Career Change
Exploration

CAREER & PROFESSIONAL TOOLS

Mapping where you want to go, what you're leaving behind,
and how to close the gap.

Where This Tool Helps

Career transitions are rarely clean. Most people considering a change have spent months - sometimes years - talking themselves out of it, accumulating reasons why now isn't the right time or why the move isn't practical. By the time they sit down with this worksheet, they usually know what they want. What they need is to get it on paper in enough detail that it stops being a feeling and starts being a plan.

The 10-year vision question is deliberately far out. It removes the tactical objections ("but I don't have the credentials") and makes space for direction. Most people write a shorter, more limited answer than they actually believe when they think past the practical barriers.

The wants/don't-wants section does something specific: most people can articulate what they want to move toward. Far fewer have clearly named what they're moving away from. Both matter. A career change driven only by aspiration, without clarity about what must not repeat, tends to reproduce the same problems in a new environment.

The steps below move from vision to specifics, and from desire to design.

How to Use This Worksheet

  1. Write the 10-year vision first, before doing anything else. Do not edit for feasibility. Write the direction, not the plan.
  2. Complete wants and don't-wants separately. The don't-wants list often surfaces constraints that the wants list alone would miss.
  3. Review both lists and identify your top 3 priorities from the overlap - the things that appear in wants and whose absence appears in don't-wants.
  4. For each of the 3 priorities, define a concrete success goal with specific action steps, a realistic timeline, and a measurable outcome you'll recognize when you achieve it.
  5. The goal table is the conversation-starter for your coaching session. Bring it filled in, even if the answers feel rough.
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Career Change Exploration Worksheet

10-Year Career Vision
Without filtering for feasibility - where do you want to be in your career in 10 years?
What I Want in My Professional Life
What I Do Not Want in My Professional Life
My Top 3 Professional Priorities
1.
2.
3.
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Success Goals

For each of your top 3 priorities, define a goal, the actions required, your timeline, and how you'll know you've succeeded.

Goal 1
Action Steps:
Goal 2
Action Steps:
Goal 3
Action Steps:

Before Your Next Session

Which of your three goals feels most urgent? Which feels most uncertain? Bring both to your session.

Look at your don't-wants list. What from your current situation would follow you into a new role if you don't address it now?

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Tandem Coaching Partners

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partnering with executives and organizations
to unlock sustainable growth.

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contact-us

Email

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Phone

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