Positioning yourself means knowing your talents and having a plan to achieve your goals. Find out just how valuable this self-knowledge can be

You've probably already considered what you're doing with your career, what you've done in the past, and what you want to do in the future. Maybe you've had one career your entire working life or maybe you've had ten. No matter how many times you change focus or how much you've progressed, you have to position yourself to succeed.

Positioning yourself is different from marketing yourself. Of course, you need to market yourself, your company and your skills. But positioning yourself is about:

1. Knowing who you are
2. Knowing what you do well
3. Knowing what you like to do
4. Knowing what you don't like to do
5. Understanding where you want to go
6. Understanding where you don't want to do
7. Figuring out how to get where you want to go
8. Figuring out how to avoid going where you don't want to go
9. Figuring out how to change directions when you're on the wrong road

At first glance, these things seem simple. But if you take time to focus on each one, you'll gain a lot of insight and be prepared to position yourself well. Successful people will tell you there are several reasons for their success: talent, connections, luck and positioning.

So what is positioning? It's not playing political games. It is having a clear sense of your talents, your goals and your plan for achieving those goals. If you get good at positioning, you will be able to not only achieve your goals ,but also find unexpected opportunities.

Here's an example of positioning and how it works.

When I was 19, I decided to teach aerobics, since I'd been going to classes and enjoyed it so much. I bought a Jazzercise franchise and had several successful classes. But I knew that I didn't want to make a career out of teaching aerobics and was already enrolled to do a post-graduate course. So I used my experience running my franchise and leading classes to get part-time jobs both inside and outside the university.

By the time I graduated with my Ph.D., I had experience running a business, managing volunteers, marketing, doing public relations, writing for publication, editing a newsletter, assisting with teaching large lecture courses, teaching small courses, consulting and designing instruction. All of these skills came from my first job - teaching aerobics - and were fine-tuned as other jobs drew on those abilities.

We all have skills in various stages of development. To position ourselves, it's a good idea to develop all of them in ways that relate to what we do and what we want to do.

More
Career planning