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T-shaped careers: ten ways to stop your career going stale
Career boredom takes central stage in many of my coaching conversations, especially this time of year, with annual leave depleted and no bank holidays on the horizon.
One client described their current career stage as wandering through a dry, dusty desert with beautiful green hills on the other side, too far and too dull to cross. Another described feeling stuck in a room slowly filling with water, nearly floating up to the ceiling with no space left to breathe.
Both are good descriptions of the professional disengagement that sets in once we start to experience a lack of impact and growth in our careers.
In this article, I'll focus on how to tackle the lack of growth. I'll discuss the importance of generalist skills as an antidote to job staleness, and offer several tips for putting the oomph back into your career or steering it in a different direction.
From an I-shape to a T-shape
Most people's careers follow a fairly linear pattern. You might recognise it because perhaps you chose a field when you were younger, or you fell into one. Over the years, you may have pivoted here and there until you finally settled in a career lane and slowly mastered your profession and industry.
The trouble often starts once you're mid-career. By then, maybe you've chosen the path of an individual contributor, a subject specialist, or you've worked your way up to a managerial position. Either way, you've become more and more masterful in your field.
This is fairly typical of a classic I-shaped career. It's where boredom often sets in. You may have become highly skilled and well-adapted to your role, but the learning curve has flattened and you no longer feel particularly stimulated.
Maybe it's also dawned on you that you never felt excited about the work in the first place, or you've started to question its impact and meaning.
This is where the idea of T-shaped people comes into play. First coined at the end of the noughties by Tim Brown, CEO of design agency IDEO, it describes people who combine a depth of expertise in one domain (the vertical stroke in the T) with broad knowledge and skills across a range of other areas (the horizontal stroke in the T). Unlike their I-shaped counterparts, T-shaped careers show both breadth and depth.
Think about a marketing specialist studying for a Master's in social psychology, a family doctor spending three months working in a maternity ward in the Congo, a chartered accountant who moonlights as a financial advisor in their spare time, the C-level executive doing a two-week summer course in architecture and design, or the architect learning to build worlds in the metaverse.
They're all building generalist skills while tickling their curiosity and sense of contribution. They're also making themselves more attractive to future employers, patients, or clients.
Operating in a super-wicked world
I'm in my mid-forties, and like many of you, I started my professional journey in a vastly different world. It was complex, but nowhere near as complex as it is twenty years later.
IDEO would describe the past two decades as a shift from a world with wickedly difficult problems to a world with super-wickedly difficult problems. Yes, this is what happens when Gen X tries to speak Gen Z.
To solve some of these super-wicked problems, being a specialist won't cut it any more. Complex issues require sophisticated, interdisciplinary solutions. They demand people willing and able to see connections between their fields and those of others.
Most companies have come to understand this and are increasingly looking for people with updated and expanded skill sets to respond to that wickedness. They want empathic employees who can imagine problems wearing different hats. The kind of people willing to drop their ego, go beyond their narrow field of knowledge, and happily build on other people's ideas.
These T-shaped professionals combine deep expertise in one area with a breadth of knowledge across several other domains. They're curious about the work of others, lead with a creative and open mind, and stay intellectually versatile.
T-shapers also know how to join forces. Everybody wants them on their team precisely because they're both excellent at what they do and collaborate so well.
Ten ways to breathe new life into your career
How does all of this relate to professional boredom? If you're currently busy quiet quitting or languishing at your desk, deciding to develop broader T-shape skills and expertise could re-energise your career.
Below are ten possible avenues for becoming more of a generalist. Some require bandwidth and courage. A handful may involve significant financial investment and the explicit support of your employer.
1. Start early
If you haven't joined the workforce yet or you're still studying, know that to thrive in a complex world you need both depth and breadth. By all means, get a foundation in at least one domain or skillset, but supplement it by cultivating a broad range of experiences. You can do that through internships, student jobs, volunteering, joining societies, or international travel. All of these will help you build a well-rounded personality and an attractive CV.
2. Give yourself a decade to explore
The pressure to pick a career lane and the opportunity costs of not doing so early in your twenties can feel enormous. As anyone who's done it will tell you, you're always young enough to pivot or change careers. People do it all the time. Instead of obsessing over what you want to do for a living, why not use your twenties to do plenty of prototyping? This will give you exposure to various roles and industries. You'll thank me for it in your forties.
3. Build relationships
Even if you know your current career lane is right for you, keep cultivating empathy and curiosity by building networks inside and outside your industry. Attend events, meet-ups, and conferences directly or tangentially related to your industry. Engage in conversations with a wide range of professionals because one day this may lead to exciting collaborations, job opportunities, or mentorships. It'll also prevent silo-thinking in your role and get you out of that ivory tower.
4. Seek mentoring or reverse mentoring
Identify a few people in your organisation who've already embraced a T-shaped career and ask them to be your mentor. Most people love talking about themselves and will be flattered to share their experiences. Mentors can also act as advocates for you. If you're a mid or late-stage-career professional, reach out to younger colleagues for reverse mentoring. Nobody's better than those Gen Zs to help you navigate emerging technologies and trends, and prevent you from becoming the office dinosaur.
5. Collaborate
Be bold in actively seeking opportunities to collaborate on interdisciplinary projects or with colleagues from different teams. Join professional communities, participate in cross-team projects, and offer to share some of your knowledge. Your colleagues will appreciate the fresh perspective you provide. You'll get a better view of the bigger picture and develop examples of great teamwork to dazzle future employers.
6. Focus on adjacent skills
Adjacent skills are low-hanging fruit when it comes to developing the horizontal T-stroke. They're usually not mentioned as essential in your job description, yet they help build expertise in your area. Things like marketing, data analytics, or AI content generation. Because they're closely related to your day-to-day role, you can often develop them quickly without straying too far out of your comfort zone. Most employers won't think twice about paying for extra training in these areas.
7. Build a side hustle
Starting a gig outside your usual employment offers a relatively low-risk and potentially rewarding avenue towards building broader skills and expertise. One day it could help you transition your career entirely. Whether you sell your crochet work on Etsy, rent out your property on Airbnb, or do some consultancy work on the side, you'll learn a tonne of new skills. You'll build your confidence, stop feeling stuck, and maybe even bring in some extra money at the end of the month.
8. Consider a career break
Some of the most exciting CVs come from people who decided to take time to gain a new outlook on life. This is only an option for some, because career breaks usually involve taking unpaid leave for at least a few months. Some employers actively encourage it and will keep your job open until you return. A career break can serve many purposes, from spending time with your family to travelling the world, starting a passion project, developing new skills, or prototyping a few alternative career paths.
9. Go on a secondment
If the opportunity arises for an external or internal secondment, grab it. Secondments offer valuable exposure to new work environments and are an excellent way to broaden the horizontal T-stroke and develop new areas of interest and expertise. Internal secondments give you an entirely different view of your organisation (particularly if they're in a branch abroad), while external ones make you much more knowledgeable about your industry.
10. Become a student again
Enrolling in part-time or full-time education is a good way to develop more generalist skills. It'll help set you apart from other job applicants and can even be a route into an entirely new career. This may only be an option for some, because it requires significant funding and headspace. In today's tight job market, more and more employers are willing to part-fund further education or MAs, particularly if they're deemed relevant to your current role or career trajectory.
Taking back control
Whether you find yourself in pre-promotion purgatory or dreading another two decades in your current job, you're more in control of your future than you think.
Curiosity is one of the best antidotes to boredom, so start broadening your interests and lengthen the horizontal T-stroke. It'll put the fire back into your belly and open the door to a lateral move or a complete career shift.
If you'd like to think through what your own T-stroke might look like, you can book a free consultation call.