Date · Thursday, 7 May 2026, 20:30 to 21:30 CEST
Hosted by · IOM and UNDP
Session page · UNOG learning
Speakers
- Erin Bowser · HR Officer, Career Development and Transition Unit, IOM · Bio
- Shihui Xu · People Development Analyst, UNDP · Bio
Discover the 5i Framework, a practical approach to making informed and realistic career decisions. This session explores five key dimensions, values, goals, skills, learning, and constraints, and how they interact to shape career direction. Participants will gain clear reflection prompts, a stronger sense of what matters most in their career choices, and practical next steps, with space for questions and shared insights.
Key takeaways
- Start career decisions by identifying what matters to you right now, not by scanning what vacancies are open. Your gut reaction to a job posting (even an impressive one) is data.
- SMARTEER adds three dimensions to SMART goals: Enjoyable (does the process energise you?), Evaluate (what checkpoints will you build in?), and Reward (how will you mark milestones?). A goal you enjoy is far more likely to get done.
- Strength is not the same as being good at something. The formula is Talent x Investment = Strength, and the key question is whether the activity gives you energy. You can be competent at something and still have it be a weakness in career terms.
- Performance evaluations across multiple cycles are an underused skills audit. Look for what was consistently rated high and what was flagged as a gap. That is your development baseline.
- Reframe networking as intentional conversations. You do not need a hundred contacts; one or two conversations with people in roles you are curious about can shift your understanding of what it takes to get there.
- Cross-functional collaboration inside your current role is a low-risk way to build new skills and expand your visibility without changing jobs.
- In the silent coaching exercise, the single most useful question is: what would it take to move my progress score up by just one point?. It forces a concrete next action rather than an abstract intention.
Erin Bowser
Erin introduced the 5i Framework as a whole, then led the segments on motivation, skills identification, and career transition planning. On motivation, she offered a practical distinction between two drivers: moving toward something desirable (achievement, completion, reward) and moving away from something unpleasant (embarrassment, consequences). Understanding which is at play for you in a given situation matters because it shapes how sustainable your effort will be. The actionable nudge: listen to what gives you energy versus what drains it, rather than defaulting to what looks good on paper.
On skills, Erin gave a clear working vocabulary distinguishing skills (specific learned abilities like writing, negotiation, or planning), competencies (higher-order capabilities needed to do a job well, such as strategic leadership or analytical thinking), and strengths (behaviors and attributes others associate with you). She pointed to performance evaluations as an underused resource: looking across multiple reviews to find what was consistently rated high and what was flagged as a gap gives you a data-driven starting point for a development plan. She also encouraged participants to ask people already in roles they aspire to what it actually takes to succeed there.
Erin led a structured “silent coaching” sequence, a series of written prompts delivered in silence: name your goal, identify what progress would look like, reflect on what you have already done and what it achieved, pinpoint when the need to act feels most urgent, name the barrier holding you back, rate your current progress on a scale of one to ten, and identify what it would take to move up by one point. The exercise is designed to produce a concrete next action and a commitment rating rather than a vague intention.
For career transitions, she outlined five areas to work through in sequence: self-assessment and clarity (values, goals, skills, constraints), research and exploration of roles and sectors, skill development targeting the gaps between where you are and where you want to go, networking reframed as intentional one-on-one conversations rather than a mass activity, and cross-functional collaboration as a way to acquire new skills and visibility within your current organisation without changing roles.
Shihui Xu
Shihui covered values, goal setting, and strengths. On values, her core argument is that good career decisions start not with what is available but with what actually matters to you right now. She introduced a card-sort activity (a tool by Karebra and Louise Scaliote) featuring 24 work values that participants drag into priority tiers, making trade-offs explicit. The practical follow-on: bring your top values into your next performance or career conversation with your supervisor as a concrete agenda item.
On goal setting, Shihui introduced SMARTEER goals, which extend the familiar SMART criteria with three additions: Enjoyable (the process itself must give you energy, or you will not sustain it), Evaluate (build in checkpoints to assess what is working and what needs adjusting), and Reward (plan specific milestones you will celebrate, however small). Her point is that SMART goals fail not because they are poorly designed but because they are not sufficiently human. Goals you enjoy and share with others are the ones you actually follow through on.
On strengths, Shihui challenged the common assumption that strength equals being good at something. She offered the formula Talent x Investment = Strength and argued that the prior question is whether you want to invest time and energy in developing a particular talent at all. Being skilled at something you find draining is not a strength in any career-useful sense. She illustrated this with a story about a UN colleague who had an outstanding track record in project management but privately found the work exhausting. Through coaching he discovered that what energised him was data analysis and pattern recognition; transitioning into monitoring and evaluation improved both his performance and his engagement. The practical implication: pay attention to moments when you lose track of time (a sign of genuine engagement) and to requests for help that you welcome rather than tolerate.
Frameworks and models
| Name | What it stands for | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| 5i Framework | Identify (values), Intentional (goals), Inventory (skills), Investment (learning), Inhibitors (constraints) | Work through all five dimensions in sequence. Each informs the next. Use for a career transition or as an annual reflection. |
| SMARTEER Goals | Extends SMART with Enjoyable, Evaluate, and Reward | When setting a career or development goal, ask: will I enjoy working toward this? What checkpoints will I build in? How will I mark milestones? |
| Talent x Investment = Strength (absorbed into Strengths Profile, no separate framework page) | Formula from “Go Put Your Strengths to Work” for distinguishing between skills you have and strengths worth developing | (Considered for promotion to a framework page but not promoted: this is a complementary lens to Energy x Performance x Use from Day 4 S5. Both formulas are now documented inside Strengths Profile, which has been updated to a cross-session page covering Day 4 S5 and Day 4 S8.) |
| Silent Coaching for Goals | Erin’s 14-question silent-reflection sequence for moving a goal to a committed next action with an exact date | Use independently or in a facilitated setting. The goal-focused complement to the strengths-focused Silent Coaching Sequence from Day 4 S5 (Kata’s 24-question variant) |
| Skill Matrix Audit | Six-column matrix: skill, current level (1-5), target level (1-5), in-demand (Y/N), action steps, resources, timeline. Operational artifact for the 5i Framework’s Inventory dimension | Build a development plan in one sitting. Pair with the 3 E’s of Development to ensure the action steps span Experience, Exposure, and Education |
Resources
| Resource | What it is / What it’s for | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Foundations to creating my own career path | A worksheet for structured reflection on your top skills, main work-life challenges, how others describe you, and what one more thing you want in your career. | Foundations to creating my own career path worksheet.pdf |
| Mapping your motivators (Career Tips Thursday recording) | A session on motivational maps to help identify what drives you. Referenced by Erin as an excellent complement to the motivation segment. | Vimeo |
| Skill-Matrix worksheet | A table for auditing core skills against your career path: rate your current level (1 = no experience, 5 = expert), flag which skills are in-demand for your target field, and set a development timeline. | CTT_Session46_Worksheet.pdf |
| Work Values Card Sort | An interactive drag-and-drop tool featuring 24 work values. Helps surface your priorities and trade-offs. Developed by Karebra and Louise Scaliote. | https://www.icscareers.com.au/card-sort/ |
| Myers-Briggs Test (MBTI) | A psychometric personality assessment placing respondents into one of 16 categories, based on Carl Jung’s work (1943). | https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-us/explore-solutions/mbti |
| DISC Profile | A personality and behavioural assessment useful for understanding workplace communication and teamwork strengths. Free version available online. | https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc |
| Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors Test (16PF) | A personality questionnaire developed from Raymond Cattell’s 1940s model, widely used in applied psychology and HR contexts. Free version uses International Personality Item Pool scales. | https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/16PF.php |
Last updated 2026-05-10.