248: Building a Career Prototype: Strategies for Advancing Your Career with Jeff Perry

Ever wondered how approaching your career like an engineering project could transform your professional life? I'm joined by Jeff Perry, author of "The Intentional Engineer - A Guide to a Purpose-Driven Life and Career For Engineers and Technical Professionals," as he reveals the secrets to better job alignment and career satisfaction. Jeff shares his personal and professional journey of writing his book, offering universally applicable tips on leadership and career development that transcend the engineering field. You'll learn why knowing your 'why' is crucial for both personal and professional growth.

Discover how to navigate career changes without feeling overwhelmed by embracing the concept of career prototypes. In our discussion, we highlight the value of making small, manageable experiments to test new roles or responsibilities. By conducting informational interviews, taking on side projects, or volunteering for leadership roles, you can gather data on what truly resonates with you. We emphasize the importance of reducing pressure and viewing these transitions as experiments to build resilience and adaptability, creating a flexible and fulfilling career path.

Explore the shift from traditional work-life balance to a more harmonious life-work alignment. Learn how principles like the 80-20 rule, personal branding, and clarity of intention can lead to greater fulfillment, especially during mid-career transitions. Jeff Perry provides practical resources such as his book and workbook to guide you further while I share tips on building your mid-career GPS step by step. This episode promises to transform your approach to career growth and life alignment.

Connect with Jeff Perry
Website | LinkedIn | Book

Chapters

• 0:00 Finding Your Happy Place in Career
• 13:02 Navigating Career Changes Through Prototypes
• 18:58 Embracing Change in Career Growth
• 27:14 Prioritizing Alignment in Work Life
• 33:05 Building Mid-Career GPS

Transcript

John Neral: 0:00

What if your work and career were all about finding your happy place? What would that look like for you? Today, I'm welcoming back one of my previous guests, jeff Perry? Jeff's here to talk about why finding your happy place isn't always about finding a job. See, according to Jeff, your next move can be found by approaching your job search like an engineer Build a prototype and see how it runs. We're going to talk about how to help you build that career prototype and why finding better alignment in your career can help you build your mid-career GPS to make all the difference in where your career is headed. Let's get started.

John Neral: 0:52

Hello, my friends, this is the Mid-Career GPS podcast and I'm your host, John Neral., I help mid-career professionals like you find a job they love, or love the job they have, using my proven four-step formula. Jeff Perry appeared on episode 142, you Are More Than your Title, and one of the things we discussed was why you should never say yes to a job that isn't the right fit for you. Jeff reached out to me a few months ago to tell me about his new book, the Intentional Engineer a guide to a purpose-driven life and career for engineers and technical professionals. What I appreciate about Jeff's book is that the message applies to anyone, even if they aren't engineers or technical professionals. His book is filled with practical tips that utilize proven career and leadership development techniques to help you improve as a leader, employee and citizen. So let's get to it. I hope you enjoy my conversation once again with Jeff Perry. Jeff Perry, welcome back to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. How are you?

Jeff Perry: 2:03

Doing so well. John, it's a pleasure, as always, to chat with you.

John Neral: 2:07

Yeah, it's great that we got a chance to reconnect and I'm so excited to have you back on. Your episode was episode 142. We're talking over 100 episodes ago here on the podcast. Tell us what has happened since we last spoke in January of 23.

Jeff Perry: 2:26

Yeah, so during that month of January 23, we had our fourth child, so that was a big one that happened in our family and continued to grow in my work doing coaching and training, particularly for engineers and technology professionals, around career and leadership development. But I think probably what we're going to talk a lot about today is I was able to write my first book, the Intentional Engineer a guide to purpose-driven life and career for engineers and technology professionals. That came out October of 2023. So it's been a few months since then. So that's been a fun thing to be able to get out in the world and get the response there and see how that can help people. So I was inspired by you writing your book, the Mid-Career GPS, and many others who I've met over the years and had a mentor who was like, hey, maybe I'll finally write a book, and so I did.

John Neral: 3:19

Well, I'm glad that life is full and work is full as well. I'm glad that life is full and work is full as well. What, what was the biggest takeaway from you writing the book and actually getting all of your great stuff out there? What'd you learn from all of that?

Jeff Perry: 3:32

Yeah, I think it's just the the process. Uh, I found and here's the irony, when you, when you do something professionally I have a mentor who calls it the irony of expertise A lot of the things that I was writing and putting together was stuff that I was needing in the moments that I was writing the book right. So the concept of being intentional is something that I always need to keep coming back to, even though it's a theme that I talk with people about all the time and I speak about and I coach around it as a theme. But it's something that I needed, and some of the other principles that I came in. I think that's one of the beauties of the work that we get to do is, by coaching and working with people, we stay very close to the principles that help us continue to try and evolve and be better humans as well, and so that's the beautiful thing about this work that we get to do that I really enjoy.

John Neral: 4:33

Nice. So you start writing this book and you get it published and everything, and while not everybody who listens to this show is an engineer or technology professional, but some are, and there's obviously a lot of applicable information here your book is focused on being a guide to what you call a purpose-driven life and career. What I want to know from you is what makes our life and career very purpose-driven instead of simply just going through the motions that can sometimes happen when we get wrapped up in stuff.

Jeff Perry: 5:12

Yeah. So that's a fabulous question. And obviously, just to back up just a second, yeah, the book is written to engineers by someone with an engineering background, but I've had dozens of people who aren't engineers who have read the book and been like, yeah, you could strip away that title and it would still be very applicable to all the rest of us too. So don't be too scared of it. But the concept of being purpose-driven, aligned and connected with the principle of being intentional aligned and connected with the principle of being intentional right.

Jeff Perry: 5:50

So Simon Sinek is best known or kind of became famous with his Start With why concept, with his TED Talk and his book and stuff, and identifying that purpose, why you do what you do from an organizational standpoint, but then down to the individual what's my why? Why do I want to do what I want to do? And so sometimes we start with like, what are the goals? Great, that's fantastic. We get into what's the purpose behind that, what's the second order effects or third order effects that we hope will come of that in my personal life and also the potential impact that can go beyond just me, whether that's just simply the impact in how your career can support you raising a great family, the impact you can have in community, the impact you can have in the people that you interact with at work and serve in some form or fashion, the products you create, whatever that is right, what's your purpose and that can change and adjust in time, and then that informs your intention around. Where do I go? Driven by the purpose and the reason behind it and, looking at it from a holistic perspective, that the career is one piece of this puzzle that we call living a whole life. Right, it's a necessary experience. So we want to be contributing, we want to work hard and do good things there, but it's only one piece to who we are in the big spectrum of things.

John Neral: 7:15

Absolutely, and so for the people whom you specifically help, those engineers and technical professionals, what is often the one thing that gets them either the most stuck or challenged as they're navigating through their career?

Jeff Perry: 7:33

Yeah, and I'm sure this is very similar to you as you think about the GPS concept.

Jeff Perry: 7:38

But there's always something that kind of pricks their mind or heart and says, hey, something's not right here.

Jeff Perry: 7:48

Sometimes it's an external event that happens whether that's a life event or a career event, like a layoff or something and says like, hey, I was just sort of riding this wave and now I need to try and figure out how do I actually take this next step and figure out what that is.

Jeff Perry: 8:04

But plenty of people who are still working and on paper, have fabulous careers, a lot of things going well, and yet they still feel like this isn't really what I want to be doing right now. I need to make a change and I probably am not sure what that is. And so trying to take the big spectrum approach and say, okay, if being intentional, if we want to move through some sort of intentional career transition or upgrade, we need to identify what that intention is, identify some of those internal roadblocks. I got two chapters in the book that are all around the mindsets that we have and how important those are to unlock some of the opportunities that we have and how we orient towards situations and people and experiences and challenges that we face, because if we just prescribe behaviors, and that's not really going to do right for us either. And so it's trying to go deep, broad and be driven by that intention as we move forward.

John Neral: 9:10

When you talk about mindset and you write about this in your book, what do you often find is the one thing that people have the most difficulty with when it comes to either shifting or changing their mindset to get them the success they ultimately want?

Jeff Perry: 9:31

Yeah, so the biggest difficult thing is the first step is gaining awareness of the mindset that's actually holding them back.

John Neral: 9:38

Can you give us an example.

Jeff Perry: 9:40

Yeah, so here's one that I wrote about a little bit in the book. So I had a client we'll call him Henry and when we first chatted in our first conversation he said you know what? I've done a lot of things over my career. He was a software developer, he'd been in the military, done a number of different things. But he said I just want to find my happy place in my career. And I don't know what that is, that sounds kind of fluffy, but I just am trying to find my happy place. And I said, ok, well, let's work towards that.

Jeff Perry: 10:19

And he thought that finding his happy place would be actually being in a new place, being in a new job, compared to where he was at that right now he wasn't enjoying for various reasons. Okay so, but when we moved through some of the work that we did to uncover some of this mindset stuff, he gained awareness of how his own mindsets were so self-focused around what he wanted and not considering how he was impacting and affecting the other people that he worked with that were part of that dissatisfaction. And so the beautiful thing was, as he moved through some of this work that he gained awareness of that he started shifting his orientation towards other people and he started actually enjoying that job so much more than he was previously, to the point that he's like I don't know if I have to move. This is fine. And I found my happy place because I changed me in my environment instead of feeling like I had to change my environment to make a change Right, and he was able to do that.

Jeff Perry: 11:28

And then eventually he did find a new role that was an even better fit for him and he was much more able to embrace that with that much more of an improved mindset than he was previously. And I just had a beautiful conversation with him yesterday. Actually we had a catch up conversation. This is years after we originally did some of this work together and he said you know what, some of these things as the challenges of life and some of these things that we worked on, continue to pay dividends because of the way that I orient and move through some of these challenges at work and also at home, with health challenges for him and family members and other things, and so just that orientation of for him being early, so self-focused and having that acknowledgement or awareness that how can I be more others-focused in a way that still aligns with the things that I'm trying to accomplish, and things moved in a better way for him. That's just one example.

John Neral: 12:36

Well, and it's a great example. And what's so powerful about that, though, is that sometimes, the change that we seek isn't always the outcome we initially think's gonna happen. Right, we've talked so much, and we talked the last time you were on the show, but one of the biggest things I always talk about, too, is helping people find a job they love, or love the job they have.

Jeff Perry: 13:00

Yeah, I love it.

John Neral: 13:02

Right. And so when, when clients come to you or you're talking to people and you hear them say that they want to make a change, but they're not sure what that change is going to be, how do you get them to quiet their brain so they focus on one change at a time to see whether that's it or not, as opposed to let's just try a whole bunch of stuff and see what works so I can just find a new job?

Jeff Perry: 13:40

bunch of stuff and see what works so I can just find a new job, yeah, great, and there is some element of let's try things right. But I want to frame that I love using. Coming from an engineering background, I love the concept of a career prototype. Okay, how can we not feel like it's only the big change? I need to have a complete role shift or a promotion or a new job or company, and that's going to be the thing that's really testing something out. How can we do smaller prototypes or experiments to get a sense of what do I really like? And that can be as simple as having more informational interviews and conversations with mentors or people who are in roles or doing things that you would consider right or have been places that you're considering.

Jeff Perry: 14:26

Can you take on a side job at work, raise your hand to take on a new leadership of a new initiative of some sort to try something out. If you're curious about trying out management and you've been an individual contributor for a long time, can you lead an intern for the summer or two and try that out for a little bit. Or just take on a mentoring responsibility for a couple people. You can do things outside of your main work and do volunteer positions at church or in the community or other things that you can get involved in to try out what do these different elements look like and how can I collect data around what I'm good at and what I enjoy and maybe just areas that I need to grow my skills in to do that better.

Jeff Perry: 15:15

Just run these small experiments instead of feeling like we have all this pressure that if I don't make the right decision, then you know terrible things are going to happen. Right and that's so. And even when we do make a big decision like, hey, which job am I going to take if I'm going to make that career transition Still lessening the pressure on that. To say, hey, even this is still just an experiment. Like if you go to management and you try that out for a year or two and like, for whatever reason, this just isn't the path for you. Totally cool, you can go back into a different sort of role as an engineer or project manager or something like that, and you can be great at that. I see people who go back and forth all the time. You're just running experiments and trying things. The decision you make now isn't forever.

John Neral: 16:07

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Jeff Perry: 17:28

Well, many people are, and that is a difficult thing that I think we're talking about.

Jeff Perry: 17:32

How can we detach from that a little bit?

Jeff Perry: 17:35

But he's also been experimenting with this prototype and multiple prototypes, you might say of starting his own technology business, and so he's had dozens of conversations with other founders, people he might want to partner with or people could be potential clients and all sorts of other things. He thought that his outcome was to have a first paying client and maybe be able to transition out of his full-time job in three or four months. That was the outcome that he thought and moving through some of that process, eyes were opened around just how difficult moving through that transition actually is and to look at all the ways that, even if he hasn't had his first paying client yet, being able to look at all the wins and gains and learnings that he has had and some of the things that haven't worked out. So he's now moved through the process to detach from some of those outcomes and see the progress that he's on a path that still is quite uncertain, but he's become a lot more okay with that and actually we need to increase our ability to deal and handle uncertainty to be able to find more peace.

Jeff Perry: 18:58

One of the quotes I love and I quote in the book is from a psychologist by the name of Virginia Satir, who says many people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty. Yeah, and, and so too often we stay stuck in what we know, even though we know it doesn't, and what we know, even though we know it doesn't, serve us for one reason or another, whether that's a situation or a mindset or something, because we're unwilling to explore the uncertain new thing on the other side, because that feels even more scary.

John Neral: 19:32

Yeah, Well, and change is difficult right.

John Neral: 19:35

Not everybody is. I don't, I, I don't believe we we grow up going. Oh yeah, change is great because we're all looking for safety right out of the gate. Right, you know, we look for the basics. Right, we want to know where the food source is, we want to know where the shelter is, we want to make sure we're taken care of and, especially when're younger, we don't want to have to worry. As we get older, we learn what worry is and sometimes that worry is attached to change, because that change is that thing that is so uncertain.

John Neral: 20:09

Jeff, I'm going to ask you to be a little biased here for a moment. Okay, in a very safe way. Okay, okay, great. So when you think about the people you help and we're talking about engineers and technical experts and such you and being one yourself, right, you get to know there are certain quirks or characteristics, things that make the coaching relationship a little easier and perhaps a little more difficult. Through writing your book and through your work and everything, what would you say is the one thing that an engineer or a technical professional can use to their advantage in a job search and what's one thing that is more than likely a limiting belief or holding them back?

Jeff Perry: 21:04

Yeah, what comes to mind are two sides of the same coin. Okay, so on the advantage side, engineers are fabulous problem solvers. They're always dealing with ambiguity and technical uncertainty and able to move through the learning that it takes to figure these issues and the root causes of them and to find a solution. They're fabulous at that and they're trained to do that. Even if they don't already know how to accomplish something, they're uncovering ways to solve some of these problems, and so you can look at that from a same perspective, in that going through the job search process is just a different sort of project and type of problem that you need to learn how to solve. It's different than a technical type of problem, but still be able to apply that. And when they take that lens, they can be very, very good at this, and that's fantastic.

Jeff Perry: 22:05

On the other side of that coin is the fact that, because engineers are smart, capable and good problem solvers, they often think that they can do it all on their own and they don't need any help. And I'm not just talking about the benefits of perhaps working with a coach like you and I or someone like that, but asking for help from your friends, colleagues, family and other support systems and just your network in general, to say, hey, I'm trying to figure this out. Can you share your perspective? Do you know anyone who I could talk to and all these things? They feel like I can do this in isolation because I'm smart enough to figure this out, and sometimes that goes too far to their detriment and they are likely to miss out on opportunities because of some of that pride that comes from them.

John Neral: 23:01

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing and offering that, because that is something that for so many mid-career professionals, regardless of what industry or field they in that can absolutely be something that can hold them back. I see it in my work as well, where there is that element of pride. Right, I have a master's degree, or I have two master's degree or a doctorate, and I should be able to figure this out. I will never, ever forget, jeff, when I was there was a point in time in my career where I thought I was going to get a job within the federal government and at the time the federal resume was extremely comprehensive, Right, and I was talking to my therapist at the time about this career move and this switch and everything.

John Neral: 23:47

And she said to me she said why do people hire you to tutor their kids in math? And I said, oh well, I'm really good at it and I make it tangible for them, and a lot of times parents are too close and so it causes fights and friction and everything, and and I get to come in as this third party and help them figure it out. And she goes and people pay you for your expertise, right? I said, yeah, she goes, stop being so damn cheap and pay someone to do your federal resume. And I looked at her and I was like, yeah, you're absolutely right, she goes.

John Neral: 24:22

How much time are you spending trying to do this yourself? I was spending hours and hours every single week and weekend, jeff. I invested $850 in getting someone to professionally write that resume. That resume I never got a federal job. That resume took me to three jobs before I launched my practice full-time. Yeah, that investment paid for itself time and time again. And to your point, when we block ourselves or get ourselves in the way of getting the help and support we need, we might just end up wasting a lot of our time.

Jeff Perry: 24:57

Totally, people think about the cost of maybe investing in whatever help. We might just end up wasting a lot of our time. Totally, people think about the cost of maybe investing in whatever help we might get, but they often forget the opportunity cost of what. If I don't, what am I missing out on?

Jeff Perry: 25:10

And the beautiful things that I'm sure you've had plenty of these experiences, and I have too, of hearing from those people years later who didn't just get that initial change or result or whatever that was that they were seeking for when we did the original work, but then hearing about promotions and continued growth and progression in other areas of their life years later as a you know, at least influenced by some of the other work that we did together. That stuff is super cool. And again, dividends, purely financially, there should be a huge ROI in great career coaching but beyond just the financial and you know, seeing people get jobs or get promotions and get raises and all that stuff, the other dividends to be more aligned with the career that you really want to do and the satisfaction that can come from that and the other elements of life alignment and things that can come. It's harder to put a price on that but hugely, hugely impactful. And that's the stuff.

John Neral: 26:18

I'd love to see. Yeah, no, thank you for that. So look, before we start wrapping up, Jeff, there was a part of your book I want to just come back to for a second. You talk very specifically about alignment. You talk about alignment in terms of a different approach or alternative to what we often hear about work-life balance. Can you talk to us a little bit about why alignment is so important in our career search and career satisfaction?

Jeff Perry: 26:48

Yeah, and maybe to some degree it's just semantics, but I believe in this pretty strongly, in that work-life balance has become a very common topic of conversation thing that people are seeking for and they usually just think it means how many hours am I working and can I turn off work when I get home, and those are great things to consider, right. But first of all, we in the phrase phrase work, life balance. We put work first. That means, and the question just for us to consider, is work really first in our priority level? Should we do work, life balance, or maybe even just shift the priority, say life, work, balance and say how do I balance a life and put work inside of that? Right, whatever that work is, and that's great.

Jeff Perry: 27:44

But the concept of balance when I think of balance, I think of the balancing scales. It's often used to represent, like law firms and stuff like that, the legal field. But when things are imbalanced, they're static, they're unmoving, there is no momentum or progression and that means that if you take something or add something to either side, then it's now imbalanced, right. So it has this tension that feels like if I do any more work or add anything else to my at work, then that's going to take from my life. Same thing, on the other side, if I add anything else to my personal life, then it's going to take from my work and that has this really negative. You know zero sum game feeling to it has this really negative, you know, zero-sum game feeling to it.

Jeff Perry: 28:42

But when we shift to the concept, instead of life-work balance, to life-work alignment, how can we look at these things being integrated more fully or being aligned? For those who have taken even just any basic physics class, there's a concept of a vector that has a magnitude or an amount and a direction. And instead of these things being opposing forces, how can they be aligned? Forces so that my work can actually support the kind of life I want to live and, vice versa, that the way that I organize my life can support me being great and impactful at work? Now, that's not always going to work out perfectly, but maybe just by having that shift of perspective, we can seek to look for more ways to do that better, whether that's by being more effective and doing work that's most impactful, using things like the 80-20 principle and the Pareto principle, or organizing our life in a different way that supports these things. So I just love that concept that can shift the mindset around. How can I make this more aligned instead of feeling like they're always opposing?

John Neral: 29:57

No, it's a great part of your book and it's something I hope people will check and take a look at. So, in prepping for our conversation today, I actually meant to go back and listen to your last episode and figure out what your GPS advice was for everybody. I don't have that in my notes. I don't remember. I don't expect you to remember either. So that being said, Jeff, here we are a year and a half later from when we last spoke. Here we are mid 2024. What advice do you have for someone to help them build their mid-career GPS?

Jeff Perry: 30:31

Yeah. So three things that I find are foundational to moving through this experience. So one is your orientation of the way that you think. So that's a mindset you know, believing yourself and orienting how you think of others. Two, getting clarity of intention about where you want to go and why. That's important. We talked about at the beginning of this episode identifying that purpose and the direction. And then three, how do you then learn how to communicate who you are and what you bring to the table and the value that you give in a way that's relevant and applicable in the workplace, and we generally put that under the umbrella of personal branding? If you can really work on upgrading your mindset, getting that clarity of intention and building a personal brand that others can identify and understand, then your GPS is going to be much more calibrated to take you in the right directions.

John Neral: 31:28

Thanks, Well, jeff, as always, it's such a pleasure talking to you. I'm so happy for you and everything going on for you personally and professionally. But if someone wants to reach out and connect or learn more about you, get your book. I'm going to turn the mic over to you. Share with us all the great places where people can find and connect with you.

Jeff Perry: 31:46

Yeah. So the easiest place to go jeff-perrycom If you're interested in the book. Wwwtheintentionalengineercom and if anyone who gets a book, there's a free companion digital workbook that you get. That has. The book is very action-oriented, has a lot of invitations to do reflections and activities, and the workbook gives you that space, instead of just a normal book form, to be able to write and do some of those things. Also very active on LinkedIn if people want to find me there. So the three places I point people to yeah.

John Neral: 32:20

I will make sure all of that is in the show notes for Jeff Perry. Congrats again. Thank you so much for being a wonderful guest on the Mid-Career GPS Podcast.

Jeff Perry: 32:28

Thanks, john, appreciate it.

John Neral: 32:29

All right, my friends, if there's one big takeaway from my conversation with Jeff, I really, really, really liked when he talked about the principle of building a career prototype and what's that one change that you can make in your career to get really curious about what results come from that. What do you learn, rather than trying to do everything all at once? What's that one little tweak you can make and see what results you get? That may be just the thing to help you find that job you love, or even, as Jeff shared earlier, help you love the job you have. So until next time, my friends, remember this you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time.

John Neral: 33:11

How you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day. Thank you for listening to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. Make it a great rest of your day how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Darrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember how we show up matters.