Step 1: Learn
No matter where you are in your career journey – new employee or seasoned professional, first days and weeks of a new role or several years in – you should always start from a place of learning. Every role and experience is an opportunity to learn about your strengths, interests, and what you do and don’t like about work so that you can use that information to make more informed decisions moving forward. And, it’s an opportunity to practice intentional learning about your role, your organization, and your industry and how these align with your strengths and interests.
Here are some tools to get started:
Use this worksheet to do some deep reflection on your WHY:
- What matters to you and how do those things drive your career decisions?
- Do your core values align with those of your organization and role?
- If not, what does that mean to you?
Intelligent Careers Competency Worksheet
Once you have spent some time reflecting on your WHY, use that information to fill out the Career Competencies worksheet. These three competencies come from research on Intelligent Careers and should be an ongoing reflective process with every new role and career stage.
- What is your why?
- What are those core values that drive your decisions?
- What do you need to know how to do to be successful where you are now, and what might you need for the next step?
- Who are the people who can help you to reflect on and work towards these items?
If you can’t fill out the Knowing How and Knowing Whom sections of the worksheet yet, keep going through the LEARN model and come back to this step when you have more information.
Read this piece on How to Start Work with a 30-60-90 day mindset. Especially if you are just starting a role, think about what you need to learn – about the organization, about your role, about structures and systems – in order to be successful. Once you have finished the article, spend time on the 30-60-90 day goal-setting worksheet to set some intentions for the next few months.
Watch the following short webinar on how to start work well, including goal-setting, finding your people, and more!
Another tool that can support intentional learning is the Clifton Strengths assessment, which you can purchase and take here. Much like with the values assessment, this is a great tool to think about your core strengths and how you use them in your workplace, and places you might make better use of them. Is your work and workplace aligned with your strengths?
Note that this is a fee-based assessment; with your registration fee you get access to the assessment, personalized reports on your strengths, access to an online learning module and other supporting resources, and a copy of the StrengthsFinder 2.0 e-book. To further discuss your strengths, you can request an individual coaching conversation with our office here.
AI can be a great tool to use as a career thought partner. Check out the following AI prompts that you can use to help you move through Step 1 of the LEARN Model as you consider your values and skills within the context of your current job role and organization.
Task (What you’re trying to accomplish in partnership with AI): Reflection, brainstorming
AI Strengths (How AI can serve as your thought partner): Summarizing, rapid scanning, asking questions
Human Strengths (What you bring to the task that AI can’t do): Critical thinking, meaning-making, contextual judgment, decision-making
Prompts for Values Exploration:
- List 3 specific meaningful work accomplishments from your past (can copy/paste from your resume bullet points). Then, enter this prompt – “Based on these experiences, suggest possible work values that might be important to me.” You can select, reject, or redefine the values suggested. Reflect on your own: Which values feel most authentic? Are there patterns across my experiences?
- You can also input your current job description and use this prompt – “Based on this job description, tell me what my employer values the most for an employee in this role.”
- “Can you guide me through a reflection exercise to help me discern work values? I would like to do this in an ongoing conversational way – so please just ask me one question at a time and let me process and reflect in real time.”
Action Planning: Learn Self, Role, Organization
Now that you have spent some time reflecting on your WHY, your strengths, and the structures and expectations for success at your organization, take the time to complete this worksheet to identify some specific next steps before you move on to the next step: Evaluate Skills and Gaps.