Sixty per cent of managers believe luck has played a part in their career

Sixty per cent of managers believe that an element of luck has played a significant part in shaping their careers, according to new research by Emlyon Business School.

Respondents stated that this luck typically came through a chance event, which could be positive or negative, but either way had a huge impact on their career.

These are the findings of research by Nikos Bozionelos, professor of HRM and organisational behaviour at Emlyon Business School, alongside colleagues Christine Naschberger and Celine Legrand, from Audencia Business School and Yehuda Baruch, from Southampton Business School.

The researchers wanted to understand the impact of chance events on people’s career paths, which in effect means whether luck had played a part in their careers.

To do so, they surveyed over 650 managers from whom they collected detailed information about their demographics and career paths, chance events they’d experienced, specifics of these events, and how they impacted their careers.

After analysing the data they found that these chance events can span over a wide range of different circumstances:

The personal: like chance encounters with people who affect your career, personal accidents or injuries

The organisational: such as being made redundant by a company or having to move location for a job role,

At a more macro level: such as the end of a political era or a global pandemic

The researchers also categorised events according to their impact on careers. These were:

A positive event that led to a positive career outcome

A positive event that led to a negative career outcome

A negative event which ended up having a positive effect on the career

A negative event that eventually had a negative effect on the career.

For around 95 per cent of managers a positive event had an eventual positive impact from their careers. Though, there were a small number of cases where positive events eventually had a negative impact on their career.

Surprisingly almost 70 per cent of managers who’d experienced a negative event stated that this had an overall positive eventual effect on their career.

The group who reported the greatest satisfaction with their careers and the greatest satisfaction with their present employment were those who had experienced a negative event that ended up having a positive effect on their career.

“Chance events happen pretty frequently, but it is not every day that a chance event has a huge impact on a professional’s career trajectorym” said Professor Bozionelos. “However, it is incredibly likely that in someone’s professional lifetime, at least one event will hugely affect their career – therefore it is important to not plan your career path so rigidly, and build up a resilience to potential changes in your career trajectory.

“In doing so, these chance events will prove to be positive for your career path, not negative.”

Though, by definition, chance events cannot be predicted, the researchers say that the impact of them can in many cases be managed.

The researchers advise that managers and employers should look to support employees more with transition periods and chance events.