Career trajectory: Focus on mindsets in addition to skills, brands and networks
As I am writing this short note in 2020, I am in my second year of my MBA at MIT Sloan. This post might be most relevant to other MBAs who are planning to pivot careers. But I hope, folks who aren’t pivoting as much might still find value in this. With that context, my conjecture is that as we plan our career trajectories, it is important to not just optimize for the skills, brands and networks we’ll gain but to also pay attention to mindsets.
The idea of a career trajectory is built upon the foundation of intentionally building a path towards a long-term career goal that we envision for ourselves. As per my observations as a part of the MBA community, there’s a lot of focus on building the right skills and networks and getting associated with the right brands and networks as we plan our career trajectories, but I realized that we don’t talk about or focus on mindsets as much. Thus, I’ll illustrate my conjecture that mindsets also need to be prioritized through the following example.
Let’s say your long-term goal is to be an entrepreneur. A few key mindsets that entrepreneurs need are — risk-taking, ownership, comfort (or even joy) in situations with high ambiguity, agility while also staying committed to a mission, humility and perseverance among others. Now let’s say, if you end up taking a role in a company in which the company culture or the nature of the industry require you to be extremely risk-averse and to primarily follow your manager’s lead with very little opportunity to have ownership over the direction of your work. I’d hypothesize that the mindsets that you develop as you spend more time in such a role/organization will eventually hold you back from quickly diving into the entrepreneurial mindsets you need when you try to start your own venture.
Thus, as we try to develop our career trajectories, it’s important to pay attention to mindsets. As always, I’d love to hear differing opinions or additional aspects that you keep in mind as you plan your career trajectory.
