How To Influence Your Professional Destiny

As a leadership coaching director, Andrea Davies of AED Leadership Dynamics, supports CEOs and executive directors in considering the future direction of their businesses, understanding their own leadership style and helping to build personal career plans. Here she encourages you to consider how you can more effectively plot their own career path

- Andrea Davies

IN childhood we all have unconstrained, magical dreams of ‘What I want to be when I grow up’. Many people go on to successfully realise those ambitions. But, on that professional journey, people often face several key decisions, when they recognise they have an opportunity to steer and influence the course of their career path.

Clarity of thought is critical at these times, so many business professionals seek the advice and support of a coaching director to help them articulate their aspirations, define their core capabilities, and explore potential options for success.

The following approach has proved helpful to many people for reflecting on their career to date and informing their development plan for career progression. I hope it may prove helpful to you in your own career planning.

THE FUNDAMENTALS 

Which core values are important to you in achieving balance in your professional and personal life? Our individual thinking is often considered to be a product of our nature, cultural heritage, the influence of people pivotal in our upbringing and our own life experiences. This life-long learning and the insights we gain over time, help to form the personal values that make us special and unique. These values also help to guide our decisions relating to the people and things that are most important to us, and for what we believe creates balance and fulfilment in our lives. As work is an integral part of everyday life, people often talk about their desire to achieve the ideal work/life balance. You may wish to ask yourself, which elements of what you do help to contribute to a feeling of satisfaction in your own professional and personal life?