Career and personal growth are not the same

We all feel alive and fulfilled when we grow. And we grow when we feel we progress, when we learn something new or when we get out of our comfort zone.

Mostly, we connect the growth with our career. We learn new skills, we get bigger responsibilities, we manage a bigger team etc.

Once we stop progressing, we feel that we are stagnating or even dying inside.

Is it really your job?

But before you switch your job for a more demanding one, hold on and think yourself, whether you have been progressing outside of work, too?

It’s equally important to feel alive and fulfilled.

If you focus your growth solely on your career, and it’s only your job which gives you the feeling that you progress, you will anyway feel stagnating in your life overall and might have a general feeling of unfulfillment, not knowing why or where it comes from.

Many things can give you a feeling of growth

You see, we need to feel growing also in our relationships. We ideally have new hobbies and activities, where we can get the possibility and the feeling of growing as well. We might also get that feeling of growth through traveling and through having new experiences. There are many ways for us to feel growth, learning, having new experiences and more. It does not have to be happening only at work.

I actually know quite many people, who, if you look at their CV, might look like they are not progressing in their career. From the first look, you may have an impression that they don’t grow.

But what if they have many things going on outside of work, where they feel they have new challenges, new activities etc. This is what might give them the fulfillment and satisfy their needs for growth. You will never find out about that by just reading their CV. You have to talk and listen to them.

Not everyone has the same definition of growth

There are people, who love their job. Let’s take some example of technical people, let’s say an IT architect. They quite often don’t desire to become managers or directors. They are so passionate about learning and working with latest technologies and that’s where their heart is. They already feel that they are constantly learning and progressing. It satisfies their hunger for growth and that’s why they don’t have the need to have a higher position or manage big teams. Plus, they might be learning to play piano at home or studying Japanese. They might actually feel very content and good about themselves.

The problem comes though, when their managers feel, it’s the time for them to have more responsibilities. Managers have the tendency to push the best performers to take a bigger role. And many of them do take it, because they feel the social pressure, especially in bigger organizations. But what happens very often is, that once they get a bigger scope of responsibilities, they don’t have time to focus on what they are passionate about, like e.g. technologies. Suddenly they have less time for their hobbies and families (which were so important for them before). They will need all their energy and focus on the new role and soon start neglecting all the rest. All the very important rest! 🙂

Avoid a circle of unhappiness

Ultimately, there comes the time, when many of them start feeling unhappy, even though they progressed so much in their career.

When you don’t have time for your passions anymore, you won’t be fulfilled in the long run. As a result, people get unhappy, they look for a new job, new companies etc. Often, they don’t have the courage to go back to the job they loved, because it will look like a demotion and thus they are stuck in an unwanted circle and struggle for a long time.

So, being very clear about what your passions are, what you are desiring and where you are heading, what makes you happy and what you lack to feel fulfilled is absolute must to know, before you make big changes in your career.

Success in other areas are as important as in your career

And don’t get me wrong. Career success is important and I truly want everyone to progress at work, too. But I just wish, you make the right choices. And for that, you need to be fully aware what you really want.

And besides that, I also need to mention, that we have different criteria for feeling successful. We have different levels of ambition, too.

Some feel successful when they come home safely from work, some only when they get the title of Vice President :). That might be exaggerated, but you know, what I mean….

We are all different and the desires I may have are not the ones that you have. So, I shall not judge your ambition level and push you to have the same expectations that I have.

Promotions are not the only way to grow

So if you are a line manager and you have very ambitious people in your team, but you don’t have opportunities to promote them to higher roles, and you do want to keep them on your team, you can try to satisfy their need for growth by giving them some totally new challenges/new projects. Challenging ones. That way they feel they learn, they feel that they are out of their comfort zone, they feel they grow and that way satisfy their hunger for growth. We all have that hunger and sometimes we just confuse it with a hunger for career progress. Just make sure you know what your team members are truly passionate about, and not only what they are good at. And that’s usually the part which is missing in many organizations.

We know who is good at what, but quite rarely we know what people really love doing. If you would only allow your employees to spend as much time with activities which would be aligned with their passions, and even with their skills, you would get the most loyal, motivated, best-performing people on earth.

Try a different kind of interview

So, to close this long story, I encourage you to ask in the interviews, what they would really love doing, instead of what they are good at. 🙂 And if you combine it with asking why they actually love doing it, you will know so much more about that person, that you would know from any usual competence based interview. It is more demanding on the skills of the interviewer, but if you are genuinely interested to get to know your candidate, try it. And it will also leave a very different impression of you, the recruiting manager, who is truly interested to know where their heart is. We all love managers, who are interested in our desires, don’t we? 🙂