least contemplating whether there’s a potential solution there.

2. Even more importantly, we need to own our decision-making process. It’s okay to collect advice, but committed action needs to come from us. Deep down, we do know what we want.

What are your thoughts? Any experience in getting good (or bad) career advice?

photo credit: ambergris (via Flickr)

How does my career path relate to my current job?
How does my current job relate to my graduate work in business anthropology?
How does my graduate work relate to Bailey WorkPlay?
How does Bailey WorkPlay relate to my career path?
…and so the cycle continues.

Much of the confusion lies in that word ‘job’. I often wonder how the work I do daily relates to where I’m going in my professional life. Don’t get me wrong…I enjoy what I do. Yet, there’s little of the business anthropology that I’m being trained to do and the employee engagement that embodies the focus of Bailey WorkPlay. How does all of this integrate? Or is that just the technicolor dream of a guy who is often accused of being a crazy idealist?

Let’s start with the whole notion of a job. It’s a word that carries some fairly crappy baggage…and more often than not we help pack its bags. By taking the small view of a job, we easily lose sight of our greater professional purpose. Pamela smartly points out:

When you focus first on the perfect job, you automatically narrow your opportunities to jobs you are familiar with. Jobs are temporary things, often enticing on paper until you realize that as soon as you get comfortable in your position, it will change, your boss will change, your team will change or your organization will change. That is just the nature of business. Therefore if you go into a job excited by the position or the person you will be working for and not the work itself, you often set yourself up to be disappointed.

Instead, she encourages us to think about our ‘life’s work’ instead. I’ve been mulling over my own life’s work (or what I tend to think of as a calling) ever since I left college. There are days when I think I have it all figured out only to have something happen that puts my idea of a calling in doubt. Thanks to Pamela I think I now know what happened: I focused a bit too much on the job details of the calling. I know…strangely paradoxical.

Now I have the beginnings of a new perspective on the question of my own life’s work. Where the core of Pamela’s life’s work is transformational, I believe mine is relational. You can see this in the questions I pose to myself above. It’s one of the reasons I chose anthropology since so much of it involves intensive study of human relations. I love taking ideas and seeing how they relate to each other. I love bringing people and ideas together and then helping them see the relationships. I love working in organizations and helping leaders better relate to their employees and customers. This is the core purpose behind my work in business anthropology and Bailey WorkPlay.

And knowing this, I too can be in occasionally rough situations in my job and still remain focused on my core passion of relationships. Even when I’m not actually doing business anthropology or employee engagement, I am helping to generate relationships between people, ideas, and actions every day.

So…here’s a gentle challenge for this week. If you’re struggling to figure out how your job, career path, and life’s work relate to each other, take some time and reflect on the exercise at the end of Pamela’s post. Then come back and share what you believe is your life’s work. I’d love to hear about it and know what I can do to support you.