Career leap : how to reinvent and liberate your career
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley April 13, 2018
Author Michelle Gibbings.
Distributor: National Library of Australia
ISBN: 9780730352198
Publisher: Wiley
Release Date: 2018
Website: https://trove.nla.gov.au
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Never a truer world was spoken than “gone are the days of slowly making your way up the corporate ladder to retirement”, or any other employment ladder for that matter. The business world is changing faster than any other time in history, with a move away from hands on to what is referred to as the ‘gig economy’, changing expectations from employers as well as employees, which has left many wondering and worrying about the way forward.
Presented in the form of a workbook, and career guidance manual, Gibbings uses her extensive skill base in helping to prepare employees and employers for the ‘future of work’. That knowledge base is now presented in Career Leap, which sheds a refreshing light on how to future-proof your career in a manner which is easy to understand, pulls no punches, but will help educate and inform enabling you to research your strengths and weakness to improve your work life, in preparation for the years to come.
Gibbings address the issue of change; not just in career choices but career directions which over the course of a modern working life are now the accepted norm. Gone are the days when jobs were plentiful, manufacture was booming and life in general was pretty straightforward.
Exactly the opposite is now considered as normal in the Global workplace, where the skills once needed to be able to work in an industry or profession of choice have changed considerably. Experience and a blunt honesty on a personal level, nerves of steel and the ability to make changes in order to keep abreast of modern workplace requirements are a necessary component of the modern workforce, to be able take advantage of opportunities as they are offered. Making and being prepared to adapt to fit the requirements is also essential. But how do you go about making the changes both mentally and emotionally?
Designed as fitness and wellbeing check for your career and ambitions, Career Leap offers a wellness check as the first thing required to be undertaken. This is followed by discovering your hidden potential, exploring options, a look at choosing which area to progress, constructing a plan, shaping your new career identity and then taking a serious look at influence and how this will affect your marketplace.
Then, Focus, Accelerate, and get set to Launch the new, workplace savvy you.
Each of the chapters is introduced with some very wise words from many people who have overcome adversity to achieve their goals. Rumi, Lao Tzu, Denis Diderot, Geronimo and Florence Nightingale are all quoted. Back in their day, what is now considered as wise words, were probably created from a once again changing world!
It somehow helps to place the modern workplace in some kind of perspective: scary but able to be managed with the right tools, a good dose of personal honesty and understanding of the shifting ground that is now the modern workplace.
The single factor tying the chapters of not just this book, but your career together is well stated in the words of Gorgi Coghlan, when she says ‘Regret is far worse emotion to live with than fear’. So as both Michelle Gibbings and many others have discovered, do the tough stuff, undertake the career wellness check, be prepared to leap and reap the rewards.