By Alexandria Noel Butler
I have spent my whole career in the tech industry and so far, my career has been based on my ability to work on someone else’s dream and not my own. I have always been a small piece to a larger elaborate tapestry that has an original architect. Now this is not necessarily a bad place to be: I enjoy being a piece of thread to a great idea and I find power in working on cross functional teams to spin hay into gold. But this journey hasn’t been without its battles. I’ve navigated through a myriad of highs, lows, bad decisions, better decisions, thinking out loud and pretending to know what is going on. In order to keep my sanity, I have to always remind myself of what I am getting out of the tapestry. Why am I here?
Five years ago, I had a conversation with my therapist about why I was at a particular job doing a specific role that was not fulfilling me completely. I told her that I needed to make money to exist and her response was striking, “You can make money at another place that fulfills you more than this.” It was the first time someone had given me permission to be intentionally selfish. I started to think: What drives me to succeed in my job? What pushes me to do my best work even when I disagree with the direction of the plan? What motivates me to continue spinning when I do not feel supported or appreciated by management? I left her large purple couch with a whole new outlook and promised myself that I would always seek my professional why. I realized, the more I know about me, specifically what I value and how I want to live my life, the easier it is for me to find career opportunities that cater to my actual wants and needs.
Alexandria Noel Butler, Founder of Sista Circle: Black Women in Tech and Unfiltered By Lexi B.
Photo source: Lexi B
When you define your ‘professional why’ you begin to unlock your shackles to the opinions of others in regard to your career choices. Your professional why will come from four major categories, each one fulfilling a part of survival, thrift or joy. You choose a category based on your personal life and values. You should map a plan of action based on the specific category. It is quite simple when you think about it. Your professional why is your intentionality behind why you are working where you are working and the amount of stress and tension you are willing to deal with. As you create your personal why, here are the categories to consider.
Coinage: Money makes the world go ‘round
We all are influenced by money to a certain extent but I can count on one hand the number of people who are truly and solely influenced by the dollar. Despite what capitalism tries to tell us, we all value money differently. The average person wants enough money to fuel their happiness - family commitments, hobbies, shopping habits, savings - the list is endless. But when you make the money that pays for your definition of a comfortable lifestyle, you don’t go searching for more coins. Professionally, there are many times when someone embarks on a new opportunity because of a larger paycheck. But the promise of a paycheck will only take you so far in times of stress and work tension. Your financial why cannot just be more money. The increase in salary needs to be attached to a personal goal. Paying off your student loans, a certain amount of money in your savings, savings for a large purchase such as a home, preparing for a new addition to the family. These are all personal reasons that have a large financial price tag. These reasons are what will keep you calm and collected in times of stress and uncertainty at work until you reach your milestone.
Benefits: Non-Financial Perks That Smooth Out Your Life
In a full-time position, you will often find other powerful benefits that are not just your regular health care stipend, such as free or heavily discounted mental health benefits, opportunities to travel to different places, childcare stipends, and parental leave for up to six months. Depending where you are in your life, these benefits could support you tremendously. While you may be able to make more money someplace else, these benefits might keep you in your current role longer because they support your current personal goals.
New Skills: The Lessons You Don’t Want To Learn But Know You Need
A new job can come with an opportunity to learn new skills. It is important to take inventory of the skills you have acquired in your career and the skills that you want to obtain. The best way to get these new skills is not a class or another certificate. It is to shadow someone who is great at that skill or be pushed off the diving board; therefore being required to learn as you go. You may find yourself in a situation where the job is offering you an opportunity. If you want to jump, just do it. Know that there will be times when you mess up or finish last. But be prepared to work very hard to become a master at this new skill. This new skill could offer you a promotion in pay and higher ranking job title.
Breathing Room: #TeamTimeOut
I am in full support of #TeamTimeOut. It is a bench that you place yourself and opt into. It is a time when you are working to keep your lifestyle running without adding any extra stress or pressure. Life can be gruesome, especially for women of color. Sometimes you need a break from the long workdays and the pressure we receive from management and ourselves. #TeamTimeOut will not erase the microaggressions that we face. Those are systemic and date back about six centuries before us. But this time will give you the clarity to decide what is next. Also, #TeamTimeOut is a great opportunity to build your own tapestry while making enough money to support your lifestyle. Many famous world leaders, regardless of gender or color, have benched themselves in order to build their next great idea. To do this, you need mental and emotional bandwidth to prioritize your dream while doing your day job efficiently. You look at your current job as a clock-in/clock-out system. Go to work, do the job, come home. Do not bring the job home because your home is a place where the new dream is being cultivated. Do not worry about getting a perfect score on your annual review. You focus on getting an average score that keeps your finances exactly where you need them.
Identifying your ‘professional why’ is one of the most important parts of your career journey. Your ‘why’ builds the foundation and mapping of your short-term goals. It is your guiding light as you decide what work battles to fight, what office politics to play and what type of leadership you value. The beauty of your professional why is that it can change at any time. The key is to always check in with your ‘why’. Is it still the same as it was when you started this new opportunity? Does it need to be changed? Have you changed? The continuous conversation surrounding your why will ultimately give you more peace in your professional and personal life and also push you to greater success. At the end of the day, you decide what success looks like for you.
Your career is your job to manage. The questions are the following: Why are you doing what you are doing? What’s in it for you? How is this company, organization or manager helping you build your dream lifestyle?
Alexandria Noel Butler - ‘Lexi B’ - is a Senior Program Manager in the technology industry and the founder of Unfiltered By Lexi B, a lifestyle social media account giving career advice to young professionals. In 2017, she founded Sista Circle: Black Women in Tech. She holds a dual degree from Stanford University in Communications and Spanish.