People vary greatly in how successful they feel in their careers. Besides differences in objective attainments, this variation reflects different perspectives on what amounts to a \'successful\' career. The realization that career success is more multifaceted that traditional corporate signals of pay and upward progression has implications for increasing the success you experience in your career. Initiatives you can take are to discover your work orientation, find a good fit between yourself and your work, and develop your adaptability to career changes. The author offers strategies for enhancing your career adaptability, including ways to engage in proactive socialization, cultivate the conviction that you can change, reason more productively about your career, understand and nurture your network, and find your balance in your career. Broadening your perspective on career success and taking related initiatives, such as those suggested in this article, could ultimately increase your experience of career success
Having a work orientation that is a mist with the culture of your organization can have numerous negative consequences. These include, for instance, job dissatisfaction, demoralization, poor working relationships with your peers and boss, increased stress, burnout, and a greater likelihood that you will voluntarily or involuntarily leave the organization. D E V E L O P Y O U R A D A P T A B I L I T Y When I told my father I was going to be an actor, he said, "Fine, but study welding just in case." Robin Williams For many years, people assumed that they could pursue a continuous linear career within one occupation, perhaps working for one or two organizations, without major disruptions or redirections. Over the last few decades, people have been forced to change jobs at an increasing rate. Managers and professionals, who had previously been more shielded from layoffs, have also experienced greatly diminished job security.
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Besides the trauma of unemployment, a persons sense of career success can also be seriously deated by the underemployment and career plateauing that these changes have also brought. People who are underemployed either perform jobs requiring signicantly less education and work experience than they possess, involuntarily work in a eld unrelated to their education, or are unable to nd permanent, full-time employment in their eld of interest. Career plateauing can involve hierarchical plateauing where future promotions are unlikely or job content plateauing, where increases in responsibility in the current job are unlikely. The attening of organizational structures has TABLE 2 FINDING FIT IN A CLAN OR MARKET CULTURE
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382 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS decreased opportunities for being promoted. Realizing his fact of modern organizational life can make hierarchical plateauing less troubling than job content plateauing for your sense of career success. While some people dont mind being plateaued, it can seriously undermine the sense of success felt by those who desire career progression, either through the ranks of the organization or in the kind of work they do.
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Beginning a new work role tends to require transitioning through a cycle of preparation (acquiring relevant skills and expectations), encounter (exploring and making sense of a new role), adjustment (ne-tuning ones role, performance, and relationships), and stabilization (characterized by high effectiveness). Changing roles can require repeating this process. Actor Amy Ting provides an example of this dynamic. Despite having become stabilized to the point of completing an acclaimed lm (Miss Wonton) in which she played the starring role, Amys perspective on life changed after she narrowly survived the September 11th attacks. She abandoned her investments in becoming an actress for a real-life, honorable role in a medical career with the U.S. Air Force. Such transitions require a new round of preparation, encounter, adjustment, stabilization . . . potentially followed by renewed preparation, if and when another substantial career transition is undertaken.
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