SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? 4 questions for diagnosing commitment issues
Are you just going through the equivalent of a marital rough patch with your employer, or has your relationship with your role simply run its course?
Ask yourself the following questions to unlock the thinking that could help you make that career-defining decision.
1. What if i changed my mindset instead of my job?
A stressful period at work can arise out of nowhere and quickly become all consuming, leading you to arrive at the hasty conclusion that you’ve fallen out of love with your job and something needs to change, stat. If your feet develop an itch during periods of intense workloads or personality clashes, ask yourself if your stress reaction to the situation needs to change, rather than the situation itself.
Corporate leaders are increasingly using the acronym VUCA – originally a military term used in warfare – to define the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity that defines the business world as we know it. The job of a leader, then, is to act as commander-in-chief, and steer his or her troops through tumultuous times so they emerge victorious. So, in many ways, learning to regulate your emotions during difficult periods is the mark of an executive in the making. That’s not to say that the chronically stressed or burned-out worker should continue in an unhappy environment – only you know what’s really going on, so give yourself time to explore the question fully.
Bottom line: Never make a decision about your career when you’re stressed.
Further reading: Diagnosing Burnout – The Questions You Need to Ask
2. CAN I SEE MYSELF DOING MY BOSS’S JOB?
It’s time to dust off your career plan and take stock of where you are now, against where you want to be. If your line manager’s role is the natural – and desirable – next step for you, put together a concrete plan for making your current role (however long you might be in it) work harder towards making you promotion ready, here or elsewhere.
If you’re clear that your boss’s job is not your dream next move, you need to figure out why. Is a sideways shift what you need to add breadth to your skillset and if so, what resources and opportunities can you draw on to nudge yourself closer? If you’re simply hankering after a change of scene, draw an imaginary picture of the horizon. Visualising what you want will enable you to recognise the right opportunities as they crop up.
Bottom line: You don’t have to have a ten-year career map, but a clear idea of where you’re going next in the journey is the best way to ensure you get there.
Further reading: Your 2017 Professional Goal Plan: 5 Ways for Success
3. AM I BEING CRAFTY ENOUGH?
Love elements of your role but despairing of others? If you find yourself constantly torn between moving on to escape the daily clashes with a difficult colleague and sticking with a job that fires you up and presents untold possibilities, then job crafting could be the key.
The term came about after Stanford scholars undertook a study to understand how workers in low paid, devalued jobs were able to report high levels of satisfaction with their work. What they found is that those workers, while meeting their objectives and doing what was expected of them, found additional ways to add purpose to their role – something that benefited them, their team, even the entire company or customer base.
Job crafting can be broken down into:
- task crafting (retooling the activities included in your job to make more room for those you enjoy)
- relationship crafting (revamping your interactions with others)
- cognitive crafting (reframing how you view your tasks and relationships)
“We find that people get the best results when they use all three forms together. For example, a corporate attorney with a passion for teaching could start an intern program (task crafting), get her colleagues involved in the program (relational crafting), and mentally frame the program as an opportunity to fulfil and spread her passion for teaching (cognitive crafting),” concluded the study.
Bottom line: You have more control than you think over how you perform your own job.
Further reading: Take the everywomanNetwork workbook Boost your career satisfaction levels.
4. ARE MY PERSONAL VALUES BEING COMPROMISED?
In a Harvard Business Review case study, a young associate tells how he came to realise that his unhappiness at work wasn’t down to his job, but to a conflict between his personal values and those of his employers.
After a series of redundancies that he felt were managed badly, he began to see that the business afforded no loyalty to even the longest-standing members of the team. They were often made redundant with little warning or emotion. One day, during his lunch break, he stumbled across a lost little boy. He helped him find his mother, but days later he had to confront the fact that his initial reaction was one of frustration: “[My] first thought was, ‘I don’t have time for this’.”
As he reflected on the incident, he realised, “I wasn’t this person two years ago: someone too busy to help a woman reunite with her child… The cost of staying [in my job] outweighed the benefits.” He quit soon after.
It’s important to remember that a value clash doesn’t necessarily have to be the end and that, as with job crafting, if something doesn’t ‘feel right’ within a facet of your organisation, you might have the power to change it.
In another HBR case study, a manager recalls how during a crucial phase in a project, an integral member of the team passed away unexpectedly. His bosses leaned on him heavily to keep the workflow going, but instead he shuffled schedules to enable any colleagues who so wished to attend the memorial. For him, at the time, it was simply a “snap decision”, “albeit within a value system of trying to be decent”, but hindsight provided a valuable lesson: “The highest motivation for team members is to get that kind of emotional connection to the team leader.”
Bottom line: Reflect on your personal workplace values and in what ways they are supported and/or out of sync with your organisation’s.
Further reading: Quiz – Define your career values
