These days, it seems as though the ether is abuzz with discussions about how compartmentalization is harmful to everything from brain function to career development. In today’s economy, it is more important than ever to be able to frame your own experiences and accomplishments in creative ways. To be successful, it is critical to be able to see yourself outside of the box, to make yourself and your accomplishments stand out from the crowd. A recent Harvard Business Review blog post asserts that “we must remove the barriers within ourselves” in order to find success today.
If you are hoping to boost your career development in your current job, or even if you are hoping to change jobs, this open-minded thinking is likely to benefit your journey: “The crucial barriers are the ways we compartmentalize our experiences — keeping them uniquely bound to one kind of job or career. Avoid such compartmentalization. Break open those compartments and mix all of your experiences, knowledge, and skills into the precise blend that makes a new you.”
This willingness to think creatively and see yourself in new ways is certain to benefit your career development in any field.
So how do you get started?
Christopher Bowe uses the metaphor of a mixing board, a device used to combine different sounds when creating music, to explain how to re-envision your own experiences: “To use this as a template for personal innovation, visualize each of your experiences and skills in life as an instrument controlled on a sound mixing board. What if this experience were ‘louder’ and this skill were ‘quieter’? What kinds of old experiences from divergent things could be used in new ways to change the overall ‘sound’ of you?”
If you are aiming for personal innovation, then one easy first step is to pull out your resume and brainstorm about the connections between your experiences, about skills and interests that you have that might not be currently used to their fullest potential. If you need a little assistance in figuring out a more creative way to envision your career path, then another important step is to invest in an online personality test. Such a test can help you to reevaluate your personal strengths and weaknesses in an affordable, objective fashion. The information you can get from an online personality test can boost your career development to the next level.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.