Before you start looking at what change you should make to your job or career, it is very useful to first step back and do a little “stocktake” of where you are at in general. This helps to put things in perspective and to see where this change sits in your priorities.
This is where the spider comes into play, though probably not in the way you think!
For the categories on the diagram below, give yourself a score from 0 to 10 for how satisfied you are with each of these aspects of your life, 0 being totally dissatisfied, 10 being 100% satisfied.
Now plot these scores against a diagram like the one below, where each branch represents one of those categories and with each branch scaled from 0 to 10.
You will end up with something looking like this (this is just an example, yours might look very different):
This diagram, called a “spider diagram”, will provide you with a simple visualisation of where you are at in your life and what to work on. (This is one of the many tools I use in my coaching, in particular when looking at topics beyond career change with my VIP clients).
That’s great but how do you use this to help you with your job??
Before we look at this, let’s take care of a possible concern: if you started worrying that you haven’t got a 10 everywhere, that is not the goal! Of course, you can decide you want to achieve a 10 in all categories and work towards it – that is what you would call a stretched goal – and that is fine.
However the focus here is more about reaching a balance between these areas of your life to a level that makes you satisfied. You could think of it as the wheel of a bicycle: if one of the spokes is damaged, and the wheel is not quite round anymore, we can’t really get anywhere easily.
Having said that, let’s go back to focusing on the career side of things.
One of the take-outs from this simple exercise is that it is important to remember that we are not solely defined by our job (far from it!). Looking at your job or career in the context of your whole life is important to help you gain clarity with regard to what you want to do, how to do it, and in dealing with obstacles and potential fears.
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Let’s take this further. It is fantastic to know where you are at (and having a baseline is essential), but where do you want to be? If you don’t know that, how will you know what to aim for, what gap there is between now and your target and how will you know when you will have reached your target?
So, focusing on the career side of things, what score would you be satisfied with right now?
Put this on your spider diagram, it’ll help you visualise the gap.
Now that you know what your target is…
What is one thing you could do now to get you closer to that score?
To help you increase your chances to take action, write down your answer under your spider diagram.
Now, in order to move this from a nice theory that you will muse on at some later stage but do nothing about now, consider these two questions:
When could you actually do this?
When will you really do it?
To help hold yourself accountable, once again write down your answers under your spider diagram.
To take it further and ensure that you actually take proper action and don’t just make a half hearted attempt at it, you might want to share this with a trusted friend, colleague or mentor (or coach) who will remind you of your commitment to yourself.
Repeating this exercise regularly can be quite useful to keep things in context as time goes by; it is also a great way to measure your progress.
This exercise and those questions are only the beginning of making the change you want, but it is an important beginning.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like some further assistance with this or if you have any comments or questions. I would love to hear how you go with it.