Making purposeful career changes by kayode olufemi-ayoola

MAKING PURPOSEFUL CAREER CHANGES

It all starts immediately we leave school, totally naïve and unprepared for the world of work, and fortunately for a few, get a job; after a while we discover that there is a gap between what we do and who we are! “We hit a period when the desire for change imposes itself with great urgency, as Herminia Ibarra said, “we try to swap our old, outdated roles for new ones in one fell swoop and we get stuck”

We get stuck because, again quoting Ibarra, we think that we can leap directly from a desire for change to a single decision that completes the career change process –most people make this mistake, most do not realize that career change is a process that begins with a forced transition (a transition that is self initiated).

According to William Bridges, A transition is the mental and emotional process you go through coming to terms with a new situation – in this case, the urgency of a career change. It is your emotional reaction and the attitude you use in deciding to accept, adapt or resist change.

“We are caught between the no longer and the not yet!”

Change is an event, and transition is your reaction to it. How you feel about it and adapt to it. Transitions usually start with an ending – a realization that things are not going to stay the same. Change starts with a beginning, or in this case, a quality decision to make a change.

Another way to define transition is – you’re not where you used to be and you’re not where you want to be yet!

Career change is a transitionary process that could take up to three years. In a memoir of her own career change, according to Ibarra, Harriet Rubin, a publishing Executive writes, “It takes, an average of three years, from the time a person decides to leave a company until the day s/he walks out the door.”

During this transitionary period, a large chunk of the time is spent making deep shifts in perspective and small adjustments in course.

Making deep shifts in perspective entails becoming more than we already are. Everything we’ve achieved so far is a direct result of who we are! You cannot achieve more without first becoming more – the most important part of our thinking takes place in our perceptions, in the way we see, our outlook. During my career workshops I usually tell participants that you cannot package yourself beyond what you already are!

Steven Covey says, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are, or as we are conditioned to see it. When we describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our belief systems, our values etc”

The way to have more/do more is to become more – we become and then we attract, we grow personally, increase our mental capacities, and then we advance in our careers.

Making small adjustments in course will entail, in the words of Ibarra, during something on the way to something else, so don’t get obsessed about making the right decision. Make a plan to tide you over for the next three years until you figure out your longer term plan – you are more likely to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

Begin by trying out new activities/experiment moving into a new job without leaving your current job/ try out new roles or projects on a small scale. Create new useful networks in the field/company of your choice; pick up new relevant skills, find new role models, join some new peers groups to guide and benchmark your progress.

I would like to close this with the powerful words of John Gardner who said, “Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success/failure is of less account.”