Origin
Some careers are made of moves their owner went out and got. Others are made of moves that were offered, assigned or left as the only option. Both can lead to the same jobs, and they ask very different things of the person living them. So the fifth aspect asks where the commitments in a career came from.
| End | Letter | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Self-Led | O | O, for owned. You went and got your commitments, by looking for them, asking for them or making them exist |
| Guided | G | Your commitments came to you, offered by an employer, assigned by an institution or left as the only option open at the time |
For each commitment, the question is who decided that it would happen. If you decided to go looking and took one of the things you found, the commitment came from you, even though someone else owned the vacancy. But if you were promoted, posted, transferred, recruited, invited, made redundant into the next thing, or took the only work available, it came from outside you.
Not every move counts equally. A career sits at the end of the moves that shaped it most, such as the ones that changed your work, your environment or your standing. For example, someone who was promoted along a ladder for fifteen years and then left to start the business that became their life's work may well have a Self-Led career, because that one move shaped the rest.
| Where each case sits, from Self-Led to Guided | ||
|---|---|---|
| The nurse across an acute ward, a remote clinic, a cruise ship, a prison and an IVF clinic | Self-Led. No employer offers that sequence, so she found and applied for every post | |
| The commander posted to Brussels and then to Afghanistan | Guided. The armed forces decided both postings | |
| A young doctor, so far | Guided. Medical school, then the posts a training scheme allocates | |
| A bookkeeper who took the job that was going at twenty-two and has been there since | Guided | |
| A bookkeeper who left twice, went looking both times and chose the practice she wanted | Self-Led | |
| A self-employed carpenter who set up after the firm restructured and takes whatever the builder calls him for | Guided. Owning the business settles nothing | |
| A self-employed carpenter who went out on his own to choose his own work | Self-Led |
Self-Led
Gains
A career of their own making. Each move was their choice, so the career feels like theirs.
Owes nobody. They built their position themselves, so nobody can call it in.
Not at one employer's mercy. No single boss or committee decides their fate.
Makes things that did not exist. They start ventures, posts or projects nobody offered.
Costs
Every choice is theirs to make. Deciding what comes next takes time and worry, and the mistakes are theirs too.
On their own. Nobody pays for their training or speaks up for them in rooms they are not in.
Judged by strangers. Each move depends on convincing people who have not seen them work.
Builds from nothing. What they start has no people, money or history until they supply it.
Guided
Gains
Free to focus on the work. Others decide the next step, so their energy goes into the job.
Backed and trained. The institution invests in them, trains them and speaks up for them.
Judged by people who know them. Those deciding their career have watched them work for years.
Steps into something built. Their roles come with people, budgets and a history already in place.
Costs
A path others chose. Much of it was decided by someone else, and can feel less like their own.
Obliged in return. What the institution gave, it can ask back, in postings or in loyalty.
At one institution's mercy. A reorganisation, a new boss or a poor review can stall the whole career.
Limited to what is on offer. Their career holds the posts the institution happened to have.
Coming soon
Which of the sixteen types fits you?
The scan shows the career you've had. The trait test, which I'm building now, shows which of the sixteen types fits who you are, and how far your career is from that type.
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A career inside an institution that manages its people gains depth, backing and positions that nobody reaches alone. That is how careers are built in an army, a church, a civil service or a large firm, and many of the most senior people in them got there by being guided.
People tend to remember the moves that went well as their own idea and the ones that went badly as someone else's. That is why the question is where each move came from, and not whether you were glad of it.
