Desire

Where I work, there is a very active and structured career development process in place. That is at least, for people who do what I do. Without giving too much away, I am an operations manager in a top-50 ASX company. We have the "normal" yearly performance review, and the "typical" incentive scheme. We also partake in a yearly development discussion with our boss's boss. Now this is a pretty interesting thing. In many ways. Firstly, it happens before the performance review. Well before in fact, like 6 months before. I guess you could say it could be 6 months after. Anyhow, these "chats" are very useful. At least I think so. I can honestly say that this process has resulted in changes to my career path. The last one I had was literally 6 months ago, so why bother with the post now?

I got thinking about it because of the changes in my work in the past few months. It's been going pretty well. I've enjoyed the challenges that have come my way and I certainly have changed the way I approach some things.

The way the "chat" works is that you fill out a form where you can say what types of things you'd like to be working on, where you see your career heading, what help you might need, etc. All good. Now that I reflect on the last "chat", there's something that sticks with me more than anything else. On the form last time, I wrote, "I have a desire to..... (insert ambitiousness diatribe here) ....". On reading this and then beginning our discussion, my boss's boss said "I never hear people in Australia talk about desire. It's refreshing to hear".

Really?

Now I chose this word pretty carefully. I wanted to ensure I projected ambition without pretension. I wanted to show that I was capable yet willing to learn. Does anyone else find this strange?

Now that was only a career based desire. I guess it's a pretty strong word. What else do I desire?

What do you desire?