Choosing a career path (or
changing one) is, for most of us, a confusing and anxiety-riddled
experience. Many will tell you to “follow your passion” or “do what you
love,” but as Cal Newport argues in So Good They Can’t Ignore You, this
is not very useful advice. When I graduated from college, I liked lots
of things. But love? Passion? That would have been seriously overstating
it.
We all want to choose a career that will
make us happy, but how can we know what that will be? Research suggests
that human beings are remarkably bad at predicting how they will feel
when doing something in the future. It’s not hard to find someone who
started out thinking that they would love their chosen profession, only
to wind up hating it. In fairness, how are you supposed to know if you
will be happy as an investment banker, or an artist, or a professor, if
you haven’t actually done any of these things yet? Who has ever, in the
history of mankind, taken a job and had it turn out exactly as they
imagined it would?
So if passion and expected happiness
can’t be your guides, what can be? Well, you can begin by choosing a
career that fits well with your skills and values. Since you actually
have some sense of what those are (hopefully), this is a good starting
place.
But a bit less obviously — though just as
important — you also want to choose an occupation that provides a good
motivational fit for you as well.
There are two ways you can be motivated to reach your goals.
Some of us tend to see our goals (at work
and in life) as opportunities for advancement, achievement and rewards.
We think about what we might gain if we are successful in reaching
them. If you are someone who sees your goals this way, you have what’s
called a promotion focus.
The rest of us see our goals as being
about security — about not losing everything we’ve worked so hard for.
When you are prevention-focused, you want to avoid danger, fulfill your
responsibilities, and be someone people can count on. You want to keep
things running smoothly.
Everyone is motivated by both promotion
and prevention, but we also tend to have a dominant motivational focus
in particular domains of life, like work, love, and parenting. What’s
essential to understand is that promotion and prevention-focused people
have — because of their different motivations — distinct strengths and
weaknesses. To give you a flavor of what I mean:
Promotion- focused people excel at:
•Creativity & innovation
•Seizing opportunities to get ahead
•Embracing risk
•Working quickly
•Generating lots of options and alternatives
•Abstract thinking
(Unfortunately, they are also more error-prone, overly-optimistic, and more likely to take risks that land them in hot water)
Prevention-focused people excel at:
•Thoroughness and being detail-oriented
•Analytical thinking and reasoning
•Planning
•Accuracy (working flawlessly)
•Reliability
•Anticipating problems
(Unfortunately, they are also wary of change or taking chances, rigid, and work more slowly. Diligence takes time.)
By now you probably have a sense of your own focus in the workplace, but if you don’t, try our free online assessment.
Knowing your dominant focus, you can now
evaluate how well-suited you are motivationally to different kinds of
careers, or different positions in your organization. More than a decade
of research shows that when people experience a fit between their own
motivation and the way they work, they are not only more effective, but
they also find their work more interesting and engaging, and value it
more.
If you are promotion-focused, look for
jobs that offer advancement and growth. Consider fast-paced industries
where products and services are rapidly changing, and where the ability
to identify opportunities will be essential, like the tech sector or
social media. To use a sports metaphor, look for a career where you get
to play offense — where boldness, speed, and outside-the-box thinking
pay off.
If you are prevention-focused, look for
jobs that offer you a sense of stability and security. You are good at
keeping things running, at handling complexity and always having a Plan B
(and C and D) ready at a moment’s notice. Consider careers where your
thoroughness and attention to detail are valued — for instance, as a
contract lawyer or data guru. You work best when you are playing defense
— you can spot a threat a mile away, and protect your company or client
from harm.
But what about entrepreneurs? you ask.
I’m thinking of starting my own business — which motivational focus is
best for that? For any successful venture, the truth is that you need
both promotion and prevention. An entrepreneur who is all promotion may
get her business going, but she probably won’t keep it going for long,
since she’ll be unprepared for the obstacles that will inevitably come
her way. And the prevention-focused entrepreneur will get so bogged down
worrying about obstacles that his business may never get off the ground
at all.
This is one of the reasons that good
partnerships can be so invaluable — it often takes a Steve Jobs to see a
product’s potential, and a Steve Wozniak to actually build it and make
it work. So if you are starting a new venture, make sure that you’ve got
a healthy balance of promotion and prevention thinking in the right
places.
Source: Harvard Business Review
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