​Perhaps you’re one of those people who loves meeting new people, sharing your own story, and hearing about what makes them tick? More likely not. Networking has a slightly grubby image, bringing to mind suave but slippery souls pretending to want to build a relationship and get to know you, all so they can sell you something… 

So, given that we’re meeting more and more in person again, including at business and professional events, this article shares some tips for those to whom networking doesn’t come naturally. Across many industries, business relationships are very important to career progression, but initiating and nurturing them can be a challenge for some of us.

One of the aspects we help our proteges keep track of on the Protagion platform is their career fulfilment. We ask about it initially as part of their self-directed Journey of Self-Discovery (designed to support them to think about their goals and desired future, and their route so far), and then also remind them in their Protagion diary to update their career fulfilment score over time. It ranges from zero to ten, with zero being the extreme of “completely not fulfilled, dreading work every day” and ten being the other extreme of “ecstatic, dreaming of bounding & skipping to work”.

Based on discussion with one of our mentors, we’ve done further thinking on the dimensions of career fulfilment i.e. what contributes to our fulfilment at work. There are three key elements: 

• Satisfaction: how satisfied we feel in our careers right now
• Achievement/Challenge: how accomplished we feel in our careers right now
• Support: how supported we feel in our careers right now

​While these are naturally affected by the working environment we’re in (including our boss and colleagues), we also have an influence over them personally, both through our attitude as well as our willingness to put ourselves forward for new challenges. In addition, great mentors or coaches can help us to improve how supported, accomplished and/or satisfied we feel, independent of our current workplace, by helping us develop, pushing us forward, or giving us different perspectives.

Do you agree with these dimensions of career fulfilment: satisfaction, achievement/challenge, and support? And, are there any additional dimensions that form part of career fulfilment for you? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Some of our proteges ask our mentors and especially our coaches about how to discover their sense of purpose i.e. the broader why which motivates them and which could offer more meaning if they align their work with it. Tara Mohr, author of Playing Big*, names our desires to contribute to the world 'callings', and says there are different types: community callings, career callings, and creative or vocational callings. She defines a calling as “an inner sense of longing or inspiration to fill a particular need in the world”.

Read more to discover Tara’s calling driving her to create her Playing Big programme to inspire others to achieve their dreams, as well as explore ways to recognise our own callings, including some familiar to me in my passion for people development, and my yearning to found Protagion to help professionals actively manage our careers.