Fulfilment is one of my top Career Values and honestly, it underpins everything I do in my business. When I’m explaining fulfilment to clients, I use a pie analogy, because firstly, I love pie. And secondly, I find it to be a really useful, visual way to consider all of the elements that contribute to our fulfilment in the workplace. Enjoy!
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3. Career Fulfilment Pie Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, there I’m Bec McFarland the host of the Pop Your Career Podcast. As a career coach, I’m most passionate about helping my clients to discover their own personal flavour of career fulfillment. In this podcast, we are going to be exploring ways that you too can feel more fulfilled by your work. So strap yourself in, get ready for the ride. The tips around here are fast and in abundance.
[00:00:29] Hello. Hello. It’s Bec McFarland here helping you do better and be better in your career. Welcome to today’s episode where we are talking about something very delicious, and that is of course. Pie. But more specifically career fulfillment pie.
[00:00:49] So we talked in our last episode about this idea that your job can be your dream or your job can be the thing that facilitates you living your dream life.[00:01:00]
[00:01:00] And I want to kind of expand on that today by talking about another concept that I share with a lot of my career coaching clients. And that is about career fulfillment pie and how we can make sure that we get as much pie as we possibly can, who doesn’t love pie. Right.
[00:01:18] So recently I ordered a gluten and dairy free lemon meringue pie.
[00:01:24] If you’re in Canberra, it came from Tikvahs bakery and it was absolutely amazing. I haven’t had lemon meringue pie in about four or five years since my diet changed and I stopped eating gluten and dairy. So I was super duper excited to find out that Nicole was able to make me this pie. I really, really thoroughly enjoyed it.
[00:01:46] Uh, and it definitely spurred me on and made me think that I needed to get this episode recorded so that I could share my love of pie. But also the concept of [00:02:00] career fulfillment pie with you all here is I think that you’ll really enjoy it and see some value from it.
[00:02:06] So when I think about career fulfillment pie, I think about it being like a pie chart, right? So we all know what a pie chart looks like. It is very, very dull and boring, which is why, when I’m talking about this concept, I like to talk about it as in actual pie. For me, it just makes the process a little bit more enjoyable.
[00:02:28] So you’ve got a pie in front of you. I want you to have a think about your current career. If you had to cut a piece of that pie for every element of your career. They are the elements that are there, and also the elements that aren’t there, how much of your pie would actually remain intact.
[00:02:50] Now, usually when I’m with a coaching client, I actually draw this. And so it makes it a little easier to explain. It’s a little tricky over the [00:03:00] audio, but we’re gonna work with it. I’m gonna give you an example.
[00:03:03] So back when I worked in the public service, I really, really, actually very much enjoyed my role there. I wasn’t one of these people who started the side hustle because of the fact that I wanted it to be my main hustle.
[00:03:15] In fact, I told my business coach on many, many occasions. I love my job so much. I’m just doing my business on the side to help me round out my career fulfillment pie. So what I could see from my job in the public service was that it ticked most of my boxes, but there were two pieces of pie that were really, really missing when it came to my career fulfillment.
[00:03:43] The two things that I felt like I was missing in that role were firstly, leadership and more so around like the coaching space. So prior to working in the public service, I was the HR manager of a small business here in Canberra. We [00:04:00] had, just over 30 staff within that. I also had my own team, so I was coaching my own team, but I was also coaching members of the organization more broadly.
[00:04:10] When I went into the public service, I know they talk about the fact that they’ve got a coaching culture and things like that, but it just wasn’t the same. It just wasn’t at the same level for me as what I’d experienced in this small business. And I really, really missed that.
[00:04:25] It’s not to blow my own trumpet, although. This is a pretty good platform for me to do that. I’m a good coach. I know what I’m talking about. And I know that I’m able to assist people with achieving the breakthroughs and reaching the transformations that they really desire. And so I felt like there was this part of me that was missing. It was missing. I was being held back.
[00:04:48] The second piece of pie that was missing was my creativity. Now I don’t play a musical instrument. I don’t knit. I’m definitely [00:05:00] not an artist. I couldn’t paint or draw to save my life, but I’ve got a lot of really creative qualities. And if you follow, Pop Your Career or any of my other businesses, I’m sure that you’ll see that coming through.
[00:05:12] I love bright colours. I really get very creative about the way that I present myself. I’m deeply into graphic design and things on the internet look beautiful. And I love to write, and I write nonfiction. Mostly I write blog articles about career advice, but I like to do it in a really creative way.
[00:05:35] And that’s the way that I get my creative outlet. Right? And so what I found is that in this job, I just missed those creative elements. It was quite obvious to me when I looked down at my pie tray, that, that particular pie piece representing creativity was not there. Now I’d spoken to my boss about this at the time we had a [00:06:00] pretty good relationship.
[00:06:01] I told him I’m really missing my creativity, but as a not very creative person himself, he didn’t really have a lot of great ideas about how I could feel more creative in the workplace. Aside from ‘Bec, can you be more creative about the way that you write the brief?’ And I know there are gonna be a lot of people out there that will really resonate with with that, and they’ll understand why that was not the most helpful advice. It came from a really good place. It was really well meaning, but it just wasn’t that useful in the end.
[00:06:31] This episode is brought to you by the Career Clarity Quest, my absolutely free, seven day program, which is designed to support you in getting so much clearer about your next steps. Find it at PopYourCareer.com/quest.
[00:06:48] So when I was looking at how to actually fill my pie pieces, I had to think, okay, now it’s time for me to embark on an adventure. [00:07:00] Do something start some kind of project that’s going to allow for me to fulfill those areas of my pie that are missing.
[00:07:09] And this was around the time that I started officially Pop Your Career as my career coaching practice. Now, at the time when I was planning this out and I was thinking about the way that I would operate my business, I knew that there were two key things that I needed to incorporate into the business to ensure that I was feeling more fulfill over all.
[00:07:31] Because as far as I’m concerned, career fulfillment is life fulfillment as humans. We just can’t compartmentalize things and we can’t just keep our job in one box and our life in another box. That just doesn’t happen. So when we are talking about our fulfillment pie, we’re actually talking about the way that we’re fulfilled by our lives as a whole.
[00:07:56] So when I started the business, I was looking at these two pieces of pie. [00:08:00] And to me it was a perfect match. It was super easy for me to look at that and say, okay then, so I know that I’m gonna be able to get the leadership and the coaching stuff that I desire because of the fact that I’m gonna be working in coaching.
[00:08:11] I’m gonna have the opportunity to be able to coach individuals on their careers. And from the leadership perspective, I know that over time, I’m going to grow a team and I want to be the type of leader who is very focused on capability building and development within the team and that I make time for coaching.
[00:08:29] I will admit to you. I am not doing a fantastic job of that at the moment. I am definitely struggling to find enough hours in the day to do all of the things. But this is definitely part of the scope of the future business and what our culture looks like. So I just wanted to add that as a side note.
[00:08:47] So once I started to build in those two pieces of pie, what I notice is that all of a sudden my fulfillment levels went up. I started feeling really great. I loved the balance [00:09:00] between my day job and my side hustle. Not because of the fact that I’d started my own business, but because of the fact that I’d listened, I had listened to myself and I had come to learn what it was that was missing and thought really creatively about how I could bring that to fruition.
[00:09:19] Now I just wanna remind you, this is not an advertisement for starting your own business. That is definitely not the right path for everybody. For some people starting a business and doing that on the side of your job can be really fulfilling and it can be a way for you to tick those boxes or refill those pie gaps in your pie.
[00:09:38] And it can be a really great idea, but do you know what? You don’t always have to start your own business in order to fill up your fulfillment pie. There are lots of other ways that you can do this. So this could be through starting some kind of creative project or some other project that you do in the home or in the community. Could be through volunteer work. It could be [00:10:00] through studying. Might be something to do with your network and the way that you actually connect with other people.
[00:10:06] So really having a look and paying attention to where you are getting those nudges. Where you are feeling like something’s missing and rather than just brushing it to the side and thinking, ‘oh, well, you know, I can’t have that in my job. So I’m destined to feel unfulfilled forever’. You know?
[00:10:26] We actually do something about it. You have a choice and you have the power and you have the ability to change. Now I know this comes from a very privileged perspective and that not everybody has the privilege that I do. And you’ll notice that I’m going to acknowledge that.
[00:10:45] In many of my future episodes as well, because I do know that I’m very, very lucky. But I just wanna say these changes, these tweaks, these little additions that you bring into your life to fill up your [00:11:00] pie and to feel very fulfilled overall, they don’t always have to be huge. They don’t have to be big changes. It’s amazing how sometimes a little tweak, to what we’re already doing can make a huge, huge, huge difference, especially when done multiple times over a period of time.
[00:11:26] So I just wanna leave you with that today. Thinking about your own career fulfillment pie, or call it your life fulfillment pie. If you want, think about what is being ticked off, what are the things that you are really feeling fulfilled by at the moment and what might be missing?
[00:11:45] And if you can sense that there’s something missing, but you’re not quite sure what it is, maybe start thinking about some of the jobs that you’ve had before, or some of the situations that you’ve had before? Maybe some projects that you’ve done in the past? People that you’ve [00:12:00]connected with times when maybe you experience that feeling that is now feeling a little void.
[00:12:06] Of course, if you’re looking for more ways, to feel more fulfilled in your career, I would love for you to keep listening to the Pop Your Career podcast. That is all from me today. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. Please feel free to jump over onto social media, say hello to me and let me know what you think, but otherwise take it easy.
[00:12:26] And I look forward to catching up with you again in the next episode of the Pop Your Career podcast. See you soon.
[00:12:33] Thanks so much for listening to the Pop Your Career podcast. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s tips and that you found value in what I’ve shared with you. If you like your career advice quick and entertaining, I would love for you to subscribe. Also leave me a rating and a review. If you wanna continue the conversation, come and join me over on social media. You can find me everywhere at Pop Your Career. I’ll see you soon.
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