Growth & the many paths for maximum impact.

In my profession, my main goal is to create a positive impact as a result of my work. What kind of impact? Positive, good, helpful, of service… How much impact? As much as I am capable of without losing life balance. As you may imagine, this definition offers little guidance about the direction I should grow and develop myself persoprofessionally (because for me, it’s hard to dissociate) so every year when the growth-development-talent-… review talk with my manager-mentor-team lead-… comes I find myself in the same landscape of uncertainty.

That being said, there are a few things that do work for me:

1. I believe that if I have clarity on my persoprofessional principles or beliefs, they should guide my journey successfully. This implies a blind faith in assuming that whatever destination these principles take me I should be satisfied. This allows me to navigate my path in a timely manner without committing to a single destination, but still be coherent in my actions.
   *Worth noting: these principles or beliefs need to be under constant scrutiny to ensure that they stand true and work for me. I have found it pretty useful to combine them with mid-term goals in the one to three-year range.
2. I have learned to find guidance in understanding the context I am embedded in — the more I leverage the contextual opportunities for growth the more effective my efforts will be, and better the outcomes. I have failed a few times in trying to develop a particular skill in a context that doesn’t allow its practice and had to swallow the frustration — not good. On the other hand, I have developed unexpected skills just because the context rewarded them that have proven to be really valuable. Maybe not the skills I was after, but that’s another discussion.
3. Finally (and obviously), the more I align my actions with my beliefs there more successful I will be in my enterprises, whichever those may be.

Recently, approaching my growth-development-talent-… review talk, I may have done some breakthroughs. For starters, I’ve stopped trying to define a development plan based on others’ approach, and I’ve tuned into my own ways of doing things persoprofessionally. Second, I’ve stripped out role names and focused on tasks, so I can let go of unnecessary restrictions (that my context doesn’t require at the moment). And finally, I drew a conceptual framework — of course.

My very-WIP-but-useful framework for persoprofessional evolution.

My framework builds on three persoprofessional premises:

1. That my end goal is to maximise positive impact through my work, without losing life balance.
2. That I believe that the best way to do this is by aligning my actions with my beliefs (thing number 3 that works for me).
3. That there are multiple paths to achieve maximum impact aligning actions and beliefs.

The framework is defined by four different layers:

1. My beliefs: the layer that is closer to my identity and the core of my self. These are the things that I believe in, that I aspire to, values, ideals, purpose… a bit of a mixed bag to be honest but it worked out.
2. My abilities: these are the things that I believe that I am naturally good at — nature or nurture… who knows. The fact is that these are abilities that make me feel good when I’m making use of them, abilities that lead me easily to a flow state, and often result in success.
3. My tasks: these are the things that I do on a regular basis as part of my day-to-day work, the practical activities that I do to get my job done. Some of these tasks may be abilities in execution, some others not.
4. My mission: this is the goal that I share with my team, my project or my organisation. Though I it’s better to be a bit more time specific and concrete in this layer, I found myself writing purpose-like statements. But, in this layer, purposes are shared and not individual — those would go into your beliefs layer. If individual purpose matches with the shared purpose of my team, we’ve got a match!

If you want to give it a go, the idea is that you write down your beliefs, your abilities, the tasks you do and your mission on the map and reflect on it. Look into the alignment between the different elements, assess the gaps, and consider the value of the different elements for you. If my hypothesis stands true, the more coherent and complete your path is, the more impact you’ll achieve.

When working out the framework there are a few considerations that you can play with:

1. For starters, maybe obvious but worth pointing out, you can use the framework to either assess your current position or look into your future aspirations. You probably want to do both.
2. There are multiple paths to connect your beliefs with impact. Some of them will take more effort and time than others, but they may be all valid for you. It will be up to you to decide which path is more worth it considering your available resources.
3. To build a path you can use skills that you’d like to acquire in the future. This can be super helpful to decide what to learn next.
4. You can use the tasks layer to think about things you’d like to do more or things you’d like to do less. This consideration may be helpful for you to (later down the line) define the flavour of your current role, find a new role that suits your aspirations better, or even define you’re own, brand new role (like all the creative industry does, apparently).
5. The level of definition is up to you. Keep this in mind especially when considering your tasks — no need to list all the things that you do, but make sure you consider those activities that you find more value in and the ones that you don’t.

Now, coming to the end, when starting to settle on a growth path, there are a couple of critical things you’ll need to ask yourself:

1. How straight does the line feel? Not how straight does it look like — how does it feel in your guts? From beliefs to mission, does it make sense? Does it motivate you? Does it make you feel courageous? Scared? Sceptic? Is it something new for you? Unexpected perhaps?
2. Does your current position allow for the path you’ve plotted? Does your context support your growth in the way you’d like to? This question can be tough to ask because the answer may have dramatic consequences but, in my book, totally worth the risk.

From here on, it’s up to you to take action and navigate your options to land on your new path. The good thing about this framework is that it’s for your self-reflection and, although you can talk about it with your manager-mentor-team lead-…, you don’t need anyone but yourself to agree.

Wroth pointing out that I’m calling it my framework — and not a framework — because I did it for myself and it’s based on my world-view but I hope you may find some inspiration in it and get some clarity for your next growth-development-talent-… review talk with my manager-mentor-team lead-…