My Original Career Tenets

Over 7 years ago, one of my mentors walked our @leaninorg Circle through a simple Career Tenets exercise. I recently revisited mine to see if they still were relevant, and was excited to see they were. Career Tenets (or principles, beliefs, rules) are meant to serve as a guide throughout your career. They're based on a combination of your experiences and values, and can help you when making important decisions.
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This one is pretty straight forward. There have been several points in my career where it was clear that I needed to set boundaries between work and the rest of my life, and doing that greatly improved my health and quality of life.
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This is the first of my career tenets- yours would probably be completely different! I'm going to share the other four I originally created and any tweaks/additions I'm currently making as I revisit them. I'll also share my adaptation of this exercise so you can draft your own if it interests you (Check out my reel on Instagram!).

I'm typically a risk-averse person, but when I looked at a timeline of my career as part of the exercise, I noticed that whenever I took a calculated risk it was beneficial. I wanted to encourage myself to look at taking career risks differently, and remind myself that I have the ability to create stability for myself even when I'm in a challenging environment.
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Your career tenets can help you when making big decisions or shifts in your career - this one in particular was helpful for me when deciding to quit my corporate job at the end of my maternity leave, and when I decided to start Hire Possibilities!

This tenet came from a few specific times early on in my career where I felt underestimated by others, and that made my drive to succeed stronger. This is one I've been revisiting as these days. I've proven myself, and the opinions of those who don't know me very well just don't hold as much weight. 🤷‍♀️
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I do still like the idea of "playing against type" since that feels more like challenging myself to be different than what's expected, try on new hats and keep coming up with new ideas.
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It's important to revisit and adjust your career tenets over time- I'll be sharing my updates as part of this series.

Invest in helping others - this career tenet has always been a no-brainer for me and that will not change. For as long as I can remember, I've always felt strongly that I should take the time to bring others along with me. I chose the word "invest" because truly helping other people does take your own time, energy and sometimes money, but it's always worth the cost. Research even shows it may be the key to happiness.
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My favorite way to help others in my life has been 1:1 mentoring, in both corporate and volunteer environments. I've never turned away anyone who came to me to ask for help or advice. I also gained a few lifelong friends I can't imagine being on this journey without. ❤ It's at the core of Hire Possibilities - investing in every client to provide them 1:1 support.
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How can you get started investing in helping others? Let your manager know you're open to mentoring (as long as you're getting everything done and have some time to spare). Volunteer for a local organization you feel strongly about. Donate your daily coffee money to a good cause. Make it one of your weekly goals.
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This is the last of my original career tenets. I'm someone who is often going down various research rabbit holes because I love to learn. When I would get too busy with work, or I wasn't working on projects that got me out of my comfort zone, I would find that I really missed learning. I wrote this tenet because I wanted to remind myself to actively carve out time to learn, and found that I was much happier in my career because of it.
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One thing that worked especially well for me was scheduling an hour during the workday once a week to just research, learn, read. I did this in my typically least productive time- Friday afternoons. It gave me some energy to end the week on a good note.
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Next week I'll give an update on changes to my tenets when I went back to revise them. Have you liked this series? Are you writing or revising career tenets for yourself? Let me know!