Q: Why is it important to have a career role model?

A: Having someone who inspires most of your career decisions can impact your performance professionally. A role model is someone who inspires you. Most times you may not have direct access to them but from a distance, the insights they share, and their experiences and motivation can inspire you to achieve your career goals. Take for instance, a student who aspires to become a CEO can understudy Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple Inc., and learn from his experiences.

In the same vein, having a role model can give you a sense of purpose, focus, and direction. The inspiration given by successful individuals plays a major role in defining the paths of a lot of people. There have been situations where some students start with a career in business and after consistently following the professional aspect of a career model’s life, they decide that they want to change career paths to that of the career model.

Also, a career model can influence how intentional you are about the development of your social skills particularly regarding how you create meaningful connections with people close to you and far from you. Isn’t it amazing when you see business leaders around the world having roundtable discussions deliberating on matters that could influence over seven billion people in the world? Many of these people have built these relationships right from the start which makes it easy for them to continue being associates after they have become successful.

Furthermore, career models help place our minds on the right path especially when it comes to doing the right thing to succeed professionally. When you hear the stories of some of the world’s leaders in HR, social work, business, education, health, and technology, among others, it is always inspiring to hear some of them share how they avoided cheating, corruption, and other vices to get to where they are. It gives young ones an assurance that doing the right thing can still get them ahead in their careers and in life, generally.

Finally, although a mentor can do all of these things, it always helps to have a career model person that you can observe from a distance and adopt positive attributes from their lifestyle that led to their success.