14: Aligning Your Career with Your Calling | Jennifer Vancil

Does your work fit into your life the way you hope it does? If you truly follow your calling, you’ll see that you’re probably going to get hired for what you got in trouble for as a kid. Today’s guest stands by this philosophy and urges everyone to understand the personal strengths that are taken for granted. In other words, realize that your strengths can be the origin of your work.

Jennifer Vancil provides value as a Strengths-Based Career Coach, and mainly assists people who are looking to feel more connected to their work. She achieved her Bachelor of Arts in Theater and a Masters in Education in Adult Education. Currently, Jennifer teaches the MBA Career Management class at Colorado State University and does career coaching at both Colorado State University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Through her business, Communicating Strengths, Jennifer helps clients handle career changes, resume writing, interview preparation, and positioning for internal promotion.

As Communicating Strengths focuses on strongest skills, Jennifer’s approach to career management includes knowing the nuances of your strengths to build deeper awareness. Usually, people find a more reliable balance in life once they connect with something intrinsic. Jennifer says that the people she primarily works with are in a scenario where they are not getting to use their top strengths. How does life calling relate to work?

Jennifer speaks on the need to have some consistency and some compatibility in your career and work that mirrors your talents. Being honest with yourself, having a discussion about if there is a real match between your view of life and work exposes any disconnect. Jennifer explains how consistency and compatibility across different parts of our life create an integration of calling and work. Listen to Jennifer give the key points of examining our current career, talk through the steps of assessing career options, and explain how to use curiosity to spark change.

Time stamps:

• [00:18] - Jennifer Vancil is a career coach helping people navigate their calling.
• [02:34] - How does theater merge into how Jennifer delivers her skills today? She talks about the moment her theater skills and coaching skills first overlapped.
• [05:25] - Jennifer explains power behind the nuances of the Clifton Strengths assessments.
• [07:18] - Jennifer says you’re probably going to get hired for what you got in trouble for as a kid.
• [09:49] - What does career management include? What sorts of issues are people dealing with in career management?
• [12:07] - How does life calling relate to work? Jennifer speaks on the need to have some consistency and some compatibility in your work that mirrors your talents.
• [14:39] - Here’s a way to think of calling as an overarching theme that is applicable in more than one field of study or part of life.
• [17:32] - Jennifer recalls the conversations that happen when deciding a new direction in career and calling. First, acknowledge the need for change.
• [20:11] - Listen to Jennifer give the key points of examining career and using curiosity to spark change.
• [23:09] - Jennifer discusses her blog post “Creating a strength-based career” that goes deeper into the strategies she spoke about in this episode.
• [24:50] - Think about the different roles in your life, and how you can merge your calling into each one.

Links:

• Chris Heinz
• Chris Heinz Co.
• CommunicatingStrengths.com
• Book a call with Jennifer
• LinkedIn Profile
• Creating a Strengths Based Career