How to stay in a job you don't like...FOREVER! (And the exact steps to do the opposite.)
I’d bet money that you know someone who appears “successful” to the external world but internally they dread Monday mornings, feel unfulfilled while at work and head home most days feeling dissatisfied with their contribution to the world.
What are their choices?
Leap into something else or just point their head down and bum up until they have amassed enough of a retirement fund to go and do something more fun instead - as the 80s kids TV programme suggested.
What it feels like to be in a job that you hate
Someone I know well wrote an article for me explaining in perfect detail how a job that he used to love turned into a job that had begun to erode his motivation, his energy, his family life and ultimately his health. Read his anonymous story here. It certainly packs an anonymous punch.
Not all situations are as drastic as his but without action, low level unenjoyable work can develop into something more serious.
· Ben Fielding got stuck with a new boss who had “a cataclysmic impact” on his love of his work. He took charge of his future in an interesting way which gave him focus, a very specific goal and breathing space whilst still paying the mortgage. Read Ben’s story here.
· Andy Eaton realised two things which prompted his departure from a 20+year career. He realised that over the previous decade he'd spent 50% of his time away from his family on work trips and that the role of Finance Director had morphed into something he didn’t want anymore. Read how logical and creative thinking combined to lead him to his new career.
From my coaching experience, professional career changes are always prompted by a specific trigger experience that prompts deep reflection.
In some people, this deep reflection converts to a need for action.
Note: This need for action is what differentiates actual career changers from people who would "like to do something about their career." These people haven’t quite reached a tipping point from which action is required. They are likely to stay where they are until things get bad enough or until they see a perfect idea that excites them.
Top 10 triggers for midlife career change.
A big birthday – either on approach or a year or two afterwards
Personal illness
Medically-diagnosed (as opposed to self-diagnosed) work-related stress
Elderly parental illness or the death of a parent
Divorce
Redundancy
Unplanned exit from a long-term company/role
Major changes at home e.g. kids moving to secondary school or university
First ever lower-than-expected performance appraisal
A crappy bonus
Being overlooked for promotion
For clients, all these experiences have prompted a re-adjustment of their expectations from their work.
They express a desire to have "more" of something at work (often satisfaction, fulfilment or fun) and less of something else (the crap bits of working life).
The trigger can initiate a different thought process. If action is not taken, the circular thought process can sometimes lead to the ever-decreasing circles of a mid-life career crisis.
But, if action is taken, and attached to a structured methodology for change it can result in a clear path forward.
So why is it so hard to change?
If you look around you, you will get the impression that career change at our age is bloody difficult…it is!
Some suggest that natural human behaviour just gets in the way e.g. the fear of change (Read my article on how career change is experienced in our brains) or unwillingness to make the necessary sacrifices or simply being unprepared for the degree of change that is required to pivot into a career.
But it is more than that. Conventional wisdom is flawed.
According to career change conventional wisdom, successful change is a one-chance saloon.
Apparently, you should only make a career change when you know exactly where you are heading.
WRONG.
If you follow this advice, you are in danger of staying exactly where you are for a very long time…possibly forever!
Problems with Leaps of faith (and “perfectly planned” career change.)
1. Clarity:
Most people I meet are not clear about what they want to do with the rest of their career even though they’ve often spent a long time thinking about it. They can easily tell me what they want to escape from (mind-numbing corporate politics; feeling shrunk-to-fit; under-challenging work; over-requirement to be away from home; futureless internal career vistas; lack of learning opportunities; over-cautious decision-making or organisational short-termism.)
When I ask what it is they do want from their work – they never have a clear answer
2. Link passion with skills:
I don’t trust psychological profiles for career change. Most of the psychological profiling tools which are commonly used in career coaching are flawed. They can give general insights to those who have lost a connection with themselves or have been stuck in an identity for so long they can’t imagine getting beyond it. Starting point? Yes, but very broad brush.
Re-designing your working identity is a must before any change takes place. It frees up creative energy to change career. Our working identity can be tied up in status, our income, our life-style, our ego, our parenting and the way we were parented. This takes time, reflection, pulling apart and putting back together over time. This isn’t included in the Plan & Implement model.
“Passion” is my least favourite word to use in career change discussions as it more often than not leads us down a fantasy passion path. To risk everything on something called "passion" is at best...risky. Check out my video series on the myths behind career change at our age.
3. Seeing advice from people close to yoU.
People already known to you are invested in you staying in the same spot. Your partner wants you to be happy but needs to feel secure; your favourite head-hunters are tied to your past in a way that is unhelpful for a career change. Your colleagues and mentors lack the investment in you as a human to do anything radical with their opinion of you.
The individuals who know you best, are less likely to be able to imagine you with a completely different working identity and can become more of a hindrance than a help.
You need a new tribe to change career.
4. Implement resulting actions
Banish the idea of linear career. We need to let go of linear career steps leading to somewhere very specific that we had planned earlier and making pre-judgements on how it will feel when we get there.
Single leaps can be lucky. But they are more likely to fail or go nowhere.
A different method of career change – Experiment, Analyse and Refine
Experimentation = Action before knowing the answer.
Rather than leaping into a new career, I believe the only way to know whether your potential career change is the right one is to conduct a whole range of mini-experiments.
This is the only way to evaluate whether a certain change could be right. Not quite trial and error…rather experiment, analyse and refine.
By doing a whole range of experiments you open doors that were never open to you before to see if the draught bowls you over.
You edge open doors that were ajar in your mind and then see how it feels with the wind in your face.
You push against some ugly doors to sometimes discover the most beautiful possibilities behind. The limits placed on your experiments provide the only limitations for your future career.
BUT THAT TAKES BRAVERY AND TIME.
Done slowly this experimentation phase could take 3 years but very few of my clients have 3 years to spend – we narrow down the initial experimentation phase to a 3-month period following a 2-month discovery process.
That way the experiments are not random. They are focussed. They play on the SuperPowers of the individual and they feel exciting.
Single leaps are likely to bring us back to the same starting point and crucially, they make us feel like a failure.
That’s why you hear stories of people who made a leap and within a short time frame are back in their safe old job. They were following the perfect plan and implement model of career change.
The Downsides of the Experiment, Analyse and Refine model of career change
· A longer, less linear transition process can sometimes leave you feeling that you are not moving fast enough. But smaller steps combined with quicker analysis after each experiment allows for a richer, more developed and realistic idea of the future work identity to emerge.
· The Experiment and Learn technique of career change is challenging and requires resisting the pull of the familiar.
· It requires tenacity to lift and shift experiments and point them in a different direction, at a different audience or to tweek the experiments.
· Did I mention that it requires bravery? But really, how brave is it doing a few little experiments on the side of your real job (that doesn’t fit anymore)?
· The experiment stage is front-loaded – you can’t sit behind a screen and do some lovely, easy research. You must do stuff. Make stuff. Write stuff. Try stuff.
· You need your brain to be turned on to analyse.
· You need energy to do the experiments but if you are using your SuperPowers you’ll be surprised by how energising it can be.
· You very often need someone to have your back, pick up the pieces, re-point to after each experiment, challenge your thought processes until they broaden for themselves, re-frame your imposter syndrome, tone down your perfectionism. Luckily you know just that person.
Dream-testing
If you don’t test your dreams they remain just that – or even worse, they could end up as pipe dreams.
Experiments are the only way to test your dreams. Their advantage lies in their small scale, their ability to be squeeze in around your current work and their lack of large-scale risk.
Whilst trigger events are usually pretty horrific when you are going through them, they can become the beginning of a completely new career story - or life story if you want to think bigger.
Discovering work that fits and feels great takes time and effort, but it also requires a methodology to discover if you have what it takes to make it a reality. My methodology is called The Fierce model of change and I teach it in The Fierce Emporium.
Planning for the perfect leap is more likely to leave you staying where you are today.
Experimenting and learning, taking action in the form of mini-experiments, analysing the results and refining new experiments very likely to find you in a much better place. Finding work that you might love…forever.
Ready are you for action?
Check out The Fierce Emporium - where midlife professionals go to design work they love.
One of the departments of The Fierce Emporium - where professionals go to overhaul their career and design the next decade of work…work that they might love.
