Career development is what people do when they're not in job search mode. Actually, that's not entirely true. Lots of people don't do it very intentionally at all.

But when people do get that they need to be creating the conditions for ever-readiness, even when they're not actively looking, the next question is usually: where do I start?

It's a question I hear a lot. And it's one that coaches and people managers often find tricky too, especially when someone doesn't have a clear next move in mind.

So I'm sharing a tool that helps answer it.

​The Core Career Dials Assessment helps those you're working with to get clearer about where to focus their career development attention (because none of us have much of that to go round these days, right?).

The questions create opportunities for reflection and are designed to help people consider the types of actions that might make them score higher or lower on a particular dial. Have a go for yourself and share it with a client or colleague too.

Once the area for attention is identified, then the goals and objectives start to emerge.

Let me show you what I mean by sharing a tool from my book, The Core Career Dials.

Say someone scores low on the Self-Knowledge dial. They know they need to understand themselves better in terms of what makes them tick, what they value in their working life, and where they add most. But self-knowledge has a tricky little blind spot problem, which means we can only see so far on our own. That's where others come in.

One way of doing this is through a very simple exercise, inspired by the Johari Window.

To do it you need to:

Create a grid with four quadrants:

1. Strengths I see (in me)
2. Strengths others see
3. Gaps I see
4. Gaps others see

Start by filling in 1 and 3. If you find it hard to think about strengths - consider it as those things that energise you and that you're probably pretty good at.

Then choose 3 to 4 people whose opinion you trust and who see you in different professional contexts. Ask them specific questions like:

• What do you see as my standout strengths?
• What have you noticed I do well that I might not realise?
• Where do you think I could have more impact?
• Which mission critical elements of my role do I need to improve?

And any other questions you can think of that might help you populate quadrants 2 and 4.

Try it and see what you find out.

See you soon,

Sarah

If you want to bring me into your organisation to support your people leaders in having more meaningful development conversations, book a call to find out how I work.