Harmonics

Do you know anyone waiting for a package? There are so many among us who have given years of service to one employer and would love a change but think they should hold on for the Voluntary Severance package. Working in career transition for years, at Harmonics we know there comes a time (somewhere after 8 years) when people feel they have too much to lose by leaving without a package. And there can be a sense of entitlement that others before them have received packages so why not them.

I define people who are waiting for the package as FedEx. Fed up with where they work but waiting for an Ex Gratia payment from an employer to leave.

This FedEx mindset can be detrimental to their careers. In this article, I share some tips on how to manage your career better and honour your talents.

Waste of talent

There is a lot of well documented waste in the world like food, energy, water but there is even more wasted talent in Organisations. I have seen too many people wait and wait for the package, year after year, and allow their talent to waste away. They’ve told me privately they would be gone in the morning if only there was a package going. They speak about having to follow protocol, keep the head down, how their boss is a living nightmare and the work environment will never change. One civil servant recently described themselves as “being imprisoned by the system”. The statements are always filled with negativity and powerlessness to change anything. The end result is that the person has plateaued in their career and wasted their talent waiting for the package.

So what would do if the package arrived tomorrow?

When I ask what exactly they would you do if they left, the response is usually “anything else but this”. I could count on one hand when someone has articulated clearly to me what they would do if the package arrived. Having a FedEx Mindset removes personal responsibility. Being Fed up with your current manager or employer can be blamed on them and how they will never change. Waiting for an Ex Gratia payment simply means you can’t afford to leave unless you get an attractive enough package to do so. There are many different personal circumstances individuals face when considering whether to stay or leave.

Depression and Regression

Susan (not her real name) recently engaged me as a career coach. She has worked with her current employer for 18 years.  She described the culture as toxic; the canteen chat littered with stories of poor managers, round pegs in square holes, having to do more with less resources, etc, etc. If the rumour mill is true, a Voluntary Redundancy Programme may open up in the coming year.

Susan came to me because she didn’t know what else she could do if she took the package but she wanted to broaden her career options. She took personal responsibility to pay for career coaching privately to create a new future beyond what she only knows now.

In recent years, Susan suffered from depression and was on medication. It became clear to her, as we worked together, that her depression was directly linked to her workplace environment. Susan had taken medication for depression for the first time in her life, all the time waiting for the package to arrive and letting her skills to regress. Now she cannot bear the thoughts of another 10 years waiting for a package and knows she needs to get out.

What to do while you wait for a package to arrive

While I don’t encourage people to wait for a package, sometimes their level of debt and personal situation means it is the only realistic thing to do. Susan has a big mortgage, is the main earner in the home and a family that will need college education soon. She needed to know what her family’s financial needs are before making the next step.  Susan completed a personal financial exercise with my colleague Liam Croke, MD of Harmonics Financial in advance of knowing what the package could be.

She also completed a Career Stocktake Programme with me to evaluate her new career options. The work we have done together has completely opened her mind to using her talents and skills in a new way in a new sector. She is now working actively on her future with an excitement she hasn’t experienced since she first started out in her career almost 20 years ago. Now, with a realistic plan B in train, the negativity in her workplace washes over her head. She is committed to her new future and growing her network of connections and knowledge of new careers outside her own sector. She knows where she is going and why. She is off all medication and feeling like a new woman.  She has joined a reading and yoga class and found new friends outside her negative workplace.

Bridging the Certainty Gap

There is always a gap people will have when making a career transition. The gap between what they have now. This includes the certainty, the structure, the known, the same people in the canteen, the same route to work. Even though this place is not where they want to be, there is a certainty and security about the old and proven.

Making a career move seems a lot harder the longer you have been with one employer and especially into a new sector. You are unknown, unproven, uncertain and fearful you might fail. As children, we don’t worry about failing, we just fall and get back up again and try to walk and eventually make it. As adults, we have a lot invested in our former selves, who we are and often worry way too much about what others may think. Bridging this gap and trying something new is filled with the opportunity to make mistakes, rejection and loss. Change can be like a turbulent flight; you can expect moments when you do need to tighten your seat-belt.

It sounds scary, yet the people, who we have helped transition with the proper career and financial planning ahead of time, tell me instantly they would never go back to the old. They tell me “They needed a push”, “My instinct was right”, “I put up with it for way too long”, “I knew I could do it”. We simply dishonour our talents by waiting too long for the package.

Parable of the Talents

I was reminded recently in a coaching session about the parable of the talents. The coachee shared his father’s guidance when he was growing up: The parable of the talents was an instruction for the disciples to use their God-given gifts which were seen to include personal abilities (“talents” in the everyday sense), as well as personal wealth. What a wonderful message to have endured the course of time from father to son.

Four Questions to Consider

Here are four questions I ask people considering why they feel they need to change. I get them to think about career transition as if they were spring cleaning their house:

1. What do you want to keep? It will often be what they do best, my most important values
2. What do you want to discard? It could be old habits, a toxic work environment
3. What do you want to change? It may be self-limiting beliefs, a new role, a new challenge
4. What do you want to add? These could be new skills, knowledge and networks

If you are honest with yourself in completing this exercise, you have authored your own reasons on what you need to change and why. Allowing yourself to wait and plateau without taking action on this list is doing you and your employer a disservice. It is like staying in a marriage for show and not being really committed.

Three Important Lessons

Susan has learned three important lessons:

1. If you need to wait for a package because of your financial situation, start the process of change yourself and commit to it so that it becomes harder to stay than leave.
2. If your job has had an adverse effect on your health, then this is only a symptom. You need more than a doctor’s prescription, you need a career stocktake to take you out of the toxic environment.
3. If you don’t feel brave enough to do it on your own, engage the help of a career coaching professional who has worked with many people just like you for support.

In summary, if you are over 5 years with your current employer and can sense that you are at a plateau, don’t wait for 8 years or 18 years to feel powerless to change. Don’t wait to be told by your manager where you should move in the organisation or to be offered a package. Take proactive action and recalibrate; take the time to refocus on your career and become reenergised as a result. Be more than ready for that time when the package arrives. Be so ready that, if a new role appears while you are waiting, it is easier to leave. The more often you complete career transitions, the less scary they become. Career transitions become a part of your DNA; you have less to fear and more to gain. You will become more marketable and employable in the longer term.

Be mindful when the package runs out

Always remember the package offers you a certain amount of money which will last for a defined period of time. Reinvesting in new skills and educating yourself with labour market knowledge provides a lifetime platform for new career opportunities. The only barrier to this reinvestment is your mindset and what you believe is possible for you!

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not into fighting the old but on creating the new” – Socrates

Hearing that the Aintree Grand National takes place this weekend, I was reminded of this piece which I wrote a little over two years ago.  At the time I had just finished a 3000 piece jigsaw and it was the same week AP McCoy retired from racing. It seems appropriate to share this article again as the message is still very relevant today – particularly for Senior Executives on an upwards career path or facing transition…

I had never completed a jigsaw as big as this before. It was the picture that grabbed my attention. It was the 7 wonders of the world. I thought WOW that would be really great to complete some time. Well that time came over Christmas when I thought I could potter away at it in my own time while I am off work.

I used to love jigsaws when I was younger and said it would be fun to do something different. We have an open space upstairs and this became my playroom for my jigsaw. I started it on December 28th and since then and now it’s been part of my life, a place to go to chill and forget about the rest of the world, my part time job! On February 8th I eventually got it knocked out.

Over the past few months, both my parents have been in hospital and it has been a particularly stressful time for my sister and I building hospital runs and home care trips into our daily routines. Doing the jigsaw became my chill zone even if it was stressful at times when progress seemed painfully slow.

It’s interesting what goes through your mind doing a jigsaw. For me it was a test. You see, I’m the best at starting something, great with new ideas and getting stuff off the ground, but my completion rates are not great. I’m not a completer finisher, so finishing this seemed like a new challenge. Finishing gives you such a high on one level and an anti-climax on another level. Almost straight away after finishing I started thinking “what will I do now?”  Do I really want to open another box of 3,000 pieces and have to start again? Or will I go for a bigger test of 5,000 pieces and really test myself to the limit. Or will I step back down to my 500 pieces. Sure wouldn’t that be grand, my wife said to me rather than staying up half the night trying to complete the 3,000 pieces.

As I put my final pieces in the jigsaw, I heard Sky in the background on TV; they were speaking about the announcement of the retirement of the world’s greatest jockey. On February 8^th, AP and I had something in common; we are finishing on a high.  He won the Hennessy Gold Cup in Leopardstown for the first time and I finished my 3000 piece jigsaw for the first time. His achievement has not come without a cost as he has broken over 700 bones in his riding career, my meagre achievement a lot less painful!

We seek more

Both AP and I have come to the end but we are not fully satisfied. We seek more. AP is driven; he is the best in the world at what he does. He knows if he has to start something new again, he will have to start right back with the 3000 pieces in the box and has no idea what he wants the picture on the box to look like. From what we know of AP, he will want the largest jigsaw possible to complete. 3,5,10, maybe there is a 100,000 piece jigsaw for him to have a go at!

Many people reach a high like AP in their careers and find they can’t ever repeat it. They were at their best and happiest doing what they did and then they can’t, for whatever reason, do it anymore. Professional sports people stand out because their retirement often comes at such a young age, usually in their 30’s. They were once driven to achieve, pushed themselves to the limit, but after stepping down they just can’t get that buzz anywhere else. One of my clients said to me recently, “John, your job is to get me off the drug of more, I’m addicted. I can’t stop this insatiable drive to go for more and more!”

It’s great to find what you love to do and it is possible to replace it with something more or less, but it does take time to stand back and not rush it. You may want to look back at all the great days, all the stand out winning days you had, but that’s the past and we need to learn to look back fondly but never wantingly.

When I got to the end of my 3,000 piece jigsaw, I found I had a missing piece. One missing piece! I had 2,999 pieces but one piece got0 away. I searched high and low under couches and carpets but no sign. I could have decided that it was a disaster, after all my hard work that one missing piece could ruin it all! But no, I just have to accept this will always be a missing piece, the one that got away. I’m sure if you asked AP have you any regrets, he will probably speak about all the close races he nearly and should have won – even though he has ridden over 4,000 winners.

Just accept it and move on

The important thing is never to let the missing pieces take over your life. Just accept it and move on. Life isn’t perfect. Careers aren’t perfect. Just enjoy building the picture you want to build and take the learning that life brings along the way. Accept that change will always bring new challenges and opportunities.

For AP, he has started a new career in the media as a racing pundit. He has admitted he would love to go back and ride again to test himself on the racetrack once more. That’s his drug of more – missing the drug of racing and saddling up every day. While he has replaced it with punditry, I get the sense this isn’t enough for him. In my opinion, he will need to replace it in time with something more personally rewarding to fill the void. This takes patience and time, just like building a jigsaw, to create a new career picture that will intrinsically meet your needs. Others will gladly suggest what they think is right for you in your career future but AP and others who change careers need a new burning ambition. This burning ambition video by Peter Fuda on how to approach change is a helpful link in creating change from within.

Fear is not a sustainable energy source

In an interview some time ago, AP said the fear of failure had driven him on for years. Fear is a powerful motivating fuel but a fuel that eventually burns you out.  Fear is not a sustainable energy source over the course of a lifetime. I am currently coaching a Senior Business Leader and they work crazy hours because of a life message from their mother to “work hard”. This served him well in his earlier years, but he is now nearing 50 and still driving on with the foot to the floor. Coming from very little, his life belief is that he has to prove to his parents that he is now a success. He doesn’t have a degree and fears he will be found out at some stage in his career, yet he hasn’t made the time to go back and study part time. What he needs, more than a degree, is to change his leadership style from doing to leading, from busyness to creating boundaries and saying ‘No’.

For AP, and for all of us, the missing piece is not riding more winners, chasing the next promotion, working longer hours, driving for more sales, building bigger businesses or bigger jigsaws, it is finding another piece altogether, peace within ourselves that we are OK. That we don’t have to be, do or have anything more than anyone else to prove this. Taking the time to listen to our inner voice of wisdom rather than taking too much notice of what the commentators and amateur life pundits have to say.

The missing piece is that we are all OK; we just need to take the time to find that inner missing peace within ourselves.