Non-Negotiable

What are your Career Non-Negotiables?

Your Non-Negotiables are the things that you absolutely must have in a role or that absolutely cannot feature.

They are really helpful as a way to decide next steps in your career. Say, for example, that you have been offered the most amazing opportunity which, prior to determining your Non-Negotiables, you would have jumped at! But you have decided that you need a degree of flexibility to sustain a side-project that you love and this role just won’t allow for it. So you consciously decline it.

Non-Negotiables are also helpful as a way to course-correct in a current role. You can check in with them quarterly [put it in your calendar!] and use them to assess how the role is progressing and what needs to change. For example, say you’ve always valued and enjoyed a high degree of trust but a new manager has started to curtail your autonomy. You can ask yourself: what can I do, to recover this Non-Negotiable?

Non-Negotiables tend to change as your life does. For example, maybe when you were starting out, you were more than happy to be travelling every week – super exciting and a fantastic opportunity to be gaining experience and expanding your professional networks. But when you chose to start a family, you preferred to limit your travel, to prioritise time with little people.

So how do you work them out?

• Take a big piece of paper
• Consider the best jobs you’ve ever had – what made them so good?
• Consider the worst jobs you’ve ever had – what made them so difficult?
• Add all those factors to your List of Non-Negotiables
• Expand: is there anything else that you absolutely must or absolutely cannot have?
• Refine: now refine the list, letting the really [really!] critical ones float to the top.

Tags: career-coaching, life-coaching, Melbourne