A Career Doesn’t Define You.
Insights and learnings from LMF Life Skills Summit 2022
When you meet someone, the first question you might ask will very likely be: ‘What’s your name?’
But what is the second question you ask someone you just met? In my experience, the second question is always ‘What do you do for a living?’
On average, a third of a person’s life is spent at work — although the numbers depend on your job role and the industry you work in. So my question is: Are we our job role?
On 21 July, the LMF Network organized an extremely comprehensive Life Skills Summit as part of its mission to build the careers and confidence of 25,000 people by 2025.
Don’t forget to sign up to get a FREE TRIAL on LMF’s new Career and Inclusion platform: https://bit.ly/3Q0xNq3
One of the panels was entitled “A career doesn’t define you”, and I couldn’t miss it!
Since our work approach is quickly changing, especially in the last few years, it is worth sharing some of this panel’s best takeaways.
In this panel, there were three exciting panellists:
- Sonal Shah is Vice President, Remediation Projects at Barclays and has worked in corporate for over 20 years ranging from Telecoms, Oil and Gas.
- Andrew MacAskill is CCO at Fraser Dove International and an award-winning author, commercial leader and LinkedIn Top Voice operating in the Talent Ecosystem.
- Rob McCargow is the Technology Impact Leader at PwC UK and their AI Centre of Excellence founder. He strives to ensure that the technology workforce is equitable and inclusive.
And everything was moderated by Alejandra C Menendez, Senior Consultant & Communications Manager at LMF Network.
Here are three insights I found powerful on this panel.
Fulfilment and matching your passions with work are possible.
Sonal made the first point on the panel by sharing that people realized they needed more flexibility after the pandemic. That’s why more people took a side hustle to match their passion. She said:
“Flexibility has redefined what a career looks like.”
Rob agreed with this point and added that there was a paradigm shift around a career in the last few years because money is not the only value people seek from a job. Together with the income, there are two things: fulfilment and living an authentic self at work. (Luckily, matching our passions with work like sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and mental health is getting easier.)
Andrew also agreed and concluded that keeping people from fulfilling themself makes them confuse identity with their job. We are not the work we are doing, but we can align our job with our passions!
The idea of the ‘dream job’ is nonsense, and it is more important to experiment.
Answering the question, ‘What are your thoughts on the idea of a ‘dream job’ and how it impacts professionals in their career path?’ Andrew said something that shocked me at first and made more sense after. He said:
“I think that the dream job is nonsense. Let’s read at this comment on the chat that says, “I still have to understand what I want to be when I grow up”, and that’s normal. There are plenty of nightmares behind what we think is a dream job, but most people don’t know what to do. If we don’t experiment first, we can’t know what we like.”
Entrepreneurship is a good way to experiment with your career.
Talking about this, Sonal expressed that we should encourage side-hustles and skills learning. People should follow their passion and take the courage to do what they like even if they have never seen it before. Many jobs were created recently and didn’t exist a few decades ago.
On the other hand, Rob said that:
“People that work in big companies are stuck in a compartment, get bored and leave. Being an entrepreneur is not the best word to break down corporate boundaries. Still, we have to break down that idea, and freelancing or entrepreneurship could be one solution.”
Additionally, Sonal mentioned that the new generations want things to happen way quicker. The new generation grew up with better technologies, which is good. Still, one issue of growing up with all these social media platforms is that just by looking at social media, we don’t see the hard background work, and we might think that changing is more effortless.
Finally, here is some advice for graduates approaching the world of work and professionals questioning their career paths…
Sonal suggested not to underestimate networking and remain our authentic selves. If something makes you uncomfortable, speak out and let other people know. This can also be an opportunity if improvement the company.
If, perhaps, you are an introvert and not comfortable speaking out in the meeting, let your manager know and give some suggestions that would make you more comfortable. For example, sharing the meeting agenda and having time to organize your thought.
Andrew’s suggestion was to pick a leader and not a job. Sometimes the people we work with are more important than the job itself. Working in a healthy environment will let you be your true self.
Rob ended the discussion by suggesting getting comfortable with failure, failing fast, learning from your mistakes and starting again.
These are just a few of the main takeaways that I found from this exciting panel. After attending the LMF Network Life Skills Summit, I will be more aware of myself, and if anyone asks me, ‘What do you for living?’ I will not be going to say a simple ‘I am a Project Manager’.
This blog contribution was made by Eleonora Papini.
Eleonora has 3+ of experience in sustainable development and international cooperation with a background in Economic Development and International Cooperation with Finance.
Her background includes working as a Project Implementation Officer in a European project about urban sustainable development solutions to value the young and female entrepreneurship industry.
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