How to influence and shape your career path

Welcome to the third of a series of articles based on a recent OxTalks podcast in which Chris Oxley (Managing Director, Oxley & Partners) and Bradley Honnor (MatchFit Managing Director) discuss leadership and development training.

In this third episode, Chris explores direction. He explores with Bradley the challenge that many of us face; we have good work habits, we are resilient, and we are consistent – and yet… we aren’t where we want to be with our work/ life/ relationships.

How can I work out where I want to get to?

Bradley explains the value of moving forwards, both in terms of learning but also as a prevention against inertia. He explains why waiting for a complete understanding of the goal may lead to indecision. The value of coaching for teams and individuals in determining direction is explored and how this complex topic requires a degree of self-awareness, reflection and acceptance of the value of feedback.

What next?

This episode wraps up with a discussion about how to take decisions forward – we know where we want to get to, so what do we need to do next? Bradley explains how the CLIMB programme works with teams and individuals to create pathways that will lead to high performance underpinned by key business metrics to track change and improvement.

Transcript

Chris: It sounds like a big part of this is forming good habits right? The consistency part. And that develops the resilience. I certainly noticed this in myself at times, and from other people that I’ve spoken to.

There are many individuals who want to work hard, but they’re almost directionless. They don’t know what to work hard on.

And I know there’s program that you’ve developed at MatchFit called the CLIMB program. Is that right?

Bradley: Two matters come to mind here. First of all, that can be a difficult  place to be. I remember that myself.

A good analogy is that I felt I was in a racing car and I was revving the engine, and I had the will to win the race, but I didn’t know where the race was taking place. I didn’t know what direction to go in. I wanted to be successful, but in what way and how, and that was a very frustrating space to be in.

And all I can advocate in that particular set of circumstances for someone is to find a way to move forward. Paralysis is the death of any development. It might not be your ideal direction. In fact it probably won’t be your ideal destination first time around. Many people do a number of things in their lives, me included. Working in different cultures and environments, and with different responsibilities.

But it’s the sense of moving forward and finding what you enjoy, what do you like, what does fit with you and what doesn’t.

So I’ve put my racing car into first gear and I’m speeding off. I’m starting to travel and to look at my route as I go, and the landscape changes. I’m seeing things on the horizon that I wouldn’t have seen had I not set off.

You really do have to push away and swim into the ocean to see the next land mass. That moving forward in some capacity is really beneficial.

So yes, the CLIMB program does encapsulate that ethos of: we are where we are today, but what does better look like? I’m a real advocate of let’s not wait until we see the whole vision in front of us. If we can do that, then fabulous. But sometimes, if we wait, that’s where indecision comes.

Chris: Let’s pull back a little bit and focus on that, because I think this is quite an important point we’ve almost stumbled across here, and I’m a fair believer in that as well.

It’s pick a direction, move forward, and the very least you will gain is knowledge. And I think it can be incredibly paralysing to some people to just constantly overthink a step on what way to go, without the realisation that actually, you will still gain knowledge going in this direction.

And I think a big part of this, in my personal experience, is having the courage to be very self aware of what do you actually want to achieve out of this?

And it can be difficult I think, to sit down and have that conversation with yourself. Is that right?

Bradley: When we think about development, we need to consider how important self reflection and self awareness are. And they are fundamental.

There’s the Johari Window model that suggests there are aspects of our personality that other people know about and I know about. There are aspects of my personality that maybe I know about and other people don’t know about. But there are also aspects of myself that nobody knows about, including myself. And there are other aspects that other people know about me, but I don’t know myself.

So we’ve really got to be open to feedback. We really need to be asking for and seeking feedback from other people so that that can increase our awareness.

And we need to avoid being defensive and shutting down feedback but open ourselves up to what we are hearing so we can learn and adapt. If we just plan and do without that review, that self reflection, we won’t learn. We will just keep doing the same thing over and over. So being open to the feedback of others is very important. And the more we throw ourselves into new experiences and move forward, as we’ve been talking about, the more feedback I get from myself about how I am dealing with those different situations. So those two things—that self reflection and the capability to have people give you feedback and not be defensive or justify the reasons why you did what you did, but just to hear that feedback and take what is useful for you and your own development—yeah, that’s fundamental.

Chris: Another guest of mine, a psychologist within sports, was talking about when you’re increasing resilience, specifically your performance under pressure, what you’re talking about there is the cognitive piece; the ability to review, develop and move forward. And unless you’re doing that piece, it doesn’t all come together as it needs to. It’s almost three steps there. Again, it’s coming from that behavioural science psychology that there’s so much evidence here that this is the process we need to go to, but it can be transferred to different areas and scenarios. It’s effectively maximising the human brain within a particular context; home, work, relationships, whatever it needs to be. But it seems imperative that the more and more I speak to experts such as yourself and the other individuals that I’ve had on there. So that it’s great to hear. When we’re looking at MatchFit, how do you explain that?

Bradley: We’re a niche consultancy focusing specifically on high performance. So very much in terms of what you just said: how do you define your performance currently, what criteria you’re using, and what is needed in order to move to the next stage of performance yourself or as a team or as an organisation.

And our role within that is to do some fact finding about what is it that people are saying about the current levels of performance of those individuals or teams or the organisation generally.

What do they feel would be the really beneficial things to look at in terms of what to engage in, to really maximise the opportunities to perform at a higher level.

And we then feedback those key themes from the analysis exercise with a view to facilitating workshops and individual coaching to enable those individuals, teams and organisations to move towards their priorities and start to think about what they need to do differently.

We hope that you enjoyed this conversation and remember look out for Episode 4 soon. You can listen to the whole conversation here The Transformative Impact of Personalised Development with Bradley Honnor