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Victória Azárenka – Former world #1 singles player

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Why a successful career transition should focus on career roles

In what career role can you be the superstar?

A Career Transition can be exciting and filled with promise or it can be an experience you dread. How you approach it makes all the difference.

The most powerful way to ensure your career change is a smooth process is to focus on defining what career role you can thrive in. The role where you can you be a superstar!

This is true whether you are looking to make a career change at 30 or 40, or are searching for a new career at 50.

A career role is the easiest yet most powerful way to present your value to the jobs marketplace.

In this article: Why your Successful Career Transition should focus on Career Roles

How roles empower your career transition by expressing your unique identity
Using career roles as a tool to transition to your Career Destiny
What comprises your career roles
Proceed without fear: how career roles help you make a career change with confidence
How a defined career role prepares your career transition for the job search phase

How roles empower your career transition by expressing your unique identity

Your career roles express your unique identity as a “package.”

They are a container that holds all aspects of who you are in one place.

This is because a role incorporates all your personal qualities into one unified persona.

Your talents, values & beliefs, your personality, and the customer you are meant to engage with all day are all channeled into your roles.

This makes roles an ideal vehicle to power your transition to a place you will be happy. It also makes it easy to present your value to an employer.

Actually, you already play many roles without being conscious that you are.

You play a friend role
You may play a work role such as customer service, teacher, financial analyst, auto mechanic, etc.
You may play a parent role or a child role
You may play a student role

The only difference is now you are going to learn how to consciously build a career role that incorporates all your most authentic qualities. So you are not stressed or in conflict at work and can portray your maximized value and power.

Best of all, your roles are already within you, you just have to clarify what they are.

Your Career Destiny is already within you

You just have to chip away the facade.

Employer defined roles vs. career roles that express your personal power

Traditionally, roles are defined by your employer through job descriptions.

These positions are defined by business roles within an organization such as CEO, VP COO, etc. Those roles are defined by your business title and function within an organizational chart.

But within those job descriptions is where you can express your personal power. It makes all the difference in your success, personal fulfillment, and job satisfaction.

If a job does NOT allow you to express yourself, you will be constrained. By identifying what roles you can thrive in, you can target jobs that are a fit for your authentic self.

For purposes of empowering your career transition, we are talking about how you personally present yourself in your day-to-day career roles and social roles.

This is your opportunity to get it right.

No matter how you got to where you are now, identifying your optimal career roles gives you the certitude of being grounded and on solid footing, even if:

- You are making a tough midlife career change
- You need to recover from some unfortunate earlier career choices and want to make the right career change at 40 or start a new career at 50
- You are exploring for a good career without a degree
- You are like Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, who needed to find a career for introverts with anxiety because of his extreme shyness
- You just want career satisfaction

You are in a vulnerable period right now and need all the certainty you can get. I compare how a transition is like crossing a desert in my article How to Follow Your Career Transition Roadmap

Using career roles as a tool to transition to your Career Destiny

Why are roles so essential to your career transition?

Roles give you a power structure to work from. Your roles identify where you fit, so they define your power as well as your boundaries. They even distinguish your brand.

For example, in a movie, actors assume roles. How well they play them determines their value. If they don’t “fit” a role well or are miscast, the movie can be a flop.

Conversely, a very strong role, well played, can make an actor a superstar for life. Vince Vaughn in the Wedding Crashers comes to mind. 😄 It totally exploded his brand to superstar status!

The same concept works for you. If you can identify what roles fit you best, it will make you a superstar.

Defining where you ‘fit” ensures your career transition is a natural progression rather than uncertainty. You are someone who knows where they are going.

So, what comprises your career roles?

Think of roles and like the wood frame of a house. The frame is what supports other elements of a house infrastructure, such as the plumbing, electric, insulation, siding, and roof.

In that same concept, roles are the frame that holds all your talents, aptitudes, social skills, and lifestyle desires together. They are a set of beliefs that express your unique power in job and social settings.

They are how you powerfully and enjoyably serve your workplace and your customers.

Proceed without fear: career change with confidence when you know your roles

When you take the time to fashion the factors that best identify your career roles, you can transition without fear because you know where your greatest value is and how to deliver it.

So if you are making a career change, even a tough midlife career change, you can do so with confidence. Identifying your career roles make your career choices so much clearer than earlier career choices were.

How do we accomplish this self-assurance? In order for you to have that rock-solid confidence in your career role, you must identify what I call The Five Factors of your Career Destiny.

The way the five factors work together is in two phases.

First, you identify what roles best express your unique identity:

What are your employment, money, and lifestyle values & beliefs?
What is the best application of your most marketable talents?
What workday lifestyle best expresses your talents, values, and beliefs?
What customer market are you meant to engage with?

Next, you want to identify the best position, industry, or business platform where you can best deliver your career role by identifying:

Who is the Peer Work Community that you want to work with all day?

This meme sweetly flowcharts the process:

How defining your career role prepares your career transition for the job search phase

Once you’ve identified the Five factors that determine your most powerful career roles, your career transition is now primed to move into the job search phase!

You can quickly slide into the right job search silo because the Five Factors have revealed:

Who is the peer working community you want to work with all day, this narrows down what position in what kind of companies or venture your niche roles can thrive in
Who is your target market audience – the clients or customers that you want to provide your services to daily – which gives your day its pleasure and work enjoyment
Which of your talents bring the most value to the marketplace
You will not be in conflict because you have aligned your values and beliefs, and removed limiting beliefs
What working day lifestyle and ideal work environment do you thrive in, so you can now search for jobs that meet as much of your requirements as possible

Identifying these five factors guarantees your job satisfaction and the most lucrative application of your talents!

For example, if you identify your career role as a gaming software engineer it fulfills the Five Factors in the following ways:

Your target market customer might be the gamers who play competitive survival games
Your peer working community you work within could be concept artists, animator, engine programmer, software developer, etc., working together to build a world-class product
Your values and beliefs will align with your creativity and enjoyment of entertainment and computers
Your creative talents will be used to their fullest extent
Your work environment and lifestyle is the loose, casual routine of the tech industry

Conclusion:

Your Career Roles empower you to express your unique identity as a package, so you can present your value in the most powerful and enjoyable way to the job market.

Get started on defining what role you can be a superstar today.