Bridging the gap to a more meaningful creative career.
Bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be?
Welcome to the second in this series of three blogs on how to make your career more meaningful. In the first of the series, we looked at the areas of ourselves that influence our career decisions that we have little control over (our natural preferences, personality and innate values). In this blog we will focus on the areas we have direct and immediate control over. If your personal preferences equates to the type of car you drive, this blog focuses on the steering wheel, gears and accelerator.
~
I remember the first time I went to a qualified coach to work on my career in 2019. I knew a lot about what changes I wanted to make and what projects were really exciting to me but there seemed to be a large gap between where I was and where I wanted to be.
I was an actor but I'd never made my own work, and that was something I wanted to address. I knew I wanted more balance and financial security within my career. I had an idea about creating some sort of workshop aimed at giving other creatives a greater sense of the options available to them in their careers, but I knew nothing about how I could do that. I was 'just an actor', to use my own words, and unsure how I could become 'more'. I was deftly challenged by the coach to think beyond my current conceptions of myself just long enough to entertain some broader and more fruitful ones. Ideas that seemed to allow for what I wanted in ways that fit who I was.
That was three years ago now and a lot has changed. For one, I'm now the coach which was an unexpected turn but blatantly obvious in hindsight. I've managed to create more balance and financial security and earlier this year I received an arts council grant towards developing my theatre-making practice. These are all still works-in-progress and all had a bumpy ride during the pandemic but they represent clear shifts that are unmistakably self-directed and yes, deeply meaningful. But what does one do after such insights like the ones I had in that coaching session? How is the gap then bridged between where you are and where you want to be? Well, a change of orientation is a great place to start.
What's the impact you want to have on your world as a creative?
I'm a big believer in getting better answers by asking better questions, and this one represents an orientation for our creative careers that's particularly empowering. In the presence of much advice-giving, gatekeepers, closed shops and old boys' clubs we might find ourselves living the question 'how, if anywhere, can I get a look-in?'. This is a legitimate question to ask under the circumstances but feels heavy and only speaks to one part of our careers.
We know that creative careers aren't just jobs, they are things we live in and live through too. They cross many domains, from the professional to the financial to the familial and emotional. So a great place to start with making your career more meaningful is to apply this question to the entirety of your career. What's the impact you want your being a creative to have on your friends, family, finances, feelings, online & offline community, peers, profession, nation, culture, history, future and even the world?
The answers to these questions will be riddled with personal meaning and will no doubt prompt more than a few project ideas that could be options for shifting your career towards. But how do we bridge the gap from these ideas to their fruition and what stops us? Let's turn to career theory for some... well, theory.
Outcome Expectations.
I'm an actor not an accountant. I had a clear sense that I'd do better as an actor than as an accountant based on my early experience, but I had no proof. I didn't spend three years giving it a go to find out for sure, I might have been an accountant of quality! But well before I even took a single practical step towards a life of budget analysis there was an internal idea I just had of myself that said ''that's not you, you're better treading the boards''. This internal idea is what psychologist Albert Bandura would define as an outcome expectation.
Your outcome expectations are incredibly influential in informing the direction and development of your career. They are already at play in our early years when we find ourselves considering what we might do for work. They are what has pruned back all the other options to allow the career path you're currently on room to develop. They are playing right now on your career, in ways that you might not be fully aware of. They are what form the answer to the question 'How successful/impactful/creative can you see yourself becoming in your career?'
Like any mental construct some outcome expectations are more core and rigid than others but all are malleable and open to change. Developing new skills and learning is one key way we do this, for instance your outcome expectations of your ability to walk a tightrope might shift significantly after a two month course in tightrope walking. But sometimes just being around people or in a culture that holds more expansive expectations than your own can be enough to shift them.
Outcome expectations set the bar for our careers and one solid way of making your career more meaningful is to challenge them by setting a new bar, exploring new options or by asking different questions of your career. Bandura's work points to how influential outcome expectations are across many areas of human endeavour, including careers. In bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be managing these expectations can be ground-breaking. What are the outcome expectations that are currently at play in your career and is it time to re-evaluate them?
Goals/Projects/Aims/Aspirations
Goal formation, motivation, behaviour and all the rest is a book of its own (not that another is needed) but what's important to note here is that in a creative career we have full control over the goals we set and when to shift them. Unlike other professions where you might have to wait two years, take an exam, be evaluated and have a series of meetings with a line manager before a new career opportunity is permitted, we can do that instantly for ourselves, today, if we felt comfortable and inspired to do so.
The most meaningful goals and projects that I see arise in coaching fall under the category of 'what's wanted'. If you have a good ear for it you'll hear creatives dropping these breadcrumbs all the time. "I mean in a perfect world I'd have my own studio, be making my own music and working as freelance session musician" or 'well, the dream would be to somehow shift my 10 yrs as a theatre director to TV but who's going to hire me over a film studies graduate or a tv director with 10yrs experience". Now, I'm not discounting the very real challenges that face each of these creatives in making a shift towards their ideal, but I am saying that both are likely to be able to begin to form small goals or larger projects that move in that direction.
A useful analogy to help get small goals and projects off the ground from where you are is the idea of "working on your own script, within someone else's narrative". The musician could be in a position to use his time working in a studio part-time to learn the ropes of management, the theatre director to draw from their network of collaborators to begin to experimenting in making short films.
Goals and projects like these infuse us and our careers with new energy and focus. We can find ourselves being side-tracked by even better opportunities that arise as we peruse these goals. What's important is that we're creating movement in a meaningful direction. What's important to avoid with these is the trap of perusing goals we feel we 'should' as opposed to ones that have genuine intrinsic value. How can you begin to work more to your own script even if it’s within the narrative of another?
Professional Development (with no applications required, open to all, year round).
I almost abandoned my idea of working with creatives on their careers for the very real reason that I didn't know how to work with creatives on their careers.
One thing that can get in the way of starting or perusing one of these goals or projects is a very real lack of ability, skill or understanding. We often neglect that fact that doing anything new will require learning something new. With any new goal or project you're considering a good question to ask is "What I am going to need to learn or develop in order to be able to achieve this". This type of learning is much more than a means to and end it’s meaningful in itself. The journey I’ve been on to train as a career coach for creatives continues to be one of the most challenging and fulfilling I’ve embarked upon.
Developing our capacity by learning a new skill or acquiring new knowledge is something that lies well within our influence. It can begin with something as small as reading a book in a new area of interest. Doing so breeds curiosity, confidence and creativity. It's movement in a meaningful direction and that may be definition of a creative career that we have. So, what do you need to be learning and how can you construct your own personalised Professional Development? (with no application required, open to all, year round).
Self-Efficacy
If you read enough arts policy you're sure to stumble across many mentions of self-efficacy and the need to develop it. So, what is it and how can you build it for yourself?
"Self-Efficacy is a person's particular set of beliefs that determine how well one can execute a plan of action in prospective situations. To put it in more simple terms, self-efficacy is a person's belief in their ability to succeed in a particular situation."
A. Bandura
There are many ways you can go about developing your own self-efficacy but for a creative career one of the best and most used is the forming of a creative practice. This could be the 20mins a day spent writing while on the train to work, the one hour of yoga before rehearsal or a three-hour early morning self-created practice that does all you need to keep the engines of your work running smoothy. What's important in terms of building self-efficacy is that:
A. This practice is something you construct for yourself and is based on your own needs and goals.
B. The aim is to make it a consistent and regular practice.
C. You have an eye towards its development by reflecting regularly on what's working, what's not, what needs to be added or taken away.
The very act of doing this builds both your own self-efficacy in your ability to plan, develop and structure yourself & your time but also builds your career specific skills and knowledge. It's a powerful combination. Again, it is movement, everyday, in a meaningful direction, which might just be the best working definition of a creative career we have. What are the keys skills you’d be best served by working on every day? What one activity could you add that would help to build your presence in your field? Who’s support will you need to help you maintain this practice?
The above are just some of the key 'characteristic adaptions' as termed by vocational psychologists that inform career development. You are no doubt familiar with most of them but knowing their relevance more fully will make moving your career in a more meaningful direction less of a random coincidence and more a conscious creative act. Bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be is rarely quick or easy but with the right kind of insight, a good dollop or career theory and a willingness to experiment with new approaches it doesn’t have to be a bridge too far.
In the last of this series of three blogs we'll look at how you can bring all these together in a way that makes them truly a part of you. The biggest shift in career-thinking in the last 40yrs has been the 'narrative turn' and the good news for creatives is that as storytellers it couldn't be more applicable to us.
(If any of the ideas you've read here made you think about how you might better apply them in your own career I offer a free single session service to do just that. Just contact me here availability is dependant on my capacity at the time).
Image by Alex Azabache