Career fit is over, career belonging is the new reality
After a recent keynote, I spoke with a couple audience members about the topic of my next book, career belonging instead of career fit.
The moment I said those six words, their eyes lit up. I could tell they were hooked. I've seen this countless times because this short phrase nails a truth many of us workers are seeking.
Belonging is a bigger motivator and desire for people than fit, yet we talk about career fit all the time! We can't seem to help ourselves.
Maybe you're guilty of saying:
"Where do I fit in the workforce?"
"Let's find your fit."
"I wish I knew my fit."
"Why don't I fit?"
"Use this assessment to see how you fit."
Why do we use these expressions so much? It’s because we’ve been conditioned to say them. It’s how we reference a successful career. If you haven’t figured out your career fit, then it usually means there’s a problem to be solved.
However, finding fit is not career success in my estimation.
What is career fit?
Fit is about fitting in. Fit is about being who others want you to be.
Conversely, belonging is about being accepted for who you are.
Nobody "fits" a career anymore. It's like saying you can only wear one pair of clothes for the rest of your life. That's nonsense. People change styles and sizes all the time. Heck, sizes aren't even consistent across different brands. You find the pair of pants that works for your body, sizing is just a guide, everyone knows it's imperfect.
The same is true for job titles. They don’t mean the same thing across companies. You can have the same title as someone else, but that doesn’t mean your career looks the same or is the same as theirs.
Career fit is an old expression for when we could assess and place talent into roles, pathways, and positions that were simple, clear, straightforward and pre-determined by companies. That's not how the world works anymore.
Now, employees want it their way. They want to customize, individualize, and bring their sense of self and self-expression to their work. They want careers that belong to them and their dreams instead of fitting into boxes employers tell them to be.
What is career belonging?
Career belonging is a new idea. It means your career belongs to you, is defined by you, is aligned to your values, and consists of internal measures of success. When you’ve found career belonging, you know how you want to feel seen, known, and valued in your career, you can communicate that, and people accept you for it.
Your sense of career belonging impacts how well (and how quickly) you navigate and overcome career hurdles as well as your overall sense of wellbeing in your life. No matter what comes your way, the stronger career belonging you have, the more resilient you are to market forces and economic changes that may affect your career plans and trajectory.
When your career belongs to you, you can never lose it or have it taken from you. Only you can redirect or change it when you want to.
The new career reality
Our careers are not linear pathways heading towards a clear bullseye. Rather, our careers are a montage of seemingly fragmented experiences. Together, these fragments mean something unique to us and become part of our unique career path in this life.
(BTW Where your career is going and how to get there are totally different questions than what your career is, and those will be discussed in a separate post.)
Following someone else's career footsteps will never work for you if you believe in career belonging. You have to create your own career direction based on your unique talents and opportunities.
Career belonging is a tricky new reality when most of us have bought into the notion that careers are something you study for, grow into, and achieve by working in companies and climbing ladders. These old paradigms are dissolving as we speak.
Many of us as professionals only see ourselves they way we’re told we are in our jobs. When you’re hired for a position, you become that role until you are no longer that title. This is a veil we need to lift. We are more than our job titles and our careers belong to us.
Furthermore, employers aren't ready to understand career belonging because it’s a different way of managing, training, and motivating workers. It means managers have to ask employees new types of career development questions:
The new career questions
How do you see yourself in your work?
What does your career mean to you?
What do you value in your career?
Which experiences from your work history are part of your career and which aren’t?
What themes and patterns do you see emerging from your work history and how does that help you see what your career is about?
Old questions like, “Where do you see yourself going in the next 5 to 10 years?” or “What’s your next step you’d like to achieve?” don’t apply to career belonging.
Career belonging is about feelings of self-worth and self-confidence that you’re doing what youre supposed to be doing. It’s about being being seen, known, and valued in your career. It’s not about the objective milestones or traditional measures of success.
When you’re not trying to build a formal career path and there is no linear goal, the old rulebook gets thrown out the window. Having freedom to assemble a career that’s comprised of multiple experiences, omni-directional opportunities and total autonomy completely challenges and changes what we think about in terms of our career growth and future.