Identifying your deal makers and deal breakers now can help you avoid compromising too much when looking to make a move. While no job is perfect or absent all tasks we dislike, identifying nonnegotiable factors will help you stay true to yourself when making decisions. In section two, “Blaze Your Path,” you will put the results of this highlighting exercise into action.
A sample of the YouMap® is illustrated below. Again, you can download a copy at MyYouMap.com.
JANE DOE YOUMAP®
My Unique Contribution
I’m an innovator, a confident decision maker, and a catalyst for change.
I bring the combination of an inventive and analytical mind.
Self-Assurance, Ideation, Activator, Restorative, Analytical
Honesty, Contribution, Strategic Thinking, Community, Innovation, Belonging, Autonomy, Making a Difference, Personal Growth, Fun
Strategy, Writing, Inventing, Delegation, Leadership, Design, Teamwork, Analysis, Research, Initiating Change, Mentoring, Conceptualizing, Visualizing
The Designer: An original thinker driven by the investigation of ideas and connections between things. Highly observant and intuitive.
Case Study: Antonette, The Pharma Sales Rep
Let’s review a real client case study to illustrate the power of the process that results in your YouMap®.
Antonette was a pharmaceutical sales representative whom I met in 2017. She had recently taken a bold risk and quit her job. In our first phone conversation, Antonette shared she has never landed in the right role, with the right manager, in the right company in her 25-year career. She knew something was missing, and most jobs felt very cookie cutter. They just didn’t seem to fit her.
Antonette had taken strength and personality assessments in the past. However, the information had not been debriefed or organized into an integrated story until she went through the YouMap® career profile process with me.
The YouMap® revealed some surprising insights and equipped Antonette to articulate what was missing from her career up to that point. I’ll present her case study using each of the pillars of career satisfaction, share the insights she gained, and show her final profile, highlighting the gaps in the career path she had pursued.
Antonette’s Strengths
This table outlines Antonette’s Driver, Passenger, and Fuel strengths. Take a moment to review.
DRIVER
Strategic (Thinking Theme) – You find alternative ways to proceed, sorting through clutter to find the best route. This skill cannot be taught. You play out alternative scenarios allowing you to see around the next corner. You discard paths that lead nowhere.
PASSENGERS
Achiever (Executing Theme) – You have a great deal of stamina and work hard. You take great satisfaction from being busy and productive. Your drive is the power supply that causes you to set the pace and define productivity levels for others.
Learner (Thinking Theme) – You have a great desire to continuously improve. Learning enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time.
FUEL
Input (Thinking Theme) – You have a craving to know more and often collect and archive information. You keep acquiring, compiling and filing stuff away because it’s interesting and keeps your mind fresh—without knowing when and why you might need it.
Futuristic (Thinking Theme) – You are inspired by what could be and you inspire others with your vision. You see in detail what the future might hold, and it pulls you forward. You make the picture as vivid as possible for others to see and keep asking, “Wouldn’t it be great if….”
Antonette’s Strengths Insights
As a pharmaceutical sales representative, Antonette spent a lot of time on the road meeting with health care providers. Her job was characterized by the following responsibilities:
• Achieving aggressive sales targets in numbers-driven environments
• Cold calling to increase revenue and market share
• Executing sales strategies
• Influencing and persuading clients in high status positions, namely physicians
Following are three explanations why Antonette’s strengths were not suited for sales:
Influencing without authority – Antonette has no Influencing themes in her Top 5 strengths. Therefore, she does not enjoy circumstances where she is expected to make things happen through influence and persuasion. Most sales people have one or more Influencing strengths.
Few intellectual challenges – Antonette’s strengths are heavily represented in the Thinking category (four out of five), with one strength in the Executing category. She is a thinker/doer. Because of her large number of thinking themes, her role must require brain power, as she will quickly tire of work that is routine or not intellectually challenging. Sales is more relationship influence than intellectual challenge. (No, I’m not saying sales people don’t think or like to use their brains!)
Insufficient learning opportunities – Learner is in Antonette’s top strengths. Therefore, it’s important for her to grow and learn new things on a consistent basis. Learners get wander lust after a role offers little opportunity to stretch themselves. Once she learned the ropes of her clients and territory, insufficient learning opportunities left her dissatisfied.
It became apparent in our first session that Antonette’s strengths would be better suited in a role other than sales. Now, let’s look at her values story.
Antonette’s Values
Perhaps now might be a good time to stop and complete your values exercise, if you haven’t already, and then read the insights from Antonette’s case study. It’s not required, but it will be helpful to have your list of values in front of you.
If you’ve completed a values assessment in the past, feel free to use those results. Take time to prioritize your values. The “Discover Your Values” section contains an exercise to reveal and prioritize your values and explains why prioritizing your values is important. You can download the values exercise at MyYouMap.com.
During our second session, Antonette and I discussed her values and what is most important to her. She had completed the values exercise, including prioritizing them, prior to our meeting.
Antonette created the following prioritized list of values. I have included her definitions of each value and her comments from the session.
ANTONETTE’S TOP VALUES
Dynamism – Movement, forward motion, incorporates doing something important and dynamic to move an idea or an organization forward.
Inner Harmony – I feel like I’m in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. FLOW! I don’t have anxiety. I can feel peace inside. We’re all together. I get a gnawing feeling when I’m asked to do something that feels like a lie or stretching the truth.
Commitment – Alignment and integrity. Commitment at the individual and team levels. Of one accord.
Vitality/Health – Is what I’m doing affirming life (not just my life but everybody I’m touching)? How happy am I about Monday coming around? Mental health is the biggest. Does the atmosphere provoke anxiety or fear? Time off, reasonable expectations, occasional work from home. A place that’s flexible and progressive enough that a person’s whole health is considered. For example, can I take a walk at lunch, or walk to work, standing desks, allow physical activity? Do they emphasize employee wellness?
; Mastery – Excellence and beauty. I can appreciate when someone or a company is good at something, such as how they communicate to customers and employees. When I’m working with leaders, how do they demonstrate their mastery? Do they talk at you or get in the trenches with you? I learn better that way (in the trenches). It’s a goal for me to get better.
Community/Service/Making a Difference/Love & Connection – I must make a difference. I can find community with like-minded people anywhere, but then when everyone is out for themselves I feel adrift. I’m usually someone who helps build community and make connections. I’ve got energy to be of service at work!
Antonette’s Values Insights
Antonette and I reviewed her values, one at a time. Then I asked her three questions, which I discuss below.
What does dynamism [Value #1] mean to you?
It’s critical to personally define a value. I don’t care how Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a word, I care what it means to you. As you can see from the illustration above, Antonette defined dynamism as “Movement, forward motion, incorporates doing something important and dynamic to move an idea or an organization forward.”
Do you desire this value to be reciprocated in the workplace by your manager and/or team members?
Two of Antonette’s values are reciprocal: Commitment, and Community/Service/Making a Difference/Love & Connection. Both were violated in her last role. Antonette shared that it was important to have a sense of alignment at the individual and team levels—to be of one accord. In a contract sales position, everyone tends to be out for themselves.
Was/Is this value honored or violated in your role, by your manager, and in the workplace culture?
When I asked Antonette if her role, manager, or company culture honored or violated her first value, Dynamism, she told me it was violated at the role level. She elaborated that her position was a contract role, which meant the only option was to do that role and then leave. In her words, “They don’t need you to belong or be aligned. They just need you to do the job. You can sell any pill.”
The ability to do something important, to move an idea or the organization forward in a temporary role wasn’t in the cards, which left Antonette feeling disconnected and without purpose.
As with her strengths, Antonette’s values were not aligned to her sales role. That’s a two for two mismatch. Next, let’s see what we discovered about her motivated skills.
Antonette’s Motivated Skills
After reviewing her values, Antonette and I shifted to a discussion about the skills she enjoys using most at work each day. Here, again, are the four categories of skill motivation:
Motivated Skills – Skills you’re good at and enjoy doing every day. For example, you might love conceptualizing, dealing with ambiguity, or working with numbers.
Burnout Skills – Skills you’re good at but do not enjoy doing. For example, you might be proficient at working with numbers but find it tedious and draining.
Developmental Skills – Skills you would like to do more but haven’t had an opportunity to develop, such as managing others. Perhaps you love managing your home budget but haven’t had a chance with budget responsibility at work.
Low Priority Skills – Skills that no matter how much time you invest in them, you don’t seem to significantly improve your skill level. That’s OK, because you don’t like to do them, either!
The following list is a combination of Antonette’s motivated and developmental skills. Knowing Antonette was unfulfilled in her career as a pharmaceutical sales representative, does anything stand out about her motivated skills that might explain her career dissatisfaction?
ANTONETTE’S MOTIVATED SKILLS
Administration
n/a
Artistic & Mechanical
Entertain/Perform
Conceptual & Creative
Ambiguity (Deal with)
Conceptualize
Ideas (Generate)
Improvise
Innovate/Invent
Strategize
Synthesize
Visualize
Interpersonal
Act as Liaison
Counsel
Deal with Feelings
Perceive Intuitively
Teach/Train
Team Work
Leadership
Initiate Change
Leadership
Mentor
Motivate
Manage Process & Projects
Manage Time
Plan/Organize
Research & Analysis
Analyze
Interview for Information
Observe
Read for Information
Research Online
Sales
Negotiate
Supervise
Decision Making
Delegate
Technical & Information
Computer Literate
Test
The following list contains Antonette’s burnout and low priority skills—skills she would prefer to avoid. Knowing Antonette was unfulfilled in her career, try to identify skills she had to perform as a sales rep that contributed to her dissatisfaction.
Antonette’s Skills Insights
Antonette’s highest concentration of motivated skills is in the Conceptual/Creative category, relating to mental concepts such as generating ideas, innovating, strategizing, and visualizing. If you recall, four of Antonette’s strengths were in the Thinking category (Strategic, Futuristic, Learner, Input). Hence, it’s unsurprising that skills related to mental concepts would be most appealing to her.
You will see common patterns and threads across your own data when you complete these assessments and exercises, which is very affirming.
Antonette’s other preferred skill categories are:
• Interpersonal (Act as Liaison, Counsel, Deal with Feelings, Perceive Intuitively, Teach/Train, Teamwork)
• Research & Analysis
• Leadership
In addition to the lack of conceptual and creative skills in Antonette’s role as a sales representative, another mismatch was her strong orientation to teamwork. A sales rep role involves frequent travel for client visits, which is counter to team-based work. The role of a sales representative is often independent of the team.
Notice that Selling and Customer Service are in Antonette’s Low Priority and Burn Out skills. These are probably the two most important and frequently used skills of a sales representative!
Also note that Supervise is a low priority skill for her, but Leadership is not. This means Antonette will thrive most in a role where she has some level of authority for decision making and can exercise leadership through expertise and mentoring without having to manage people. Think of the power of her Strategic and Futuristic strengths to help guide and lead others forward!
At this stage, Antonette has a mismatch for the first three pillars of career satisfaction. Let’s review her fourth and final pillar.
How Antonette is Wired
As introduced earlier, Holland Occupational Themes is based on six personality types. To recap, they are Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional.
After assessing Anton
ette’s career interests, I looked at her top two highest ranking career interest codes. Her highest was Investigative, followed by Social, as shown here:
We know that Antonette has four Thinking strengths in her StrengthsFinder results. Again, we see consistency across her assessments, as Thinking strengths correlate with the Investigative career type (The Thinkers). Teamwork is also important to Antonette, which is consistent with a Social career interest orientation.
Antonette’s Career Interest Type: The Practitioner (Investigative/Social)
CareerCode: Know Your Code, Find Your Fit by Lowe and Lungrin provides a nice characterization of the I/S career type:
I/Ss are often caring, diagnostic, cautious, curious, analytical, overextended (take on more than they have time for when people need their help), independent, intellectual, objective, and introverted.
Healthcare is a typical field for those with an I/S code because much of the work revolves around helping others, thinking objectively, and solving challenging problems. An I/S will likely feel fulfilled in healthcare jobs that involve contact with patients or staff and makes a difference for others.
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