Tweak your job until you can make the leap into a new career

How to make the best of a career you’ve outgrown – until you can make a bigger change

You’re desperate to change careers – your current work has lost its excitement, its meaning, and no longer fits the person you are today. But when jumping ship isn’t immediately practical, how can you sit it out in a positive way, meanwhile creating the bridge to your new working life?

Whether you call this redesigning or re-crafting your career, what this means is making some mini changes to make your current role more ‘you’. 

When I moved from a full-time career consultant role in a university to owning my own career coaching business, I didn’t just walk out of the door one day after work. There was a strategy involved that fulfilled my desire to do a great job where I was while also honouring the purpose-fuelled change I was seeking.

Some aspects of this career change strategy involved mental management, while others were about taking actions to move towards my new working life.

Once I’d done all the research into WHY working as an independent career change coach within my own business was completely right for me,  (and this clarity was essential in providing ongoing motivation and commitment to the change), I worked out a timeframe and the steps to achieve my goal.

These involved:

·      Doing additional training at my own expense

·      Negotiating a reduction to part-time in my employed role, while setting up the business

·      Launching Freestyle Careers alongside my employee role

·      Finally, resigning my employee role and going full time as a business owner and career coach

I suppose this whole process took about 18 – 24 months. And of course, it wasn’t as linear or simple as that appears!

Psychologically, once I’d made the decision to leave, I was also incredibly impatient to make that happen immediately. I swung back and forth throughout the two years, some days sure I was doing the wrong thing, but always coming back to WHY this move was so important to me. It was one of the most difficult choices I think I’ve made in my life because for the first time I was the only person impacted by the decision – and the responsibility felt huge.

By anchoring to WHY this really was the right choice, I was able to reinvent my career, keep going through all the doubts and fears, and arrive at a place where my working life finally suited me perfectly. But it was tough going!

So, if you’re in that difficult place of knowing you want to leave but for various practical reasons not being able to resign quite yet, here are some suggestions to help you make the best of your current role, while also getting ready for that career shift that has your name on it.

Ideas from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans – Designing Your Work Life

‘Don’t Resign, Redesign’

Dysfunctional Belief: I have a bad job, and I need to quit!

Reframe: There are no bad jobs, just jobs that fit badly, and I can redesign where I am to make my own ‘good’ job

1. Reframe and reenlist to the job you have

This involves a shift of perspective on your current work so that you have a new relationship with it and tell yourself a different story about it. 

This might involve crafting your activities to realign with the organisation’s priorities, perhaps by taking on a new project that is of high importance to your employer and which plays to your strengths and interests. It’s a win for you both.

If you gain greater clarity about where you want to be heading in the longer term, it’s easier to remodel your current work as a way of helping you get there. You no longer feel trapped, but on your way somewhere that really excites and rewards you.

2. Remodel your job

This involves making changes to your daily or weekly activities so they’re a better fit for your interests and strengths.

It could also mean developing skills you enjoy using and which take you towards your next direction, while also serving the needs of your employer.

The resulting deeper personal engagement in your work will both re-energise you and please your boss.

3. Relocate

This might be a sideways move within your current organization, which has the advantage of staying with an organization you might like. There’s less risk than moving to a new organisation.

This internal move means slipping into a new role but without the need for extensive retraining. There might be the chance of a sabbatical in some organisations, which will allow you to test out a different role with minimal impact to your security.

4.  Reinvent

This might also be an internal move – but into a completely new role that requires more training and preparation. Your prior technical or specialist experience may not be directly relevant, but your personal qualities and skills will be.

If they know and like you in your current organization both options 3 and 4 are easier to achieve. 

Ideas from Positive Psychology

Job Crafting

Research from Positive Psychology focuses on ‘crafting’ a role that no longer suits you by adjusting:

·      the tasks you do

·      the work relationships you have

·      the mindset shifts that will allow you to better accommodate the role

By taking an audit of the tasks you do and how much of your working week they take up, you can see more clearly why you might not be feeling the satisfaction you need. When you know your strengths or favourite skills, your interests and motivations, and can see how far they are finding expression (or not) in your working week, it’s easier to understand which tweaks would help you enjoy your work and make a stronger contribution to the organisation.

By minimizing the aspects that fit you least well, and maximizing those that allow you to use your favourite skills, and play to your strengths, you are taking control of your career again. Think about how you could raise this with your manager and what the benefits would be to the team as a whole. It may well be the case that another team member is longing to do more of the work that leaves you cold, and there could be an easy win-win out there. 

At the very least, you could raise this within your annual review, showing where you could develop your contribution and discussing how this might be achieved.

Unless you ask the question, you’ll never know.

If you’d like to think about how to explore this with your manager, or just gain greater clarity about what a fulfilling role would look like, get in touch.

Ideas from Susan David, author of Emotional Agility

Tweak Your Role

There’s no denying that emotions plays a part in how we live and work. In ‘Emotional Agility’ Susan David suggests some practical ways in which we can understand what we are thinking and feeling in any situation, unhook from the paralysing effects and negativity of some of these feelings, and create something better for ourselves.

Knowing exactly what ‘better’ looks like is a very personal thing. This comes down to what you value most, what you find most rewarding, and what gives you a sense of purpose and enjoyment.

In career change terms, I call this your WHY.

When you have clarity about your values, purpose and strengths, you can create a vision for what you need for a more fulfilling working life. This compelling vision provides great motivation, but it won’t necessarily create change overnight.

What it can do though is to make the period of transition easier and more rewarding to live through. 

One aspect of this is what Susan David describes as ‘Take this job and tweak it.’

• The first step is to face what you are feeling – perhaps boredom, conflict, or anxiety. These are important signposts to what matters most to you.

• Secondly, identify what these emotions are telling you – ‘I can do better than this’ or ‘I do my best work when it allows me to be more creative.’

• Then, you can start to introduce what was missing into your current role using some of the ideas above.

According to Susan David,

‘Employees who try job crafting often end up more satisfied with their work lives, achieve higher levels of performance in their organization and report greater personal resilience.’

By crafting the role you’re doing right now to take you closer to your target role, you’re winning. But by taking control of your career again and creating a realistic strategy to create a more fulfilling work life, you’re shaping your life based on what you want rather than passively being carried along by the tide.

‘By being emotionally agile, we can use the wrong job to gain the perspective, skills and connections necessary to get to the right job../.. That’s how we ensure that we’re not just making a living, but also truly living.’ - Susan David

Because it takes time to change careers

Even when you have clear vision for the changes you want to make to your working life, the transition can take time. While you are planning the strategy to take you towards your new career, the redesigns suggested above will help you both feel more comfortable in your current role, and also reassure you that you are moving in the right direction. This kind of clarity is energizing and provides the momentum and motivation to make your career change happen.

If you need help understanding your interests or strengths, and in developing a realistic career change strategy get in touch and we can set up a free call to get the right steps in place.