Passion combined with your skill set will help you while pivoting in your career.
How often have you heard the phrase, “Just follow your passion?” Probably too many times. It’s the top advice for many business executives to share with entrepreneurs or new university graduates.
Having a passion is wonderful. It gives life purpose and a reprieve from the monotony of everyday life; however, not all passions lead to a successful career. For some, it can carry lifelong debt and a sense of failure, especially if you’re new to the entrepreneurial hustle. Just because someone likes to sing doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate into a career.
Roughly 20% of new businesses fail within their first year. Failure to pivot a business strategy or course of action when following your passion commonly results in dissolving companies. Preparing for the pivot and actually following through is a recommendation by Skynova’s latest research.
Many people think the only way to be happy is to do or work on something they’re passionate about. Put aside the entrepreneurial route for a moment; quiet quitting has continued to disrupt the workforce. Fifty percent of workers are quiet quitting, a Gallup poll finds, due to lack of engagement. In the last decade, people have been engrained to follow their passion, especially if they’re unhappy with management, work projects or how to discover their purpose in life.
But how does passion relate to successfully pivoting?
Just because you are passionate about something does not make you an expert in the field or good at it; sometimes, when you pivot, you’ll have to learn a new skill or start one or two levels down from where you were currently at in the old company. What’s missing from the advice is ensuring that your skill set compliments what you want to do. The skills you’ve already developed should be more than a starting point when pivoting in a career.
Yes, you should be happy with what you’re doing, but sometimes that happiness doesn’t mean that it’s connected to your passion or that the only way you’re going to be happy is if you follow your passion. Instead, successfully pivoting correlates with what you are good at, what you can become an expert in, and how you can apply that to what you want to do or who you want to be.
Develop a broad set of skills that will lay a foundation for you and can be applied to any industry.
How to tie passion to skillset:
Narrow down your passions
People have many interests and passions. Clearly describe what you want to do and the learning curve it will take to do it correctly and efficiently; look at the business side of the passion. Determine if you have the time to understand and implement the analytical side that will make you money.
Define what you are good at
Everyone has developed particular skills from past experiences. First, identify your strongest skill set and how it coincides with following your passion and the value that you bring to a new company or industry. Then decipher if combining the two will make you happier than what you are doing now.
Learn to fail quickly
Although it’s not as taboo to talk about failure as it was a decade ago, some people still struggle with the idea. Failing quickly is giving yourself permission to value your time and energy spent on a particular project or passion; it allows you to move forward to see what will work for you and your lifestyle. Maybe what you are really good at just doesn’t align with your passion. Once you can figure that out, it’s a lot easier to move forward more efficiently and strategically. So align those goals with the skill set at which you are good at and go from there.
Following your passion linked with your skill set and ability to recognize if it will work will help you successfully pivot in your career. It is possible to find work or build a business that aligns with your skill set, still makes you happy working on projects and gives you time off hours to pursue what you’re most passionate about.
