CPP Icon Success

Peter Drucker and Career Exploration

written by Mike Shur

One of the most emotional and impactful applications of type is career exploration. Finding a job and a career that are satisfying, help us be productive, and still pay the bills, is easy for the lucky few but can be a soul-wrenching journey for many. CareerBuilder.com was the latest entrant into the high-stakes Super Bowl commercial casino where Monster.com and other job search sites have bet big before. One of CareerBuilder’s ads shows a woman sitting at her work desk in front of a computer when suddenly something begins to writhe in her chest. After a few moments of struggle, her heart makes its way out of her chest, hops down to the floor, and boldly proceeds to pad down the hall on little gristly feet into her boss’ office. There it presents the boss with official notice — “I quit” it says. Finally, the liberated heart streaks out of the office into a brighter future. “Follow your heart,” the commercial counsels.

It makes for a cute ad and probably drives site traffic, but what if your heart is leading you on a wild goose chase through job #5 in the last 3 years. How does one actually go about building the career one is dreaming of? Peter Drucker, legendary management consultant, offers not just words of wisdom, but strategies to help people choose a career and a work environment that suits them best. His article titled “Managing Oneself” was published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999, and laid out an approach that each knowledge worker can use to evaluate themselves, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and chart a course to the Big Rock Candy Career Mountain. What does this have to do with type and personal development? Quite a bit as we’ll see.

Drucker acknowledges that the days when companies took care of their employees “from cradle to grave”, from the first stock room assignment through the gold watch presentation ceremony thirty years later, are long gone. While there’s more opportunity than ever, companies no longer manage their employees’ careers. “We must each be our own chief executive officer,” says Drucker.

“How do I do that?” you may wonder. Drucker’s article lays out five questions to ask oneself when building a life of excellence.

1. What are my strengths?

Success must be built on a person’s strengths. Although showing up one’s weaknesses may be necessary, lasting achievement can only be built on our strengths and more highly developed skills.

2. How do I work?

Does stress energize you or do you need planning and structure to be effective? You read information to process it best or do group discussions facilitate better understanding and retention? Finding the right working environment for you can make a big difference in leading to your success.

3. What are my values?

When your work is aligned with your values you will likely excel and be a high achiever. If however the values are misaligned then you will run into frustration and lower performance.

4. Where do I belong?

Taking stock of your strengths and preferences allows you to choose an environment where you operate at your best and your contributions are most valued.

5. What can I contribute?

In the past organizations defined the contributions their employees made more clearly, and sometimes narrowly. Today employees, especially knowledge workers, have choices as to how they can best contribute. Based on your self-knowledge you can determine how best to contribute to your organization’s efforts.

(The article is available at the official HBR site and at this site as a PDF.)

“Managing Oneself” discusses a number of techniques of learning about oneself, including the use of “feedback analysis“, and it naturally leads to personality assessments as sources of information about an individual. The article does not explicitly mention any given assessment, but I can’t help but think of the extensive use of the MBTI(r) assessment as well as the Strong Interest Inventory(r) that career counselors rely on to give both content and structure to career builders about their personal preferences as well as their prefered occupations, learning styles, and working environments.

Drucker makes the good point that we are not always the best judges of our abilities and behaviors and that is why objective observation using feedback analysis can be so valuable in getting to know ourselves. Personality assessments take this personal knowledge one step further by helping individuals to place themselves in a wider context and gives people a common vocabulary to talk about themselves and one another in a value-neutral manner.

I would enjoy hearing other perspectives on career building and exploring as well as feedback on the article from anyone who’s read it.

Happy career hunting,