Today’s blog will give you some insight into the workings of The Birkman Method, a behavioral analysis tool that focuses on motivation, self-perception, social perception, and mindset when helping a person identify a desired work path. As a career coach, I regularly use this tool to help teens and adults answer some of their most pressing career questions because the tool works! With today’s blog, I aim to help you grasp some of the basic concepts of the method and show you how you can apply them to finding work in a range of careers. In doing so, you will see that you are not your job, but you are your skills—and your motivation, self-perception, and mindset—which means that you may be able to find happiness in many types of jobs. To that end, we’re going to look at an example based on a true career-switcher story.
Here’s the scenario: “Jim” has a journalism degree and a few years of experience as a reporter. In his short time working for an online news outlet, his communication skills expanded; his job allowed him to learn how to effectively communicate with people from all walks of life. In the process, he improved his ability to understand people and gain their trust, which led him to report great stories.
A few years into his career, Jim experienced a career crisis. His news outlet went out of business during an economic downturn. This left Jim jobless for a long stretch as he found it difficult to land a journalism position elsewhere. But his student loans, rent, grocery bills, and car note weren’t going away. He had to get a job.
Jim was fortunate to pick up a seasonal sales position in the men’s clothing section of a successful department store. Over the holidays, he consistently outsold his colleagues, including those who had been in his very same job for years. With the New Year on the horizon, store managers asked Jim to come aboard full time; his job would come with some expanded, higher-level responsibilities than it had placed on him as a seasonal employee. Still having no success getting back into his degreed field, he accepted the job offer. And to his great surprise, he found that he loved his new role.
Why?
Many of the things that Jim loved about reporting were the same things he loved about sales. They included getting to know all kinds of people, gaining their trust, and persuading them to act; for the news outlet, he had persuaded people to share their stories for print, while in sales, he convinced them to make a purchase. Comparing the two careers, Jim knew that he could excel in both because he had a magic mix going for him: He loved fashion, speaking with customers, and helping them find clothing that changed their lives for the better. And in journalism, his motivation was similar: He loved sharing people’s stories to change their lives for the better as well.
A year into his sales position, Jim was basking in his new business success when a job opportunity came his way in the form of a business card discreetly deposited on the counter by a customer. Earlier, as Jim had helped the man select a suit and the two were making general conversation, Jim had revealed his prior reporting job. The client, on the other hand, had been coy, not revealing his line of work. But as the client walked away from the counter with his suit on a hanger in a long plastic garment bag, Jim picked up the man’s card to discover that he was the editor-in-chief of a top-notch magazine. On the back of the card, Jim read his note: “Call me about a potential writing job.”
The next day, something similar occurred, only this time the manager of a men’s luxury clothing store discreetly left a business card on the counter for Jim. On the back, Jim was asked to call the man about a “sales opportunity.”
Turns out the sales opportunity was to manage an entire store, a job with a six-figure-annual income. The magazine writing job, on the other hand, would pay about 50 percent less.
Jim faced a quandary. He’d always thought he was born to write. On the other hand, he had fallen into the sales job, and, to his surprise, discovered his love for sales. So, he interviewed for both jobs . . . and he received formal job offers for each one. He had to make a choice. Crunch time.
In the midst of debating his job offers, Jim struggled with his decision. Who am I? he asked himself. I always saw myself as a writer, not a salesperson.
Here’s where we’ll look at Jim’s wonderful quandary by borrowing the lens of The Birkman Method to explore how your skills and motivation, self-perception, social perception, and mindset can help you find the right job across a range of careers.
Let’s first start with motivation. As we previously noted, one of Jim’s primary motivations—his passion for communicating with others and changing their lives—has been fulfilled to varying degrees by both his sales job and his old reporting job. But what Jim didn’t know until he began to succeed in the sales job was how much he loved the financial freedom the larger paychecks from sales, far and away superior to his journalism pay, afforded him. He weighed this fact: As a journalist, he was more likely to profoundly change people’s lives for the better than in sales, but a journalism income might never give him the kind of financial freedom he was coming to enjoy as a salesperson.
Next, let’s focus on self-perception: Jim had always seen himself as a writer, not as a salesman. But having grown in sales and performed it so well, he felt proud to hit the sales floor each day. He was starting to perceive himself as a great salesperson, and he liked what he saw when he glanced at himself in the mirror in his “uniform” of a three-piece suit; it was a far cry sharper than the jeans and button-down shirt, sans tie, that was almost a standard “uniform” in his old newsroom.
But despite these positive feelings, the matter of social perception lingered.
How will people I went to college with perceive me in a “permanent” sales role? Jim wondered. Will they look down on me for doing a job that doesn’t require a college degree? Do I care what they think if I’m happy doing something that affords me far more opportunities to live the life I want? Jim didn’t have an immediate answer for this last question but knew he had to resolve it to make his job choice.
So, this is the perfect point to consider Jim’s mindset. Jim had always been a determined person who had not let barriers keep him rooted in one place. He considered that while an income from a writing career would be substantially less than in sales—at least immediately—that didn’t always mean he couldn’t make good money in journalism, maybe even great money. It might not ever be six figures, however, but could he live with that?
Deep inside, Jim knew that whichever job he chose, he would be setting a career course that could alter the rest of his life. Which job do you think won out?
After many nights of soul-searching, Jim chose the sales manager position. He had determined that his identity did not rest on what he did for a living or what others thought of him; to Jim, the real constant of his work identity was his skill sets that would transfer with him from one kind of job to the next. Realizing that, Jim then came up with a new dream: He would be the best luxury-fashion store manager ever, make six figures, and hone his writing on the side through continual journaling and freelance writing assignments if the editor-in-chief of that top-notch magazine and other outlets would take his work.
The lesson of Jim’s example: Keep an open mind about the work you do now and in the future. You never know where your true happiness may lie in careering. You’re far more likely to find that happiness when you don’t let your job title define you. And using The Birkman Method to help determine your career moves is a good place to start on that road toward job serenity.
