Stepping Between What is and What Could Be: How to Find Hope and Direction in Your Career

Sometimes you know what you are doing in your career is not working, but don’t know what to change. And, even if you know where you want to go, it can be hard to figure out how to get there. We've all been there, right?

Fascinated by how people develop the skills to find their careers, three professors compressed a lifetime of research into a framework to help people refine what they want to do and create a plan to get there - they called it Hope-Action Theory. 

They found that understanding where you want to go and how to get there, hinges on your ability to flexibly think through different visions for yourself and brainstorm about pathways to realize these visions. They define this ability as hope. But, they knew people needed more than that—people needed a roadmap on how to implement change in their lives. To better describe this change process, they researched the different aspects of making good decisions and implementing change. 

On its own, hope is not enough. Implementing change not only involves thinking flexibly through different paths to a goal, but also building different competencies. “Hope is not a strategy,” explains Dr. Niles in an interview with Thrive’s Ron Steckly, but “Hope-Action Theory actually is a strategy that can be learned.” As you practice the theory and improve at it, “you can generate and sustain a sense of hope for yourself, even in the most challenging circumstances.” 

As per this conversation, there are seven key competencies that lead to successful change:  

1. Action-oriented hope: serves as the foundation for all other competencies and “empowers an individual to look for possibilities even in the face of adversity and to engage actively in career behaviors.” 

2. Self-reflection: the process of reflecting and building self-awareness by asking yourself questions to better understand your likes, dislikes, and your situation. 

3. Self-clarity: a state achieved by discovering answers to the questions that are a part of the self-reflection process. 

4. Visioning: building on the previous two steps to imagine future career possibilities and determining the most desirable outcome for you.  

5. Goal setting and planning: creating and implementing short- and long-term goals to achieve your personal vision and adapting your strategies as you acquire new information and experience along the way. 

6. Implementation: taking action to work towards your goals. 

7. Adaptation: facing inevitable challenges and moments of uncertainty with energy and enthusiasm to find creative solutions.   

You can create change in your life by combining these competencies. Dr. Niles and the theory’s co-creators use a pinwheel to illustrate how these steps reinforce each other: imagine hope at the centre of the pinwheel, with each arm as a separate competency rotating around this centre of hope.  

Typically, working through Hope-Action Theory begins with self-reflection, but the model does not necessarily have to follow a linear pattern: it is a continuous process that is meant to bring you closer to your goals and you can follow the steps in any way that best serves you, moving back and forth between them as necessary. While not essential to the model, it can be helpful to work through these steps with a career counsellor.  

Without hope at the core of the pinwheel, none of the other competencies can work. Building and maintaining a sense of hope is essential. When Dr. Niles et al. talk about hope, they differentiate between wishful thinking and action-oriented hope. In the process of cultivating hope, even small steps are important: just the act of setting goals and taking steps towards them can generate hope. In turn, feeling hopeful then can motivate you to set and work towards other goals. While hope may have the welcome side effect of making you happier, it is also proven to increase job satisfaction and performance, and to benefit career decision making. 

Dr. Niles and his research partners conducted a study of people who stayed high in hope despite significant challenges in their lives. They found that “one of the key ingredients for people to be able to maintain their hopefulness in the midst of [significant] challenges was support, which was widely defined as some connection with an individual, a group of people, or a living thing [such as a pet],”. You’ve likely heard the common phrase, “misery loves company.” This, says Dr. Niles, “is not exactly right.” “Misery loves miserable company,” he elaborates, “we gain most from being in connection with people who are having similar experiences. We know they can identify with us, we know that we can share our trials and tribulations [with them], as well as our resources.” 

One-to-one career intervention is useful and important, notes Dr. Niles, but “it often requires more than that.” A peer group “can help with a lot of those environmental challenges that people are experiencing as they’ve got their rope tied around a mass that they’ve never seen before, on a river that is totally new to them, with a shoreline that looks totally unfamiliar.” Having people who “are right there with you . . . is critically important,” he adds. “Together, you help each other navigate that new and foreign river so it becomes . . . more familiar.”  

Career is often a vital aspect of a person’s life and sometimes, even, their identity. However, Dr. Niles remarks that “we put an awful lot of expectation upon work, which is simply one life role that people play.” What makes all the difference, he says, is “how you structure the basic life roles into a life that you find satisfying.” There are a variety of roles, such as relationships with family, friends, and partners or engaging in leisure activities, that “are so essential to pay attention to, [as they] nurture and contribute to a sense of fullness and wholeness in terms of the life that we’re living. It ain’t just work.” “You have all these identities, and so how do you honour them? How do you nurture all of them to have a life that you would say, for you, is worth living?” 

Unexpected bumps are, of course, an inevitable part of anyone’s career journey and in life. In the face of challenges and uncertainty, persistence is important: “holding the creative tension between what is and what could be and doing something every day to close the distance between the two,” Dr. Niles explains, is a key practice to help you get through to the other side. 

Want to check how hopeful you are? You can take the assessment and start your journey of exploration today.