What have been some of the defining moments in your life? How have these defining moments impacted your career? These are some of questions my co-authors (Troy Nielson and Wesley Kading) and I set out to explore recently in our research. We define a career-defining moment as a point in time that substantially alters the trajectory of one’s career.
These experiences can be a result of:
1) anticipated transition events (like graduation)
2) unanticipated transition events (like a bout with cancer),
3) an insight experience (you felt like “dead man walking” at work and knew you had to make a change),
4) relationship experiences (like a mentor), or
5) spiritual experiences (experience with the divine). We interviewed 18 amazing leaders about their defining moments and what we learned was fascinating.
Here is a summary of these types of experiences from the article.
Table 1: Major Sub-Categories and Exemplary Quotes of Career-Defining Moments (CDM)
If you are interested, I have included a link to the full article:
/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/CausesofCareerDefiningMomentsonlineversionFinalMarch2016-1.pdf
Happy Reading!!