Sometimes you just gotta jump on a life raft!
You’ve probably heard me say the best time for coaching, interview prep and getting your CV in order is when you aren’t under pressure to find that new job! It’s never too early for clarity and confidence when it comes to your career. Truly.
Your career is something to be PROACTIVE about, not REACTIVE.
Don’t wait until you need a job to make a plan. Make the plan so when the need arises, you already have the clarity and confidence to start moving.
But there is a big difference between a career crossroads and a career crisis and I see plenty of both. For some of my clients, circumstances around making a career move aren’t within their control. They might be on borrowed time.
At any one time I will almost certainly be working with clients who are in the midst of performance management processes, mediation, restructures and redundancies, and impending contract end dates. These are SO tough to grapple with, and if you haven’t been there, you can only imagine.
In the last week or so I’ve drafted emails for my clients asking for reasonable adjustments for a client grappling workplace stress (requesting two WFH days from an organisation that has mandated a full time office return), and clarity around the purpose of a series of meetings which have been scheduled for another client with her manager and General Manager (she literally has no idea why she is there. Performance management? Succession planning? Resource allocation? Who the fuck knows!)
When your confidence is shot to shit and you find yourself feeling like a character in the Da Vinci Code, it’s unsurprising you can’t see the woods for the trees.
A dear client of mine who is absolutely nailing her job search, came onto our first session and told me about the post it note she had stuck to her mirror. It said “Trust no one”.
Not every role you ever take will be a career defining move. Not every role on your CV will be chock-full of achievements. Not every role will be one in which you stay and grow. If you’re a single mum or single income household generally, if your partner has been out of work for a while, or you don’t have a financial buffer that allows you the luxury of taking your time to find a really great job that ticks all the boxes, you might have to make some tough decisions.
Sometimes you just gotta jump on a life raft and take a less than perfect job for the sake of your sanity. That’s reality. Your entire career shouldn’t be made up of life rafts, but sometimes it’s a case of sink or swim and a girl’s gotta eat.
The best thing I can help clients like these do is build their confidence, resilience and self-trust so that they KNOW they’ve got this, now and anytime the universe throws them a professional curveball AND do the work around clarity and confidence, so when the storm has passed and they’re ready, they can get off that life raft and make some more intentional and strategic moves about their career.
If you’re increasingly feeling sick on Sunday nights or crying in the toilets at lunchtime. If you’ve found yourself caught up in some workplace situation which feels too big to navigate alone. Or if you’ve just reached the point where you feel spending another day at your desk is going to make you self- combust, I got you.
All of my coaching clients get unlimited in-between session support from me for the duration of our work together, and that can make all the difference when you are navigating the complexities of any of the situations I’ve talked about above at the same time as job hunting.