3 Tips to Support Your Successful Career Transition

I was recently asked “what did you find to be the most difficult aspect of career transition?”

What a great question for gaining personal insight…  and as I reflected I discovered that the most difficult aspect of my latest career transition, just over 4 years ago now, was giving myself the space to discover my sense of purpose and find my new identity.  After 20 years of corporate life I was used to being given my identity in the form of a role title and associated responsibilities.  I was constantly juggling work objectives and home life, not giving myself space to think about who I was, what I was doing and why.  It was only when I reached a sense of personal crisis and a knowing that something had to change, that I started to realise that who I was at work was not who I am!

On starting my own business I continued my busy pattern, filling my life with activities and people to keep me occupied.  The value of creating space for self enquiry and personal development has emerged over time, as a consequence of being coached, practicing yoga and in coaching others through their life transitions.  It has taken me some time to discover my passion, define a service that feels meaningful and an identity I feel comfortable with… and discovering the value of both being and doing has helped me make sense of my experiences over the past 45 years.  I am now able to integrate my skills, knowledge and talents in all that I do as a coach and facilitator, supporting leaders through personal change.

Learning from my own transition I offer three tips for a successful career transition:

1. Stop Doing For a Moment!

Give yourself reflective space for self enquiry and personal development.  This space will enable the true you to emerge, with a clear sense of self and purpose.

2. Challenge Yourself

Engage a coach or friend to help you create a reflective space where you can challenge your engrained beliefs and patterns of behaviour and allow new patterns to develop.

3. Discover What’s Really Important

Develop a creative hobby which allows you to get in touch with you, this will help create the space you need to discover what’s really important to you – your passions, values, skills and talents.

Out of The Frying Pan…

Out of the frying pan, into another frying pan

When you find yourself facing redundancy or other challenges in your career, the feeling of impending crisis means that the first step many of us take is immediately to contact the agencies to find another similar position.  But is this always the best course of action?  After the initial impetus, many people have regrets about this hasty step because it can be a case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire”.

I mean this in two different ways.  Firstly, if you are being made redundant then there is always a risk that market conditions mean that other, similar jobs may also be precarious.  One of our friends has recently been made redundant for the third time, and twice just in the last 12 months.

The other reason is that repeating what we know means that you miss the opportunity to take stock, to re-evaluate what’s really important in your life and what you really want from your next position.

So if you are facing redundancy, rather than jump into the next frying pan too hastily, take a moment to list out what your absolute ideal, perfect position would look like.  What would you focus on? What would you hear? What would you be saying to yourself when you establish yourself in the perfect role for you?  And how great will that make you feel?

Now, what role will give you all that?  Think widely and take your time, and be confident of creating for yourself absolute clarity over the right next step.

5 Keys to a Successful Career Transition

If you are a senior professional facing career crisis, redundancy or other career challenges, it is likely that you are making one of 5 mistakes which are stopping you from achieving the transition you desire.

To find out what these are, and how to overcome them, watch this video

Doubt

How often have you asserted something “without a doubt”? But stop and think for a moment – to be truly without a doubt, one of two things must be true.  Either, you have absolutely every single fact required, and have eliminated all possibility of challenge, alternatives, or error.  OR, you have chosen to ignore any possibility of challenge, alternatives, or error.

In all but the simplest decisions, the first is highly unlikely, and the second is impossibly arrogant.

A real leader knows that doubt is inevitable, and in fact necessary. It is doubt that will drive a real leader to explore the alternatives and counter-arguments, and to be prepared for them.  It is doubt that will impel the real leader to step into other people’s shoes and see things from multiple perspectives.  It is self-doubt that guards against hubris, and ensure a life-long commitment to personal improvement.

Let our leaders have a little more doubt, please.

Emotional Wellness

The threat of redundancy or other career crisis hits many of us hard, and it can come as a surprise to people who have always thought of themselves as strong and resilient suddenly to find themselves dealing with unfamiliar and unwanted feelings.  Anger, fear, denial, sadness and loss are all common emotions felt by people facing redundancy.  And what can make it worse is that these feelings also trigger memories of previous experiences which we associate with the same feeling.  This means that as well as feeling new anger or sadness, you are also remembering any old anger or sadness from earlier in your life.

When you think of redundancy as having something in common with bereavement – after all, it is the sudden loss of a large part of your life – then these emotions are much more understandable and manageable.  They are the common emotions experienced when grieving, and just like any grief, they will eventually evolve, resolve themselves and eventually fade.

In the meantime, accepting that these feelings are OK, are normal and that you are not alone can be very helpful.  The worst thing that you can do is to mask your emotions through drink or drugs.  Instead, evaluate what method of dealing with these emotions will work best for you.  Do you prefer to talk to a trusted friend or a professional, or whether you like to burn off your emotions with strenuous exercise?  Whatever method you choose,  make sure that you are taking care of your emotional health as well as your physical and intellectual health in order to be in the best possible situation to move on to your next project after redundancy.

Confidence In The Face of Redundancy or Career Crisis

For most people, being made redundant or facing a career crisis gives their confidence a battering. I know that the first time I heard that my job was at risk, I almost went into meltdown, asking myself “Will I ever be able to get another job? What skills have I got? Who will want me once they know I’ve been rejected?”  Of course, these self-doubts are the death-knell to confidence, and they can start a real downward spiral. We begin to believe what we say to ourselves.

Interestingly, the word confidence literally means “with faith” or “with trust”. This faith or trust comes in two directions – firstly you need to have faith or trust in yourself. So what can you tell yourself that will build this faith and trust? Can you remind yourself of all the successes you’ve achieved? The projects that you’ve delivered? The teams that you’ve built up?

Secondly, you need to earn the faith or trust of others. People around you are more likely to display confidence in you when you are showing confidence in yourself. So the period of initial self-doubt is a very bad time to be out searching for your next role or project. You will be projecting a very pale version of yourself, and subliminally sending out messages of doubt.  In return, prospective employers or partners will doubt whether they will want to work with you.

One of the most useful exercises that I undertook when I was really struggling to see my own self-worth, was to ask people around me what they valued in me.  I contacted a range of people including colleagues, friends and family, and explained that I was in the process of evaluating my next step in my career, and asked them if they could jot down a few points on what they most valued about me.

The results were overwhelming, and enlightening.  Firstly, every single person I contacted took the time to reply, which was in itself a big boost to my faith in myself. And the responses which came back were illuminating, surprising, funny, emotional and insightful. Many people commented on attributes which I had never even thought of as strengths, which helped me to look at myself differently and in a new, positive light. Other people picked up on attibutes which I didn’t even know I possessed, which stimulated me to think about areas of myself which are hidden to me, but visible to others (the old Johari Window exercise comes in useful here.) One or two people helpfully included their observations on my weaknesses as well as my strengths, which was wince-making, but honest and balanced. All of them expressed their 100% support for what I was doing, and were glad to have been of help.

Who can you reach out to in this way?

Balancing The Pie

What role do you expect your work to play in your life?  If your whole life was a pie, and one slice was called “work”, how big is that slice right now? And what are the other slices called? When you look at your pie of life, are the slices how you’d like them to be?

I recently re-drew my own pie and noticed that the slice called “physical fitness” had shrunk in comparison to the slice called “watching the television”.  Looking at the whole of my life in this way meant that I could make sensible, implementable choices and avoid the classic trap of trying to do “more of” one thing without making the necessary and corresponding “less of” adjustment elsewhere.

A well-balance pie probably has slices that cover a range of areas of your life including:

• Work
• Continuous learning
• Family
• Friends and social life
• Health and physical fitness
• Spirituality
• Rest and relaxation/hobbies
• Money

When you are facing any kind of personal challenge can be a great time to re-evaluate your pie.  If the news of an impending redundancy has hit you particularly hard, then you might notice that the slice called “work” is disproportionately large compared to other slices, and you may be fearing the implications when this slice is removed and the rest of the pie collapses.  Do you remember the old saying “when you die, no-one goes to their grave saying ‘I wish I spent more time at work’ “?  So how would you like to re-draw your pie while you’ve got the opportunity?  What slices do you want to enlarge?  What slices will reduce correspondingly?  Is there a slice that has been neglected and needs to be added in?  If so, what will go to make room for it?

The nice this about the pie of life is that you can re-bake it as often as you like.  Just remember that the most wholesome, nutritious pie is a well-balanced pie.

The Sherpa as a leadership model

the Sherpa - a metaphor for leadership

“I am the Sherpa,
I know the way, I show the way, I travel the way.
I have the strength to carry my own load, and the humility to carry yours.
I have the resourcefulness to travel with the lightest load possible, and to use the resources of my surroundings, no matter how bleak, to make the journey successful.”
Unknown source

I really like the metaphor of Sherpa as leader. For me it is characterised by some simple tenets:

• a clear vision of the destination
• familiarity with the route, coupled with the flexibility to adapt to circumstances as they arise
• courage not just to travel dangerous ground, but also to take responsibility for others on the journey
• happiness to let others be the “famous name”, a lack of ego which is so rare when coupled with such strong self-belief.

I invite you to take on the Sherpa qualities; what difference would that make to the way you tackle things? How would it benefit you, and those around you? What resources does your environment offer that could be put to better use? Whose burden can you ease?

Where do you find leadership role models?

Working with our VIP coaching group recently, we asked them to identify role model leadership qualities, and then to find people who were role models, displaying these qualities.  The qualities they listed include:

• having a vision and going for it
• staying true to your purpose
• balancing work and home life
• making a difference in the economy
• making a difference to the community

So who, we asked, embodies these qualities?

After a long silence, one voice hesitantly offered “Barack Obama?”  It was clear that the participants were having difficulty finding their leadership role models, but here’s the thing – look closer to home, and look carefully.  There are examples on your doorstep.  “Show us”, the participants challenged, so we put on our coats and walked into the village where our rural retreats are held to find the following:

1. the mother/daughter partnership who both hold down full time jobs and have simultaneously set up Chillilicious,  the UKs most Northerly Chilli farm – overcoming the climatic challenges to grow and sell chillis and chilli products
2. the special needs teacher with a passion for art, who has opended the Lunardi Gallery to showcase local artists and crafts people, while continuing to teach art therapy for special needs children, and also taking comissions to produce ther own unique textiles
3. the local Ceres butcher who got fed up having to buy meat from supermarkets when we live in a farming county, and opened his shop selling locally sourced meat. He can even tell you which herd that steak came from, and provides much-needed employment for many people.
4. Griselda Hill, who made it her mission to revive the iconic Wemyss Ware pottery, reinstating the original designs and techniques and breathing new life into this age-old brand.

And we visited all these role models in just one afternoon, in one small village of 1,000 people.   How many inspirational leaders can you find on your own doorstep? And is one of them you?