“I think there’s a higher degree of acceptance of people moving in this economy versus our parents’ generation,” says Geoghegan. “When you’re in the first 10 years of your career there’s an element of selfishness – you need to be a little self-oriented. If you’re motivated and know where you’d like to be, you have to take your career into your own hands and balance your growth with winning the respect of the people you work with.” So, never burn bridges. “You have to make it clear to your company what your career goals are so that if your situation is not delivering that for you and you were to take an opportunity to leave, everyone involved would understand.”

Now, if he could only find a way, like Mehr, to secure a little more free time, perhaps even just to enjoy the new LEED-certified condo he recently bought in Calgary and neglects for a week every month as he travels to MEG’s northern job sites. You may move through the early years of your career selfishly, but, as Geoghegan is reluctantly accepting, those years will inevitably make demands you’ll find impossible to refuse if you really want that corner office.

“We’re all underdogs at some point,” says Donald Asher. “I want to help people figure out how to beat a monolithic system and play it to their advantage.” For the fast-track careerist, this is the best way to see the situation. Even if you’re a bit less eager, Asher’s viewpoint can rectify any naivety about where you rank amongst a company’s priorities. Happiness and wellbeing are too delicate to leave in the calloused hands of corporations. And, as Bryan Hiebert would say, being complacent is risky. “In planning your career you’re planning your life,” says the professor. “It’s just not possible to separate the two.”

Given this link, he cautions against an overly rigid view of personal progress. The concept of career development includes a lateral promotion that pays out in satisfaction just as much as it means scoring a fat raise by moving up into management.

“Getting ahead is pretty much defined by others rather than self-defined,” says Hiebert. “It doesn’t often translate into being more self-fulfilled. In other words, the directing force in that should be me, not somebody else. If you want to be happy in your life, take responsibility for generating your own solutions.” U

Share this on

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.