Key Outcomes
- Work that lights him up
- Deep clarity about what energizes him
- A tool that enables him to clearly evaluate his career decisions in light of how likely the result is to energize him
- Courage to make a risky change
- Ability to stay with a long-term employer in a new role
In the beginning...
Corky was a long-time employee at one of the world’s biggest technology companies. In recent years, his role had unexpectedly taken a turn and he was dissatisfied with where his path was going. As he describes it, “I was feeling at a crossroads, wondering where the next step was going to be, and frankly at risk for staying there.”
And now…
And now...
As Corky describes his current situation, “I’ve taken a new role with my company – finally, have gotten into a true sales role that encompasses many of the characteristics that we uncovered of what lights me up. And I’m really loving the job. For the first time in a long time, I’m very fired up about work.”
Factors supporting his change
That change to a true sales role is one he acknowledges wasn’t without risk. “If you don’t produce,” he says, “if you don’t generate revenue, you could find yourself with no job at all.”
One of the factors that played a significant role in his decision to make that change was the Passion Core he created in his work with Curt (an internal compass consisting of the underlying themes that tend to be present when he feels energized and engaged).
As he describes it, “One of the things that gave me the courage to go ahead and take that risk was when I looked at this inventory of the characteristics of a role that really did turn me on, and it mapped closely to what I envisioned a sales role to be. It was good to have that to look back on when I was evaluating the wisdom of taking that risk and moving into that role.”
The work Corky did with Curt went a long way towards taking the guesswork out of career decisions. “The process we went through gave me some tangible guidance in terms of, hey, if you’re looking at another job and it doesn’t have at least a bunch of these characteristics, you’re probably making the wrong decision.”
Working with Curt
Looking back on his work with Curt, Corky describes the value he got out of it. “What I really enjoyed and really got a lot out of in the process was Curt’s interviewing process where he was able to peel the onion and go beyond the superficial layers of various things that I enjoy doing. That insight and that probing, and that ability to react to what he heard me saying in order to get a level deeper was very helpful.
“The most valuable piece for me was in starting with a fresh slate, really analyzing what are the things about a career that I find gratifying – what are the characteristics of a job or a role that are going to make me get out of bed in the morning and tackle the day.
"Curt had a gift for peeling the onion and enabling me to look at those characteristics without any influence of what usually clouds our judgment, like what we think we ought to be doing, or what we think others think we ought to be doing.”
