Becoming a Willing Student® Career Development Model.
A Fresh Approach to the Issue of "Career Development Fatigue"
Too many young professionals busy themselves with chasing their daily meanderings in “employment leads”, “job titles”, “years of experience”, “total training hours”, "Rockstar or Ninja labels”, “social media likes/followers”, “arbitrary percentages”, “lines of code written”, “total registrations/downloads”, “page views/impressions”, “viral launches/buzz”, “total email subscribers”, and other immediate but pointless metrics, but ignore a metric that is essential to the long-term success of their career – Becoming a Willing Student.
If job titles, total training hours, social media likes, lines of code written, years of experience, or annual performance reviews was all there was to building a successful, lasting and competition proof career, then a lot more young professionals would be happy. As this isn’t the case, we don’t adhere to this approach.
The global workplace and marketplace aren’t what they used to be. The conventional outside-in career development models which are based on first building a resume, generating employment leads or defining a career development goal and then performing a series of tasks sequentially to achieve that goal don't work that well anymore. The Becoming a Willing Student® Career Development Model challenges traditional, linear, hierarchical, career ladder-based models that dominate so much talk about career development with the "Becoming a Willing Student" approach.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
— Buckminster FullerBeyond Career Development to Authentic Engagement.
Becoming a Willing Student® describes an approach to career development, founded on the underlying principles of authentic engagement. It is an exciting career development model that gets you past career development fatigue and on to becoming a willing student - using your unique brand voice to start intelligent and genuine conversations that actually add value to your employers and makes them fall in love with you.
Traditional career development models are based on crafting a single plan for your career, then working tirelessly and single-mindedly to bring that plan to fruition. This approach to building your career can work in a static world or under conditions of relative stability, but things have changed. In today's global workplace and marketplace, this conventional approach can be severely limiting and dangerous.
To survive in today’s workplace and marketplace, you need to stay nimble, evolve, iterate, and always be in the learning and growth mode. I call this mindset "becoming a willing student". As a willing student, each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, and grow more in your career development journey. Becoming a Willing Student is essentially a lifelong commitment to continuous learning and growth. It's about growing your career smart, expanding the reach of your network, gaining a competitive edge, and attracting the most lucrative of opportunities.
“Becoming a Willing Student is a transformational way to think about career development that combines the best of personal coaching with the power of authentic engagement to bring about transformative impact.”
— Tawanda Chirenda, Founder
Why Becoming a Willing Student?
It's all about your mindset
In our increasingly competitive global workplace and marketplace, there are no short-cuts to building your career, getting hired or growing your impact. Even if you've found an effective career growth technique or tactic that can give you a strong advantage, that advantage won't last long once a million other people have learned of that tactic. This is why even the best career growth tactics and strategies are always only temporary.
I love this quote from Beverly Sills, "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." This is true for just about everything in life, but especially building your career in our highly saturated global economy. Succeeding and effectively growing your career in today's highly competitive global workplace and marketplace requires more than just career development activity or goals – it is a mindset. It is a mindset where you are constantly testing new strategies to find out what works and what doesn't, and then iterating upon them once you've found the winners.
Anything less, such as blindly following or copying basic career success tips or career growth tactics from some mainstream source, won't be nearly as effective. The only real "winning strategy" is by continually seeking out effective tactics and strategies that others have not yet realized.
There is a lot of great career development content out there on how to grow your career, get hired or get promoted, and you absolutely should read it and think about it, but the key is to think critically and skeptically about any information you absorb and test it out for yourself to see if it works for you or not.