How to take charge of an authentic and sustainable career

Seneca once said that “no wind is favorable to the sailor who does not know where he is going.” This captures the core challenge we face when navigating our professional trajectory, whether at the very beginning or during a major transition. Do we really know where we stand in our careers? We may want a change, yet often struggle to define its direction.

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report warns that nearly 80% of employees feel disengaged from their work, performing tasks that are misaligned with their values (what matters to them at this stage of their lives), interests (what they genuinely enjoy and find engaging), and strengths (what they are good at and enjoy doing).

This scenario is deeply concerning. Building a successful professional career—one that is both authentic and sustainable—requires precisely a point of convergence among these three dimensions: values, interests, and strengths. It is from this intersection that maximum potential can truly be deployed.

Everything begins with self-awareness. The reality is that most people would struggle to clearly articulate their personal “success triad”: what truly motivates them (their values), what they genuinely enjoy (their interests), and what they are good at and take pleasure in doing (their strengths). They may have a general sense of it, but rarely have they reflected on it with the depth it deserves.

In Take charge of your career!, I develop the three pillars of a methodology designed to set this journey in motion and activate the key strategies for building an authentic and sustainable career.

Know yourself

In the words of the Swedish diplomat and economist Dag Hammarskjöld, “the longest journey is the journey inward.”

Self-awareness is the most powerful lever for building a professional career aligned with the person you want to become. When we understand who that person is, the answers begin to emerge.

Researcher Tasha Eurich of Stanford University notes in her studies on self-awareness that while 95% of people believe they are self-aware, only about 10% to 15% truly are. So even if we think we know ourselves well, chances are we do not.

Without engaging in this deeply honest and intimate process of reflection, we operate without a clear compass—without a reference point to help us identify the right path. The first step, then, is to truly know ourselves, because as Herminia Ibarra, the world’s leading authority on career transitions, puts it, “a professional transition is not just a change of role, but an evolution of our identity.”

Even if we believe we know ourselves well, chances are we do not

Moreover, when contemplating a significant career change, the first question that usually comes to mind is: What do I want to do? And that is where the first framing error begins. Something as important as our professional careers should start with a far more powerful, almost transcendental question: Who do I want to be?

In a world as complex and fast-changing as today’s, we rarely devote enough time to such a revealing question. Yet it is precisely the first one that must be addressed, and its answer is closely tied to the three dimensions of success: values, interests, and strengths.

We should ask ourselves:

• What truly motivates you at this stage of your life, and what are your non-negotiables?
• What do you genuinely enjoy?
• What do you truly enjoy doing and feel energized by?

From this honest reflection, we begin to move in a direction. Self-awareness should not be an endless analytical exercise, but rather a sincere and intimate starting point that encourages us to take action, without fear of trial and error. It provides the internal gauge that tells us whether we are on the right path, without fearing setbacks—inevitable and necessary as they may be.

Communicate

As Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, pointed out, sustainable success rests on two pillars: the ability to create value and the ability to communicate it. Without the latter, the former all but disappears. In the professional arena, talent that is not projected becomes invisible. This is not about “selling oneself” in the traditional sense, but about being able to tell one’s own story in a way that makes one’s value tangible in the marketplace.

The ability to communicate with impact is one of the most essential skills in any professional career. The good news is that communication, like any other skill, can be trained. The first step is daring to do it—becoming comfortable with visibility and giving voice to what one is already doing.

The question is: how? By following the OPD (being the initials in Spanish) strategy, we can reflect on three key questions:

• Offering and need: What do you offer, and what need can you address?
• Differentiation: What sets you apart?
• Audience: Who is your target audience?

Building a strong narrative around these three elements is what makes the difference between a simple message and a truly impactful one.

Share

Self-leadership does not end with oneself. As an African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This is one of the golden truths of building a sustainably successful career. Creating community and sharing knowledge are, without a doubt, the key levers of professional progress. They are not acts of selfless altruism, but the very foundation of a solid career trajectory.

Whether you are navigating a period of change and feeling somewhat lost, or enjoying a moment of stability in your career, each of us has a responsibility to build teams and to turn whatever we are doing into something bigger than ourselves. As Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and author of The Start-Up of You, has said, “no matter how brilliant your mind or your strategy is, if you play solo, you will always lose to a team.”

And this is not about the transactional undertone that often characterizes the overused concept of networking, but rather about that deeply human—and indeed innate—act of creating an ecosystem.

Taking charge consciously

The most important outcome of this model is gaining the compass needed to make conscious decisions.

Most careers that stall or fall apart are the result of a series of poorly considered decisions, driven by haste, social pressure, or the immediacy demanded by the fast-changing world we live in. The antidote lies in the revolutionary and courageous act of deciding consciously.