Portfolio Career - Achievements

In order to achieve a Career Portfolio and leave behind the corporate world, an important step in the process is selecting the individual roles to fill the portfolio. I am working through the exercises in a book called, “And What Do You Do?” by Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger, and this suggests a couple of approaches that will help to clarify the areas that you actually enjoy, are important to you, and that you are actually good at.

The first exercise focuses on the achievements that you have had in your life, and the Motivated Skills that were used in achieving it. The point being that if you have used these skills to motivate you to success in the past, the chance is that you are naturally stronger in these skills. Although the corporate world would have you believe that you must work on developing your weaker attributes to become stronger, the truth is that if you concentrate on doing the things that you do well even better, then you will excel in that field. Also, if you are employing those skills that you are good at then you will be more motivated because you will constantly feel that sense of reward and achievement.

If you do the things that you are good at, then you enjoy what you are doing, this means that you are motivated, and this means that you will succeed; and the cycle then becomes self-fulfilling as you expect to succeed, you do.

So, I listed out the personal achievements that I could think of, which is actually quite hard. I found that the memories I tend to remember are the ones where I failed, and the achievements were buried much deeper under a cover of self-deprecation and a blanket of modesty. We tend to concentrate more on the failures in an effort for it not to happen again, and gloss over the achievements and just move on.

The achievements can be in any walk of life, not just your occupation, and the list I had in the end totalled around twenty. Some went right the way back to school and others related to more recent successes. The three prompts that the book mentioned in order to think in that frame of mind were; 1) You believe it you did it well, 2) You enjoyed it, 3) You were proud of it.

My achievements varied from School Plays and Swims, to Finance Projects, to Exams, to being a Dad, with a broad range in between. You could say I’ve been good at many things, or you could say that I’ve been scraping the barrel here, but the interesting point for me was what my perception was with these things in particular. Most of my achievements have not come easily, they have all taken a bit of pain, but ultimately the reward when it all pays off is fantastic and everlasting. This is something that I can take away for free from this exercise, the fact that perseverance is needed in anything in order to really succeed.

Anyway, the book then asks you to rank your achievements and select the top seven to score in a matrix versus the Motivated Skills that were used in completing this achievement. There are about thirty motivated skills listed and I averaged about eight skills used per achievement. Without going through the whole thing, the common skills that were used in my achievements, and therefore those skills that should be my natural strengths are as follows:

Came up five times
o Communication

Came up three times
o Solving Problems
o Motivating and Leading
o Working Creatively
o Managing Time
o Strategic Thinking
o Performing
o Helping Others
o Assertiveness

I think that these are a true reflection of the areas that I would consider motivate me to do a good job, and also the areas that I tend to concentrate on in any job that I have had. It also articulates some of the frustration that I have in my current role because I do not get a chance to use some of these skills. You can probably tell which ones.

This will now become valuable information about myself that I can bear in mind as I move along this journey towards selecting occupations that really fit with what motivates me, and that simply - I will enjoy.

Later this week I will post the results of an exercise that I have completed on my fundamental values, and I will also show the results of a psychometric personality test. All of these exercises will be directional, and some interesting conclusions are generated.