How do you answer the question: So what do you do?
Think about it. Do you answer with your company name: "I work for XYZ Corporation"? Or do you answer by your job title: "I am a Senior Manager at XYZ"? Or do you answer by what you do: "I'm a leadership development consultant." Or do you tell people actually what you do: "I work with successful professionals to help them figure out what they want to do with their lives."
How we present ourselves can be a great way to become aware of what's important to us with regards to our ‘professional identity' in our family, social and professional networks. And it can also be one of the things most difficult in a career change.
I find that how we answer that question is often telling of what we value about our work, what we think is important. For example, telling people what company you work for often implies that you find it important to work for a known company. Or if you give out your title, you might put more value on having achieved a certain level in an organisation. Or if you tell people more about who you work with and what you actually do, from a professional identity point of view you place more importance on what you do than where you do it or what you're called.
So why does this affect career change? Because we might be afraid of letting go of a label that we find is important in identifying who we are in the world. "But Satu, if I don't work for XYZ company, I'll be a nobody" is a phrase I've heard from not just a few people. "But if I no longer associate with the City, nobody will take me seriously" is also something I hear a lot of. We have a a certain ‘story' we share with others about ourselves, and we actually get caught up in that story ourselves.
To get passed your job title, your prestigious organisation or your great sounding job, it's important to focus on what's important for you. What do you value? What really matters? There will be people who previously thought your story was ‘cool' who won't necessarily understand your new story. Think for a moment, do they have to? Not everyone is going to be jumping over the moon over your possible career change.
I had a client who worked for a big company and wanted to set up her own business. She wasn't quite sure how to speak about this in her various social and professional networks. She felt that she should always bring up the big company to establish credibility, and yet, this had nothing to do with her new venture. It's when she became confident in letting go of a previous identity that things really started to grow for her in the new venture. She became comfortable in seeing herself as an entrepreneur, and the more confident she became, the more she was happy to share her story with the outside world.
So if you are someone in a career transition, what's your old story, and is it holding you back somehow? And what's the story that best reflects what you are doing right now? It doesn't have to be your day job. I often find that the best stories are of people sharing the things they are most passionate about, even if they only do it a few hours a week.
What are your interests, what are you passionate about, what would you like your work to ideally impact? A friend of mine working in the City started to trying out different careers by talking about them and seeing what came up. Yes, she was originally worried that she'd come across flaky with a ‘career of the month' kind of attitude, but it helped her to finally make the right move for her, as the trying on different careers helped her understand what they actually entailed and what was important for her.
If you want change, start creating the dynamic for change to occur! Don't stay stuck in the past. What you focus on expands. How could a new revised story help you move forward in your transition?
