What Is Kind Careerism?
I imagine a world where we all shift from Toxic Professionalism to Kind Careerism.
Social impact and purpose-driven professionals are often exploited by their employers’ labor practices, industry-wide labor practices, and generally accepted labor practices - sometimes unknowingly - and suffer from pressures like perfectionism, projected progress, and permanence in their careers. This is Toxic Professionalism.
I believe we don’t have to give in to this way of careering anymore. We can DO careers in a different way. A way in which we can be kind to ourselves, to others, and challenge the unkind. We can shift to Kind Careerism.
What is ✨Kind Careerism ✨?
It’s a vision: a more kind, more socially just world in which we make career decisions that serve us, our communities, and the planet.
It’s a practice: a series of actions we can take repeatedly to move towards this vision.
It’s a mindset: a way of thinking, existing, making decisions that align with our true values and energy.
The “secret sauce,” but let’s not keep it a secret from anyone! Let’s spread that shit everywhere!
To me, this magical, warm, fuzzy philosophy is what I center my coaching around and it’s a game👏changer👏.
Before I get into more detail about the concept, let me give you some background on my professional adventures. My career consisted of a windy path with alternating episodes of career identity crisis and feel-good social impact work. I held various roles at mission-driven organizations doing project management to help them and client orgs move their community building and engagement programs forward. I spent 7 years working, studying, and feeding my fascination with behavior change, motivation, organizational culture, and leadership development, with experience working internally and as a consultant in this space.
After a relatively short career of exploitative experiences, getting laid off, departmental restructuring and elimination of my job…a global pandemic, which among many devastating impacts also forced my job search prospects to disappear overnight, not uncommonly…AND with encouragement from my mentors, I decided to try entrepreneurship. I co-founded a consultancy helping grassroots organizations transform the public spaces in their neighborhoods. I felt good about this new path!
This was not the first time I had navigated my way out of a career identity crisis into feeling confident and energized about my new direction. Dare I say, I was getting good at career changes. They weren’t necessarily easy times, but these transitions helped me build self-awareness, emotional resilience, and faith that the universe works in serendipitous ways. I gathered incredibly useful perspectives and self-growth tools along the way. Why keep those all to myself when I had a network full of other social and environmental impact professionals suffering from the pressures of conditioned Toxic Professionalism too?
By reinventing my career multiple times and the exposure to many different environments, experiences, leadership styles, company cultures, I developed a personal Swiss Army knife of generalist skills, which have made me a more confident entrepreneur. Though, it took me a while to see it that way…
Mainstream culture taught me that I needed to specialize to be valued (this is Toxic Pressure #1: Perfectionism).
It taught me I needed to stick it out at a job for years, even if I had outgrown it, because a resume with short-term jobs is stigmatized (Toxic Pressure #2: Permanence).
It also taught me if I started a business and wasn’t making as much money as my peers while I figure out HOW to run a brand new, baby business then I am “less than” (Toxic Pressure #3: Projected Progress).
I wasn’t being kind to myself because I learned that this is JUST HOW IT IS, having grown up in mainstream western career culture fueled by capitalism, white supremacy, ableism, and patriarchy (all big topics I’ll cover another day).
Now, as a Career Strategist, I help social impact-driven and kind-hearted professionals gain tools to recognize and break free of Toxic Professionalism, while making decisions that align with their energy and values.
We want a career that allows us to be kind to ourselves, kind to others, and to challenge the unkind.
This is Kind Careerism.
This is how I define what Kind Careerism is, and what it is not. Consider this a Kind Careerism cheat sheet!
WHAT KIND CAREERISM IS
Kind = making career choices that align with our values AND what energizes us
Kind = making decisions out of love
Kind = making choices that allow us to be kind to ourselves, others, and to the planet
Kind = advocating for ourselves, advocate for oppressed people in our community, and CHALLENGING THE UNKIND
Kind = confronting people from a place of love and revealing uncomfortable truths out of care and compassion for the people we confront
WHAT KIND CAREERISM IS NOT
Kind ≠ Just being nice or polite
You can be nice or polite AND still uphold oppressive systems and toxic culture. (See the blog post on When Nice People Make Bad Bosses)
Kind ≠ Toxic Positivity & suppressing negative emotions
Being able to sit with uncomfortable emotions, identify them and why we feel them, and then make decisions accordingly is a necessary skill (and takes practice!) for Kind Careerism.
Kind ≠ making decisions out of FEAR
When we make decisions out of fear and conditioned beliefs that aren’t in line with our values or energy, we risk our joy.
I believe we don’t have to give in to Toxic Professionalism to be successful.
We can make moves, big and small, that align with our values AND what energizes us.
We can shift to Kind Careerism.
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I’m NOW ENROLLING for Career Crossroads, a 12-week coaching adventure to help you shift your career to align with your kindness, your values, and your energy. >>> LEARN MORE
