Crafting Your Teen’s Career Vision Board

As the saying goes, "Seeing is believing"—and that’s the power of a vision board. A vision board is a personalised picture collage of images, words, and affirmations that represent your teen’s career aspirations and can help them to envision their ideal future. By giving their goals and dreams a tangible, visual form, a vision board serves as a motivational reminder, inspiring them to take actionable steps toward achieving these ambitions.

In this article, we go through the benefits of making a vision board, followed by a step-by-step guide on how to create one with your teen.

Why a Vision Board?

A found that 1 in 5 successful entrepreneurs use vision boards when starting their businesses, with about 76% reporting their progress aligned with their vision. Here is how a vision board can benefit your teen.

Clarifies Goals

A vision board can help your teen clarify what they want from their future career. By selecting images and words that reflect their interests, values, and goals, they can begin making informed choices when considering possible summer internships or jobs, volunteer programmes, subjects to study, suitable universities or degrees, and career paths.

Boosts Motivation

When your teen can “see” their future, it makes their dreams feel achievable and within reach. A vision board can serve as a reminder to stay motivated during challenging times, like preparing for exams or exploring new subjects.

Encourages Self-Reflection

Creating a vision board encourages teens to think about what success means to them, beyond a job title or salary. It’s an invitation to explore what they value in a career and who they want to be—whether it’s helping others, being creative, or having a flexible schedule.

How to Create a Career Vision Board with Your Teen

Creating a vision board should be a fun, creative experience that encourages meaningful self-reflection from your teen, with plenty of support and encouragement from you along the way.

Step 1: Reflect on Strengths and Passions

A great starting point is to explore your teen’s current interests, skills, and strengths. While they may already have some ideas, encouraging them to dig deeper can uncover hidden passions. Reflect on moments they felt proud of their achievements. Are they great at problem-solving, communicating, or working with their hands? Including images that represent these strengths can remind your child of the skills they already have and wish to develop further in their life.

Questions can help spark ideas. For example, try asking:

• What subjects do you enjoy most in school?
• What activities or hobbies make you lose track of time?
• When do you feel most energised or happy?

Step 2: Visualise Their Ideal Future

Instead of focusing solely on a specific job title or company, encourage your teen to envision their ideal future (or futures!) and the work environment where they’d thrive. This approach can help them build positive connections with a particular lifestyle, rather than a title. Adding photos of these workplaces, like a lab for a scientist, a stage for a performer, or even photos of bustling teamwork can help make abstract goals more tangible.

Ask questions like:

• What does a day in your ideal future look like?
• Do you imagine working outdoors, in a bustling city office, or remotely?
• Would you like a job with a lot of people or one where you work independently?

Step 3: Identify Values and Impact

Encourage them to think about the causes or values that are important to them, such as creativity, helping others, innovation, or environmental conservation. Photos related to these areas can help inspire a career centred on making a difference.

Here are some ways to explore values together:

• What would make you feel proud in your career?
• Is there a social issue or cause that’s important to you?
• Do you see yourself in a role that supports people, builds things, or creates change?

Step 4: Finding Role Models

Role models can help your teen see examples of people who have built careers they admire. Ask your teen to think of anyone—famous or not—who they admire for their career choices or values. Are there public figures, family members or friends doing the job they’d love to do? Adding a picture of that person, or even a quote from them can help them envision themselves in that role.

Step 5: Searching for Images

Have your teen search for pictures, quotes, and keywords that represent these dreams and goals from magazines, newspapers or the internet. These can include images that represent a specific lifestyle, like a picture of a city they’d love to work in, or photos of activities that reflect their passions, like designing, teaching, or building things.

Inspiring words can also be added as affirmations they can repeat to themselves. For instance, quotes like “Dream Big” or “Stay Curious” can serve as guiding principles. Adjectives like “Creative,” “Leader,” “Innovator,” or “Problem-Solver” can help them include abstract qualities they want to embody.

Step 6: Arrange and Assemble

Now comes the fun part—assembling the board! You’ll need a poster board or corkboard, printed images, scissors, markers, and glue. You can also go digital with tools like Canva, which offers templates to design vision boards online. You can also use Pinterest to create various boards.

Encourage your teen to arrange images, words, and quotes in a way that feels inspiring and authentic. There’s no wrong way to do this! They can group similar ideas together or create different sections for values, skills, and career aspirations.

Step 7: Display

Together with your child, decide on a place to display their vision board – ideally somewhere they’ll see it daily, like their room or study space. This way, it serves as a constant reminder of their goals and keeps them motivated to work toward them every day.

Step 8: Revisit and Update

Remind your teen that the board isn’t set in stone. Goals and aspirations can evolve, so revisiting and updating their board keeps it relevant and inspiring. They can add fresh images, remove outdated ones, or even create a new board each year to reflect their growth.

Step 9: Celebrate the Small Wins!

A vision board isn’t designed to pressure your teen to achieve everything all at once. Instead, it’s a tool for celebration! When they reach any of the goals on their board, make sure to celebrate those milestones together. This emphasises that each small step brings them closer to their vision, creating positive momentum along their journey.