Career Empowerment as Co-Creation

August 11, 2008 | Career Advice

Last week, I wrote a series of posts to really target the theme of career empowerment:

Each of the posts talked about an aspect of improving or enhancing your nonprofit career. But those are just some ways you can become empowered in this field. During this Saturday’s Women Rule Meetup in DC, seven awesome ladies sat around a table in a tea shop talking about so many ways we struggle and succeed in our work. I wanted to share one thread of our conversation that came from Gabriela Cadena, who is one of the most positive people I know.

Gabriela said that we need to see ourselves as co-creators in our careers. Our employers and even the nonprofit field itself are only one part of the relationship that we enter into when we come to work. And we should seek to take responsibility for that relationship. I took a step back in my mind when I heard that, because I meet so many young nonprofit professionals through my blog, at conferences, through my day job…and we have a lot of gripes with the nonprofit sector. Most of the time, our attitude is that our bosses are doing us dirty with these low salaries, our supervisors give us projects that are impossible to complete during regular working hours, and our clients need so much more than we can provide. No wonder so many talented people end up quitting before they’ve had a chance to make a difference. We give up because we don’t think about the other possibilities. We forget that everything is negotiable.

Gabriela reminds us that we have to stop blaming other people or institutions or the culture of our sector for what we don’t like about our careers. If we can start to think of ourselves as co-creators of each relationship that we are a part of, it can lead us to more creative ways of structuring the way we work, so that it works for us.

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Tags: Career Advice

Anonymous

I think that this would be something very appropriate for your website to talk about. Women and girls need to be considered equals in life, and as my story shows, girls can earn the respect they deserve. A very young girls' soccer team played in a league that they dominated. The girls won every game, even against other girls that were older than them. Their coach made a bold move and put them into the boys league. This was met with some criticism, but as the girls did exceptionally well, it made people stop and think about what was fair and right concerning girls and boys. People should not be discriminated against based on gender, and these girls overcame that discrimination. Watch the trailer at www.kicklikeagirlmovie.com and see what you think.
vanessamason

I love this idea, especially because I have to acknowledge my own control freak tendencies. It is easy to interpret discontent as a need to assign blame, but it is better to put that energy into something productive. Thanks for a great post!