Looking at him across the table, it was obvious that Simon was struggling with seriously mixed feelings.
“When they offered me voluntary redundancy, I was really up for it,” he reflected, looking down into his coffee mug, as if he could see a gloomy future in the dregs. “I wanted to make radical career changes, and I could see myself using the money to do exactly what I wanted at long last – I had it all mapped out. But with all my commitments at home, the figures just didn’t add up. So now I’m stuck. How do I re-engage with my job when mentally and emotionally, I’ve already moved on? How can I make a career change if I’m still here?”
In recession-beleaguered Britain, many might envy Simon having a job at all. But he feels frustrated and trapped, stuck at Square 1, as do many others who can’t currently see how to develop the career they‘d ideally like. It isn’t only shortfall in redundancy or anxiety about change that can keep us in our current posts; it can be the very real demands of our responsibilities – mortgages, small children, teenagers we want to support through university, elderly parents we’re committed to looking after, which make the risks of leaving too high in an uncertain market. Sometimes, no amount of wishful thinking can change the need to stay put.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t career shift. Initially, we may have to struggle with disappointment, frustration, or even a rather misplaced but completely understandable resentment: it’s not really the employer’s fault you have to stay, but it might feel like it. It’s only human to be tempted to ‘coast’, to do the minimum to get by, to detach yourself, whilst day-dreaming about what life would be like “If only!” you could move on. But this is de-moralising and de-motivating, likely to lead us into lack of focus and mistakes, making the job even less satisfying. It’s human, but it doesn’t help.
So once you’re through this phase, and you’ve decided to make the reality of the situation serve your career-shifting interests, you have two alternatives.
Option One: Use Your Job Purely For the Money While Pursuing Your Career Change Outside Work
The first is to turn up, do the work you have to do in an adequately competent and friendly way, and at the same time, do as much as you possibly can out-of-hours to build up your skill-base, experience and networks. In this way, career shifting will become more and more probable and possible. You can use your regular salary to fund this, and put the energy you’re not exactly using in the day-job into voluntary activities, going on courses or studying independently in your free time, in the lunch-hour, evenings and at weekends.
It’s a classic self-improvement route, used by actors, artists, writers, anyone who has put themselves through a professional training whilst doing a ‘boring job’. It works well for many. It requires you to compartmentalise yourself, in- and outside work, but it can be very effective.
Option Two: Re-engage With Your Current Work
This route is more subtle, and requires a change of perspective. The second route is to re-engage with your job, and make the commitment to grow whilst in post.
To do so is likely to take time, effort, courage and imagination, and there are three steps to making it work for you. The first is to develop new ways of looking after yourself physically and emotionally, so that you are in the best possible state to deal with a new challenge, and arrive at work fully fired up, clear-headed and wanting to use all your energies during your working hours. Maximising well-being includes having frequent contact with people you care about and who care about you: exercise, especially ‘green exercise’ ie spending time out of doors: enough sleep, a balanced diet including plenty of water; and having fun (often omitted from well-being lists).
How can you bring a focus on fitness into your working day? Who could you enlist to join you in this? What would support you to organise a team sport’s match, an after-work yoga, massage or relaxation session for your department, a shared lunch where everyone brings a healthy, organic contribution?
Getting other people involved in collectively improving well-being starts to associate you in people’s minds with feeling good, which can lead to more fruitful relationships, a better working atmosphere, and certainly better references when you move on.
Secondly, set some time outside work aside to really think in detail about what you would rather be doing. Far from being a way to torture yourself, this step gives you a huge amount of information to help you develop where you are now, which will enable you to career-shift however long you stay where you are, or if you do eventually move on. Analyse your vision in relation to relationships, tasks and your working environment.
- Relationships: in your ideal job, what would you be doing with people? How would you be treating them? What would you be noticing? What would you be asking? What would you be saying? What aspects of yourself would you enjoy expressing? What attitude would you have to what you were doing? How would that show up on your face – in how you move – in how often you smile?
- Tasks: in your ideal job, what skills would you be using? What personal strengths and professional capacities would you be demonstrating? What would you be learning to do all this better? How would someone watching you know you were entirely committed, fully involved and excited about what you were doing?
- Environment: in your ideal job, what would you have around you? What would you be able to see? How would you be able to move about? What would you hear?
When you’ve really given this enough thought, you should have three lists. Circle what stands out for you, what you feel would really make that career seriously satisfying for you. Now comes an imaginative leap.
Use Your Current Employment As A Basis For Your Career Change
How can you use your current employment as a learning base for the skills, qualities, attitudes or strengths you want to develop? How can you grow your job to become an outlet for their expression?
What new responsibilities could you take on in-house that would provide such opportunities? What informal or social outlets present themselves? What training is available in line with your objectives? Could you find a mentor within the organisation? What charity event could you involve your team with, for a cause you care about? If your vision of an ideal career prioritises green or ethical values, what could you do to help steer your existing company into more environmentally or human/animal friendly practices? Would working from home sometimes suit your needs better? Does your employer allow employees to do pro-bono work off-site in the voluntary sector, either through secondment or time off? If not, are these possibilities? What needs to change to allow them to happen?
Research what’s possible and brainstorm alternatives with someone outside work, and then talk to your line-manager about what you want to do. You may have to ‘sell’ some of your ideas to your employer, especially if you’re the first to break the mould and try something new. You may be asking your employer to think differently about you and your job, placing new demands on the contract between you. So what’s in all this for them?
A huge amount. By committing to grow on the job, the third step, you’ll be bringing your full range of energy, skill and enthusiasm to work, rather than restricting what you do to the letter of your formal contract. You’ll be expanding what engaging with your job means to you and to your employer, opening up new possibilities and modelling creativity. You’ll be telling people what a great company or organisation you work for, one that is more in line with your principles and values, one that encourages and supports employees to learn and develop, rewards initiative. Your growth can be your employer’s growth, a win-win situation.
And enthusiasm is infectious. People want to be around colleagues who can transform the mundane into something inspiring, who can re-fresh and re-invent. You have nothing to lose. If/When you move on, you’ll be taking much more with you, and are far more ready and likely to succeed. If you stay, you’ll have a much more enjoyable, satisfying and fulfilling experience. It’s good in situ, great for the CV. And brilliant for career-shifting.
© Andrea Perry March 2010 www.andreaperry.co.uk
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