In my executive coaching work, I spend a lot of time with senior professionals in their 50s. As our coaching sessions progress, they often surface an uncomfortable question, one that is playing like background supermarket music on a daily loop. It’s there all the time but it sometimes plays louder. Recently I was coaching a senior person, I will call her Rachael for the purpose of this article. This is what she said in our session:
Her job title, responsibility, income, status isn’t just what she does; it’s who she sees herself as being. She is six years away from retirement in a permanent pensionable job, but she was living her life scared of becoming irrelevant, working long hours and still trying to prove herself to others. She is finding it so hard to let go of work and delegate tasks to younger talent.
In our coaching, I am helping her to build a runway that will energise her both now and also for life beyond retirement. You may rightly ask the question: She is six years away from retirement why are you even doing work to prepare her for 2032 and beyond?
I am doing this coaching work because she is not energised by a rinse and repeat year in 2027; 28; 29; 30; 31; 32. Rachael has hit a plateau, she knows it and work was keeping her busy and distracted from the harsh reality of living an unfulfilled but busy life for the next six years, that’s 1,500 work days of wasted talent! I have seen this play out many times before. Work fills the void for now, but every so often the background music plays louder…the lyrics of the Natasha Bedingfield song ‘Unwritten’ say it best.
I break tradition.
Sometimes my tries are outside the lines.
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes.
But I can’t live that way.
Rachael requested executive coaching support from her Director after her annual review to help with her career development. She wanted someone to challenge her thinking and help her to think about her future career within her Organisation.
She is a very talented woman with an impressive CV and many career accomplishments. When she sought help from me, she outlined her specific situation in her pre work:
I am sure some of you in your 50’s reading this will identify with Rachael.
When identity and job title become the same thing
Like Rachael, people often realise too late that their sense of self has narrowed. Then something at work changes like a new appointment who joins the team. This often leads to a series of negative thoughts that can spiral out of control. “Am I still good enough? Are they going to take my place? If they come in and do a great job, will they move me somewhere else? They will have digital and AI skills much better than mine. Am I getting too old for this competition?”.
This can lead to Managers hoarding information and talent and fearful of letting go of work they should be delegating. When we hold on to the past, we are not growing, we are plateauing. It’s one of our natural human responses to a threat…to freeze.
Growth is not possible when our identity becomes frozen within our job title. Yes, work is a large part of our identity, but unless we are growing, we are doing the opposite, we are dying! This is why so many people wither away when they retire. They miss what are called the big 5 – Routine, Identity, Relationships, Purpose and Power. In one of our earlier coaching sessions, Rachael described how she viewed retirement “I see as a very steep cliff John, I know it will be a sudden fall for me when I retire, I’m not prepared for it and I would prefer not to think about it”.
Work should be an evolving expression of our values, skills and talents. No matter what age we are, we should be looking forward to a new chapter, an opportunity to rewire and play to our human strengths, not fear or wait for the clock to tick to retirement. Rachael also spoke about having invested so many years building competence and reputation in her area of expertise. Why would she let go? Again, she was clinging on to her past achievements as the foundations to her current and future identity.
The Shift from Role Identity to Value Identity
Rachael saw her whole identity through the lens of her role. Our sessions helped her to separate the responsibilities of her role to the value she has added both in work and outside work.
The list included problem-solver, pioneer, network developer, EU Project leader, people manager, her persistence to deliver with limited budgets, mentor, cultural collaborator, home provider, caregiver, musician and loyal friend.
She could now see her value beyond her job title identity. She was no longer imprisoned by her job title. It gave her the freedom to reimagine the next life chapter within her organisation through fresh eyes. As we explored her entire personal and career journey, she began to speak about how courageous she had been in her younger career years, the risks she had taken which other colleagues feared, how she had travelled abroad and adapted to different cultures. These experiences and achievements were all instrumental pieces that made up Rachael’s current jigsaw picture. However, she has decided to add new jigsaw pieces and create a new energising future jigsaw.
From Promotion Pressure to Energy Levels
Rachael had also felt the pressure to move up a grade within her public sector organisation. This would obviously help financially with her pension in time to come but at what cost. She had been disappointed when unsuccessful for a promotion interview last year but realised she was carrying this as a hurtful career setback. When we discussed how life would have been different had she been promoted, it became the clear she would not have enjoyed the role. She knew this too but was seeing from the perspective of higher status and greater financial reward for her hard work.
The promotion pressure was something endemic in her organisation. It was a symbol of career achievement but not aligned with career enrichment. Up is not the only way in today’s world. In fact, we are seeing many ambitious younger professionals with no desire to manage others because they see the stress that promotion pressure brings to their parents’ generation.
High achievers in sports speak about energy levels. They know they can be at their best with rest, recovery, diet and focusing on developing their skills and talents. From a life and career perspective, Rachael and I started to map out a future journey that focussed on her energy levels.
This led to her gaining increased clarity on what her future work and life was going to look like. It meant setting boundaries and not working late hours or worrying about work at weekends. The question changed to: “I want to do work that energises and prepares me for life beyond my current job”.
From Fear of Loss to being Open to Opportunity
When we change our mental focus from fear and survival to growth and opportunity, a whole new world opens up to us.
Here are six questions to ask yourself when you shift to a growth mindset:
- The fear of becoming less relevant changes to “where can I add value here in the future”.
- The career plateau is replaced by asking “what work energises me at this career stage”.
- The interview knockback teaches us to reflect “what valuable lessons have I learned”.
- The age bias concern prompts us to probe “what experience do I uniquely bring”.
- The retirement financial fears lead us to ask: “do I need independent financial advice”.
- The unsustainable busyness of life makes us realise “what boundaries do I need in place”.
As we age and hit roundy birthdays, I will hit a big one this year! I attend more funerals of people my age, I hear more about health issues due to stress and poor diet. These events cannot but impact people with less than a decade to retirement. It has definitely helped me to question my own mortality and how I want to live my life into the future.
I want to finish Rachael’s story. I shared when she sought coaching support from me, she outlined her specific stressful situation in her pre work exercise. We have now reworked this paragraph below to reflect an intentional sustainable way to live a healthy energised life.
Here is Rachael’s reworked guiding mission:
To conclude, this coaching programme with Rachael led me to thinking about a friend of mine who worked with Coolmine drug and alcohol treatment centre. He once shared their guiding mission with me:
“You alone can do this, but you cannot do it alone.”
Rachael needed coaching support at this career stage to put herself and her future first. This year alone we have seen a dramatic increase in Organisations seeking support for senior people who have this career plateau stage in their mid-50’s and early 60’s. The Career Stocktake Coaching Programme was developed to meet this specific organisation need and help their people to thrive after 55.
If you would like to know more about the career stocktake programme, you can drop our Coaching Programme Lead Liam McDonnell a note on lmcdonnell@harmonics.ie
John Fitzgerald
Managing Director, Harmonics
Harmonics supports Organisations and their Leaders with Organisation Design, Leadership Development and Executive and Career Coaching for twenty years. If you are an Organisation leader and would like to know how Harmonics can support you to future proof your people through change, contact us on info@harmonics.ie
