Career Agility [1 ed.] 1527557669, 9781527557666

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Career Agility

Career Agility: Strategies for Success By

Fiona Elsa Dent, Patricia Hind and Viki Holton

Career Agility: Strategies for Success By Fiona Elsa Dent, Patricia Hind and Viki Holton This book first published 2020 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2020 by Fiona Elsa Dent, Patricia Hind and Viki Holton All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-5766-9 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-5766-6

CONTENTS

Foreword .................................................................................................. vii Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1 Introduction x Reflective Checkpoint 1: Identifying Your Career Tribe .............. 12 Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 15 Career Dilemmas and Predicaments x Reflective Checkpoint 2: Identifying Your Current Dilemmas and Predicaments........................................................................... 21 Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 26 21st Century Career Themes and Dilemmas – The Broader Context x Reflective Checkpoint 3: Career Themes and Predicaments ......... 27 x Reflective Checkpoint 4: The Changing Nature of Work Review . 36 x Reflective Checkpoint 5: Dynamic Family Structures .................. 42 x Reflective Checkpoint 6: Working in Multigenerational Organisations................................................................................. 46 x Reflective Checkpoint 7: The Impact of Technology.................... 52 x Reflective Checkpoint 8: Influencing and Working with Organisational Politics .................................................................. 57 Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 59 21st Century Career Themes and Dilemmas – The Personal Context x Reflective Checkpoint 9: Career Themes and Predicaments ......... 61 x Reflective Checkpoint 10: Dual Career Working Families ........... 68 x Reflective Checkpoint 11: Transition in My Working Life .......... 75 x Reflective Checkpoint 12: My Resilience Profile ......................... 83 x Reflective Checkpoint 13: My Personal Identity .......................... 85 x Reflective Checkpoint 14: Progress and Actions .......................... 92 x Reflective Checkpoint 15: Career Stages and Choices.................. 95 x Reflective Checkpoint 16: My Work Life Balance ..................... 107

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Contents

Chapter Five ........................................................................................... 110 Understanding Where You Are Now x Reflective Checkpoint 17: My Personal Career Path .................. 112 x Reflective Checkpoint 18: My Work Expectations ..................... 115 x Reflective Checkpoint 19: Life and Career Stage ....................... 117 x Reflective Checkpoint 20: SWOT Analysis ................................ 121 x Reflective Checkpoint 21: Career Values and Drivers ................ 123 x Reflective Checkpoint 22: Career or Role Highs and Lows........ 127 x Reflective Checkpoint 23: Personal Motivators (Finest Moments) .................................................................................... 129 x Reflective Checkpoint 24: Career Drivers................................... 132 x Reflective Checkpoint 25: My Relationship Network................. 134 x Reflective Checkpoint 26: My Brand and USP ........................... 141 x Reflective Checkpoint 27: Career Realities................................. 143 x Reflective Checkpoint 28: What I Wish I’d Known Earlier in My Career ............................................................................... 148 x Reflective Checkpoint 29: Derailment ........................................ 150 x Reflective Checkpoint 30: Freeform Review .............................. 151 Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 154 Finding Your Way Forward x Reflective Checkpoint 31: Overview of Learning So Far ........... 159 x Reflective Checkpoint 32: Realities and Issues to Be Aware Of .. 160 x Reflective Checkpoint 33: Important Questions to Consider ...... 162 x Reflective Checkpoint 34: Limiting Restrictions ........................ 163 x Reflective Checkpoint 35: Decision Matrix ................................ 165 x Reflective Checkpoint 36: Action Plan Template ....................... 168 Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 171 References and Booklist, Career Apps and Online Resources Index ....................................................................................................... 176

FOREWORD

The world around us is in constant flux, and we have become used to the idea that our jobs and careers will be influenced by external factors. Now more than ever we must be ready for change. The world and life we had all become used to changed dramatically with the advent of Covid 19 during the first three months of 2020. When we first started researching and writing this book in 2019 employment was high, unemployment low, and the economic forecasts seemed predictable. As far as careers were concerned, within certain parameters there was a degree of choice, and overall, many of us had freedom to carve out a life in general and a working life to suit our needs and situation. Some of the major events on our horizon at the beginning of our writing process were the impact of BREXIT, climate change, and the redistribution of economic power from West to East (among other world events) on the UK economy and job environment. We knew then that these factors highlighted the need for people to take personal control of their careers In late March 2020 it began to dawn on the whole world that the ‘constant change’ we had become used to talking of was taking on hugely different proportions. Covid 19 means we are living in times that are on a different scale in terms of economic and social challenges. It has brought a whole new meaning to the often referred to concept of the VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). Now everyone has an appreciation of what this really means. It is easy to list the things we took for granted living in the developed world in the twenty first century. x Freedom to travel pretty well anywhere we want. We had already taken for granted that we could travel easily around the world for either business or pleasure. x Socialising with people in the environments we choose – in our homes, in restaurants, pubs, theatres, cinemas, sports events, etc.… x Commuting to work daily

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x In the developed world, we had reliable supply chains, yet our access to the basic commodities of life were threatened overnight. x Although prior to Covid – 19 we were talking of the ‘death of the high street’, and the retail sector was struggling to survive, we did have easy access to the ‘retail therapy’ many of us used to enjoy on a regular basis. This is no longer the case. x Work typically involved travelling to our base and spending time in our workplace happily rubbing shoulders with our colleagues – now we must ‘socially distance’ if we are in a workplace or alternatively work from home. That is of course if you have retained your job and are not furloughed, made redundant or unable to work for some other reason. Many people have already demonstrated a degree of agility during this period by adapting and flexing how they perform their jobs, however, the following examples show how important it is that the mindset and skills of agility are developed for the long term – they rarely offer a quick fix to the seismic dilemmas faced today. x GPs have adopted more video and telephone technology to undertake initial consultations thus negating the need for many to attend the surgery and enabling them to spend longer with each patient. For many GPs this has been a move that should have come along anyway, but the pandemic proved to be the catalyst that made it happen. x Independent coffee shops and cafes developed take away and home delivery services. This has enabled them to continue to offer services to their communities, yet it is unclear whether they will be able to return to a full complement of employees. x We have also heard that in many environments, decisions about processes and strategies that would have taken months or even years to make were made speedily and efficiently to enable new processes to begin. x Despite the creativity of the sector, the cultural industries face long term issues. TV, theatres and cinemas have been quick to offer their existing productions online, yet the difficulties of developing new productions and shows have not yet been resolved. Without new material in the pipeline to generate income in the short term, the future remains insecure. x Universities have been quick to adopt technological solutions to delivering their programmes. This has upskilled many ‘traditional’

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lecturers who have rapidly become familiar with on - line delivery, which has proved beneficial. However, there remains the challenge of modifying a business model which has always been dependent on student attendance and face to face education. So, how do we, as individuals, manage our careers against this background? We believe that more than ever before we will have to be agile in how we manage our working lives. We have all had different experiences of this rather surreal time in our lives – some of us may be: x Questioning why we do what we do workwise – perhaps having had the time to reflect and review during lockdown. x Recognising that their working environment has changed forever – how will that appeal to them – for instance, working from home more regularly than previously. x Facing the fact that their job has disappeared forever. Some of us may be recognising that now is the time for change. This perfect storm of events provides the opportunity for many of us to recalibrate what we want to achieve and to offer in our work and our lives in general. As you are thinking about your work or career, we hope that our book will give you a structure to assist you in the process and help you on your journey. Fiona Dent, Patricia Hind, Viki Holton

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Attributed to Confucius Idealistic words perhaps, however, we believe that too many people settle for mediocrity in their working life rather than seeking out work that suits their particular set of skills, abilities and needs. So, ask yourself a few questions: is your job x Meeting your expectations? x Fulfilling your dreams? x Letting you enjoy the lifestyle you aspire to? If the answer to these questions is yes, please either buy this book for a friend or buy it for yourself as an investment for the future should anything change. If, however, you answered in the negative – then read on. This book will help you to understand what you value most in your working life as well as offering you many practical exercises and insights that will help you to take control of your career. We all know that the future of work is rapidly changing. Most of us will have to or choose to work longer. For many it will be to fund later life and a happy retirement. In addition to this and with the increase in life expectancy many of us will choose to work longer for our own wellbeing, for economic benefit and for the social and intellectual stimuli provided. The rise of older workers is not only evident within the UK. Over the past decade, except in the US, data from the OECD indicates that the proportion of older employees has risen in the developed world. Some of the significant changes that we perceive which affect the future of work and career/job choices include:

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x The impact and speed of technological change x The gig economy x The reduction of loyalty to a single employer and demise of the job for life x The ongoing changing nature of the global economy x Major geographical and political events such as BREXIT x Organisational downsizing, outsourcing and merging x Social and cultural changes – for instance changing family structures and the one-hundred-year life. x Access to education x The COVID 19 pandemic x Economic recession. So, many of us are finding ourselves in multiple different careers and jobs throughout our working life – hence the need for what we have called ‘career agility’. By career agility what we mean is the ability and the mindset to grasp opportunities and enjoy a positive and proactive response to the changing and evolving job environment. There was a time when careers moved in a linear direction, with just a few, or even just one, employer throughout a working life and a focus in one career area. This scenario no longer applies, which means that career and job decisionmaking has never been more crucial and has become rather more complex than it has been for previous generations. With this in mind, and whatever stage we are at in our working lives we must be mindful of the impact of each career decision we make (or fail to make) and how it might affect any future decisions. Throughout our lives we face a variety of different job - related challenges. In our roles as trainers, researchers and executive coaches we have heard many different stories about career dilemmas. Some have happy endings; some do not. We do know though that these dilemmas cut across different sectors, countries and nationalities. We have used these stories, and research interviews we conducted during 2019 with a wide range of individuals from all walks of life representing many different sectors, roles, career stages and ages, to compile this book. The stories are many and varied, illustrating that we are all unique in our lives and our approach to our career and job. There is no set template to follow that will guarantee success, but in this book, we can offer you practical frameworks, tools and techniques to use throughout the rest of your career. Think about your career as a journey or a recipe. In both cases

Introduction

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there are goals and essential ingredients for success and yet there are also options for different routes or (for recipes) different flavours. We believe that the obvious or quickest route on a journey is not always the most effective and, as with a recipe, two chefs presented with the same ingredients will often produce wildly different results. For instance, we would point you to the many television cooking programmes like “The Great British Bake Off” to witness the very different results that can be produced. You might like to consider how you have approached your career or job choices so far? Which of these boxes describes your approach best? Figure 1-1

CAREER APPROACHES By unplanned we mean that you have just ‘gone with the flow’, based on what your employers offer and other opportunities that present

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themselves. It often means a passive approach where things just happen to you – sometimes these will be great, lucky events but not necessarily. Planful is a far more engaged, active style that means a more careful consideration of options with awareness of your own values, motivations and career ideals. Thoughtful is when you have done your research and have taken an objective overview and worked out a strategy to achieve your goal. Intuitive is when you get a gut feel about what will work for you without overthinking and analysing. It may not have been easy to choose one of those boxes which represents your whole working life. Many people will be somewhere in between, or in different boxes at different times. But we would encourage you to always ask yourselves the questions ‘which box am I in’ and ‘which box do I want to be in’ as you approach a career decision. It is essential to factor in ‘reflection’ time, to step back and weigh up carefully what’s on offer, what is likely to happen as a result and do you want this? Try to be honest with yourself and to look forward. What else might happen as a result of your choices? For example, what’s the impact not just on you but on your loved ones? What is the impact on your overall career goals, is this likely to help you achieve these? Our belief is that in an ideal world the more thoughtful you are about your decisions the more satisfactory the short and long-term outcomes will be. Just to be clear about this, we are not advocating plans that are set in stone and rigid but rather we are promoting ideas to help you broaden your horizons and take a more holistic approach to managing your career or job future. Let us show you what we mean with an example of what this difference might mean: Harry spent his twenties and early thirties as a flotilla skipper, and freelance yacht skipper, a life he absolutely loved. He was an extremely talented yachtsman, popular with clients and very competent professionally. On his travels, he met his future wife, another lover of sailing, but also an ambitious entrepreneur. A couple of years after they married, Harry’s travelling career was no longer fitting in with the life they wanted as a couple. Just as he began searching for a suitable land-

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based job, he immediately came across an opportunity to work for the builders of large, luxury yachts as a salesman. This seemed a great fit with his past life, and so he jumped at the role. Sadly, the gulf between sailing and selling proved huge and the move was not a success. Although personable and knowledgeable, Harry’s love of yachts did not translate into commissions and the new career eventually led to a voluntary redundancy. At a loss as to what direction to take, Harry accepted the offer of outplacement consultancy as part of his redundancy package. This was thorough and detailed, involving meetings, analysis and advice over a six-month period. Key features of Harry’s personality that were relevant to his working life were a love of working with and helping others along with other features that led the consultant to suggest that he consider joining the Ambulance service. Harry applied, was accepted and began his new career almost a year after leaving the sales team. He enjoyed it so much that after two years he applied to train as a full paramedic. Two further years on and he is now immersed in, and loves, this new role – it took nearly five years to get there. This is a real example of someone’s recent career transition and illustrates how with a bit of help, some analysis and retraining it is possible to replace the job of your dreams with another different role that you also love. We’ll be sharing many such examples with you throughout the book and hope that you’ll find some time to reflect about your own experiences. In this book the real-life stories we have heard, together with our own research and experience, underpin the practical tools, techniques, exercises and examples we offer to help you in your career or job journey. So, whether you are fiercely ambitious or indifferent, whether you are at the beginning, middle or towards the final stages of your career journey, whether you think about your working life simply as a series of jobs (rather than ‘career’), this book is designed to support you. Remember, if your own working life involves some responsibility for the careers of others, it is equally important that you need to understand the options and consequences of their job-related decisions. In all these circumstances this book will help you to:

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x Take charge of your working life and proactively curate your expertise and skills. x Challenge and question your assumptions and to think more broadly about your career opportunities and options. x Be more aware of what you want from your working life. x Take better decisions in relation to your career and job progression. x Evaluate where you are today, and how you got there. x Identify your key strengths and weaknesses by doing a personal audit. And if you have never done this before, it is a fascinating reveal, if you have done one before, noticing any changes is often very revealing. x Raise your awareness of some of the career dilemmas you might face in your career journey. x Appreciate some of the values that impact on your ‘ideal’ career. We all have values, it’s just that sometimes they stay dormant until an unexpected event brings them into the foreground. x Be more aware of the contemporary demands on employees and how this affects your wellbeing and work life balance. This book is relevant to anyone no matter your gender, age or occupation who wants to make the best of their working life in any working environment at any level in their organisation. x It is a valuable resource for anyone thinking of revitalising or rebooting your career or for helping others to do this. x It includes exercises and examples in a practical workbook style. Many of us spend too much time with our heads down, busy working and too little time reflecting on our values and where we want to go on our career journey. This book will help you stop, reflect, plan for the future and then of course, hold you accountable for the changes you need to make. Later in this introduction we set out the structure of the book – you can decide where to dive in or you can read through in the more traditional way of chapter one, chapter two, etc., right to the end. Either way will be fine.

Introduction

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OUR RESEARCH Our research was based on a range of interviews with people at many different stages of their working life, in many different job roles and working in many different organisational contexts. We also read widely to gather contemporary issues and trends. We have shared our reading list in the references section at the end of the book. We have drawn five key insights from our research. Careers are successful when people: x Stay focused – too many of us just ‘switch off’ in terms of thinking about our careers when we get to a place we are reasonably happy with. This can lead to ‘career drift’. We think most about our careers when we’re dissatisfied, just about to leave, or on a job hunt. We should be continually monitoring, reviewing and planning in order to stay career agile. x Are prepared to be flexible – don’t assume that what you do now is what you must always do. The phrase ‘think out of the box’ is becoming more and more relevant to organisational structures and job roles. Complacency is the enemy of career agility! x Are holistic when thinking about our careers. It’s not just about you! What will work best for you, your nearest and dearest and the situation in which you find yourself. This does not mean that you must always compromise. What is best for you may also be best for them, but you really need to consider the big picture, what is possible, plus what will be the probable outcomes of your decisions? x Are planful. A big generalisation here – but, people do not tend to plan enough for their careers. Opportunism is rife, and short-term options and solutions are often as far as people get. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing as it is the essence of agility, but it needs to be strategic! x Reach out for help. Successful careers are often those where the individual has sought, and received support from those around them, including their employer. Career agility embraces partnerships, with networks, families and employers to optimise opportunities, contacts

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and skills. It also requires that you be consciously aware of developments and changes in your working environment.

OUR POINT OF VIEW Most of us spend most of our lives in organisations of some sort – including families, friendship groups and communities and in particular, the workplace organisations in which we invest blood, sweat, and, on some occasions, tears. We believe that each of us has a responsibility to ensure that our working lives deliver the value that our organisations need from us. We believe as well that, in return, we should receive value that contributes to our identities, our life satisfaction, and our ability to care for and support others. Even if, in the model in figure 1, you choose to ‘go with the flow’ when it comes to career choices, this in itself is a decision that you should be comfortable with as the consequences of that option can be as far reaching as any high-powered career development plan. Therefore, we offer you this book with the key message of understanding that this is your life – the more you know what you want and plan how to achieve it, the more likely it is that you will reach the holy grail of job and life satisfaction. Wherever you are in your working life at the moment, if you find you’re at any sort of crossroads, we believe that taking time for active reflection on who you are and what you want will help you to make the right decisions. We also believe that in order to cope with the twenty first century working environment we must all be more agile and flexible in our approach to managing our careers long-term. In the past many people have selected a career path in one particular job field, profession or organisation growing and gaining experience over the years. In today’s more complex and fast changing business and working world the pace of change in organisations and indeed in many career and job areas is much faster than it used to be. Traditional career paths are constantly being eroded and challenged. For us this means that individuals must take account, in a more holistic and opportunistic way, of the career/job landscape. This means regularly taking part in career/job reviews to determine whether or not your current role and path is appropriate. Career agility means responding to change and evolving job roles. To be agile individuals must be more aware of their key skills, strengths and

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development needs so that they can adapt accordingly. No longer climbing a single solid career ladder but rather people must respond to changes, taking and making opportunities that suit their capabilities rather than sticking to a rigid career plan. So, change your mindset and think of your career as a journey through a series of individual stages or projects where you are constantly gaining new skills and learning and recognising that you might have to move or change in a significant way at any point in the process.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK Throughout this book, our aim is to present you with a practical toolkit to enable you to analyse, review and reflect about your career or job journey in order that you can make good quality decisions based on the information you have at any point in time. The exercises in the book are numbered sequentially throughout. In each case we have provided you with space to make brief notes, though you may prefer to have your own separate career workbook either online or in a notebook. This, of course, is a personal choice, but we have found when coaching others that capturing your ideas and reflections at the time is a crucial part of moving your thinking forward. It also enables you to have a clear record of your thinking and to hold yourself to account for future actions. Following this introduction, Chapter Two explores what we have called ‘career predicaments’. We think of a predicament as ‘a situation that is challenging to move on from or a confusing situation that is difficult to get out of or solve’. In career terms, this means that your job may not be meeting your needs, helping you to fulfil your ambitions or just simply not interesting you any longer. As we spend so much of our lives at work, it’s obviously important to resolve such a situation and that is what this book aims to do. In Chapter Three we consider some of the technical, social and economic changes that have transformed the working world. Whilst often out of our personal control, these changes nevertheless have a direct influence upon us. A better understanding of this background can help you

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Chapter One

to see your career options more clearly and, importantly, help you to ‘future proof’ your skill set in a world of continual and fast-moving change. Chapter Four brings this wider context back down to a more personal level. We explore here the interlinked factors that create the tapestry of our lives, against which we play out our working lives. Here we’ll be talking about things like the impact of living and working in a dual career family, experiencing redundancy and the importance of a good work life balance. These are issues that affect us all and can have significant impact on the satisfaction and fulfilment we can get from our working lives. In Chapter Five, we focus on helping you understand yourself, where you are now in your career and how you got there. In this chapter we take a close look at your strengths and your ‘areas for development’ in terms of the skills and values that you bring to your career. We know that selfawareness is often the key to success in that it helps us to articulate our principles, what we want from our work, and why this is important to us. Such reflection is not at all self-indulgent. It’s important to fully understand the value we can give to, and the value we can get from our jobs in order to make sure that we maximise both – a one-way trade is miserable! ‘Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it’ Steve Jobs This chapter is very practical and continues with the range of reflective checkpoints that have featured in the rest of the book. These are the short practical exercises to help you explore your career strategies and to develop the self-awareness to provide a foundation for great career decisions. Just a little word of warning here – we won’t be letting you confuse your dreams with reality. Throughout the book, we’ll be keeping your feet firmly on the ground – we want you to be fulfilled, not frustrated. If you really wanted to be the next Wimbledon champion, you may have needed to start some years ago!

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So, moving on. In Chapter Six we concentrate on helping you to Find the Way Forward. By this we mean we help you to bring together all your understanding and insights from the previous chapters to formulate a practical action plan to help you not only resolve your current predicaments, but to articulate your vision for a meaningful future career. In our experience, too many people are maybe not actually unhappy at work, but certainly unfulfilled and perhaps feeling like a square peg in a round hole. By the time you have worked through this chapter, you will have a blueprint for your future, whether that means wholesale change or incremental tweaks to improve things.

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Chapter One

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 1: IDENTIFYING YOUR CAREER TRIBE As a starter and before you delve into the detail you might find it interesting to consider the following questions. Let’s start with a broad-brush review of how you perceive your career to date – what is your career profile? Indicate on the scales below where you believe you are at the moment with regard to your career or job. Indicate with a cross or tick which end of the spectrum you are closest to. You can use the midpoint as well – but please be honest with yourself! Fig 1.2

Introduction

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Using this profile will help to reveal your career tribe – a high level description of your general approach to your career, as shown by the five thumbnail examples below. Use the final box in the chart below to define your career tribe and identify challenges and what you would like to change. This will provide you with a reference point for further reflections. Table 1.1 Career flourisher: This individual is in the happy position of having found something they are good at doing and being allowed to do it. They feel they are being rewarded and developed appropriately, with a career path ahead of them. They are able to deliver of their best and for now this is a great place to be. Shape and tweaker: Here we have a person who is happy with a reasonably high level of satisfaction with their job. You have ambition, influence and control. You love making things happen and are given the opportunity to do it. However, career opportunities here may be limited and may not suit you for ever. Give it a go-er: This individual has confidence, chutzpah and energy, a great profile for a budding entrepreneur. Care should be taken about realistic ambitions. Sometimes this person does not always give employers or jobs a chance, so job hopping becomes a habit. Middle of the roader: This person is fairly comfortable at work, maybe fading into complacency. Ambitions may have been compromised. Career bystander: This person is disenchanted with their career job or actually find most of their life satisfaction outside their job. In their working life they do just enough to get by. I would describe my Career Tribe as:

How does this make you feel? What insights does it give you about yourself? Do you want to keep your membership of this tribe or do you want to join another?

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Chapter One

The remainder of this book will take you on a deeper journey of reflection and understanding of your unique career needs.

CHAPTER TWO CAREER DILEMMAS AND PREDICAMENTS

“The predicament that you are in, does not define your destiny.” —Anthony Davis

INTRODUCTION During our research process many people spoke to us of the broader social, technical and economic changes that are affecting the current employment landscape. We heard that these changes sometimes provoke career predicaments. Our definition of dilemmas is a situation that requires a challenging decision and a predicament is a difficult situation that is not easy to manoeuvre. We have categorised these into two areas: x The broader context – this section covers the types of predicaments and dilemmas that are universal and environmental. x The personal context – this section covers the issues associated with an individual’s personal choices throughout the different stages of their life. The model below highlights four different categories of the various dilemmas and predicaments people told us about, with a few examples in each, you may be able to think of others. Use the chart below to highlight those that apply to you.

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Chapter Two

Fig. 2-1

Let’s examine each of the categories in a little more detail with examples of each.

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x Personal predicaments tend to be influenced by life events, personality and our personal expectations of work and working life. These are often intertwined with our life stages, our social networks, our family responsibilities and educational opportunities. It’s very easy to become ‘blinkered’ and to make assumptions about what we can and can’t do, based on the way we interpret our experiences. Often a new perspective or a ‘reframing’ of our perceptions can help us to find a way over seemingly insurmountable career hurdles. An example would be Mr. A who felt he had reached a dead end in his current career, having been passed over for promotion. He was very demotivated feeling his career was over at 53. His dilemma was whether to take the easy road and sink into complacency or to reappraise and take control. With the help of a career coach he was able to add a developmental dimension to his existing role, mentoring and training others, which revitalised him and added real value back into the organisation. Do you think of your skills as adequate compared with others at your level? If so, you are probably keen to learn from feedback about your performance, and welcome challenging new tasks, expect rewards for good performance and are generally comfortable where you are. However, people who have doubts about their skills might avoid feedback and feel undermined by critical evaluations. They may not initiate new activities, might ‘play safe’ and might be perceived as being a weak contributor to the organisation, although they may be capable of achieving a great deal. The phrase ‘imposter syndrome’ describes this well and is common in both men and women. It applies when individuals feel they are somehow undeserving of, or unqualified for the position they have achieved. Dan, an entrepreneur, took the plunge after some 20 years of corporate life. He now has a small graphic design business which has some loyal clients but was not growing as fast as his talents might suggest. The issue here is that Dan is completely self-taught and often worries that others are aware of his lack of qualifications. The consequence of this is that his competitors often win business as his pitch lacks confidence and he is not well connected due to his reluctance to engage in and network at professional gatherings. His predicament is how to overcome the imposter syndrome that he knows is holding him back. He is managing this by engaging a life coach, who is working with him on his confidence levels.

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x Job predicaments can be related to the organisation’s culture and values as well as how much control you have or have had in determining your own path. People often hesitate to speak out on such issues, as it may be career limiting to complain about and challenge the status quo. It is often helpful here to do a deep dive into your own career values, to see how aligned they are with those of the organisation. For example, Ros was a stylist at an independent hairdressing salon and whilst the job initially represented achieving a lifelong ambition, and was interesting for the first two years, it became humdrum and lacking in challenge for Ros. Her predicament was she felt she had stopped learning, which was important to her, yet this did not seem to bother her colleagues. She found she was investing less of her energy and considerable skill in serving her customers and helping to develop other staff. With her employers’ agreement, she studied for, and passed an intensive and advanced course in the latest hair colour technology. Newly qualified as an expert in her field, Ros found her job satisfaction returning and in fact, was promoted to management quite quickly after this. Another predicament in this area might be whether you are allowed to take decisions and responsibility, or whether you have to seek permission, toe the organisational line and follow predefined processes? How much the tensions between these options are in conflict with your sense of individuality and capability will determine whether this is a predicament you may find yourself in. An illustration of this comes from a data analyst whose career had been with international companies where she had managed large departments and had a big team of direct reports. Making the decision to relocate for personal reasons, she found herself reporting to a micro manager who valued her analytical skills but would not recognise her management and decision-making experience. Should she put up with this or return to a long and gruelling daily commute? She felt trapped. She managed the predicament by refusing to become stuck where she was. Over several months, she proactively approached larger companies who needed her skills and eventually was able to secure a role which allowed her to work from home two days a week.

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x As we conducted the research for this book colleague predicaments were often mentioned. These tend to be about the quality of relationships within teams, between individuals and their bosses, and with peer groups. Human beings are social animals and good working relationships make all the difference to our wellbeing and levels of engagement in our jobs. We were struck, several times by the importance attributed to mutual respect between colleagues. We heard one story of a recently qualified accountant, Mohammed, who, whilst settling well into corporate life in a prestigious partnership felt that one of his colleagues was undermining his confidence by interrupting him and contradicting him in meetings. Whilst this seemed too petty to ‘surface’ with managers, over a period of time he felt increasingly undermined and undervalued. His dilemma was that he began to doubt himself and question whether he was able to fulfil his potential. A long conversation with an old University friend helped him to recognise he could actually leave the company and seek a fresh start elsewhere. Although he was lucky enough to be able to do this, he realised that he should have tackled the problem much earlier. Predicaments in this area can also be about a particular boss or colleague who assumes that telepathy between him/herself and direct reports is effective! One senior academic we interviewed had spent almost a year designing a master’s programme for inclusion in the institution’s portfolio the following year. However, in an about turn, his Head of Department aligned herself with the marketing department, who disagreed with the programme’s potential and the programme was withdrawn. Our interviewee had invested a great deal of time in the development phase and had committed delivery time to the project as well. His predicament then how was to re-establish both a personal, and organisational, sense of value. You may recognise this example as being fairly typical in siloed organisations.

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x Organisation/Sector predicaments can broadly reflect the environment facing the organisation or be much narrower and more focused on things like the personality, values and behaviour of the CEO and his or her team. It’s easy to identify certain job roles or sectors that are under pressure. For example, The National Education Union in 2019 surveyed 8,600 teachers asking, “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” Forty per cent said that they would no longer be working in education highlighting the problems caused by excessive accountability, huge workloads and a culture of fear in some schools. Little wonder that so many people wish to leave. The same is true for many working in the health service Sarah was an experienced and well qualified doctor who had worked in general practice for over 10 years. She quite suddenly decided to resign from her partnership in the practice. Many different reasons contributed to her predicament – bureaucracy in the NHS, constantly changing and unachievable targets and above all else her inability to deliver high quality patient care. An added complexity was the impact it was increasingly having on family life. Her resolution was to restructure her medical career so that she could have more control and flexibility, be able to offer a level of care in line with her values and still do the job she loved. In essence she is moving ahead with a portfolio career in medicine. So, think about your organisation’s culture. What is valued most – collaboration or competition? If your values are mainly collaborative and you enjoy working in alliances, achieving together yet your organisation operates a competitive environment with winners and losers, this will be hard for you to reconcile. One of our interviewees told us of when she worked in the City of London for a leading financial institution. Despite the prestige associated with securing a job there, the constant pressure to achieve individual targets did not fit her preference for working collegiately. After several stressful months, she realised that she was hating her job. Her predicament was whether to sacrifice her health or her significant salary and enviable standard of living.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 2: IDENTIFYING YOUR CURRENT DILEMMAS AND PREDICAMENTS Think about the career predicaments and dilemmas that you are currently facing

Ask yourself the following questions: x How much is this predicament affecting you personally? x Is it just a temporary phase for a limited time? Do you need temporary coping strategies or a longer-term solution? x What is the impact of this predicament on your career? x How important is this? x What can you change – now, or in the future? x Who else is involved? Who could help you? x What advice would you give to a colleague faced with similar predicaments? Later in this book, we’ll be helping you to work with your answers to these questions to help you to find the best way forward.

UNDERSTANDING PREDICAMENTS Let’s take a deeper dive into predicaments. Remember that these are difficult situations that are not easy to manoeuvre. The story below from one of our interviewees illustrates how pervasive predicaments can be and that they are not problems to ‘solve’ but situations to be managed.

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Richard is a trained chef whose career began by serving an apprenticeship in the family hotel business together with gaining a certified sous chef qualification. Initially he found this very satisfying. But, soon realised he was feeling trapped. A friend of his said he was going to Greece so Richard simply said, ‘can I come?’ He arrived with £80 and has now lived and worked in Greece for almost 20 years. The country has become his home whilst he has worked as a freelance chef in various tourist resorts. He admits to never really setting any career goals except not to work in the UK. He always wanted to pick and choose his work and knew that the family business would not satisfy him, but he certainly would not describe his career as planned. So, the positives are that he’s never had any ties, no mortgage, no children, no debt. It was a delightful, enjoyable life for his younger self. He still enjoys living simply, not needing much money and avoiding jobs where he would hate going to work. However, he is beginning to reflect on his siblings’ career choices (his sister is a police officer, and his brother in banking), and sometimes envies them their security. He now hates not knowing if he will ever be able to buy a house. But although he is still aware of, and values, the lack of stress in his life he has begun to realise he might not be able to afford much in the future, and that his career choices have not brought him total fulfilment. His ambition has always been to own land in Greece and build a house, but that now seems unlikely. Richard is finding that his main income as a freelance chef is challenged as he gets older, by a younger more sophisticated generation of modern chefs. Although his years of experience are valued by clients, he is now considerably older than others doing the same job. He is trying to diversify his income and has started an artisan sausage business and moves to New York to sell Christmas trees every year. He lists his particular career predicaments as; “Money – I now really need a permanent salaried job. I’m thinking of trying to get some investment into my sausage business so that I can expand that, I could be a restaurant manager, or go and work for a hotel company again. But I don’t want to move.

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I’m not a gambler, I don’t like risk so I’m apprehensive about my next step, I need a business partner to invest £50/60k to give the sausage factory a chance, but I don’t have the skills or network to progress that. Another local enterprise has begun making sausages like mine in the village. I am worried that the competition will stall my business. There is no good small business advice available in Greece and I don’t speak Greek which makes it difficult. If I had my time again, I’d try to save money and get a pension”. So, let’s look at the positive career decisions Richard has made, he decided to: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Leave the UK – on a bit of an impulse. Study for a qualification – his sous chef certificate. Work freelance, so that he could pick and choose his work. Not to go into management in the catering industry.

What did he overlook? 1. Future financial security – he has accumulated no assets, no pension and no savings. 2. Updating his skills – these have become much more important over the years since he started his career. 3. Staying in the same job, not wanting to move either geographically or into management, has meant a fixed, limited income which cannot increase except by moonlighting with other projects. It’s helpful to bear in mind that it is OK to find a predicament uncomfortable and also to acknowledge that there may be no easy solution. You may have found, as you read through Richard’s example above, that you could offer no ‘silver bullet’ answer to his challenges. That’s because he does not have a problem to ‘solve’, but he certainly has a predicament to manage. This is both a blessing and curse – if you acknowledge that there is no simple solution to your predicament, it’s quite easy to do nothing, to say ‘it’s impossible’ and to let the situation drift. This is where career agility comes in. Managing your predicament means understanding what you can

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control and what you can’t, what you can change and what must stay the same and being honest about what you want to tackle and what you can’t face. One indication that you may be in a predicament that you need to manage is if you feel that you are experiencing one or more of the below. x x x x x x x

Anxiety or stress Difficulties with a particular part of your job Personality clashes and challenges Procrastination and motivation issues Frustration and anger Feeling trapped Feelings of powerless and lack of control.

Here are a few more examples of commonly cited predicaments. Firstly, people who had spent too long working for the same organisation. People who told us this often went on to say that this meant that it would be difficult to change now as it would affect so many elements of their life, for instance: financial security, family commitments, health and wellbeing, personal work reputation. The sort of comments we hear are: “It’s just too late now, I’m so committed to remaining in this organisation to protect my pension, to pay the mortgage and then school and university fees. In fact, to continue to support the whole family’s way of life.” “I’ve worked hard to get to this position and build my reputation and credibility and quite frankly I am scared to start again.” “It’s just too damn difficult to step off the rollercoaster at this stage. Where would I go? How would I cope financially?” But is it too late? Are there ways of adapting your position even in an organisation where you have worked for a long time? We hope that this book might help you to identify some ideas to consider.

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A common predicament mentioned, often by apparently successful people, was of a feeling of unhappiness and lack of fulfilment in their job. In this instance individuals talked about how they recognise that on the face of it they were seen as high achievers but that they had also had to compromise their values and forgo aspects of family life for their job. The sort of compromises people mentioned include: x Working excessively long hours. x Extensive business travel involving being away from home on a regular basis. x Living apart during the working week to accommodate each other's careers. x Never being able to ‘switch off’. During our research it became clear with many of the predicaments mentioned that inertia and sometimes fear of failure were the two greatest barriers to explore and bring about change. For some people, these concerns have been bubbling away in the background (or in the back of their mind) for quite some time and have gradually built up over months and years. It is only by surfacing these issues during focused career discussions, often during coaching sessions, that they begin to recognise the impact that this is having on them personally, on their family, on their work life balance and on their whole career. Once we began to explore these issues with people it became clear that it is important to acknowledge and understand those predicaments that affect you and the impact they have on your career and family life. This recognition and understanding will help you to be clear about the trade-offs you are making and can then contribute to greater clarity for career planning and decision-making. In the next two chapters we will explore more fully the broader context in which many career dilemmas and predicaments come about.

CHAPTER THREE 21ST CENTURY CAREER THEMES AND DILEMMAS – THE BROADER CONTEXT

Fig. 3.1

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INTRODUCTION Each of the areas identified in Fig 3.1 emerged during our research and are also often mentioned by participants during our development programmes and coaching sessions. We have categorised what people tell us into broad categories and themes. For each area we examine a range of elements including what each issue involves and why it is important and offer tips to help readers.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 3: CAREER THEMES AND PREDICAMENTS Before you progress to read about each of these areas you might like to indicate with a tick which of them you believe has affected or is currently impacting on your career or work life. Make some notes about how this has affected your career. CAREER THEMES AND PREDICAMENTS The Changing Nature of Work Dynamic Family Structures Working in Multigenerational Organisations Impact of Technology Influencing and Working with Organisational Politics Any other relevant predicaments or themes which have affected you?

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THE CHANGING NATURE OF WORK Why is this important and what it involves? So, what’s the world of work going to look like in the future? There are several areas which are likely to look fundamentally different from what we’re used to: 1. The jobs available 2. The skills needed 3. The working environment. Let’s look at these in turn. Firstly, the jobs available. We know that the jobs needed to service and maintain our social structures have changed significantly over time. We are familiar with the history, changes from feudal to agricultural, to industrial, through to the knowledge economies that have each produced distinctive job opportunities. And now, we are moving into the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ characterised by overlap between sectors, organisations and skills. We can see easily how some jobs have evolved. We know that printing for example, began as a job for the elite, producing documents for the few powerful individuals who could read. Mass production of printed material for all evolved during the industrial revolution and the printed media reached its heyday in the 20th century when newspapers and written journalism provided jobs for thousands of people. In today’s digital and knowledge economy, this industry is again transforming, and technical skills are as crucial as verbal communication for effectiveness. Similarly, other industries are changing. We are seeing huge growth and new directions in medicine as populations live longer and longer, and the lines between biology and technology blur in the areas of biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, prosthetics and robotic diagnosis amongst others. Obviously, the whole world of information technology has been offering new career paths for many years now and the pace and scope of developments will continue to do so exponentially. Web and app developers continue to be in demand, and these career paths are now much more

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accessible to many with basic computing skills. Social media management is an emerging career choice, not just for celebrities but for leaders and influencers in all walks of life, with associated growth in personal lifestyle ‘curators’. Social network influencing/blogging and life coaching are appearing more and more as career opportunities. Other directions for IT careers are opening up in the world of internet security and policing roles, all underpinned by engineering skills, which although more traditional as a career choice, nevertheless will be crafted through digitalisation into very different job families in the future. There are many more trends emerging, such as increasing needs for entertainment, in new and different forms, for space exploration and management, environmental management and of course, the constant need for new forms of education to ensure that these emerging occupational fields are resourced with a workforce who are appropriately skilled. Secondly, what might the new skills that will be needed look like? Headway Recruitment, in partnership with the University of Kent, in 2014, investigated the skills that employers felt were valuable at the time, and those they identified as being key for the future. The study found that the two lists were quite different. First – the key skills named by employers as currently important; x Verbal communication – the ability to express oneself clearly in speech x Commercial awareness – understanding commercial realities of an organisation x Analysing and investigating – gathering information, problem solving x Initiative/self-motivation – to be independently proactive x Drive – determination to get things done and to make things happen x Written communication – ability to express oneself clearly in writing x Planning and organising – plan and execute effectively x Flexibility – adapt successfully to change x Time management – prioritising, working to deadlines. Pause for a moment - How do you think you rate on these skills? How many of these would you count as your strengths?

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All of these skills are undoubtedly valuable in the workforce today and are sought out by employers, but in addition newer skills have evolved. These new skills reflect the changes in the workplace that we must all respond to. The study found that the skills we need for the future include; x Sense making – an ability to grasp the deeper meaning or significance of what we come across. x ‘Filter management’ – the ability to filter, prioritise and absorb vast amounts of information. x Social influence – ability to connect with others and to shape reactions and interactions x Cross cultural competency – the ability to relate across geographical and cultural boundaries x Computational thinking – the ability to translate big data into abstract concepts, data-based reasoning. x New media literacy – to be able to develop media content and use it to persuade and relate to others. This must be blended with good interpersonal skills – we need a balance x Cross boundary fluency – understand concepts across multiple disciplines x Design mindset – represent and develop tasks conceptually, through different mediums x Virtual collaboration – work productively and drive engagement as members of virtual teams. Quite a long list! Again, pause and think about how do you rate on these skills? How many of these would you count as your strengths? Do you need to begin to develop any of them? It is clear that skill sets need to change, so you will need to develop the career agility to shape your own skills profile for the future. The first task is to look forward, to see what might be required by the organisations of the future, rather than to check you can meet the requirements of the past. We will finish this section by looking at where those future skills might be deployed, what will the working environment look like going forward? There’s no doubt that things are changing, post Covid 19 the economic outlook will be vastly different. New, entrepreneurial approaches to work will be needed. The world’s most successful entrepreneurs are characterised by thinking differently and doing the seemingly impossible.

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This basically means that companies of the future will do what they want, new business models will constantly emerge – there will be no rules! The best, most exciting companies today, such as Tesla, are distinguished by a desire to re-engineer basic ideas in service of more sustainable environment. “To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles” was Tesla’s vision statement in 2019. This acknowledges that the world has come to an era where only renewable energy should be prioritised. These changes in the working environment have produced several new phenomena. One has been called the ‘side hustle’ phenomenon. This is where employees start up personal enterprises or microbusinesses in their spare time, outside their normal working hours. This is not simply to earn additional money but, may be to pursue a passion (such as selling street food) or for a hobby (such as making jewellery). This is clearly part of the move towards more flexible ways of working but is also part of a new way of thinking about careers. People who embrace this working style have been called ‘slashies’. This means that rather than identifying themselves as a ‘programmer’ or an ‘administrative assistant’, they refuse to be defined by their day jobs and describe themselves as ‘market analyst/app designer/author/yoga teacher’ showing the breadth of their interests and skill. The underlying trend is towards a changing psychological contract between employer and employee, where the needs of both are acknowledged and addressed. For your next career change, make sure you know what it is you want to get out of it before you make your decisions – many things are possible! All of this is linked to the increasing development of the gig economy and that of portfolio working where people generate income and interest from several projects or organisations. Let’s look at a couple of people who currently have gig careers. Uber driving is a great job for one young woman living in London. She does not have a lot of free time and also, needs to fit in around caring for her young child. But whenever it suits her, she is able to go off and drive for Uber. “It’s ideal for me... I never know when I will be free and sometimes I have only a short amount of time.”

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The owner of a barber shop in Durham drives for Uber ‘when business is slow, and the shop is quiet’. He can choose to take jobs within 15-minute radius of his shop to be sure he is close to his primary business. The gig economy gets its name from each piece of paid work being akin to an individual ‘gig’ or engagement, although, such work can fall under multiple names. It is often been called the “sharing economy” — mostly in reference to platforms such as Airbnb — and the “collaborative economy.” Technology is usually at its core. App-based platforms that dole out work in bits and pieces — making deliveries, driving passengers or cleaning homes — leading some to prefer the term “platform economy”. However, not all gig economy roles are based around a technology platform. Gig economy workers can also work for more traditional companies, which have changed how their staffing system operates. For example, delivery drivers for Hermes also work on a piece-by-piece delivery basis, though their employer was not a ‘tech start up’ as these businesses often are. Gig economy work and the much criticised zero - hour contracts have similarities. Both treat workers as contractors and offer no guarantee of pay, but gig economy roles are normally paid per piece — such as a set rate to deliver a package or drive a fare to a location — while zero-hours contracts are paid hourly, but with no set minimum. Both are the result of companies using lean operational processes by trying to cut or limit staffing costs and can leave workers unsure how much they’ll earn. The companies dominating the gig economy space argue that they bring the flexibility to work whenever you like. Critics — which include many of those working for these companies — argue that not only do workers lack protection and fair pay, but the roles aren’t as flexible as they seem, as workers are incentivised or pressured to work when the companies need them. On top of that, workers aren’t paid benefits such as holiday or sick pay, and reports suggest some aren’t making minimum wage. That’s legally possible because gig workers aren’t seen by the companies they work for as employees but contractors — though a UK court ruling against Uber disagreed with that claim in 2018. Despite the criticisms, it’s an age-old concept that’s here to stay. As well as many new business models incorporating flexible employment practices

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many traditional professions operate on similar principles, such as barristers in chambers. It’s possible that up to 15 per cent of UK workers are selfemployed, some five million people. Although some of those are not necessarily in what we consider to be the gig economy, as this also covers conventional freelance roles and contractors. You might not find yourself immediately identifying with the wellknown gig businesses like taxi driving and pizza delivery but a recent report by McKinsey found that knowledge-intensive industries and creative occupations are the largest and fastest-growing segments of the freelance economy. And this may well be the future for your career change. When we talked to gig workers, we found remarkably similar sentiments across generations and occupations. All those we studied acknowledged that they experienced a raft of personal, social, and economic anxieties because of the lack of cover and support from a traditional employer. They also told us, however, that their independence was a choice and that they would not give up the benefits that came with it. Although they worried about unpredictable schedules and finances, they also felt they had mustered more courage and were leading richer lives than their corporate counterparts. The most effective independent workers seem to navigate this tension with common strategies. One model suggests that they cultivate four types of connections — to place, routines, purpose, and people — that help them endure the emotional ups and downs of their work and gain energy and inspiration from their freedom. As the gig economy grows worldwide, these strategies are increasingly relevant. Indeed, we believe they may also be helpful to any corporate employees who are working more autonomously, from home or a remote office, or who feel they might one day want — or need — to jump into a freelance career. The first thing we realised when we began looking at how independent consultants and other freelance workers was that the stakes are enormously high — not just financially but also existentially. Freed from managers and corporate rules, people can choose assignments that make the most of their talents and reflect their true interests. They feel ownership over what they produce and over their entire professional lives. However, the price of such freedom is an uncertainty that doesn’t seem to subside over time. Even the most successful, well-established people we interviewed still worry about money and reputation and sometimes feel that

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their identity is at stake. You can’t keep calling yourself a consultant, for example, if clients stop asking for your services. For this reason, productivity is an intense preoccupation for everyone working in a way where each piece of output is paid separately. It provides self-expression and reduces uncertainty. Interestingly, however, the people who work in this way aren’t just focusing on getting things done and sold. They care about both being at work — having the discipline to regularly generate products or services that find a market — and being into their work: having the courage to stay fully invested in the process and output of that labour. Maintaining productivity is a constant struggle. Distractions wear away at it and they are extremely common in everyday life! When we looked at the secret to getting through days filled with ‘white noise’ and to sustaining productivity, we discovered a paradox. People who work like this all want to be a little different, independent and to “keep my edge”. At the same time, they invest in developing a particular stability for their work environment — a physical, social, and psychological space – which is almost traditional. What they are doing is creating an environment that both liberates them to be individually creative and them and roots them in their work so that their output doesn’t drop off. The phrase ‘liberating connections’ has been coined to describe how people anchor themselves to places, routines, people and their sense of purpose. These connections help gig economy workers to ‘mirror’ more traditional working environments but without the controls those people experience. For many of us working from home during the coronavirus pandemic has given us a taste of the freelancer style of working. It is worth reflecting on how you have found it. Did you relish the experience? Or did you miss the office routines? Reflecting on this might help you to determine how you want your working life to be structured in the future.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS The model suggesting the types of connections mentioned above were described by Gianpiero Petriglieri in an article in Harvard Business Review 2018. They provide people who work in the gig economy with a focus and

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environment where they can connect in a similar way to those who work in more traditional environments. The diagram highlights the 4 areas and they are described in a little more detail below. Fig. 3-2

Place-without the traditions of a corporate office people have found lots of different answers to a productive working environment. For some this could be a busy coffee shop for others a private and personally designed garden office. Routines-independent workers create their own working structures, routines and processes that suit and work for themselves. For instance, such practises as building in fresh-air breaks to the day, setting goals of writing 500 words before taking a break or accomplishing 6 client calls per day. Purpose- “Purpose creates a bridge between personal interests and motivations and a need in the world” says Petriglieri. This is a vital part of independent working and provides an anchor for everything you do.

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People-independent workers are rarely completely independent beings. We all need connections and social interaction with others to support, energise and give us alternative perspectives. Otherwise we risk social isolation which is detrimental to our well-being. As Petriglieri says “Success in the gig economy comes from a balance between viability and vitality.” Lotta is a typical gig economy worker or slashie who over the past 6 to 7 years has developed as a team trainer/consultant/coach/singer and musician/allotment holder. Each of these different work strands gives her rewards – financial, developmental, creative and connections with nature. These satisfy the 4 liberating connections as described above.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 4: THE CHANGING NATURE OF WORK REVIEW Thinking about the changing nature of work, make notes about how this has affected your career journey so far. What new skills have you developed? What have been your coping strategies? Looking forward can you anticipate any further changes that will affect you?

DYNAMIC FAMILY STRUCTURES

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Family structures have changed significantly over the last hundred years. In the UK more relaxed social norms mean that couples, whether heterosexual or same sex, no longer necessarily rely on a marriage ceremony to kick start a family. Newer, different and sometimes more complicated structures, such as step - families, blended and reconstructed families are familiar and accepted. What this means is that what was called the ‘nuclear’ family, consisting of married heterosexual parents and their children is no longer the norm. Many factors have contributed to this relatively rapid change in social structures. Changes in legislation, technology, attitudes and expectations have all played their part. Feminists would argue that a key tipping point was the easy availability of the contraceptive pill from the 1970s onwards, allowing women to choose when to start a family, and therefore also allowing them to choose when not to have children, but to make career choices their priority. The financial model of the ‘stay at home’ housewife and the breadwinning husband is now a relative rarity in first world economies. Gender equality legislation continues to evolve to ensure that career opportunities and rewards are evenly applied and distributed. For the world of work, this means that roles are rarely considered to be gender specific in the 21st century, opening up new worlds of opportunity for all sexes. Female fighting soldiers and male nail technicians would have been impossible career choices 50 years ago! Two examples of new ways of working that we have come across are: x One professional couple – a GP and a Dental Surgeon – have chosen to share childcare with each working part time and having their own days for parental duties. x A second couple who have a highly unusual situation in that they are both engineers and since having a family they have chosen to work together in a job share each doing one month on and one month off. Both these examples illustrate the changing nature of family life and the willingness, of some, for both parents to be flexible and challenge traditional ways of working. Of course, it also means that the organisations employing these individuals have been willing to adapt and try out new approaches to work as well.

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Dramatic social change over the last few decades, has had enormous implications for career choices and opportunities. Organised religion plays a less prominent role, and appreciation of diversity and all its ramifications has been accompanied by increased fluidity and flexibility in both family structures and career progression. We now have a looser, non-judgmental approach to personal lives which is being accompanied by an acknowledgement of each and every individual as being worthy of respect regardless of race, gender, religion or intellect. In the workplace this means clear parameters being set around equal opportunity legislation, gender pay gaps, abuse of power and diversity policies. The net effect is to open up jobs that were once elitist, and to insist on increasing transparency to working practices, safeguarding as far as possible the employed workforce. However, we know that this work is not yet complete, and we need to continue to encourage and increase transparency. Despite the political will to enshrine respect and equal opportunity for all in legislation, prejudice and bias have not yet been obliterated. Multicultural societies often show sharp differences in the family structures of different groups and high immigration brings with it the influence of other family traditions. Whilst some cultures live as multigenerational extended families, others are more likely to have a high proportion of single parent families and both such factors impact on what people can do in the workforce. In the UK, there has traditionally been a divide between our personal life in the family, and our working life in organisations, but this line has now begun to blur with important implications for the way we work. In the UK, the welfare state, child protection legislation, tax, education and employment regulations all mean that the state has an increasing role within the family, often through the workplace. The preferences of ruling political powers have an influence too. For example; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher believed that working mothers would create 'latch key' children, so her tax regulations favoured particular family structures. Finally, in terms of family configurations that are relevant to the world of work, there is another very interesting development – the growth of the “self-partnered” or singleton population. More and more individuals live and work alone, often choosing this lifestyle over the more traditional marriage and children option. Many women now have opportunities to have highly respected and well-paid careers. They therefore choose to focus on their jobs and perhaps have a baby later, on their own. For these individuals, work is a key feature of their lives, being financially independent allows a

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freedom to live and work that dependents might preclude and offers employers an ambitious and potentially mobile workforce with which to develop and grow. At the same time, society is witnessing the rise of unintentional single parent families, often experiencing potential financial uncertainty and instability. Such dualities are not uncommon, yet cause social tensions and inequalities. During our research we heard lots of examples of dynamic family structures which had an impact on many individual careers. These include: x Several dual career families who experienced one or other partner moving to work abroad for progression leaving the other partner at home base to continue to work and raise the family with occasional visits home. Initially this seemed like a manageable change but increasingly it can put pressure on relationships and future career choices. x A blended family where one partner had older children at university and the other partner had three significantly younger children making the adjustments difficult for both. x Increasingly we heard demands of the sandwich generation who have responsibilities for both dependent children and increasingly aging parents. This is often compounded by geographical distance. x Geographic mobility, where the younger generation moves away from other family members and networks also has an impact on the support networks available for young family life. The impact on careers can be either positive or negative, the point is to recognise the importance of factoring in your family structure and dynamic when considering your working life.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Most people spend their whole lives as part of different social groups of which the two most important are their family and their work. Whilst some want, and are able to, keep the two distinct, for the majority of us they ‘leak’ into each other and are linked inextricably. A key decision made in one of the two areas will often have an impact on the other, sometimes with predictable results such as the financial consequences of job loss or redundancy, but at other times, unexpected or less tangible results can follow. Lack of self-esteem following a job loss for example, or more

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positively, freedom to pursue a cherished dream. When making any career choice the impact on the family must not be ignored. We heard of one half of a highly paid couple, who chose to quit an extremely well-paid director level role but felt unable to tell their partner – who only discovered this had happened a few weeks later and felt angry, upset and not valued as a life ‘partner.’ This lack of communication had long term implications for their relationship which affected both their careers.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS So, when you are faced with making decisions if and when your family structure changes there are a few tips we have gleaned over the years. x Don’t just accept the norm. Spend time as a family working out what would work best you. x Be bold, ask your employer for what you want. Too many people give up at the first hurdle. Just because it hasn’t been done before or isn’t the norm doesn’t mean they won’t consider it. So much has changed in the last few decades – part time work (for all genders), flexi-working, job shares, working from home, etc... x Always think about career or work changes in a holistic way and include your family and/or your wider social support group in the discussion and decision-making x If something changes in your family circumstances, don’t struggle on. Acknowledge the impact on your working life, seek support where necessary and be prepared to display agility in responding to your new circumstances. x Our major learning from many of our interviewees are that instigating open discussion early on, where you acknowledge potential change and review together how this will impact the whole family, is necessary for success. The story below is from our research and illustrates how many twists and turns there can be in one person’s career journey all caused by various aspects of family life.

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Jane, currently in her 60s talks about having had two or even three careers. She was enjoying a successful career as a retail buyer, then she fell in love with, and married her boss. Their employing organisation did not find this acceptable, so Jane was the one who had to change direction. She felt she ‘trod water’ for a bit, with a succession of less satisfying jobs, and then her husband’s job moved them back to London. Location was a big part of when and why she took jobs. Babies were another milestone, as she didn’t want to do much travelling. After a short while, she opened her own high street fashion shop. This was surprisingly successful, encouraging Jane to expand with another two branches. Sadly, this proved over stretching in a difficult retail environment and the business was closed. Jane’s husband took early retirement and they had a need of a reliable salary, so she moved into her third career – and retrained as a teacher. What Helped – getting additional qualifications, financial support to train was available. The fact that she had a previous career was a big help as it brought broader experience. What Hindered – she put limitations on herself as a working mother and wife. ‘Staying put in Kent rather than moving to London’ where there were more opportunities. Jane went on to explain, “I have always looked out of the box to see how I can use my skills and knowledge. When I had just qualified, I realised I didn’t know how to teach children to read. I was always in search of new knowledge so I could do things better. Always adding to stuff, always learning, still doing CPD (continuous professional development) – gives me confidence to stay on top of things”.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 5: DYNAMIC FAMILY STRUCTURES Thinking about your family situation make notes about how this area has affected your career journey so far and what have your coping strategies been?

Looking forward can you anticipate any further changes that will affect you?

WORKING IN MULTI-GENERATIONAL ORGANISATIONS In 2015, Brigette McInnis-Day, EVP of Human Resources at SAP published an article in Forbes magazine claiming that ‘for the first time in history, the global workplace will include five generations working sideby-side: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z’. We face a workplace where employers could have employees ranging from 18 to 80 in the workplace, where an 18-year-old intern could be working alongside a 65-year-old colleague on the same project. Both work for the same organisation, with the same purpose and vision, but both will bring very different expectations and experiences to their roles.

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The facts are that many workplaces are facing the challenge of employing a range of generations that encompass Veterans (born in 19391945), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1976) and Millennials (1977-1995). There is also a new generation, born in 1996, who are now in the workforce, labelled as Generation Z, in their early twenties. The implications of this for organisations are huge, as they face the challenges of engaging with and managing such a generationally diverse workforce and there is currently much research underway to help employers to do just that. However, there are also implications for individuals working in such environments concerning the choices and decisions they must make as they adapt to working with multigenerational colleagues. Whilst some research seems to indicate that intergenerational differences concerning job stability, income goals and work life balance (WLB) are less pronounced than we might imagine, there are still some distinct differences between generations. For example, in this ever more self-aware age, we are all more willing and ready to accept feedback, and to actively seek it out. Millennials seem to want it more frequently, at least monthly if not weekly, whereas non-millennials are happy to receive it more traditionally on a quarterly or even annual basis. This has a lot to do with the increasing use of social media to provide instant and comprehensive feedback on all aspects of life. The ‘Like’ facility on Tweet and Facebook mean that younger digital natives are used to immediate returns on their communicative investments and require it in the workplace as well. This will clearly affect manager/direct report relationships wherever there is a generational gap, particularly if the manager is the younger individual in the association. A key difference often cited between millennials and other generations seems to be not only that millennials search for more fun and engagement at work than previous generations have required, but that they also search for ‘meaningful’ work. Again, this seems to go hand in hand with a more self-aware and confident generation, keen on acknowledging their worth and requiring their work to provide personal meaning, reflecting individual interests and values, at the same time as supporting a financially viable lifestyle. We have long known how important it is to understand individual motivations at work in order to create the engagement and commitment needed to deliver high performance. People of different generations need to partner together to try to understand what motivates others. For employees

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to feel their work is meaningful, they need to see that they are contributing to the purpose of the organisation in a significant way. If more senior leaders are not particularly skilled at communicating the vision or purpose of the organisation, this results in a lack of understanding as to why particular roles add value and have meaning within the bigger picture. Tied into this need to understand personal impact, and to be appreciated through feedback, is another distinctive millennial trait – they want to be recognised and rewarded as soon as possible. ‘Dead men’s shoes’ is not a concept that is acceptable to them, and this may be uneasy for those more used to traditional and slower routes to promotion, who might perceive an arrogance, or a sense of entitlement in the younger generation. Such negative stereotyping also works both ways – a younger colleague may assume an old fashioned, inflexible approach on the part of an older colleague. We heard lots of examples of ingrained and negative generational stereotypes that are detrimental to good working relationships: ‘ x All millennials lack staying power – the so-called ‘snowflakes’ x All older workers are averse to change and complacent – so-called ‘boomers’. x Older people do not accept being managed by younger people. x Baby boomers and veterans are technologically naïve. These stereotypes are often myths!

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? This matters now more than ever, because so many generations are beginning to work together at the same time. For instance, older generations do not want to be put out to pasture simply because they have reached a certain number of candles on their birthday cake. They want to be able to continue to contribute and to bring their valuable experience to bear on organisational results. They want to continue to enjoy the interest and meaningfulness of work until they choose not to. Set against these wants and needs is a changing world where old skills are constantly challenged and tested and the world belongs to the fast moving and agile knowledge workers of tomorrow. Young entrepreneurs create today’s wealth and have no time to look back and treasure tradition. The answer must be in bridging

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the intergenerational gaps, in valuing the knowledge that comes with age, but in changing it to suit today’s purpose. Intergenerational partnerships are one way to bridge these gaps. Partnering a young talent with a more experienced employee is one way to develop skills in both generations, but this is rarely part of a formal developmental programme or indeed a usual form of PDPs (personal development plans) or CDPs (continued development plans). Individuals must forge their own relationships and pursue their own initiatives to ensure that such partnerships thrive and add value for all concerned. Relinquishing some of the traditional role authority held by older workers to give millennials their voice in a business will not only increase their engagement but will encourage depth and innovation. Taking a leaf out of millennials’ career books and using new projects and job moves as ‘lily pads’ rather than ladders will help everybody in the workforce to stay fresh, develop agility and learn and develop as individuals, not just as workers. We didn’t hear much evidence to suggest that these issues are being widely discussed in organisations. Bringing these generational issues to the fore and opening discussion and debate to work through how best to accommodate all age groups and their career needs will pay dividends in the long run. One current thought in terms of new organisational structures is the idea of the ‘holacracy’ which has been coined by Adam Poswolsky and others to describe a way of removing power from a management hierarchy and distributing it across clear roles. It suggests a flatter structure which will appeal to all generations. Baby boomers who embrace it may find their careers enhanced rather than threatened by their newest colleagues The work is even more structured than in a conventional hierarchy, but it does not require micromanaging as each team has clear rules and processes along with defined roles, responsibilities and expectations..

TIPS FOR SUCCESS If you find yourself in a multi-generational work group then you should consider some of the following: x Buddy up with someone from a different generation to help you understand each other’s needs and wants.

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x Consider reverse coaching – this is a system we first came across when we interviewed an HR Director at Cisco who told us about their approach. This involved a younger manager acting as coach to an older manager. He also told us that it was a challenging process where people found some of their views and opinions called into question but given time, he believed it was wholeheartedly worth it to help in work processes and productivity. x Set up multi-generational self-help groups or action learning sets. x Make use of technology like WhatsApp and Facebook to create online virtual multi-generational networks. x If you are creating a new work team try to ensure it is multigenerational to ensure the best possible diversity.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 6: MULTIGENERATIONAL ORGANISATIONS Thinking about your organisational life so far, make notes about how this area has affected your career journey and what your coping strategies have been?

Looking forward can you anticipate any further changes that will affect you?

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THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY We discussed earlier how, as society and its technological needs develop and evolve, so do the jobs that need doing. We can all name ‘old’ jobs that have disappeared, as new technology has emerged to replace the labour required. For example, local telephone switchboard operators were replaced by call centres which are often now replaced by home workers. Coal mining is to a large extent being replaced by nuclear and alternative energy. A postman, in 2019, recalled that he started working for the Post Office 40 years earlier as a telegram boy and now only delivers parcels. This evolution has often concerned jobs requiring manual labour which have been replaced by automation, but it seems very probable that automation could feasibly pose a threat to almost any job. Whilst this is not necessarily all bad news, as it can be argued that over time, technological change has created more jobs than it has destroyed. It now seems that the new wave of technology, including robots and AI (artificial intelligence), will be able to do service tasks involving ‘intelligence’ as well as routine physical or manual tasks. Already in medicine we are seeing innovative and exciting changes such as keyhole cancer surgery with the da Vinci robot that is being used at the Royal Marsden and at Poole Hospital. You might like to think about other jobs that have been replaced in recent years and also any new jobs that are emerging.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Without exception, those studying the impact of automation on the workplace agree that the change and scope of future change will be unprecedented and will affect almost all employment that we currently know about, much of which we are as yet unaware. An interesting example recently is the decision by Google to hire a team of 250 in Munich (including 100 engineers) to tackle privacy and safety issues on its platforms. It is unlikely that even a year ago that many people in Germany would have predicted the creation of such a team; of course, we also might observe that few people in Google were aware of such a major investment in these specific skill areas. Another example is the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei who, at one point, had more software engineers than the UK has soldiers. The speed of such change can be a challenge for employers as well as for individuals.

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It strikes us that it is interesting and sometimes unsettling to see how many public figures use technology like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social networking media to influence their audiences. Who would have thought 5 years ago that this could have such a major effect upon the political environments such as US presidential elections or UK general and local elections? As you make career choices it is worth thinking about which jobs or at least which job families may be most affected by technology. What skills might you have to develop to succeed in this new world order? Which might develop and offer greater job security? Or which might become obsolete and require you to make further significant changes in a few more years.? In the study we referred to earlier, the University of Kent together with Headway (2014) analysed the job market and identified some key areas that they believe will continue to offer great and evolving employment opportunities; medicine, space, social networking, computing, robotics, entertainment and energy production. Medicine, and health related industries continue to provide many employment opportunities as the worldwide population continues to grow, and to live much longer. The caring professions will continue to expand their service range, in particular in the areas of geriatric, occupational and mental health care. Alternative therapies continue to grow in perceived efficacy and appeal to many more people. These trends, with many more people needing to be cared for, will be accompanied by increased availability of more and more sophisticated robotic domestic help in the shape of ‘pets’ to provide company, autonomous hoovers and lawnmowers and the internet of things taking care of cooking, washing and communication. Research advances in areas such as biomedics and genetics also mean that fields such as genetic counselling and nanotechnology will continue to grow requiring more and different types of biomedical engineers. Medical issues are often closely related to education; an ageing population will need to be trained in new skills; an increased population will need to be educated in places other than a classroom. Virtual educators and course developers are already needed in ever increasing numbers to support this trend which is well recognised from primary schools to university level education.

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Advances in many areas of engineering are key to the evolution of available jobs. Space exploration (and perhaps exploitation) is an important area of job growth, with space tourism, space recycling and space mining filling the gaps created by over exploitation of our own planet. Space biologists and clinicians may be required should colonisation of other planets ever become possible. In fact, the many areas that constitute the world of ‘science’ will continue to develop rapidly and offer many fascinating job opportunities. There seems to be no limit to the expansion of the world of computing and the web creating constant demand for web engineers, designers, app developers, digital imagers and game creators. Cloud computing professions, IT security consultants will be in increasing demand and would seem to offer a safe bet when it comes to job security. Recent issues around privacy protection and inappropriate platform content have highlighted the need for much more cyber policing and other internet security roles in worldwide public and private sectors. Network engineers, fibre optic technicians are all needed to create ‘ubiquitous’ computing involving human/computer interaction in all areas on the ‘internet of things’ and of course the development of robotics requires skilled engineers, controllers and operators. The challenge of global warning and the need for renewable and alternative sources of energy is creating jobs in wind, wave, solar and tidal energy industries with nuclear energy provision and decommissioning, and recycling and waste management continuing to be important. Whilst many of these sound extremely specific and requiring high levels of qualifications the industries that are developing around such specialties will be rich areas for future employment. It is not only the ‘hard edged’ world of engineering and science which highlights the changes in the working world brought about by technology. As well as the critical importance of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects. There is a growing need for the sophisticated use of ‘softer’, interpersonal skills to keep us connected and human. Technology is changing not just jobs, but also the way in which we connect and communicate at work. The world of social networking is creating opportunities around personal organising and social media management. There are many and expanding opportunities as personal branding consultants, indeed digital marketing overall is a relatively new professional area. The flourishing wellness movement needs personal fitness trainers,

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dieticians, nutritionists and image consultants who are all helping to keep people heathy and looking good while life coaches, counsellors and leisure consultants will help people to deal with other life problems. There are developments in the world of the written word that are almost as revolutionary as the introduction of the printing press. For example, online publishing, multi-format journalism and Wikis are all powerful tools for sharing knowledge, and the potential of its links to social media has yet to be fully explored. Wiki writers will find more opportunities in response to their clients’ and users’ needs. There are always new developments and the information needs to be up to date, hence people will be employed to write it. Bloggers and video bloggers (Vloggers) used to be unpaid, but to be ‘an influencer’ is now a profitable and growing lifestyle. Few of us could have predicted the impact of Instagram of creating celebrity careers say after an appearance on the TV programme Love Island – for example, more people applied to the 2018 programme than the total number applying for Oxbridge (Oxford and Cambridge Universities). Another ‘new’ job in France is an illegal one, as it is estimated that some 200,000 people now make a living from selling cannabis. Jérôme Fourquet, the demographer who makes this claim, also highlights the fact that this is more than those employed at either Uber or the national EDF electricity company. A related world to Vlogging is that of entertainment; the way we watch television, read books, play games or learn has fundamentally changed with the internet revolution. Completely new professions are emerging around the management of data. Analysts and financial technologists have obviously always been necessary, but these roles are changing with the emergence of ‘big data’.

KEY ISSUES When faced with career change, with big decisions to be made, it is critical to consider how the skills you have will be impacted by technology in the workplace of the future. Automation does not necessarily mean that you will be out of a job, but it might mean working alongside a machine that automates some aspects of your job. You might need simply to learn new skills to manage those automated processes. However, it is wise to be aware that your job might actually disappear, even if it is in the service sector, considered safe from automation in the past. Jobs such as librarian,

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receptionist, and even medical practitioner have been seen to be efficiently carried out through automation. You may need to reconsider your options. So, to embrace these changes, think broadly and ahead about what might happen to your job, and where you will find exciting new challenges, in a thriving and expanding job area. Our ways of working are changing alongside these new technological developments. We can work from home, collaborating with colleagues around the globe using virtual meeting technology. We can use online profiles via sites like LinkedIn to offer our skills to others. We can have portfolio careers enjoying different challenges as we move through our careers. These are all great opportunities but to make the most of them we must be more mobile, more connected and importantly, more agile.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS x Make sure you have an up to date and comprehensive presence on LinkedIn and become familiar with how to get the best from the site. x Be open minded to how you can make best use of technology in your work life. For instance, can you use virtual meeting technology more creatively than you have in the past? x Constantly be on the lookout for new technology that can make your work life easier. x Be clear about why you are using technology and how it is likely to be perceived by others and how it will affect your work performance. x Remember this is not just understanding about how the tech actually works but also how to use it to interact and relate with other people to greatest effect. These are important skills that can be learnt by us all, and without them, we may be left behind in the new world of work. One of our interviewees, Mario, who had recently trained and become an executive coach, told us how his life had been revolutionised by the use of video conferencing to interact with his coaching clients. Saving much travel time, expense and cutting down his carbon footprint. He told us that he wished he’d opened his mind to using such technology earlier on when he was running a large global sales team in a multi-national. With hindsight he realised it would have made him and his team far more efficient and effective

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 7: IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY Thinking about your career journey so far make notes about how this area has affected you and what your coping strategies have been?

Looking forward can you anticipate any further changes that will affect you and how you can better use technology?

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INFLUENCING AND WORKING WITH ORGANISATIONAL POLITICS Anyone working in any organisation will spend much of their day relating to other people. In addition to this, the working environment is becoming increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous – we are living in a so-called VUCA world. In this world we will work in incredibly diverse environments, in multiple teams that are frequently made up of people from different nationalities, generations and professional backgrounds. When people work together in any organisational context interpersonal skill, influencing, persuading and politics play a role.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT In addition, the structure of organisational life is changing – traditional hierarchical models are giving way to project work and matrix environments where people work in multiple teams reporting to several different people for different aspects of their job. For many of us our role and responsibilities require us to take on wide and varied duties that are frequently different from day to day. This in itself demands us to have the ability to work faster, adapt our approach to suit different people and situations and to constantly learn new approaches and processes. Another aspect of this is that many people are also dealing with issues on a day-today basis where there are no clear rules and process. Not only is this an example of working in a VUCA world but many of the issues can be referred to as “wicked problems”. These problems are complex often difficult to describe and with little or no previous experience which can inform how you can process and deal with the issue. Examples of such problems are – BREXIT, climate change, cybercrime and dealing with terrorism, and, of course, the global pandemic of Coronavirus and issues of biosecurity. In this VUCA world our day to day working life more than ever means that we have to communicate with others to create and build effective working relationships as well as undertaking the technical or functional aspects of your role. In such a world, two of the key capabilities that people at all levels must be familiar with are those of influencing without formal authority and being politically aware.

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So, what do we mean by influencing and working with organisational politics? Influencing is largely an interpersonal and relationship skill where you have to work together with others to get commitment and buy in from them about the things we need to get done. In today’s working environment we are often influencing without any authority over the others and this is where the challenge begins. No longer can you rely on your authority over others to get things done you must now develop a range of interpersonal, relational and emotional skills to achieve and work effectively with others. In addition to influencing, awareness and acceptance of the political landscape within your organisation, is also a new and necessary skill. By this we mean that you must be politically astute not overtly political in your operations. The key issue is to recognise that organisational politics are a fact of life. The astute will accept this and work with it. This means that you must be observant of others. There also needs to be effort in working to build respect and trust within your organisation and network both inside and outside your immediate sphere of influence. This will enable you to get to know a wide range of people who you can connect with to test and develop ideas when necessary. Influencing and being politically astute contribute to emotional awareness and in certain roles can be vital abilities to progress. Skill in both areas requires significant practice and development and is always situational. By this we mean what works with one group or individual or in one organisation will not necessarily work elsewhere. Increasingly important is the need to be able to work across boundaries both internally and externally to your own organisation. Recent research from Patricia Hind and Viki Holton in 2020, showed that to be an effective manager today you need to be able to communicate with and influence many more stakeholders than before. To do this you must be able to leverage virtual technology as well as honing interpersonal skills. Multi sector and multi organisational collaboration is becoming the norm.

CURRENT REALITIES Capability as an influencer who is also able to navigate and work within the organisation’s political context is a necessity for effectiveness and

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success. Both these skills are very likely to be competences identified in any organisation’s performance criteria. These skills will also contribute to your impact on others and your own reputation. Reputational management has become a key ability not only for success in your role and organisational life but also for managing and developing your career over the long-term. So, what does it actually mean to influence and work effectively with organisational politics? There are three aspects of influencing that are interrelated and will help you to skilfully deploy your capabilities. These are recognising that contextualisation is important. By this we mean that each and every situation is different meaning that you must adapt your approach and style to suit the situation and people involved. It is also vital that you understand that influencing and working with organisational politics is an ongoing process and rarely a one-off event. Recognising this will contribute to your ability to build and develop your credibility and reputation throughout your organisation. The third key area to be aware of is that it is all about relationships. Working with others to reach effective outcomes in today’s VUCA world means that you must have a good understanding of the people in your network as well as actively networking and developing strategic relationships. Being aware of the needs and wants of others will help you to flex and adapt your approach. Fig. 3-3

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Remember, success in influencing others is about understanding what’s in it for all concerned and working together to reach acceptable outcomes for those involved.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS If you want to be effective in this area here are a few tips for success: Involve others at all stages in the process Show passion and energy Be confident and positive in the issue and how you present yourself Show appreciation for others Spend time preparing and planning so that you are able to present your ideas in a clear and concise manner x Offer evidence and show your reasoning for any ideas you are advocating x Remember many careers and personal reputations have been destroyed by ill-advised use of political games rather than deploying your influence and political astuteness x Think more broadly about your network and how you can use it to create value for yourself and your organisation.

x x x x x

The explanation and descriptions we have used in this section are based on the content of “Influencing: How to Use Soft Skills to Get Hard Results” (2010) by Mike Brent and Fiona Elsa Dent Chuck had worked in his organisation for 6 years much of this time had been with his small business development team where his role was to respond to clients and pitch for new business. He and the team had been pretty successful at this so far. Based on this success Chuck was promoted to a senior level management role where he was responsible for a range of sales, management and business development functions. When we met him, he was in the early months of this role and had already realised that he had entered a completely different working context. The network of senior managers he had to influence and build relationships with was much more complex than in his previous roles with people often working from their own agenda. It was now a far more complex, ambiguous and competitive environment. His political and influencing skills were being

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severely challenged on a regular basis and he recognised that he had to tread carefully to win people’s trust, respect and goodwill. He came to realise that his reputation and future career were at stake and if he were to succeed, he had to take account of the various stakeholders and to adapt and develop his skills accordingly. He later told us that it wasn’t all plain sailing but the recognition that political astuteness and influencing skill were vital and above all realising that building alliances and good quality relationships made a significant difference to his performance. He said, learning to read the political landscape and knowing when to fight and when to retreat and give in gracefully had paid dividends for his reputation and credibility.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 8: INFLUENCING AND WORKING WITH ORGANISATIONAL POLITICS Thinking about your career journey so far make notes about how this area has affected you and what your coping strategies have been?

Looking forward can you anticipate how you might have to further develop?

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Don’t forget that your career is embedded in a much wider world, some of which you can control and some of which you can’t. You are never planning your career in isolation as it is intertwined with the complexity of the world we live in. For example, what was clear with Covid 19 was the speed with which it struck our everyday lives. Our capacity to move and to meet each other meant significant changes to the way we worked, which may have enduring effects. We hope that by helping you to raise your awareness of these broad issues, you will have more confidence to take charge of what you can change and understand the impact of what you can’t.

CHAPTER FOUR 21ST CENTURY CAREER THEMES AND DILEMMAS – THE PERSONAL CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION In our discussions with many people during our research and planning for this book, we heard of a whole range of personal job-related themes or dilemmas that we believe impact on both employees and employers. These were less to do with the broader context issues that we discussed in chapter three, and more to do with personal circumstances. The ones that came up again and again are shown below on the diagram. For each one we will describe the issues involved, why it is important and tips for success. Not all of these will be relevant to everyone; so, in this chapter we suggest you use the ‘dip in – dip out’ approach of reading and reflecting on the issue/s that speak most to your current situation. Of course, as you progress your career journey you may find that other themes become relevant.

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Fig. 4-1

Before we move on to examine these areas you might like to indicate with a tick, on table 4.1 which of them you believe has affected or is currently impacting on your career or work life. Make some notes about how you think these have affected your career.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 9: CAREER THEMES AND PREDICAMENTS Table 4-1 CAREER THEMES AND PREDICAMENTS THE PERSONAL CONTEXT Dual Career Families Career Job Transitions and Choices Dealing with Redundancy Career Stage and Choices Work Life Balance

Any others which have affected you particularly?

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DUAL CAREER/WORKING FAMILIES & RELATIONSHIPS Daniel and Helen worked for the same organisation, a large multinational electronics company. The company policy was that managers who were selected to join the hi-potential development programme had to move location at least twice in 6 years. Helen was asked to join the programme shortly after they were married. Initially the couple enjoyed the expat life in Singapore. Daniel had an interesting job in the organisation though he was not on the hi-potential programme. After 18 months Helen became pregnant and their daughter was born in second year of the high potential programme. After a short maternity leave, they agreed that Helen would return to work full time with Daniel being the main child support while also doing work from home in a part time role. In the early days this worked well but increasingly Daniel became isolated and felt his career was stalling. They were also aware that Helen had 3 further years on the programme and another geographic move and promotion on the cards. They slowly realised that this situation was putting intolerable strain on their relationship and that changes were needed to resolve the predicament. They both agreed it was important to keep Helen on her career trajectory whilst at the same time ensuring Daniel was able to achieve his own professional goals. Part of their solution was to explicitly acknowledge that they needed support and help with childcare for their period overseas. So, in consultation with her organisation, they managed to find a way for her to work more flexibly and to accommodate the family’s needs.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT During the late 20th and 21st Centuries, dual career families have become more and more common. By dual career family we mean “families in which both partners pursue careers or jobs and at the same time maintain a family together”. In fact, these are now the norm in both the UK and US with approximately 60 to 70 per cent of the working population falling into this category. As we discussed earlier in this book, the idea of the “traditional family”, where the main breadwinner was the man, with the woman devoting time to raising children and home making with perhaps a small part time job on the side once children are at school, is no longer the norm.

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Equal opportunity in the working environment is now, in theory, a fact of life. And, while there are still challenges to be overcome, both women and men have similar career prospects open to them and this is unlikely to change in the near future. In addition to the dual career family we also have dual career couples and “dual working couples” – by this we mean that both adults in the relationship are in paid employment. Quite apart from the fact that both women and men may wish to work for personal satisfaction, it is now often an economic necessity to provide a good quality of life. The dual working couple and the dual working family is therefore here to stay. Of course, not all dual career partnerships involve both partners working full time. Part time working is ever more popular and therefore becoming more accepted by large and small employers alike; data from the Office for National Statistics shows that 26 per cent of UK employees are now working part time – but they are still in dual working partnerships.

KEY ISSUES Being part of a dual career or working family has both advantages and disadvantages. Let’s look at some of these:

Positive x Greater financial stability. With both partners working to bring in an income there are likely to be fewer financial worries. x In dual career and dual working couples, we tend to find that the household chores and childcare responsibilities are shared more equally (although not always!) This leads to better role modelling for the children and gives everybody the opportunity to develop skills in the areas of home making and childcare. x When both parties work there can be a greater understanding of the day to day challenges faced by many of us in organisational life. For instance, dealing with difficult colleagues, facing deadlines, dealing with change, having to work late, unexpected family crisis, and many others. Sharing experiences, talking about what goes on during a working day is often a way of unwinding, and switching off after work. Every couple will manage this differently, we heard of one couple whose routine was that after their day at work one partner

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always begins to cook a meal (he loves cooking) and the other does 15 minutes of yoga. Then their evening begins. Ideally, partners who both work can have better balanced relationships, where both parties feel confident and capable in their work, their home and their social setting.

Negative x It’s often difficult to get the balance right. With both partners in a relationship working it can be a challenge to create and maintain a balanced family life. Particularly when pressures and challenges at work are felt to be inescapable, then family time may be sacrificed. x Dual career couples, perhaps more than any other relationships, need to agree how to make them work successfully. When one or other of the partners does not live up to those agreements as to who does what, the resulting stresses and strains within the relationship can be serious. This happens when one partner has agreed to take on certain roles, household jobs or childcare duties and then regularly fails to fulfil them. x Another ‘inequality concern’ in dual working relationships is to do with the power dynamic in the family when one party earns more than the other and decisions have to be made regarding promotions and geographical moves. Whose career comes first or are you both equal? x One issue we heard a lot about was what can be called ‘career growth compromise’. As careers progress it may become challenging for both parties to take all of the opportunities offered to them. Therefore, one person in the relationship may have to compromise and could experience regret or even resentment, which is damaging to relationships and families if the negative emotions cannot be openly and honestly dealt with. x Sometimes, we heard, there is guilt within a dual working partnership, with one partner feeling that more time should be devoted to the family, and even that working is detrimental to the family. Again, this can be damaging to all. x On the outside, rather than the inside, of the partnerships, women in dual career/working families can still experience negativity from some people about attempting to combine a full-time career/job and raise a family. This can cause problems for the whole family in that the woman can find herself in a no-win situation as far as her career

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future is concerned. There is still much work to be done in many organisations in this regard. x It is also becoming clear that difficulties are often encountered when couples retire from their full-time employment at different times. The key issue here is one party is experiencing loss of working identity and lack of focus, that often accompanies retirement. The other continues with their daily working routine and both parties may find it challenging to readjust to a different rhythm of life. Juggling two careers in a family, or any relationship, can be a significant challenge, especially when children are involved. Being part of a dual career/working couple demands much from all parties involved including any children. To make it work involves significant feats of organisation, compromise and commitment from everyone in the family, often also involving the extended family. It is also important that all family members understand and share the reasons for living in a dual career/working family.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS Here are a range of ideas, which can contribute to successfully managing your dual career/working family or relationship. These common-sense tips often get overlooked when we are in the midst of our busy lives: x At the outset, agree together a long-term strategy. Anticipating some of the typical issues you will face – when kids arrive, when one person is promoted with the resulting increase in demand on their time, if one person is offered an assignment away from the family home, if one person wishes to return to full time education, in the event of illness or other life changing event, etc…. The benefit of thinking ahead in this way is that right from the start you are discussing and agreeing a way of life for you and your family. As with most strategies certain things will have to flex and change to suit whatever is going on at the time so it is worth recognising that having ‘review times’ together is also beneficial. The more you can involve the whole family, the more likely you will succeed. Communication is key, being totally honest with each other about how the arrangements are working and being willing to renegotiate and flex if necessary. So, regularly reappraising your goals together.

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x Instigate a diary management system that works for your family. One of the big irritants in a dual career/work situation – especially when children are involved – is when both parties are not aware of who is where, when and who is responsible for the various childcare and home responsibilities on a day to day basis. Remember also not to stretch yourself too far with too many commitments – that will simply make life more difficult. Whether you use an electronic synched system or a paper system, which is visible to all within the home, you must commit to use it. The simplest tools are often the most effective – a large diary wall chart works for most people. x When not at work try to ensure you commit large chunks of time to the family as a whole, doing things together. This is increasingly difficult with digital communication requiring (or seeming to require) 24/7 availability. Open communication helps here, set your boundaries about when you will be contactable and when you won’t. This is most powerful when you involve not only your family and partner, but your boss and team members as well. Share your ideas with your extended family. You will need additional support at times, so having the buy-in of grandparents, aunts, uncles and others is vital to help not only day to day but also in emergency situations. Asking for help when necessary and making sure you have thought through that Plan B. Above all you need to ensure that dual career life works for everybody; if you spot problems address them quickly before the whole system breaks down. The following examples are families who are pushing the boundaries when it comes to job satisfaction, work life balance and finding their own flexible working solutions. You might recognise similarities with your own situation. When Sinead and Jon moved to the Dordogne, France back in 2015 as they both agreed they wanted to find a better life. Their typical UK commute was from Hampshire into London which took four hours most days on top of long hours at the office. Added to this was a young child at home, creating a complicated family life. These days Sinead works a 4day week remotely and travels back to London once a month to catch up with her team. They now have a second child and space in their lives to run a gîte.

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Has it been a success? Sinead says it took time to resettle but their quality of life has dramatically improved, not least in losing that dreaded daily commute to London: “we have lots more time together. My husband and I can go and get a coffee together before we start work and we’re not always rushing... we’re in control rather than just being in the corporate world.” Source: adapted from article published in the Daily Telegraph 23 October 2018, Flexible working isn’t Just for Those with Children by Rosa Silverman. Kirsty and Paul both had busy and challenging jobs. He was in the police force and enjoyed the routine of shifts which allowed him to pursue sporting and DIY interests on a four days on/four days off basis. She was a high-flying marketing executive in the City with greater earning power than Paul. When they married, they had several years feeling very comfortable financially and were able to purchase their dream ‘doerupper’ home. Then children came along and it was obvious that Kirsty needed to continue to work to support their lifestyle, and that full-time childcare would have a very negative impact on their financial circumstances. Paul was able to re-focus his use of his shift patterns to accommodate nursery pickups two or three days a week, and Kirsty used her employer’s flexible work packages to work at home one or two days a week. Although there have been adjustments and compromises on both sides the ‘system’ is working well.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 10: DUAL CAREER/WORKING FAMILIES Thinking about your career journey so far make notes about how this area has affected you and what your coping strategies have been?

Looking forward can you anticipate how you might have to further develop on this front?

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CAREER AND JOB TRANSITIONS AND CHOICES WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Another emerging theme for many is the issue of career transition. Careers and jobs in previous decades have tended to be orderly with people choosing a single path and following it for their working life. This would often be with the same organisation or possibly with a variety of organisations but in similar roles. So, a typical pattern would be to start in a junior or trainee role then steadily moving up to a level suiting one’s own ambitions or ability. This has often been called a linear or vertical career path. Sometimes, these careers happened because of restrictions, such as poor social or geographical mobility or gendered careers limiting the options available to people. Then, when an organisational change occurred the usual path was to look for a new role at a similar level and in a similar role to the one previously held. It was also fairly usual until the year 2000 that people would retire around sixty or sixty-five depending upon their pension arrangements. Now, financial and personal reasons, as well as the fact that we’re living longer, are meaning that many of us wish to extend our working lives. We now have a far more complex and fast changing work environment with an increasing number of people who transition to new paths throughout their lives. Globalisation, the impact of technology and increased longevity contribute in part to this process. These changes can happen at a variety of different stages in a person’s working life and for a wide variety of reasons. Sometimes these reasons are not personal choice and may be down to circumstance. We often hear people talk about a life event being a catalyst for change, such as – redundancy, changes in personal health, ending of a relationship, organisational changes, presentation of new opportunities, changes in family responsibilities, to name a few. So, now it is much more common to have a boundaryless career, sometimes called a ‘protean’ career. The Protean Career (Hall 1976) is a concept that requires everyone to monitor and assess the job market; anticipate future developments, trends, and industry shifts; gain the necessary skills, qualifications, relationships, and assets to meet the shifts, and adapt quickly to thrive in an ever-changing workplace.

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In this working pattern, sideways moves within organisations are common to develop new skills sets. Moves to completely different career options are more and more frequent as people see new opportunities and feel less boxed in by their previous assumptions and expectations. During our research we have heard quite a few stories of job transitions – these include: Jon who had a highly successful career as a barrister decided in his mid-thirties to make a significant change. He felt that he had stopped learning and in addition to this he couldn’t turn his brain off which led to “family issues” and ultimately sickness. He decided to take some time to consider his options so enrolled for an MBA at a leading business school. During his time studying he became intrigued by the world of teaching so applied for a role on the faculty of the business school. He now works for the business school and has had a variety of roles both teaching and sales/marketing. In his current role he has global responsibility for sales and business development in the executive education business stream. For Jon, taking a step into the unknown when he was no longer enjoying his highly skilled and lucrative career as a barrister has paid off. To this day he continues to enjoy his work in education but realises that “a key part of successfully changing career is being willing to retrain and work your way up – zig zag steps” and, “if faced with a decision do the thing with the spark!” Rachel left school at 16 and although she had ambitions to be a beautician, she was influenced by her parents to do office work which she continued to do for many years eventually becoming a PA to a Managing Director in a toy company. However, due to a variety of challenges in her personal life including a house move she had to give the role up and this provided her with an opportunity to “follow her dream” of setting up her own beauty business. Since initially setting this up it has been through many iterations – a mobile business, working from home, launching her own beauty products and finally establishing her own beauty rooms in her hometown where she is currently working and continuing to build her business. Rachel never forgot her “dream” and looking back she recognises that all her office and PA experience helped her and gave her the confidence to make the change. Another entrepreneur we interviewed found that her marketing skills learned in her corporate career were vital for transitioning and setting up an independent business.

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Chris only ever had one career ambition – to join the Royal Marines. He did not enjoy university because it was holding him back from active service. Eventually achieving his ambition, he served for 8 years, gradually realising that it was not a career he wanted to pursue any further. He wanted new and different challenges. He returned to study and found that he loved his law degree and is looking forward to shaping up a completely different future.

KEY ISSUES Some of the patterns that we have identified are: x A move away from early career decisions, often because a person feels their initial decision on leaving school or further education was wrong or something has changed and they want to transition in a new direction. There are also noticeable differences in what younger generations expect from their work. Research has shown that there is a much clearer focus on the self, a respect for peers rather than hierarchy and a greater need for strong balance between life and work. The millennial generations also expect a good salary package, challenging and interesting work, regular career progression and development. If an employer is not offering them what they want, then they will move on to another employer or begin to look for new ways of meeting their needs. x Midlife career/job change – midlife is a long period of time. Our definition of midlife is between 35 and 55. We talked to people who during this period are typically making not only career/job choices but also life choices. During this period of midlife this may be because of changes in family circumstances, organisational changes, redundancy, a desire to do something different, to give something back, to retrain or to develop new skills. Jon’s story told above illustrates a midlife career change as does Olivia, also a barrister who decided to leave the law and now runs her own catering company. There are many, well-known examples of career changes, some of which are:

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Pamela Stephenson (now Lady Connolly) had a successful acting and comedy career in the 1970s and 80s and made a change during the 1990s to train as a psychologist. She now runs a private practice in the US and is a well-regarded professional. John Glenn, the astronaut changed careers at age 53 to enter politics and became a US Senator for Ohio in the mid-1970s. Andrea Bocelli was a lawyer until age 34 when he left his job to work as a singer full time. Glenda Jackson CBE began her acting career in the late 1950s and went on to become one of the UKs most highly acclaimed actresses. In 1992 she gave up this career to become a Member of Parliament. She stood down in the 2015 General Election and has now revived her successful theatrical career. Often, these individuals are known as “Second Biters” (Thanks to Tim Drake for this descriptive title from his 2017 book Generation Cherry) – people in their 50s, 60s and even 70s who are either reluctant, or feel that they are unable, to stop working. In this category we observe that in general people want to do something different. Either to change career or job roles completely or to create a new relationship with organisational life and work to a new contract – for instance: part time work, consultancy, portfolio career. “I want to continue to work but not as much or as intensely as I did before,” is often the driver for this type of change. It’s not so much about powering down to do nothing but levelling out to redirect energy and time. An example of a second biter is a couple (Sophie and Steve) we came across during our research who both left secure jobs in education to pursue a more interesting and satisfying work life. Together they rented a couple of allotments and began to grow their own produce thus enabling them to reduce their shopping bill and keep fit. A recent addition to this has been to keep bees to produce honey. Sophie has also made and sold jams and chutneys at local fairs. Their biggest venture was to start a “travel” business where they organise and run walking and historical tours, using a Jane Austen theme, in the local area. Sophie also decided in the early days that she wanted to have a regular income stream so got herself a part time job in a local estate agent. All of this together provides them with a rewarding and satisfying ‘portfolio’ work and personal life.

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Of course, a key factor here is that, on average, we are all living longer. This leads to many people choosing or having to work longer, sometimes for financial reasons but often out of choice. This trend is likely to increase and new government statistics suggest that improvements in health and life expectancy mean that ’70 is the new 65’, old age is being redefined, and that people in this older age group will be economically active for much longer than in the past. (The Times 20/11/2019) It’s important to remember though that career shifts are not confined to older workers. Many people are also choosing at various stages in their life to have a change. For most of us we will at some point in our lives encounter a feeling of the need to transition. For instance, a feeling of exhausting how far you can go in a profession, job, organisation; personal life events such as marriage, arrival of children, separation and divorce; geographical location changes; changes in financial or health circumstances. Transitions can also involve career enhancements, not necessarily complete changes of direction or skills. One such example is Susan, a successful academic with a busy and intellectually challenging role, began a side career letting properties out to short term renters in her local area. She bought suitable properties, arranged for a third party to manage them and enjoyed the additional, non-intellectual income!

TIPS FOR TRANSITIONING SUCCESS x Step back and think about where you are in your role ideally on a yearly basis. Regular reflection about your career or job can help you to determine whether it’s time for a change, whether that be revolution or evolution. Remember that sometimes career change can be a personal choice although sometimes it arrives unannounced. This regular reflection and review will help ensure that you are in charge, being proactive not just reactive and also help you to prepare both emotionally and practically to cope with the disruption of career change. x It is so important to remember that you do not have to manage these changes by yourself. Check out the various, different support mechanisms you can draw upon for assistance through any transition process. Talk to others and network to enquire and understand what

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different possibilities could exist for you. Get yourself a career coach who will help you identify your potential and manage the process. x Remember to do some background research and digging around. If you want to check out salaries then the job agency Brook Street publish an annual guide on some jobs such as HR, marketing and finance. If you have an offer from a company then ask around and find some people who have worked there or are working there now for the latest view. Look on Glassdoor to see if it is listed and if so, check out what people have said about joining and leaving. (Glassdoor currently covers India, the States, parts of South America, Singapore, Canada, Australia, parts of Europe such as the Netherlands, UK, France and Germany.) Brook Street https://www.brookstreet.co.uk Glassdoor https://www.glassdoor.co.uk x It seems self-evident that transition means change, but sometimes we forget that we need to manage ourselves through the process. Think of yourself as your own ‘change agent’ and start with real selfawareness of how well you cope with change. For instance, do you welcome it and embrace the opportunities, do you deny it and try to ignore it, or do you freeze and panic. Understanding how you deal with change and developing coping strategies is vital in today’s complex and ever-changing work environment.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 11: TRANSITIONS IN MY WORKING LIFE Note down three or four key changes in your working life

Were you proactive or reactive?

What were your emotions before, during and after the change?

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What coping mechanisms did you employ?

What decision-making processes did you employ?

What patterns or trends can you notice?

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Identifying your typical decision-making patterns can be very helpful in times of transition. What is your ‘default’ process? Has it always been helpful, or would you like to do things differently in future? Understanding your driving values and motivators is also really important. We heard that people often choose to make a career transition when they find that their values are not being satisfied in their current role or organisation. For instance, one of our interviewees told us about the transition he made from the corporate world to working in the voluntary sector for the National Trust for England. He was mid-career at his transition point and the catalyst was a need to work in an area where he felt his role would have real meaning. He felt strongly drawn to working with heritage issues, where he felt he could add true value. We are also hearing many more stories of people at all stages in their career who choose to leave corporate life to set up their own business, often following a dream or idea that has been bubbling for some time. If you have ever found yourself uncomfortable in a working role, it may be because the organisation has held values at odds with your own. Of course, it may not always be easy to redress the imbalance but understanding it can help you to acknowledge your frustrations, and plan for change over a reasonable period of time. Dealing with any career transition will undoubtedly be made easier if you spend time thinking about ideas and plans for your mid to long-term career/job strategy. This does not mean that you have to have a strict set of rigid plans but, what it does mean is that you are tuned into your own dreams and values for your life.

HOW TO DEAL WITH REDUNDANCY WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Redundancy is likely to be one the toughest events in anyone’s working life, it can be a real test of resilience and your capacity to bounce back. However, it is possible to come through the experience relatively unscathed. In this section we address some of the key issues and offer tips that may help. Redundancy is a very common event for people these days. Although it can be demoralising and challenging, it is also possible to see it as a chance to draw a breath and evaluate where your career is going,

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particularly if you have been provided with a bit of a financial cushion in terms of a redundancy package. We know that some people receive plenty of warning of approaching redundancy opportunities whilst others are taken completely by surprise. Whether or not redundancy is expected there are likely to be mixed, and many negative, emotions experienced. Very few people step effortlessly into a better job. We heard that there are many common emotional responses that people talk about: x How can they let me go after so many years of commitment and loyal service? x How will I get another job at my age? x Where will I find another job at this level? x What can I sell to another employer as my skill set and qualifications are outdated? x I’m obviously not good enough, who is going to employ me now? x While I met my performance measures and more, I always thought I’d have a job here. x I’ve been fired! x How can I face my family and social circle with this shame? x Who am I now? I was pretty well defined by my job. And positive comments that we often hear included x Well I guess this is a good opportunity to take stock and think about the way ahead. x The redundancy forced me – in a good way – to move on. I would not have made the move otherwise, but I’ve now found a better job and am much happier than before. x I hadn’t realised how ‘stuck’ I’d become. Two stories relating to life after redundancy both feature women who were made redundant from their long-term roles in a moderately sized educational establishment. One, who had been in a professional service role, has reinvented herself completely by training as a silversmith. She now runs her own business making and selling bespoke jewellery. She has had to learn to be commercially aware, entrepreneurial and more externally facing than ever before. The other, who was in a client facing role, has developed a portfolio of roles – a consultant, trainer and coach, a singer in a band and an active allotment owner producing her own fruit and veg.

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Neither of them found it easy to make these major career resets, but it is striking how planful they were. Particularly as redundancy approached, in the early days of getting started and then during and building their new business. Both invested in developing new skills. Our jeweller for example has recently decided to add goldsmithing to her offering in order to develop and grow the business. The key insights we can draw from their stories include: x They both ensured they made the most of their support networks of friends and relatives – they both spoke of the importance of their partner’s wholehearted help and their willingness to compromise / change / rearrange domestic life to ensure they could focus on building the new business. x There was clearly insecurity around financial planning. The loss of the monthly cheque required financial adjustments and careful budgeting. x Seeing the importance of building the personal brand was key for both these individuals. The jeweller, soon recognised that she could transfer the marketing knowledge and expertise learned in her corporate life to her own business, and that she needed a ‘brand’ just as much as the business did. The consultant, realised the uniqueness of her portfolio profile and built that into a quirky personal brand. x They both said, ‘You are your own PA’ (personal assistant) and have to do everything yourself.’ This proved a bit of a shock coming from corporate life where things like administration, travel arrangements and all those other time-consuming support functions were somebody else’s job. x Both of our interviewees stressed how important it is to develop different ways to build the business slowly. They experimented with different ideas, learning quickly about what works and what does not. For example, you might assume that attending craft fairs would be great for a jeweller but, after a few outings she learned that not only is it expensive to attend these events, she needed to sell a lot of stock to cover the cost of attendance, and thus needed to have a lot of stock available. So that was a major investment and she found it was more cost effective to make silver and gold jewellery to order. Also, the need to learn about her market was important. Although

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some customers fell in love with her work straight away others were very direct in not liking the style or approach “My jewellery design and the amount of work for each piece are so important to me. I invest a huge amount of myself in each piece, and so I found if there were too many critical voices at an event then it affected my confidence.” It was far better to concentrate on developing bespoke pieces and building a reputation by personal recommendations. Whatever your start up might be, do not underestimate the level of commitment and huge amount of determination that’s required. Creating a web site and winning financial support from a bank or other source is only one dimension.

KEY ISSUES For many people self-worth and identity is inextricably linked into our career role and work. Snatching identity away from a person can have many negative effects for the individual and their family. For instance: loss of self-esteem, a sense of rejection and, even for some, mental health issues. On the other hand, it can act as an opportunity to invest in, to re-invigorate and energise your career and work life. We met many people who when made redundant chose to make a major commitment to undertaking a further education programme, like an MBA, which they knew would add value to their future job opportunities. Others like our examples above, fulfil dreams such as learning new skills while others take the opportunity to spend time travelling or with their family. Whilst there is little that one can say or do that will change the immediate and initial response of the shock of losing one’s job, the real challenge is in how speedily we bounce back and begin to deal with the situation and focus on the future. The job loss may be part of a big redundancy programme, or it may even be an occupational hazard in a particular sector. One IT specialist we interviewed had been made redundant nine times! It may be a sensational news-worthy event like the Lehman Brothers. Who can forget those photos of people leaving the offices carrying cardboard boxes filled with their belongings? The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2008 was one of the most significant events in the Financial Crash of 2007/8, and the biggest in U.S. history as the company held over $600,000,000,000 in assets. For most people, nothing can equal

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the shock of their first redundancy and in nearly all cases it knocks your confidence and self-belief. A good deal of the counselling and therapy advice in the UK for redundancy draws on the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who was a Swiss doctor. She developed this model in the late 1960s after looking at how people dealt with bereavement and identified five key stages – these are not necessarily a linear progression. Fig. 4-2

The original model was used extensively to help to clarify our reactions following a significant emotional event. This model is sometimes used in executive education as it offers a practical framework for dealing with both personal and organisational change. Job loss and redundancy are aspects of dealing with personal change where people get ‘stuck’ in certain parts of

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the model. Think about where you are in this process and how you can move towards acceptance and thus moving forward. So, what is it then that will help you to survive and recover from redundancy? Perhaps one of the first things to recognise is that most people will in some way experience these natural reactions to change – shock, denial, confusion and hopefully eventually recovery. One thing that can help is to understand more about psychological resilience. Resilience is one’s ability to adapt and cope with difficulties and crisis and bounce back as strong, or even stronger than before. Being resilient does not mean that you do not experience the emotional responses to redundancy (or other crisis), it is about how you bounce back from the difficult experiences and move forward. One important guideline to help you become more resilient is to accept that your situation is real and valid – you have the right to feel stressed. Look for ways to deal with this stress and worry, get advice and try not to get stuck in a passive ‘do-nothing’ phase. You may feel a ‘victim’ of the situation, but the best way to stop feeling like one, is not to act like one. Think about a time in the past when you have had to deal with a tough time in your life. x x x x x x

How did you deal with it? How did you get through it? What did you do? Where did you look for support? What would you have done differently in retrospect? How did you make decisions during this time?

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 12: MY RESILIENCE PROFILE Summarising your responses to the points above, how could you describe your capacity for resilience? Is it high, medium or low? How could you develop it?

Some tips we have drawn from our research include; x Get active as soon as you possibly can. The problem, whatever it is, won’t necessarily solve itself immediately, but getting active about looking ahead will be a good starting point. x Do a personal audit of your strengths, capabilities, likes and experiences. Interrogate this audit to determine how best you can use this information going ahead. x Use your network. You are not alone. You don’t have to involve lots of people but identifying those people who can support you and help you move forward both emotionally and practically is remarkably beneficial. x Look after yourself. Identify what you do to relax – read, exercise, do yoga, meet friends, take up golf or cook – whatever it is give yourself permission to take time out to recharge and have a mental break. (You might like to read about mindfulness which can also help here. Try these resources; Chaskalson, M., (2012) Mind Time: How ten mindful minutes can enhance your work, health and happiness. St. Martin’s Griffin

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Or an app like; Calm – meditate, sleep, relax – Google play These techniques will help you to develop coping strategies and to move ahead to think about the way ahead no matter what the crisis. We mentioned earlier that personal identity is often a key issue in redundancy. For many of us our self-concept is tightly bound up with what we do. We introduce ourselves to others in terms of our jobs, and it is one of the first things we ask people about when we meet them. When our working identity is taken from us, we often feel a great sense of loss. What is identity and why is our work inextricably linked with it? Personal identity is the notion a person cultivates about the self over the course of their life. Many things contribute to personal identity. Some contributors cannot be altered – age, colour of skin, gender, while other aspects of identity are choices we make – things like beliefs, values, attitudes, faith and how we dress. The experiences a person goes through in life will all contribute to personal identity. Obviously, many life experiences relate to work. For some people, our work identity is a huge part of their broader personal identity. If a person has spent many years creating a role for themselves in any organisation, not only will this contribute to their sense of self, their personal identity, but also to their position in society. This includes in their local community, the way people perceive them, their level of self-worth, their level of confidence and their credibility and reputation. Losing a job through redundancy can be a severe blow to identity and self-belief thus affecting levels of confidence and selfassurance. However, much will depend upon how important you believe work identity is to your overall identity. Let’s first begin to reflect about, understand and describe, your personal identity? Have a go at answering the following questions to help you understand your identity and what contributes to it. Remember personal identity is more than work identity.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 13: MY PERSONAL IDENTITY Who am I? How would I describe myself to others?

How would others describe you?

What roles do I have that contribute to my identity? For example; I am a wife, husband, a mother, a father, a friend, a sister, a brother, a retailer, a bridge player, a tennis player, a reader, a gardener, an on – line influencer, a video – game player.

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Which of those roles matter most to you – can you rank them?

Why are they in that order?

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The reasons you have noted in the boxes above are core to your personal identity. Now think about how much of your personal identity is tied up with your work. What is the balance between your personal identity and your working identity? Understanding what actually contributes to your personal identity as well as the level of importance you attach to your work identity can help you to appreciate who you are as a whole. To become resilient in the workplace it is important to remember that work is not everything. Self-worth, self-belief and confidence are all areas that people highlight as one of the key areas affected by being made redundant. Of course, many experiences in our lives can affect these aspects and fluctuating self-worth and confidence is a common issue for many of us. However, we heard from lots of people that redundancy more than any other experience a person has had negatively affects their level of confidence and self-worth. So how can you regain your level of self-worth and confidence? The first thing to remember is how common it is that you will experience a loss of self-worth and confidence. You are certainly not alone in this. The challenge is how you deal with this and regain your self-worth and confidence. So, try to begin thinking more positively and engage with positive people. Reflect about your successes and accomplishments in life so far. What are you most proud of? By identifying the things you are most proud of you can begin to see how these have contributed to your confidence and self-worth. The skill is to use this reflection to begin to rebuild your self-worth and confidence.

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH REDUNDANCY Consider the different approaches outlined below. Often, the temptation is to go to finding a new job quickly, but time to reflect is useful to review how satisfied you are with your career. If you have struggled to enjoy your job in recent years or feel stuck in a role you really dislike, then this could be the right time to think long and hard about what it is that you do want.

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APPROACHES TO REDUNDANCY Fig. 4-3

Step Away and Reflect Approach: take time out to reflect on where you are and what you wish to do next. Seek input, such as financial advice or consult executive search experts and proactively look for networking and professional meetings to attend. Be careful not to allow yourself to drift for too long. If you have a payoff then a round-the -world luxury trip may sound appealing but nevertheless it might not be the right move for you just now.

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Think about: x Do you want to change careers? Is this the time to set up your own business? x How much do you have in terms of financial reserves? Can you afford to take a gap year or set off on that expensive/exotic holiday that you always wanted? x Realistically, where is your next job likely to be? What new skills could improve your chances of being hired? Who are the key people/organisations or professional associations who can help you find that next role? x Do you want to volunteer? This is a popular stop - gap for many and a great way to give something back to society, re-build confidence and to stay connected to other people. However, it can’t fully replace the previous job, as there is one crucial difference. Regardless of how fascinating it is to volunteer, there is no salary. x Think about work life balance – one executive for example invested heart and soul, social life, everything into their job. Losing their job after twenty years was a wake-up call making them realise they had few friends. They had given too much so that without work there was only an empty shell around them. x What difference would a PhD or MBA or other professional qualification make? Now may be the right time to make that investment. Returning to education mid-career is often described as a ‘passport’ to changing your career path. It also has the added advantage of demonstrating to a current (or potential) employer your commitment to broadening your knowledge and skills. Step In and Continue Approach: this essentially is a speedy job hunt. Grab almost any job, anywhere, quickly, as long as it pays enough. Finances may make this seem like the only choice you can make, but there are a few dangers. Not least, the fact that deciding too quickly means you can be trapped in a job that is less than ideal; after the initial euphoria fades this is likely to make you (and your family) miserable. Temporary or interim work can be a useful alternative to provide income plus a breathing space for a few weeks or months. It is an opportunity to see a number of different companies and for some individuals, temporary assignments have led to a permanent job offer. The Institute for Interim Management https://www.iim.org.uk offers networking events and resources, such as a survey of interim agencies and is a useful guide to

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anyone new to the world of interim appointments. Often these will be turnaround, tricky projects that are rarely easy and certainly not for the fainthearted. You may find it useful to check out a few examples featured by the interim placement firm Odgers, https://www.odgersinterim.com/uk/howwe-help/case-studies/ Some people thrive upon such challenge and you may find yourself to be one of them. Just be aware of the scale and breadth of any project you find, as a quick or superficial review may miss such potential dangers. One person who took interim roles at a senior level for a number of years talked about the importance of setting clear goals, “whenever I started with a new organisation we would identify what my goals – and success measures – were over the next few months. These would then be reviewed and re-set all the way through. Working on complex public sector projects that were constantly changing this meant I was clear, and the organisation too, about what was being achieved.” Previous employers may also be a good resource as they may have temporary assignments to offer; one finance director we know in the voluntary sector has recently found two interim jobs this way. She wanted a fixed-term contract and each company had a tailor-made project. It is a win/win solution with the added benefit that both sides already know each other well. It can be hard to win that first interim role and the following tips will help.

Think About the Following: x Are your horizons too narrow and could you broaden the sector or role you are looking for? x If you plan to set up your own business, what are the financial implications, do you understand the level of overheads and legal complexities plus the key characteristics that every entrepreneur needs? Resilience, confidence, attention to detail and good marketing skills are just a few skills. It is especially hard to win business if plenty of others offer the same product or services as you. Find other entrepreneurs who will share their knowledge through local Chambers of Commerce, alumni networks, or the Institute of Directors and Federation of Small Businesses.

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x Networking and making new connections. How good are your networking skills? Find new contacts through professional associations and conferences. A conference is a great way to make sure your knowledge is as up to date as it should be and for making new contacts. The Holistic Perspective: Wellbeing, self-worth and resilience levels are all equally as important as finding that next job. Review your health, both mental and physical. Creating a structure in those first few weeks (or months) and find people who can help you deal with the issues you are facing. This is to avoid the ‘ostrich danger,’ when people bury their head in the sand and do nothing. It is a common approach when people are swamped with financial debts or suffering from severe self-doubt so it is easy to see why being swamped by redundancy might tempt you into such avoidance behaviour. Watch your diet, stay healthy and make sure you get some exercise. Make an appointment to see a career coach but also put in regular times for tennis, jogging, walking groups, handball; whatever will encourage you to improve your fitness. The knock to your self-confidence may be immense and some people never fully recover their equilibrium. So, make sure you stay motivated. Use the simple chart below or something similar, to record progress – and particularly actions – each week and at the end of each month check progress and identify new opportunities. Targets will keep you on track. The chart highlights the two key areas of health to monitor and also helps you to note the job strategies you are using at the moment. It offers you a place to record how you feel about your mental and physical health, the actions you are taking on all three fronts and most importantly, your progress. x x x

Mental health and resilience Physical health Your current job strategies.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 14: PROGRESS AND ACTIONS Table 4-2

Timeline

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4, etc.

Monthly Review

Mental health & resilience levels

Physical health, exercise & sleep

Job strategies & key meetings

Action log – for all three areas. I will do…

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Here’s a quick visual guide to some options when dealing with redundancy: Table 4-3 Option Volunteering

Interim work Taking a gap period Changing career direction

Going back into education

Benefits Great for building self-esteem & confidence e.g. acquiring new skills with international volunteering Valuable projects to include on CV Provides time to think and have new experiences Provides opportunities to develop new skills, meet new people, ‘reinvent’ yourself Enhance your CV with more qualifications. Develop a completely different work identity

Downsides No salary

Assignments may be complex/tough to achieve No salary and may not be stimulating after a while Challenging to make your way in new area where you have no contacts or experience Difficult to ‘go back to school’. Requires financial investment.

Whatever approach you decide to take post redundancy it is worth reflecting about the benefits and downsides prior to investing too much time and effort.

CAREER STAGES AND CHOICES Your career decisions and choices will be influenced by the life stage you find yourself at. Life stages are the developmental phases each of us experiences throughout our lifetimes. We have used the basic concept of life phases and linked them to career stages. Clearly these phases are not as

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fixed as the model suggests and the boundaries blur to some extent. However, the model below illustrates the basic premise. Fig. 4-4

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WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Throughout the course of our lives we grow and change, our lives may change in complexity. The decisions we make about career and job will tend to be affected by the life stage a person is at. Life stage can significantly affect the decisions you make.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 15: CAREER STAGES AND CHOICES You might like to consider the life stage you are at currently and the implications that has on any career or job decisions you might have to make. Think about both restrictions and opportunities. Look at the Figure 4-4 and make a note of where you are, it may help you to ‘place’ the decisions you are faced with. Identify your career stage using Figure 4-4. What are the positives and negatives about where you find yourself?

Reflect about your current level of satisfaction at the stage you have reached. What skills have you developed and what are your personal strengths?

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Identify any areas that might need your personal investment

In an ideal world would you be doing what you are doing now? If not, why not? Can you do anything about this?

Are the decisions you must make now to do with your current stage, or your transition to the next?

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KEY ISSUES Some of the key themes we hear people talk about around career decisions are: x Initial Choices – the impact of the early choices you make about career and work can live with you a long time. This is a key stage as it often involves many years of education and training. We hear stories of parental influence and pressure where people follow a career journey only to find they are not fulfilled. While we know that “follow your dream or intuition” is a bit of a cliché it is also worth paying attention to where your natural energies and interests lie rather than blindly following parental or other authority figure guidance that does not inspire you or is simply taking a safe option. For instance: “best to go to university and get a good degree, then you’ll be set for life”. While a university education is good for some it certainly is not essential for all. Many entrepreneurs make a point of the fact that they have not been to university or have dropped out but have succeeded without this. For instance, famously Steve Jobs dropped out of Read College after his first semester, Bill Gates also dropped out two years into his degree though he now has an honorary degree from Harvard and Richard Branson left school at 16 and never went to university. These three individuals are great examples of when luck, hard work and success early in their working life enabled them to replace the benefits of university experiences and qualifications with building their hugely successful businesses. x The Family Years – There are various phases here – early relationship development and commitment, the decision to have children, the possible sandwich stage of juggling children and aging parents and the empty nest years. All of these can present pressure points in managing and developing your career. One of the biggest problems related to this arises when people do not take the time to discuss and explore with their partner how best to accommodate and resolve these challenges. For many years people did not feel comfortable discussing these issues at work, and some still feel that way. For instance: one recent example we have is when a new mother on maternity leave asked her partner when he was going to take his parental leave, but he replied he wasn’t as it would not be a good career move! That said, there are many great role models who incorporate the family years into a successful working life such as

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New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern whose partner is the main carer for their daughter. Effectively coping with the family years is a massive issue for society in general, for a person’s career as well as their relationship, family happiness and success. x International and Global Opportunities – An increasing challenge facing many, at least pre – Covid, is when the opportunity presents itself to either travel overseas regularly as part of a job or indeed to move overseas for an international assignment. Both these situations can have major implications for the individual and their career as well as for relationship and family life. These opportunities are often career and life changing, enabling a person to broaden and deepen their experience. However, for the rest of the family these opportunities can have many ramifications often including unintended consequences. So, whether you are travelling more for work, involving being away from home and family for frequent lengthy periods of time or relocating the family to a new location, it is vital that due consideration is given to the opportunities and threats this may present. We hear many stories with happy endings, but we also hear examples of the extra stresses and strains put on relationships and family life often leading to breakdown. There are few sources of reliable advice and of course much depends on you and your own family set-up, but we would certainly suggest that if you are faced with making such a decision at least talk to others who have been in a similar position. x Changing Direction – So many people make career/job choices early in their life and then continue in the same general area all their working life. For some careers and jobs, it is simply becoming impossible to remain doing the same thing for life due to environmental, technological and organisational changes. Some people become disillusioned or bored by their initial career choice and others just want to try something new. Changing direction is never easy and often involves retraining or starting at the bottom again and working your way up. Of course, for some, previous experience will contribute to future success and ability. For instance: we know of one woman who became disillusioned by her role of Marketing Director following a re-organisation and culture change in her company. She decided to retrain as a teacher, and it was not long before she had “worked her way up to head teacher level”. Her

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previous experience of leading a marketing team and working at Board level undoubtedly helped with this. x Approaching “Normal Retirement Age” – we’re not even sure what that means anymore. It’s certainly constantly adapting with changing financial pressures on people, pension challenges, the fact that people are living longer and changing family dynamics. So, during what was previously regarded as a time of slowing down and exiting, many people are now seeking to continue to work well into their 60s and often their 70s. We met several people in this age group during our research who continue to pursue salaried work. Some of them have been able to move seamlessly from their full-time employment to part-time with the same employer, others have been able to use their existing skills to operate as independent consultants. There are also examples of people who have sought out new opportunities working in less demanding roles than previously to add to their income or to continue to interact with work for their own interest. Kay is a woman who was a senior lecturer in a University where her specialism was education and teaching teachers. She took the traditional route to retire at 60 and after a few months of holidays and a more leisurely life she realised that she was bored and wanted to find something to do using her existing talents. She re-engaged with the education sector and became an international ambassador and examiner of people who Teach English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). In this she combined not only her professional skills and abilities but also her passion for travel and education and started earning a salary again.

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BALANCE IN YOUR LIFE WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? The ‘work life balance’ (WLB) dilemma is not a new one, researchers, employers and employees have been using the balance metaphor to describe the management of paid work alongside other parts of life, particularly family commitments for decades. Interest and research on the topic have usually reflected current social, economic and workplace concerns. One example would be the growing numbers of women entering the workplace from the 1960s onwards, which resulted in worries about the impact of working mothers on children’s development and the stability of family life. Since then similar concerns have been voiced around the upsurge of dual career families. Later interest focused on the concept of ‘burnout’ and stress in the 1980s and 1990s with researchers attempting to understand the relationship between physical and psychological health with excessive work demands. A study by the Financial Times in 2019 surveyed more than 400 individuals and discovered the worrying fact that two-thirds believed that their work had a ‘somewhat’ to ‘extremely’ negative effect on their health. The WLB debate is now considerably broader than it used to be with the changing nature of work being seen in a more holistic way that impacts on men and women. Issues such as globalisation, organisational restructuring, the need for ever increasing efficiency, regulation, deregulation, transparency, responsibility, increasingly sophisticated technology, weakened trade unions the 24/7 workplace and the increasing move towards people working from home has seen the need for the balance in life debate to be more inclusive and less about family related matters. Whilst it is certainly a ‘broad context’ issue, and therefore would be well placed in chapter 3, it has a significant effect on our personal lives, and our personal decisions about work, so we have included it here.

KEY ISSUES At the centre of current WLB discussions is the blurring boundary between our working and private lives. The 24/7 working week is widely acknowledged, where the need to stay connected even when out of the office is considered the norm for workers at all levels of organisations. This

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inevitably means that the nature of what was considered as a ‘balance’ between two ends of the work/other life axis has changed considerably. Instead of attempting to manage that balance by ensuring an equal (or at least a managed ratio) of effort and importance, writers today speak of the work life ‘merge.’ The term was recently coined by Facebook executive Emily White to describe a life in which ‘work and free time are no longer neatly compartmentalised but seamlessly jumbled up together’. She describes a scenario in which it is quite acceptable for someone to take two hours out of a working day for something personal, but equally, that same time might be spent answering emails on a Sunday. She describes a working environment where even senior executives can leave at 5.30pm to have tea with the children, as Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg famously did when hers were small, but then be back at the laptop by 9pm. So, this new approach to WLB where we are talking of work life ‘blend’ involves work and the rest of life coming together as a life cycle rather than as two distinct and compartmentalised bits of existence and requires a new approach. As each of us has a different preferred lifestyle, we will also each have a different, unique, ideal approach to balance in our lives. It is also true that at different times (or life stages) we have different priorities which will affect how we balance and blend work with other parts of our life. It is clearly different for the lucky ones who love their job and who are happy to have the two mingle and merge. For many, work is unavoidable and simply pays for the more enjoyable parts of life. Achieving the correct blend is a matter of conscious decision-making regarding the realities of life stage, opportunity, capability and self-awareness. This shift is particularly relevant now as it reflects two major trends in our working lives. The first concerns difficult new economic realities. There is a global need for increased productivity to provide the means to support our ever-increasing populations. Taxes must be generated to pay for comprehensive welfare, education and infrastructure provision and this may mean that choices, which involve working less, are often not possible or realistic, so much emphasis is placed on enriching our ‘other’ time through regimes packed with wellness, fitness and mindfulness. The second trend, seemingly unstoppable, is the onward march of technology which pervades all aspects of our lives. In physical terms broadband, Wi-Fi and global servers mean that access to necessary work information is available literally everywhere so we do

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not need to sit at a desk, either at home or in the office. For years, those following this trend have predicted the end of the ‘real’ office, with virtual communication replacing all need for face-to-face meetings and commuting. However, although home working and remote working is now commonplace, our human need for relationships and social interaction still sees many of us venturing out to enjoy the company of colleagues. So, what happens? We go to the office to work, and when we are home, it is still there. Our inboxes are full of a mixture of private and work messages, our Facebook and LinkedIn contacts are a mixture of friends and professional contacts. In short, the merger has become a takeover. There is much talk now of the downside of being permanently connected to the outside world, whether this is work, social media networks, or indeed to global news. Concerns about the amount of time children spend online abound, as do those about FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and FOBOT (Fear of Being Out of Touch). For the world of work, there may be serious implications not least of these being burnout. This is not only about extending our working days to include what used to be personal time, but also involves vastly decreased response times – people want replies immediately to their email and text messages. So many decisions are made much faster; critical conversations are held in corridors, over telephones and even while driving, as nothing can wait. Research has yet to report on the consequences for productivity about the quality of those decisions and conversations. In the meantime, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has decided that burnout is a medical condition – this has been much debated until now. The WHO definition is that this happens as a result of chronic workplace stress which is not successfully managed, the symptoms being: reduced professional efficacy, feelings of negativity related to your job and exhaustion.

TIPS FOR BALANCE IN YOUR LIFE Research has told us, however that regardless of our family and work characteristics how we perceive our own control of our work schedules determines how we rate our WLB. Therefore, the concept of autonomy and control over our work schedules is a key factor in managing our own WLB. Making full use of flexible work schedules and consciously managing our time to suit, as far as possible, our chosen lifestyle is what makes the

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difference between burnout and balance. Whilst it may appear that this insight has been pioneered by multitasking working women, the importance of autonomy and self-determination are equally relevant to singletons, working fathers and indeed the majority of today’s workforce. In the summer of 2019, a new employee initiative was announced by Carling and Doom Bar (Molson Coors UK & Ireland), offering an extra two weeks’ paid leave. The firm call this ‘life leave’ to help staff take time off for a variety of different events, from a child’s sports day to medical appointments or those few days before a wedding. The aim is to provide staff with a better work life balance. Managing your work life balance is not only down to you. Organisations can also help by offering ways of ensuring your productivity at the same time as allowing you to prioritise your personal life. Some that have been considered, and that you might like to talk to your manager about include; x Job sharing – where 2 people work part time to share the same role. x Location flex – ability to work from a variety of your organisation’s sites. x Term-time flex – where parents are afforded the opportunity to flex their hours according to the school calendar. x Phased retirement – rather than full time work one day then no work the next being more planned about it and downsizing by stages. x Annualised hours – where you agree with your employer an annual hours contract. You have flexibility to vary the hours you actually work on a day to day basis as long as you fulfil the annual hours agreed. x Compressed hours – this is where you have the opportunity to work, for instance 2 long days to enable you to then have a day off. x Flexi-hours – usually with certain core hours but with the ability to bank hours to enable extra days off during a month. x Home Working – working from your home rather than having to travel to the office each day. (This latter option is currently the norm as we write whilst Covid 19 continues to disrupt working life. We watch with interest to see where organisational and individual preferences lie when it comes to the home vs office working debate). Ask yourself if any of those would make your current working position more satisfactory? More productive? More beneficial for more stakeholders?

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We heard many stories about flex working that people told us contributed to their effective work life balance. These include: x One professional couple with two school age children both have part time contracts at work and work on different days to each have childcare responsibilities. x Working parents who have flexible hours to enable them to drop off and pick up children from childcare and school. x Part time working mothers compressing hours to enable some time at home with their children. We also came across fathers who also work part time or in job shares. x Home working is another flexible option used by many where it enables a more or less rigid structure to the day to accommodate childcare and home management responsibilities. x For many professional and amateur sports people, the opportunity to work annualised, compressed and flexi hours are vital to the success of their training programmes. x People who want to work part time, volunteer for charities develop their artistic talents can manage such a career portfolio through flexible working arrangements. Here are some thoughts that you might like to consider in relation to balance in your life: x Reflect on your working day, keep a log over a period of time (a week, a month or whatever works for you) how you actually spend your time. What does this tell you about your WLB? x Ask others for their reflections on your WLB? For instance, how do your partner and your children feel? How do you “show up” in your non-working life? Where is your conversation focused? How do you manage your time? x How realistic are you about your performance at work, as a partner and as a parent? Do you suffer from perfectionism? How does this affect you? As a senior manager/parent recently described it, “I’m always trying to be superman and perfect in every part of my life ... at home, at work, when I’m looking after the kids and with the family. It's exhausting.” x Give some consideration to the culture at your place of employment and how much this influences your WLB? A team leader was recently ‘invited’ to stay later in the office as otherwise this was setting a bad example for others in his team.

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x Looking at your friendship circle, how do they manage their balance in life? Can you learn from others? x Remember, if in a relationship or part of any sort of family structure, it makes sense for all parties have to take part in discussions to agree an acceptable approach to WLB for them as a unit. Don’t be afraid of starting these conversations! x WLB also involves both physical and mental health including ensuring you get sufficient sleep, rest and keep fit as well as ‘me’ time. Research is increasingly indicating that rest and sleep are vital for wellbeing. (Parsons & Culpin 2012) So, are you feeling rested? This is a serious question as rest links to our sense of well-being. One of the largest surveys about rest was sponsored in 2016 by the Wellcome Foundation and the BBC. One interesting finding was that over two-thirds of respondents said they would like more rest, so perhaps it is in short supply. The survey also asked people what they found to be most relaxing? The list below indicates the activities people mentioned most frequently with reading being the most frequently mentioned. Make a note of your top three at the moment. Could you make room for more?

Top 15 Restful Activities 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Reading Being in the natural environment Spending time alone Listening to music Doing nothing in particular Walking Taking a bath or shower Daydreaming Watching TV Meditating or practising mindfulness Being with animals Seeing friends and family Drinking tea or coffee Doing creative arts Gardening

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The researchers of the survey concluded that often people are seeking to escape from other people. Seeing friends and family, chatting or drinking socially all come much lower down the list. This doesn't mean that the respondents don't like socialising, but that they don't consider it to be particularly restful. Interestingly, they found that this applied both among extroverts, who are sometimes defined as people who gain energy from being around others, and among introverts, who find other people draining. Extroverts do place chatting and socialising a little higher up the chart, but still they are beaten by solitary activities. It seems like we all need time to recharge our batteries through options such as the natural environment, spending time alone and listening to music. Are any of these high on your list of favourites? You might care to consider your own preferred options for rest, what was in your Top Three? And, of course, review whether during the past month you have found opportunities in your life for these key activities? If not, how could you diarise this time into your schedule for next month? There is a dangerous myth about resilience that if you are strong minded enough then you can never lose your resilience. This is not true as some people have found out the hard way. If you ignore rest, and never stop to recharge your batteries, you will reach overload or a breaking point. Rest strategies are part of your insurance policy to help you stay resilient and manage balance in your life.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 16: MY WORK LIFE BALANCE Keep a diary for a month or some other time scale that suits you. What activities do you take part in that give you balance?

Fig 4.5 (below) represents a common selection of the elements of work/life. In this diagram they are in perfect symmetry which is never attained in real life. A more typical work/life wheel would be far more fluid, varied and uneven in the times allocated to each area.

MY WORK LIFE BALANCE WHEEL Fig. 4-5

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You may find it useful to use the blank diagram below to indicate the different elements of your life and the proportion of your time spent doing each. You can also annotate the wheel in relation to how satisfied you are with these proportions. This will help you to identify where and if you need to rebalance in some of the categories. Fig 4-6

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Describe your current work life balance? Are you happy with it? Is this the way you’d like your balance to continue? If not, what would you like to be different? What do you need to change in order to achieve that?

CHAPTER FIVE UNDERSTANDING WHERE YOU ARE NOW

INTRODUCTION In previous chapters we have encouraged you to think in general terms about 21st century careers including opportunities, challenges and the changing career landscape. Hopefully, this has helped you to appreciate the key components of your career journey and to begin reflecting about how you got to where you are today and what you want to achieve going ahead. It appears to us that more than at any time in the past it is necessary for individuals to be better focused and prepared in order to make the best possible decisions about their career journey. Job markets are more dynamic and fluid than ever and our individual career responses need to be more agile. Competition for good jobs is stiffer than ever and it is no longer sufficient to rely on your well-honed curriculum vitae and recruiters. This means that what makes the difference these days is a vibrant online profile, development of good strategic relationships, good visibility in your chosen field and thinking about yourself as a brand. Rather than being passive and responding to invitations or opportunities offered, you must have confidence and develop the skills to shape and boost your career trajectory. In this chapter we would like to introduce you to a process to help you further understand where you are today. We’re also going to suggest tools and techniques to help you focus on what’s crucial, and what’s possible, for you going ahead. We will talk you through a range of factors that may have shaped your career to date by examining: x x x x

My career pathways so far Identifying strengths and weaknesses What I wish I’d known earlier in MY career Derailment.

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This will assist you to identify any emerging patterns and to examine these for things that have worked well and things that you would like to do differently. Don’t forget that if you move beyond your ‘comfort zone’ you are much more likely to grow, to develop new skills and expertise. So, don’t forget to add in some challenges to your future plans. We have found that many people do not give sufficient credence to the past and the decisions they have made to help inform the future. We hear many stories about the constraints people create for themselves at different stages of their lives, for instance – one frequently mentioned constraint is geographical, in that parents often feel restricted to a particular locale while their children are attending good schools in the local area. Of course, these constraints, while limiting, need not be negative nor need they be permanent. They may be specific to a particular stage in your life to accommodate necessities and quality of life at certain stages, but they need not be lifetime barriers to change. The aim is to help you to articulate, understand and make sense of patterns, successes, constraints and limitations that have driven your career decisions throughout your working life. With this knowledge we hope to give you a platform to focus on your career future and to be more agile. By pausing to reflect over your career so far and understanding more about how you got to where you are today, we hope to help you become more strategic and planned when taking your career forward.

MY CAREER PATHWAY SO FAR The first stage in this process of discovery is to remind yourself about the path you have followed so far. This will act as a template for many of the reflective checkpoints we offer as part of this deep dive process. Each checkpoint will have a different purpose and process but they will all be aiming to help you raise your self-awareness and self-knowledge, to assist your understanding of how you have got to where you are today. We will be encouraging you to delve deeply to build your consciousness and to help you appreciate: x what you have achieved x what has helped/hindered x your strengths and weaknesses

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x x x x x x

how and why you made career decisions who has helped you along the way? your values, drivers and motivators where you are in your career journey your reputation and brand the limitations, constraints and realities that have existed and do exist in planning the way ahead.

This knowledge and awareness will then facilitate the next stage of the process which is to plan your way forward. As before, look out for this image throughout the text which indicates a reflective checkpoint for you to consider and complete. These checkpoints are offered as optional and some readers may find it useful to complete all of them while others may be more selective. However you approach this process, the purpose remains the same – these are to help you review how you have got to where you are today and, how this can assist you in planning your way ahead. Before you start work on this chapter you might want to give some thought to how you will record this information. Our preference is to get yourself a career notebook and some coloured pens. That way you can both record data and colour code the information in appropriate ways. Alternatively, you can create a file on your tablet or pc where you store the information. The key thing is to record the information in a way that works for you, so that you can refer to it at a later stage. So, let’s get started with your personal career path.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 17: MY PERSONAL CAREER PATH For your personal version of a career pathway create your own image to illustrate your journey so far. So, let’s use the model from Chapter 4 in the section Career Stages and Choices as a template and you can adapt it to suit your own unique career stage. For instance, if you think your career trajectory has followed a generally straight-line progression perhaps in one organisation or career/job family it may be that something like the image below will work for you. However, this illustration looks linear, but we know that for many people there are diversions along the way, so something more fluid which indicates these might be better. Your career path, however

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you illustrate it, is meant to be an overview of what you have done so far and how each different role has contributed to your personal career development. So, you should populate your path with information about your role, time in role, organisations, expertise developed and experiences that stand out for you. The model below is a real- life example of one of our interviewees’ career path so far. We have provided a blank space below for you to work through your own career path. Fig. 5-1

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MY CAREER PATH SO FAR

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 18: MY WORK EXPECTATIONS Now, reflecting on that career path you have just worked through, let’s explore the expectations you had and the decisions you made that shaped that path. Think back to when you left full time education to enter the world of work. Reflect about the process you went through to get that first job – what expectations were you trying to satisfy? When we asked people this, they gave us all sorts of interesting answers, for instance: x I just wanted a job so that I had a source of income to fund my life and interests. x I wanted to make my parents proud. x I looked for opportunities that would provide long-term security and career development. x In my local area there are not many opportunities so any job would be good. x I didn’t get my first choice at university/college and had to take a completely different path. x I wanted an interesting and challenging job. x I need a job locally – travelling too far away will not be good for the family. x My mum and dad told me to follow my dreams, so that’s what I did! x I always wanted to be a teacher/pilot/nurse/musician etc… and that’s what I set out to do. x I wanted to stay near university and my new partner. We got married just after graduation day. x I wanted to do exciting things and travel. x I wanted a job where I could help others. x I got married too soon and had to adjust my expectations. The interesting thing about these comments is that they demonstrate that our career choices are often not just of our own making. They may be rooted in ideas planted by others which can influence our decisions, either positively or negatively, for many years.

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So, what expectations did you have when entering the job market? Think about it, make notes below or in your career workbook

Ask yourself how you feel about these expectations now?

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 19: LIFE AND CAREER STAGE Another prism we can use to throw light on our career path is the stage of life we find ourselves at. Sometimes our career expectations are coloured by our age. For instance, we may feel that as we get older, we ‘should’ be at a particular place in our career. The following table is an example of the labels that are sometimes applied to an age category with associated career expectations. Our insight is that in fact you can be at any combination of life stage and career stage. Look at the two charts below and indicate your life stage on the first one and your current career stage on the second one, Figure 5-3.

LIFE STAGE Fig. 5-2

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The career stage chart below encourages you to reflect about where you are in your career today. We have represented this as a cycle to reflect contemporary career processes where it is quite possible to have multiple careers in any one person’s working life. So, think about where you are currently. At each of the stages you will be experiencing different feelings, opportunities and challenges. Try to identify these as you decide the stage you are currently at. To assist in this here is a bit more information about each of the 5 stages: x New to role – you are in the early days of a new job, maybe 1 to 2 years in and feel you are still finding your feet. This stage is often exciting where you are being challenged and learning on a daily basis. x Transitioning – you have recently been promoted or moved within the same basic job area. The essence of transitioning is that there is some change – promotion, location, larger team, etc… but you are still on an upward learning curve perhaps developing new skills and networks. Often when we stop learning we find our job less rewarding or satisfying. x Consolidation – is all about strengthening your position maybe through development programmes, offering to take on new responsibilities and broadening in general. At this stage you may also be building your reputation and credibility and beginning to think about and lay the path for the future. x Maintenance – investing time and energy to preserve your position by ensuring your reputation is solid, that you have a good relationship network and continue to enjoy and learn from your role. x Recalibration – beginning to think about moving on for some reason either to a new job or organisation or to retirement or a career break, whatever the reason you are beginning to take your foot off the accelerator in your current role.

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CURRENT JOB/CAREER STAGE Fig. 5-3

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REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND JOB/CAREER STAGE Is this where you expected to be by now? How do you feel about where you are now?

When thinking about your career stage you begin to realise that at various life stages you have already been round this cycle before, maybe even a few times. For the purposes of this exercise however it is your current career stage that is our focus. These reflective processes have encouraged you to raise your awareness of what you have done in your working life, what your expectations were and are, and where you currently are in life and career. We can now move on to explore these in more detail.

IDENTIFYING YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES Next, we are encouraging you to take a comprehensive review of your skills, competences, drivers, relationships and brand to help you continue to raise self-awareness for planning your career or job future.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 20: SWOT ANALYSIS You may well have come across the SWOT Analysis exercise elsewhere, perhaps in relation to strategy development in your organisation. SWOT means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. We find that adapting it to a personal analysis tool is both easy and useful. It’s pretty simple really, you draw a box onto a sheet of paper or on a word document and split it into 4 quadrants – see below. In the context of self-analysis for career development purposes you then ask yourself the following questions and complete the chart appropriately. STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

What are my strengths? What am I good at? How would others describe my strengths? Where am I most confident?

What am I not good at? What do I avoid doing? How would others describe my weaknesses? In what areas do I lack confidence? Have I got certain skill areas that I need to improve?

OPPORTUNITIES

THREATS

How can I better use my strengths? What is happening in your career area/organisation that could be an opportunity for you? What situations could you leverage for greater success?

What hazards exist to your career journey? Are there changes happening to your sector that you should consider?

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MY SWOT ANALYSIS STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

OPPORTUNITIES

THREATS

It is useful to do a personal SWOT on a regular basis to reflect the constantly changing working environment we operate in today. Having completed it you can use it to assess where you may need to develop new skills or build and develop weaknesses. From a career/job perspective it will be useful as a way of developing clarity with regard to career opportunities and threats. We use this exercise frequently when coaching individuals and it often reveals interesting dilemmas especially when examining the opportunities and threats.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 21: CAREER VALUES AND DRIVERS Understanding your personal values and drivers and how these affect your work and career choices is an important element of career planning. The things that contribute to your feelings of self-worth and self-esteem. Your personal values and drivers are the things you believe in that give you purpose and are valuable in both your life and work. When the job you do and the organisation you work for satisfies your values then things are good in your life. If your values and drivers are not satisfied or are compromised in some way then things will feel wrong and can lead to dissatisfaction, poor motivation and feelings of worthlessness and frustration. Our personal values and preferences can and should guide our decisions and contribute to our levels of motivation and satisfaction in our work (and other aspects of our lives). Our personal values are just that, personal to an individual, they underpin our motivations, or what we will put energy into. We each have a values ‘profile’ which prioritises where our energies will lie. So, while person A may prioritise friendship and kindness, person B may prioritise achievement and competitiveness. That of course is not to say that these people do not recognise or hold the other values but rather it means that person A would be less motivated by achievement and competitiveness, and therefore would not be so energised by activities driven by these qualities. They may not necessarily be demotivated by them but they are much more likely to put their energy into relationship focused activities, for instance. So, the next activity is about gaining awareness of and articulating YOUR personal values and how they contribute to your motivation and satisfaction in your chosen job area and organisation. It is also vital to recognise and understand that if you are not able to live and work in accordance with your values, this will have a huge impact on your performance and motivation. In order to identify your personal values, the following questions will help you to articulate and clarify them. It’s worth stepping back and spending a little time on this exercise.

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What is most important to you in life?

What things make you happy and feel fulfilled?

What needs must be satisfied by your job?

It is also useful to think about those things that particularly upset you or make you unhappy/dissatisfied at work

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Now think about how these aspects can be articulated as a value to be satisfied. For instance, sustainability is a major concern for many. The underpinning values are care for the environment and the management of our planet’s resources. So, if you were to discover that your organisation was not fulfilling its public promise in this area then this would begin to cause inner conflict for you and may affect your performance and commitment. Another example might be you feel that playing fast and loose with the truth is prevalent in your organisation so this could mean that honesty is a strong value for you. My core values?

Rate those core values in order of priority or importance to you. What are the non – negotiables? What are the nice-to-haves?

Understanding more about your values and drivers will contribute to your ability to analyse your level of satisfaction in your current role. It will help you to identify what you need from your organisation, what features need to be present, to make you feel fulfilled and motivated. In turn this will also help you to research new roles and organisations. So, for instance it

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may help you to rule out certain organisations or sectors from your future career planning. As one of our interviewees told us she discovered the importance of the alignment of personal and organisational values when she changed jobs a few years ago. Julia had worked for one organisation for 5 years but was beginning to get itchy feet and had for a few months been looking around for a new challenge in a similar field but with a bigger organisation. She found what she thought was a dream job. All the interviews went well and the interviewers said all the right things to give her the impression that she would be joining a progressive firm which would allow her to bring in new ideas and to grow and develop. She discovered very quickly, within the first week, that the organisation’s day to day work reality was different from the promise. It turned out that the hierarchy was all powerful and micromanagement led to most of her ideas being refused out of hand in preference to the established norms. The organisation outwardly gave the impression of innovative, progressive, experimental and enabling people to work with autonomy using their own initiative but the reality was completely different. The result of this was that Julia decided she had made a major career mistake and had to move to rectify this quickly. She learned that it was vital to explore values when considering moving to a new company, so talking to more people who already worked there would have been a good idea rather than relying on simply the interview experience. She stayed for little over a year. It was not altogether an unhappy time but she’d had to recalibrate her expectations and compromise her values accordingly. We hear similar stories frequently during coaching and when running development programmes. It is not sector, level, country or role specific it can happen to anyone at any stage in their career. Additionally, it is not only caused by changing organisations but can also happen with new bosses, mergers or going to work with say a new start up where the values of the founders are fundamentally different.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 22: CAREER OR ROLE HIGHS AND LOWS This activity is designed to assist you to identify the highs and lows you have had in either your career as a whole, or over a specific time period or in your current organisation or role. The decision is yours. The image on the next page shows an example of a typical profile for a person’s career with one organisation. Use the second, blank space for your own high/low profile.

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Having created the profile you should examine it for patterns of behaviour and/or clues about events that lead to your highs or lows. So, for instance this person seems to be motivated by new opportunities and praise but finds integration into new roles or teams a challenge, also interpersonal conflict is a low. Recognising these patterns can help to make you more aware of those things you enjoy and get satisfaction from and situations, events and interactions that cause you personal challenge. So, when looking ahead to future changes you might like to consider these issues when thinking about an organisation or job.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 23: PERSONAL MOTIVATORS (FINEST MOMENTS) Understanding your personal motivators is useful to help you recognise when you work at your best. So how would you describe your personal motivators? List in your workbook up to six things you believe contribute to your level of motivation at work. These will be things that keep you energised, engaged and involved. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Another activity we often use to help people identify what motivates them is called “Finest Moments”. The idea is to focus on a time when you believe you have performed well and have been proud of yourself. Use the following process to prompt your memory and reflection.

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Think about a time in your life when you were particularly proud of an achievement. This can be at any stage, recent or in the past, and either work based or in your personal life. The key here is to be sure it is something that you were and still are proud of. How would you describe the event?

Make brief notes about the event, situation or achievement

Now think about it – how did it make you feel at the time? How does it make you feel now? Why do you think this is?

Think about who helped you and how you prepared for the event?

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Now, identify the skills and capabilities you used or developed in working towards this achievement

What did you learn about yourself at the time and what does this tell you about yourself now?

Now re-read all your notes about this finest moment and identify what you have learned about yourself from this. Ask yourself what it is that motivated you to achieve?

Now, look back at the list of six personal motivators you made earlier – does that list reflect what you have identified during the finest moment’s reflection. Are there any other motivators you can now add?

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 24: CAREER DRIVERS Your career drivers are those forces that affect the decisions we make about our career. They identify those things that contribute towards your satisfaction and motivation at work. Edgar Schein designed a classic test called Career Anchors that aimed to help people identify their personal career drivers. We have used the basic premise originally suggested by Schein but have updated the possible drivers to make the list more contemporary.

Quiz: What are My Career Drivers? The following items are often identified as career drivers for individuals. Indicate with a tick those that apply to you. You can also add your own categories to this list. Once you have reviewed the list carefully, decide which are the most important to you currently, try to select only two or at most three of the vital drivers that you could not live without. This is important in order to focus your mind to help identify the key drivers for your future career. Table 5-1 Creativity: I want to use my creative talents at work Financial rewards: I want a job that will make me financially secure Service: I want a job that means I can give something back to society e.g. working in the charity sector or the public sector Autonomy: It’s important for me to have a job where I have autonomy and freedom to act Corporate ambitions: I want to aim for the highest level in corporate life e.g. as a chief executive or senior director/vice president role Blue-chip employers: I’m keen to work for the best company in my chosen field Entrepreneur: I want to set up and run my own business

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STEM skill set: My dream is to have a job with STEM skills e.g. in science, technical, engineering, medicine or in maths Technical expert: My ambition is to be a technical expert in my chosen field A people person: I enjoy working with a team of others and the social interaction with colleagues/co-workers Work-Life balance: My ideal job is one where I will have a good work-life balance e.g. the opportunity of flexible working (by hours or place), term-time contracts, compressed working week, etc. Job security: I am looking for a job (or sector) that will offer me long-term job security An international career: Ideally, I wish to work for a multinational or find a job that offers the opportunity to travel regularly Sustainability and green issues: it’s important to me to work for a socially responsible employer Others … list below:

Now, try to identify your 2 or 3 ‘top’ drivers. This should help you to identify what you seek to satisfy going ahead and will assist you in selecting roles, sectors and organisations to target when moving jobs. Make notes about this. 1. 2. 3.

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Can you see the link between these career drivers and the values you identified in the earlier exercise? What does this tell you about what you need and want from your working life – this is a ‘sense-making’ exercise so it’s worth spending a bit of time here.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 25: MY RELATIONSHIP NETWORK Who are the people in your life who provide support and career guidance and what role do they play in your work life and career? In thinking about your relationship network, you may also like to reflect about people who have contributed to your career development in the past. So, take some time to think back, and using a mind mapping process do two separate network maps. Firstly, think backwards (select a time frame that makes sense for your career) then move to your second map and think about today. Here’s an example of a network diagram:

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Relationship Network Map Example Fig.5-5

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Fig.5-6 Summary of My Past Relationships Map

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My Current Relationships Map

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Once you have created your network maps you should use this information to ask yourself a range of questions: Are there any people who appear on both maps? How have they contributed? Is it in a positive or negative way? What does this tell you?

Can you categorise the people, for instance: x Most helpful/least helpful x People you find easy to get on with/more challenging x Work based or not x The roles various people play – listener, challenger, devil’s advocate, trusted advisor, visionary, realist connector etc…. x Time you spend with the people – either by percentage or some other categorisation system

Are there any people on the map that you think you should re-engage with so that you can move them to your other map?

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Looking at the maps overall are there any people you think you should invest more, or less, time in or indeed people who you should add to your relationship network?

Having a clear understanding of the people who have helped you thus far, how they have contributed, who is currently helping and who you might like to add to this network will hopefully help you when planning your way ahead. Having people around you who believe in your abilities and cheer you on can be truly helpful and inspirational. If you are surrounded with negative people or colleagues who are far more likely to criticise rather than praise you, this can often chip away at confidence levels. Take a look at the survey findings below – from earlier Ashridge research about women’s careers – identifying sources of career support. We also think that these findings are just as relevant for men’s careers, and as the data reveals your boss, colleagues and family are all likely to be valuable resources. Are you using as many as you could? Table 5-2 Who Boss Colleagues Family Friends External coach (a relationship based on developing your skills) Internal mentor (a relationship with a more experienced role model) External mentor Internal coach Career Supporters (for women’s careers n = 1,400)

Source of Support % 88 80 71 57 34 29 20 11

Source: Holton, V. & Dent, F. (2012) Women in Business: Navigating Career Success. Palgrave.

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So, think about your support structures – what does your list look like? Complete the blank list below. How strong is your support network? Do you rely mostly on yourself? How could you improve and strengthen this support network? If you do not currently have any colleagues around you who offer support, then how could you change this? Could you ask some people who you think would be great in this role and talk to them about your current hopes, challenges and plans? You might like to read a little more on this topic. Try this article by Rodriguez and Marcelles, which you can find online in The Muse. You can find the access details in the resource section at the back of the book.

What does your support list look like? Table 5-3 Who supports you? Boss Colleagues Family Friends External coach (a relationship based on developing your skills) Internal mentor (a relationship with a more experienced role model) External mentor Internal coach Others who support you?

Tick all those that apply

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 26: MY BRAND AND USP Let’s move on to identifying yourself as a brand or USP (unique selling proposition). This can be a useful creative process in a variety of situations. It’s also helpful as part of a summary process when you examine the information so far in this chapter. So, what do you stand for?

How would you describe your job, role, profession, career so far?

Think about what you would like to get across to others about who you are in relation to your job role

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Another way of looking at this is to create an ‘elevator pitch’ which is a short, focused description to illustrate who you are in relation to your job. By short, we mean a couple of minutes maximum!

Another creative way to visualise your brand is to design an image or metaphor that represents your key values and USPs. For instance, do you see yourself as a sleek racehorse who is ambitious, competitive and fast paced or do you see yourself as a big cuddly bear as a friendly team leader who can be relied on for support?

Thinking of yourself as a brand and identifying where you are now will contribute to your thoughts for the future. For instance: if someone asks you about your job or career you can use your ‘elevator pitch’ to engage them and encourage further conversation.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 27: CAREER REALITIES It’s time for a reality check. There are always certain career realities we must consider when examining our working life and career. Think about the realities that have affected your decisions in the past and those that continue to do so and indeed those that will affect you in the future. By this we mean things like: x x x x x x x

Geographic location Remuneration package Family commitments Skills and abilities My qualifications Career and life stage Others …….

Thinking about each of these realities indicate any opportunities, restrictions and compromises that you have made

When moving ahead you can explore these realities to determine if they are insurmountable or not. When things might change and how. How these opportunities and restrictions affect your way ahead.

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WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN EARLIER IN MY CAREER This is a question that is often posed to successful people to elicit thought provoking ideas that other people can learn from. Thinking about and asking yourself this same question can be enlightening to help guide you on your journey ahead. A number of people we interviewed put the spotlight on early career moments when they simply completed a task or project without realising the scale or level of their achievement. If they had recognised this, then it would have helped in appreciating just how capable – and clever – they were. Confidence in your own abilities is a crucial part of anyone’s career success (industry, optimism, resilience and high levels of determination are also valuable parts of that equation). Mark told us about an event in his early career when he was given responsibility to organise a large international conference. He knew at the time that this would be hard work, difficult to organise and exciting. It was a raging success and he got loads of positive feedback. Of course, this boosted his confidence immediately. It was only in later years when he looked back that he realised what he achieved by blindly getting on with something he had never done before and not knowing what he didn’t know. He wished that he had reflected more at the time about his success, and additionally had worked with someone who helped him to review and think through what he had learned and how best to capitalise on it. Certain events – a new job, a secondment opportunity, a special project, getting a sudden promotion or if you are stepping out into the wide blue yonder as an entrepreneur – can provide lots of information about what we value and love, as well as what we dislike, about our work. Perhaps the promotion did not work out or you did not enjoy the new role, maybe a company culture did not match your values. Often people stay in a company or job for too long. This ‘comfort zone’ can be hard to recognise not least because it feels… Well, it just feels so comfortable. Honesty about your strengths and especially talking through any weakness is essential to discover more about yourself and about those career values that all of us have. Similarly, it is not an exercise to be hurried, so block out a reasonable amount of time.

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Crisis and any bad meltdown moments can be particularly revealing, not least because we can appreciate how strong we are (or our team is) at such times. Leaders often say they learn more from times of failure than from success. How people deal with a bad situation reveals a lot about their personal qualities, determination and staying power. ‘Stick-ability’ is our technical term for this, and it’s a good way to think about it and can help you to understand resilience and bounce back. Everyone can learn these qualities but unfortunately, few organisations provide training and support to help with this. It is not necessarily the type of event that will make the difference and provide the insights, it is more about how you deal with such problems. Change management skills often highly valued in business and are sometimes in short supply. The same is definitely true in times of crisis; some people are brave and rise to any challenge while others dissolve. In a large organisation, it can also be enlightening to ask colleagues the question – ‘what do they wish they had known earlier?’ They may have broader or different experiences and provide some key career events that make for a good CV for that sector or organisation. International, operational, change projects and an ability to turn around a failing team are often key events. Sometimes people talk about working with a mentor for the first time – which is always helpful at any or every career stage. A mentor is someone who is more experienced or a person you admire. In an earlier career book, we asked women ‘what do you wish you had known earlier in your career?’ Among the many insights and pearls of wisdom, there were some heartfelt regrets such as not taking the opportunity for further education or lacking the courage to change career direction. In hindsight, some said they were too busy working away with their head down, of course the downside of this is that it hid their skills and abilities so well as to become almost invisible! This quieter, more silent role can also happen to people in work meetings and in events where there is a bigger audience such as company conferences and workshops. It is not only an issue for younger people, but it can also sabotage careers at more senior levels so take care that your contribution is loud and clear, your voice is heard and that you don’t get ‘talked down.’ Two themes we heard about frequently raise crucial issues, in brief:

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x Self-knowledge and self-belief, as someone said, “I wish I’d known earlier just how good I was…” Lack of targeted feedback can really hold back someone’s career. The comment described an early career phase and innovative work in cancer treatment, but it was only later this individual understood how important this work was. Self-knowledge also can help identify certain situations, for example understanding when you move from occasionally being too busy into the chronic, dangerous zone of overworking. This would include someone working ten or twelve-hour days, feels unable to take holidays, has little or no support or is constantly struggling to achieve the same results but with fewer and fewer staff in their team. Too many organisations and leadership teams, still have a badge of honour for present-ism and value working impossibly long hours. A senior manager in financial services sent out an email to their team asking why only eleven junior staff were at their desks at 11.30pm at night. They had expected to see more! Alarm bells rang for a marketing executive we know with a question he was asked during his second recruitment interviews. All seemed set for an excellent job offer until, “we do hope you are team player, we need this here as we want a lot of those kind of people who enjoy putting in a weekend or pulling an all-nighter if that’s what it takes to deliver for an important customer pitch.” Another manager boasted of commitment levels in their team: “I don’t need to ask them to stay until 6.30 or 9.30 pm; they know when this is needed without me asking them…” There is a fine line between commitment and exploitation so make sure the latter is not happening to you. x Ambition “If only I’d been more ambitious,” was something many people said. Sometimes career guidance had been limited, but others recognised their own lack of ambition, a kind of lethargy where it seems more comfortable to aim at the lowest rather than the highest level. With more motivation, more curiosity and investigation or better career guidance, they now recognised that they could have achieved much more. There is also a certain irony in today’s digital age, that while far more online career advice sites and countless articles are available, many individuals do not receive the support and structured career guidance to help them to broaden their horizons and to aim high. There is a strong connection between confidence and ambition. Some people told us that when they experienced their first setback or career disappointment, they gave up. Others may apply for a key

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promotion a number of times but do not give up – there may be any number of reasons why you are not successful. It is crucial to understand clearly why it happened. There seems to be an optimum level of confidence as highlighted by Tomas Chammoro-Premuzic, an organisational psychologist, author and TED talk presenter, who found that too low is bad and too high often created arrogance or self-delusion. So, someone verging towards less confident was more likely to listen and act on negative feedback, work harder and understand the vital importance of being fully prepared. This means not just doing a bit of background work about a potential employer or a key presentation but doing research to fully understand how you might present yourself to a potential employer. You may also like to hear the view of someone who sees many job candidates, “The most likely failure I constantly see is that they do not know enough or sometimes anything about our company.” These people rarely make it through to the second interview stage. HR Executive in Service Organisation

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 28: WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN EARLIER IN MY CAREER Ask yourself “What do I wish I’d known earlier in my career?” This will encourage you to use the wisdom of hindsight that in turn helps us to understand ourselves more clearly and surface key career values and ideas that we are not always aware of. Make notes

DERAILMENT One of the key dangers in contemporary career management is the risk of derailment. What do we mean by derailment? It means being knocked off your planned course, of not achieving what you, and others such as your friends, family, manager and HR department, for example, thought and expected you to achieve. But does it happen a lot? Well, a classic study by US researcher Morgan McCall and the Center for Creative Leadership have shown that derailment is a very common occurrence among high-potential managers in organisations. What happens is that the qualities which initially led these managers to being on the fast track actually have a downside, which has the potential to knock them off course later in their career. Of course, this does not only happen to people identified as high potentials; it can happen to anyone. There are a number of common derailment themes – the behaviours, events and situations that cause a person to fall off the track of career/job success. These fall into three main categories – personal, organisational, situational. It is interesting to note that research has shown that the most

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frequently cited reason for derailment is poor interpersonal skills in particular the ‘inability to maintain and develop good working relationships’. Table 5-4 Derailment Themes Personal x Overdone strengths – confidence when overdone is arrogance x Over statement of abilities x Strong principles moving to dogmatism x Becoming out of date – over reliance on past skills and achievements x Naivety with regard to the political landscape x Personality traits for instance, some traits are judged as charming for some and irritating to others. x Poor interpersonal skills x Inability to adapt x Failure to maintain and develop effective working relationships

Organisational x Change of key personnel for instance, a new CEO or boss. x Change in business strategy x Organisational merger or takeover x Clash of values for instance, sustainability and environmental issues are front of mind for some but not for others x Failure to meet objectives x Failure to manage expectations x Organisational culture changes x Disillusionment with organisational values, structures and expectations

Situational x Many of the natural transitions that people make in a career are potential danger points. For instance, moving from specialist to generalist or vice versa. From team member to team leader. x Power dynamics and relational support. For instance, losing a trusted sponsor or champion. x Getting a new boss who you don’t get on with x Personality clashes x Suffering from any illnesses, either physical or psychological

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Self-awareness, getting regular feedback, keeping up to date and connected within your organisation are all ways of mitigating against derailment. Of course, we cannot anticipate every eventuality but cognisance, knowledge and keeping your ear to the ground and knowing what’s going on in your organisation and environment will all help. Above all a willingness to work with change and adapt and flex to suit situations will hold you in good stead and contribute to your survival in the long run.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 29: DERAILMENT Before thinking about your own potential derailers we suggest that you identify people that you know of who have derailed and think about what it was that caused their fall from grace. Rarely do people in organisations talk about derailment, you may occasionally come across it on a development programme but even then, it is rare. So, giving it some thought when career planning will likely pay dividends. For instance, there are many examples of politicians and other famous people who have derailed largely because they have allowed their ego to become too big and to begin to be careless about what they say and do. Clearly none of them expected to fail and fall from grace. Rather than famous people though try to think about people you know of. Always remember that some people can derail due to no fault of their own, this is why it is so important to be politically savvy and have good organisational and personal antennae. Now reflect and make notes about your own situation and consider any possible derailment risk areas

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A Final Reflective Exercise This chapter has all been about discovery and reflection, looking backwards before we move forward and beginning to plan the way ahead. So, what has this told you? Reading over and thinking about your responses to the various exercises what is this telling you about yourself and your career journey so far that can help inform your way ahead?

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 30: FREEFORM REVIEW Freeform review is a powerful process for recording your thoughts and gaining insight. Take some blank sheets of paper or pages in your note or workbook and freeform write for 5-7 minutes or as long as you can continue. The important aspect of this sort of note taking is that you do not judge or edit, you simply write down your thoughts and feelings. This exercise in itself can be remarkably freeing and releasing in that you are in no way evaluating at this stage. Have a go at answering the question, “what has all this reflection and introspection told me about myself and my career so far?” Freeform writing is an excellent skill to develop. Sometimes called journaling it can be a useful process to build into your daily/weekly routines. Building regular reflection into your routines can be cathartic and also helpful for recording and understanding important elements of your life and career.

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The next stage is to interrogate this information by making summary notes, highlighting what you feel to be the most valuable learning to carry ahead and generally identifying what you believe to be the most helpful thoughts and insights to apply to your future planning and career. At this stage you may wish to summarise by using a note taking technique such as mind mapping.

Summary notes from freeform writing

CHAPTER SIX FINDING YOUR WAY FORWARD

We have worked through and introduced you to a range of common career dilemmas, predicaments and challenges. We have encouraged you to explore where you have been and where you are now. The challenge going ahead is to make sense of all of this information and shape it into a coherent plan to assist in your future development and planning. Career or job planning is never easy because more than ever it is becoming harder to predict and structure a career path. There are so many unknowns, most of which we’ve talked through earlier in this book. x x x x x x

new jobs emerging pace of change and disruption as we’ve never known it before the impact of world events e.g. Covid-19 the changing nature of organisational life and structure family dynamics, for instance dual career couples and many others.

However, we remain fast to our belief that preparation and planning are essential to be clear about what you are looking for and to put you in a good position to take best advantage of opportunities when they arise. Career planning in our view is more relevant than ever, but it is now different. No longer can you plan a timeline for progression though an organisation, sector, job role, or profession but you can think about and plan what you require for a successful and fulfilled working life. We’ve tried to emphasise to you that self-awareness is an essential component for success in so many areas of life, and work and career planning is no exception. The evolution of careers means that people have moved away from climbing a career ladder towards a complex process that seems like crazy paving. Some of the paving stones include creating a brilliant CV, ensuring you have a good network and online presence, rethinking simple upwards progression through an organisation to thinking

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more about broadening and developing your skill set and most importantly, developing the career agility to adapt and flex across many boundaries. In this chapter we will aim to provide you with a template to make sense of your analysis so far and to create an action plan of ideas for your future working life or career journey. We will also highlight some common traps to avoid and offer you a range of practical and important tips for effectiveness, in particular a coaching framework which will allow you to self-coach as well as to help others with their own career dilemmas. Much of the rest of this chapter is reviewing and making sense of what you have learned so far. Then beginning to structure your thoughts and ideas for the future.

DEVELOPING YOURSELF AND HELPING OTHERS To be effective in managing your career future there are a few practical ways that you can help yourself. In previous chapters we have mentioned the important role an executive coach or a mentor can play in helping you to explore, review and plan your career ahead. However, using a professional coach is not always possible nor is it available to all of us. That said, there are a few ways you can adapt professional coaching principles to coach yourself or to work in coaching relationships with others – either colleagues or even friends – where you help one another. Let’s start by looking at how you can coach yourself. We have adapted a well-known coaching model developed by John Whitmore which you can use to work through your thoughts and ideas about your career future. Using this approach on yourself involves you in asking a range of questions at each stage to help you analyse, focus and plan. The table below illustrates the process and beneath it we suggest a range of relevant questions for each stage. In using this process, you must flex and adapt it to suit your own particular needs. For instance, not all of the suggested questions will apply to your particular situation or needs. Use the ones

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that do to get you started and use the others to prompt you to think about questions that work for you. Table 6-1: A Process for Developing Yourself GROW - what exactly do you want to achieve? REALITY - what is going on at the moment around your goal? OPTIONS - what possibilities for action do you have? WILL - what will you commit to doing? EXPERIMENT - what other actions could you try? REVIEW - what happened? did it go as planned?

GOAL What are your aims and objectives? What is your timescale? How attainable is this? Can you identify any challenges you might experience? How will you measure progress? REALITIES What skills and strengths do you already have in relation to your goals? How realistic are your goals? What barriers might you experience? Who will support you, who might hinder you? How do you feel about the challenge and your aims and goals? What resources are available to support you?

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OPTIONS What choices and possibilities are open to you? What things could you do differently that might contribute to your goals? Anything else? Anything else? WILL What is your plan? How will you achieve your goal? What motivates you to achieve your goal? Have you got support in achieving your goal – who and what will they do to help? How much do you really want to achieve this goal – score out of ten? (where 10 is ‘very much indeed’ and 1 is ‘whatever!’) Start date? EXPERIMENT What are the different ways you could test out your plan? Could you 'work shadow' or 'job share' another role? Could you be seconded to another department or project? Could you ask for feedback from somebody new? From another generation? REVIEW Did your experiment work out the way you thought it would? What result did you actually get? How will you continue to progress? What energy level do you have to achieve your goals and indeed to continue to grow? This approach can be used both on yourself and as part of a process to use if you are working with another in a co-coaching relationship or indeed in small coaching groups. In addition to applying this process to yourself there are also clear benefits to be gained from working with others in a mutually supportive coaching relationship. Working with others provides you with a sounding board to test your ideas, it will help you to build your interpersonal skills and trusting relationships with others and may contribute to your overall effectiveness in your role. Any relationships you develop must be made

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from a position of trust on all sides. Trust that you can share openly and trust that you can maintain confidentiality in relation to what you all discuss. We heard of lots of examples where people feel their boss or direct line manager is the best person to have this relationship with, but do be aware that sometimes there may be conflicts of interest (either now or in future) which will interfere with the support you can get from him or her. You might also wish to think about who you want to establish this sort of coaching relationship with. Some possibilities include people you know who have similar challenges to you or people you feel you could learn from. These people may not always be the most obvious people or indeed those you already have good relationships with; they may be people who you have to develop a whole new relationship with. Once you have established these relationships it is important to also take some time to mutually agree certain ground rules for working together such as: x x x x

The relationship is one of reflection and questioning not evaluating Confidentiality is key Agreeing your joint and individual objectives Adopting a process – timing for each meeting, venue, reviewing on a regular basis to ensure its working.

As well as focusing on yourself you can also offer support to others. All the techniques suggested above can be applied to working with others and indeed many of the reflective processes in this book can be adapted and used when working with others.

KEY INSIGHTS GAINED SO FAR We hope that the information gleaned and analysis you have undertaken up to this stage has raised your self-awareness, given you greater understanding and insight into what makes you tick career wise and how you might structure and plan for the future. For some of you this will mean creating a comprehensive career action plan, for others it will mean recognition that you are content and happy where you are at present. For others, it may mean making compromises. Whatever it means for you it is still important to draw meaning from the analysis, create practical actions

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and make notes about insights so that you are clear about your career/work future.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 31: OVERVIEW OF LEARNING SO FAR What I have got going for me currently – strengths, opportunities, development needs and achievements?

What I have identified as my main career values, drivers and motivators?

What insights have I gained from my key achievements at work to date?

Articulate and describe brand you

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 32: REALITIES AND ISSUES TO BE AWARE OF In chapter 1 we talked about career tribes. So, what do you think your career tribe is now? How does that affect your future?

What other career tribes are attractive to you?

What career predicaments and dilemmas do you currently face and how might they affect your future?

What expectations do you have of your career/work going ahead?

What life and career stage are you at currently and what are the implications of this for your working life?

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Who have you identified as part of your career network and how will you leverage these people to best effect?

What do you wish you’d known earlier in life that might be useful for the future?

What are the limiting restrictions and real restrictions that affect your way ahead and what can you do about these?

What are your initial thoughts about your career agility in the past and going forward from here?

Any other insights that you believe would be helpful

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 33: IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER What does career/work future mean for me?

What is my timeline?

Who will help me?

How will I measure success?

How will I measure my career agility?

Finally, how realistic am I being?

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If you have got this far in reading this book and undertaking all (or many) of the reflections, then you should have good insight into what your career/job future will involve. Before we move to the final stage of creating an action plan, we have one further and very important reflective checkpoint together with a useful tool to support you when making decisions.

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 34: LIMITING RESTRICTIONS In our experience and in our research, we heard many stories where people held themselves back at various stages, thus slowing down their progress and development. The chart below lists a range of commonly mentioned limiting restrictions that held people back. Indicate those that apply to you. Table 6-2 LIMITING RESTRICTION x I’m not worthy x I can’t cope x I don’t have all the qualifications necessary x I don’t have all the skills on their list x I have to get it right x I don’t deserve it x I don’t have enough time, money, support, etc… x I don’t want others to think I am better than them x I don’t think my partner and family would like it x I haven’t the skill to be in charge of others x I’ll just fail anyway x I’m rubbish at interviews

DOES THIS APPLY TO YOU? Yes? No? Maybe?

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Limiting restrictions are pervasive and can severely affect your selfconfidence and ambition. However, they are not facts they are completely within your own control and you can challenge and change. They are a mindset that you have developed often over many years based on what others tell you, social stereotyping and norms, as well as your own insecurities. Self-coaching and questioning where and when they became part of your belief system can go a long way to ridding you of these gremlins. Being aware of the limitations and restrictions you apply to yourself and your situation is a useful piece of self-awareness. The trick is to check which are real constraints and which are assumptions you are making. The real ones need practical workarounds to overcome, the assumptions need to be challenged in a positive way. The school of Positive Psychology, and the work of Martin Seligman in particular, focuses on the positive aspects of your situation and will help you to understand how you can use these to your advantage. Remember, there are other common traps we fall into when in the midst of a career dilemma. x Allowing yourself to be stereotyped by your age, gender, ethnicity or religious beliefs x Assuming geographical limitations x Making a quick decision x Not making any decision – taking the easy way out x Being frightened to ask for help, support or promotion x Being frightened to leave the comfort zone of your past/current career x Jumping from the frying pan into the fire – change for change’s sake x Letting others decide for you or simply doing what others expect x Not talking to others about the issues you face and how you would really like to resolve them.

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SUPPORTING YOURSELF AND OTHERS THROUGH CAREER DILEMMAS Throughout the book, we have often talked of the importance of talking to others, involving them in your decisions and seeking support and advice. We’d like now just to take a moment to let you think about how you might be one of those ‘others’ for someone else. How might you help them resolve a career dilemma or predicament? If you are a team leader you are probably offering all your colleagues support and advice on these issues, and if you are not yet doing this, now is a good time to start. The following exercises and action planning will highlight whether you are falling into any of these traps and help you to avoid them

REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 35: DECISION MATRIX We’d also like to offer you a practical tool to assist in any decisions you need to make going ahead. We call this a decision matrix. It takes you through a process to structure, analyse and think through any decision you need to make. This is particularly useful in our VUCA world. The purpose of the exercise is to help you to analyse your decision process and reflect and plan how to proceed. The process is simple. (A sample matrix is illustrated below.) Draw a 2 x 2 box onto a sheet of paper. Describe the decision you are facing. Complete the 4 boxes with your thoughts about the issues related to the decision. Having practical and clear information about how you feel in relation to the decision will help you to make a wellconsidered decision and have a better outcome.

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Fig. 6-1

ACTION PLANNING Be aware that moving from analysis and reflection to actually planning and implementing can sometimes be a difficult transition. People we talk to describe a range of emotions including fear, a feeling of being overwhelmed, nervous, confused, impatient, conflicted and of course excitement. Whatever you are feeling do not let it divert you from taking the information and thoughts you have worked hard to distil and developing them into a practical, coherent action plan. Now you have reached this stage and you are beginning to formulate your written action plan; the real challenge is in actively beginning the

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process. So, whatever your first steps are there will be positive moments, hurdles and setbacks to manoeuvre. So, give some thought to the sort of hurdles and setbacks you might encounter and develop coping strategies to overcome them. As in all successful journeys with a clear goal we also need success criteria to help us to measure the progress along the way. Many of you will have encountered SMART Objectives: Table 6-3 SPECIFIC MEASURABLE ACHIEVABLE RELEVANT TIMED

Identify a clear goal that you wish to achieve How will I know when I have done it? Be realistic. Can you achieve your goal in the time frame and what is your commitment level in achieving it? Is it relevant to your overall career/job aims? What’s your timeline? When will you complete it by?

Applying the SMART process to your action planning will help you keep on track and relevant. Of course, that does not mean to say that you cannot review and alter your plan. The trick is that by applying SMART principles, in addition to having a well-structured and thought through plan, any adaptations along the journey will be easier to make. In addition to creating an action plan you should also give some thought to your review process, specifically how often you will do this which may vary depending upon the timeline you are working to. You may also like to enlist the support of a coach or mentor to help in the review process and also to help keep you on track. So, in summary important elements of action planning are: x x x x x

Be clear that you are absolutely committed to your goals Goals must be challenging yet realistic and relevant Enlist the help of others to keep you focused Create a review process to keep the momentum going Give yourself rewards along the way and remember to celebrate success.

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REFLECTIVE CHECKPOINT 36: ACTION PLAN TEMPLATE Action Plan Use the template below to complete your initial ideas on the following page you will find another copy which you can photocopy for future use. Table 6-4 ACTION PLAN My goal is…. (for example: to get promoted this year, to retrain as a ……, to move to a new organisation in a more senior role, to develop my skills by attending a Leadership or Professional Programme)

The steps I will take are:

Timing

Who or what will help me?

How will I measure success?

What setbacks am I likely to encounter and how will I deal with them?

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Table 6-5 ACTION PLAN My goal is…. (for example: to get promoted this year, to retrain as a ……, to move to a new organisation in a more senior role, to develop my skills by attending a Leadership or Professional Programme)

The steps I will take are:

Timing

Who or what will help me?

How will I measure success?

What setbacks am I likely to encounter and how will I deal with them?

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Summary statement Your challenge now is to move from theory into practice. You have worked through many aspects of the person you have brought to your working life. The trick is now to take that person to a new working life. You must take yourself on the journey, into the real world, that leads to a renewed and lasting career. We’d just like to close by offering you a few quick tips to remember. Hopefully, these will seem familiar to you after having worked through the book. We wish you all the luck in the world!

10 TOP TIPS FOR SUCCESS: x Make sure you are in a positive frame of mind, not only when attending interviews, etc., but also when you are making plans. Be aware and eliminate any negative assumptions you hold. Don’t allow yourself to get disheartened if you encounter initial setbacks. x Think about your core skills and strengths and how best you can deploy them. x Be aware of the people you surround yourself with – your boss, colleagues, reports, etc. Are these people energisers or depleters? Successful people tend to connect and work with energisers or as Mary Portas calls them “radiators”. x Remember you are not alone in managing and developing your career/work future, there are lots of support mechanisms – get a coach, identify a sponsor or mentor, attend a development programme, join or create a personal support group, etc… x Get out there and talk to people. Jobs these days are so frequently achieved through contacts not advertisements and employment agencies. x Don’t make knee jerk decisions. Take time to research, reflect and review to ensure any changes are appropriate for your goals. x Sometimes it is better to stay put and deepen and broaden than moving on inappropriately. Depending upon what your goals are you may find that your current employer would be willing to accommodate them. x Who will be your conscience? It is always good to have a trusted adviser who will give you honest feedback, reality checks and generally play devil’s advocate. x Remember to consider your nearest and dearest in any decision-making about future plans. x Remember that a large part of agility is grasping opportunities when they arise. Make sure you don’t miss them.

CHAPTER SEVEN REFERENCES AND BOOKLIST, CAREER APPS AND ONLINE RESOURCES

Auerbach, A., Flex: The Modern Woman’s Handbook. (2019). HarperCollins Brent, M., & Dent, F.E., The Leader’s Guide to Influence: How to Use Soft Skills to Get Hard Results. (2010) FT Prentice Hall Brent, M., & Dent, F.E., The Leader’s Guide to Coaching and Mentoring (2015) Pearson Education Ltd Bridges, W., Jobshift: How to Prosper in a Workplace without Jobs. (1995) Nicolas Brealey Brown, B., Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent and Lead. (2015) Trivia-On-Books Chambers, N., Percy, C., & Rogers, M., Disconnected: Career Aspirations and Jobs in the UK (2020) Education and Employers (www.educationandemployers.com) Dent, F. E., & Holton, V., How to Thrive and Survive as a Working Woman: A Coach Yourself Toolkit. (2017) Bloomsbury Ditzler, J., Your Best Year Yet!: The 10 Questions that will Change your Life Forever. (2006) Harper Element Dorling Kindersley., The Careers Handbook: The Graphic Guide to Finding the Perfect Job for You. (2015) Dorling Kindersley Publishers Drake, T., Generation Cherry: Powerful Strategies to give you a Second Bite of The Cherry. (2017) Red Door Drake, T., Do Agile/ Futureproof your Mindset. Stay Grounded. (2020) The Do Book Company Erikson, E., summarises his theory in Identity and the Life Cycle (New York: International University Press, 1959). Ferris, T., Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World. (2017) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Fetzer, A.V., & Aaron, S., Climb the Green Ladder: Make your Company and Career more Sustainable. (2010) John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Freeman, M., The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife. (2011) Public Affairs Publishing Friedman, S.D., Saunders, E.G., Bregman, P., & Dowling, D.W., HBR Guide to Work-Life Balance. (2019) Harvard Business Review Press Geey, D., Done Deal: An Insider's Guide to Player Contracts, MillionPound Transfers and Premier League Big Business. (2019) Bloomsbury. Goins, J., The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What you Were Meant to Do. (2015) Thomas Nelson Gratton, L., & Scott, A., The 100 Year Life. Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. (2016) Bloomsbury Groskop, V., & Buster., How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking (2018) Penguin Random House Hall, D.T., The Protean Career: A Quarter-century Journey. (1977) Journal of vocational ... Psychological Bulletin 84 (2), 265 Hall, D.T., (2002), Careers In and Out of the Organization. (2002) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Hall, D. T. (2004), ‘The Protean Career: A Quarter-Century Journey,’ Journal of Vocational Behavior, (2004) 65, 1, 1–13 Hammond, C., The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age (2019) Cano Hibberd, J., The Imposter Cure: How to Stop Feeling Like a Fraud and Escape the Mind-trap of Imposter Syndrome. (2019) Aster Hind, P., & Holton, V., (2019) The Changing Nature of Leadership: An Exploratory Investigation into how the Evolution of Social Media is Changing what it means to be an Effective Leader. (2019) UNICON Holton, V., & Dent, F., (2012) Women in Business: Navigating Career Success. (2012) Palgrave. Honoré, S., & Paine Schofield, C., Culture Shock: Generation Y and their Managers around the World. (2012) Ashridge Business School Ibarra, H., Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. (2003) Harvard Business Press Lees, J., How to Get a Job you Love. (2018) McGraw-Hill Education Lees, J., Take Control of your Career: Practical Steps to Improve your Working Future. (2006) McGraw-Hill Education Leider, R. J., & Webber, A. M., Life Reimagined: Discovering Your New Life Possibilities. (2013) Berrett Koehler Lore, N., The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success. (2012) Touchstone Books Loudermilk, D., Superconductors: Revolutionize your Career and make Big Things Happen. (2018) Kogan Page

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Mills, C., Career Coach: How to Plan your Career and Land your Perfect Job. (2018) Trotman Murray, S., The Burnout Solution (2018) Gill Books Neilsen, E.H., & Gypen, J., The Subordinate’s Predicaments, Harvard Business Review, 1 Sep 1979, 57(5):133-143 Ng, E.S., Lyons, S.T., & Schweitzer, L., Generational Career Shifts: How Matures, Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials View Work. (2018) Emerald Publishing Parsons, J., Powell M., & Culpin, V., Can you Afford not to take Employee well - being Seriously? Ashridge Journal 360 °, Autumn 2012 Petriglieri, J., Couples that Work: How Dual-Career Couples can Thrive in Love and Work. (2019) Penguin Life Pink, D., Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates us. (2011) Riverhead Books Poswolsky, A.S., The Quarter Life Breakthrough: Invest your own Path, Find Meaningful Work and Build a Life that Matters. (2016) J.P.Tarcher, U.S./Perigee Bks., U.S. Potts, O., A Half-Baked Idea. (2019) Penguin Books Pryce, V., Women vs Capitalism: Why we can’t Have it all in a Free Market Economy. (2019) C Hurst & Co Raptopoulos, L., & Fontanella-Khan, J., Mental Health at Work: A Trillion-dollar Taboo. FT Weekend Magazine, July 13/14, 2019. Righton, C., The Life Audit: Take Control of Your Life Now. Every Second Counts. (2004) Hodder Mobius Schein, E.H., & Van Maanen, J., Career Anchors: The Changing Nature of Careers Self-Assessment. (2013) John Wiley. Seligman M., Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing and How to Achieve Them. (2011) Nicholas Brealey Tupper H., & Ellis S., The Squiggly Career: Ditch the Ladder, Discover Opportunity Design Your Career. (2020) Penguin Wasmund, S., Stop Talking, Start Doing Action Book: Practical Tools and Exercises to Give you a Kick in the Pants. (2016) John Wiley. Whitmore, J., Coaching for Performance: The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership (Fully Revised 25th Anniversary Edition). (2010) Nicholas Brealey

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CAREER APPS, ONLINE AND OTHER RESOURCES INCLUDE: Search for jobs: CareerBuilder Job Search: CareerBuilder has a mobile job search app which lets you search for and apply to jobs on the spot or save them; track and manage your applications; get job recommendations and create alerts to hear about new job openings. The app also will send you push notifications any time an employer looks at your profile, so you know who to follow up with first. https://www.careerbuilder.co.uk Heropreneurs was started in 2017 to help people leaving the Armed Services to grow their own business. The site has an app called Imployable which creates a digital CV that matches individuals with available jobs that are posted on the site by firms. The key element of the app is that it is selective. If you do not match all the requirements you can’t apply but the site identifies how and where to gain either the skills or experiences that are outlined. https://heropreneurs.co.uk Career planning: Harvard Business Review has a career planning site that offers advice on changing careers and other topics and articles such as Kieran Setiya’s ‘Facing your Mid-Career Crisis’ published in 2019. https://hbr.org/topic/career-planning Almost every professional association will have career information and/or offer continued professional development (CPD) events which will keep your skills current and staying up to date with the latest developments. At the British Psychological Society for example, career talks offered include neuropsychology and health psychology. The website below has more general careers information. https://careers.bps.org.uk/ Lawyer of the Week: each Thursday The Times feature short interviews with a lawyer asking questions such as, ‘what’s the best advice you’ve received?’ ‘What’s the best decision you’ve taken as a lawyer?’ and ‘which three qualities should a lawyer have? Jonathan Taylor, Q.C., co-head of the sports group at Bird & Bird, reply to this last question was, “work ethic and brainpower are givens. Emotional intelligence is often overlooked.” The Times, May 9 2019.

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Career Mapper: This tool is the first of its kind and uses real time data from millions of job postings to enable users to make informed choices about their next career move and education choices. This tool is provided by Hult International Business School. https://www.careermapper.io The Muse is an online publication with lots of career advice such as this article by Rodriguez, N. & Narcelles, C., Three Types of People you Definitely need in your Network. https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fww w.themuse.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cd097acbc7e154b8db6 3308d85a42b947%7Cf0d1c6fddff0486a8e91cfefefc7d98d%7C0%7C0%7 C637358589907985642&sdata=%2FTUcxF%2FSbSG3%2BGfWAH sSNYRqoX5r6xzoSUCTtgTm4Sk%3D&reserved=0 article, undated, accessed September 2020.

CAREER PODCASTS INCLUDE: Pivot with Jenny Blake: former Google career coach Jenny interviews experts on how they manage to stay agile in a rapidly shifting workforce. Reinventing your career can help any career journey. There also are two books, PIVOT: Turn What's Working for You into What's Next (2016) Portfolio and PIVOT: The Only Move that Matters is the Next Move (2017) Penguin Random. http://PivotMethod.com/podcast YouTube resources: YouTube has had a dedicated career channel for a number of years now and this includes a Day in the Life feature for a broad range of different jobs and roles such as business, healthcare, retail, marketing, music and software. https://www.youtube.com/user/CareersOutThere Ted Talks: There are a variety of talks on careers including Carol Fishman Cohen ‘How to Get Back to Work After a Career Break’ and Scott Dinsmore ‘How to Find Work you Love.’ https://www.ted.com/talks

INDEX

Action plan, 155-169

Decision matrix, 165-169

Boss, 19, 66, 126,139-140, 149, 158, 170. See also Manager

Derailment, 110, 148-151

Brand, personal, 79-80, 110-112, 120, 141-142, 159 Career agility, 2, 7-9, 23, 30, 155, 161162 approaches, 3-6 change, 31-40, 50-51, 71-83 development, 8-10, 113-115, 121, 134 drivers, 132-134, 123-124 network, 161 path, 8-9, 13, 28-30, 69-74 predicaments, 9, 15-25, 27, 61, 160 profile, 12 realities, 10, 54-55, 101, 143147, 160 stages and choices, 93-99 themes, 27-36, 61-70 tribe, 12-13, 160 values, 18-20, 43, 91, 123-126, 144-149, 159

Dual careers, 10, 37, 39-42, 61-68, 100, 154 Expectations, 17, 37-39, 42-43, 45, 70, 97, 115-121, 126, 149, 160 Family structure, 27, 37-42, 105 Feedback, 17, 43-44, 144, 146-147, 150 Filter management, 30 Friends, 8, 79, 84-85, 89, 102, 105106, 123, 139-140, 148, 155 Gig economy, 31-35, 36 Goals, 35, 43, 65, 90, 156-157, 167170 Holacracy, 45 Identity, 34, 65, 80-82, 84-87, 93

Coaching, 25, 27, 29, 46, 51, 122, 126, 155-159, 164

Influence(r), 29-30, 38, 48, 50, 5456, 85

Colleagues, 19-20, 43-46, 51, 53-55, 133, 139-140, 145, 155-156, 165, 170

Influencing skills, 27, 29-30, 53-57

Current dilemma, 6, 15-19, 21-25, 59-61, 100, 122-125, 154-157, 160, 164-168

Manager, 18-19, 43, 46, 54, 62, 103, 146-148, 158. See also Boss

Career Agility: Strategies for Success Motivation/motivator, 4, 24, 29, 35, 43-44, 77, 112-113, 123-126, 129-133, 146, 157, 159

177

139-140, 145, 149, 155-156, 163, 170 Sponsors, 149, 170

Multigenerational organisations, 27, 43-45 Networking, 48-50, 55, 88-91 Networks, 7, 17, 39-40, 46, 79, 90, 102, 118 Organisational politics, 27, 53-55, 57

Strengths, personal, 6, 8, 10, 29-30, 83, 110-111, 120-122, 144, 149, 156, 170 Support, 7, 33, 36, 39-41, 62, 66, 73, 79-70, 82-83, 134, 139-140, 142, 146, 149, 156-158, 163165, 170 SWOT analysis, 121-123

Psychological contract, 31 Team leader, 104, 142, 149, 165 Redundancy, 5, 10, 39, 61, 69, 7782, 84, 87-94 Resilience, 77, 82-87, 90-92, 106, 144-145

Technology, influence of, 27-30, 32-33, 37, 47-52, 69, 100-101 Transition, 5, 61, 69-74, 77, 96, 118, 149, 166

Sandwich generation, 39 Values, see Career values Self-belief, 81-82, 84, 87, 146 Vlogs, vlogging, 50 Self-esteem, 39, 80, 93, 123 VUCA, 53 Skills, 6, 8-10, 18, 23-24, 28-31, 4445, 47-57, 69-73, 79-80, 89-91, 93, 99, 110-111, 120-123, 131,

Work-life balance, 6, 10, 25, 43, 61, 66-67, 89, 100-109