As career reinvention experts we talk to lots of people about where they are, how they got there, and what they want to become. At this point we have seen some themes that many smart, and accomplished folks have found led them to exit their current situation. There are eight clear, unmistakable danger zones. Take a look below and make every effort to avoid these traps.
We’ve recently worked with a number of people who seem to be experiencing some of the same shifts in their lives. Folks who have created admirable careers and racked up countless accomplishments are asking themselves, 15+ years in, if they are on the right track. Many are considering a complete career change, or are questioning if their current paths were ever right in the first place. Some are experiencing more subtle changes, like a reprioritization of their values. While others just feel, well, different.
And we are seeing some common themes emerging with that we call "mid-life revelations." If you’re reading this and it rings true, you are not alone. Here are some of the mid-life revelations we’ve encountered with our community members and ourselves.
Finding deeper meaning or purpose in work has become much more important. Other benefits of work could be sacrificed in exchange for knowing that your work is making a greater, positive impact. A former colleague with a successful career in finance in the biotech industry decided that while her career afforded her a desirable income, something was missing. She felt she wanted to make a greater positive impact and decided to go back to school to get a master’s degree in social entrepreneurship. Now in a community-building, she makes a fraction of her previous salary but says she is fulfilled by being able to help others each and every day.
Many parent early in their careers are looking for work/life balance to raise a family. During mid-life, balance is just as important and includes a heightened focus on discovering, or re-discovering, themselves. Many of my clients are trying new hobbies, joining clubs, contributing through volunteerism, training for half marathons, or traveling more. A huge bonus is that building or nourishing life outside of work can actually help your career ! A client with impeccable style is a partner in a successful Public Relations firm and has a new found interest in photography. She created an Instagram page showcasing her favorite lifestyle pictures. She’s encouraged to continue to explore her love of style and photography with over 1000 followers on her page and counting!
Speaking of re-discovering, there is definitely a theme of self-reflection . Throughout the early years of climbing the career ladder and raising children, it’s easy to get lost. Taking time to evaluate where you are and where you want to go often becomes more deliberate during mid-life. After completing the StrengthsFinder , one of my clients realized that while she identified with two of her strengths, achievement and discipline, she wondered if they were innate or if her family expectations caused her to excel in these areas. She is an incredibly successful physician at a prominent hospital. She said growing up in her family, the choice was clear: become a doctor or a lawyer. She is still processing what all of this means and says she does not regret becoming a physician, but is looking for a deeper understanding of herself and who she is outside of her family’s expectations.
More than ever, people at this stage want to know that they are valued at their workplace. Some are less interested in promotion while others are still moving quickly toward the top, but all want to do so in an organization that truly values them and what they have to bring. Recently, a dear friend shared with me that she had accepted a role in HR with a new company. She had grown tired of feeling as if her previous company of over a decade did not value professional development and was regularly cutting her budget and resources. She wanted to be a part of an organization that valued her expertise and did not make her continually justify the importance of her work. She left some potential bonuses on the table and her new job is farther from home, adding to her commute, but that’s a trade-off she was willing to make.
You might attend a conference that inspires you once, but what are you doing every day to ensure you’re happy and healthy in your work life? Do you know your career goals and how you plan to achieve them? Are you actively prioritizing the values that matter to you at this stage in your life and career?
Consistent and critical self-assessment is key to helping you understand where your career is. Use these questions to take a thoughtful look at how you feel now, then ask them again in six months, a year, five years, 10, every day to see whether you need to readjust your priorities.
Maybe you’re the go-to techie when IT isn’t around. Maybe you’re always the project lead because you’re more organized than Marie Kondo. Maybe you plan every office event because you have glitter in your veins. These are good shoes to fill, but whether you like playing that “part” in the office is what matters. Each takes time away from the job you were hired to do and might cause extra stress. Look at the extracurricular tasks you pick up and ask yourself if they add value to your work life. If they do, wonderful. If they don’t? Kindly start saying, I want to focus all my energy on this project right now. Can you ask someone else?
It’s easy to forget why your job matters when you’re firing off emails all day long. But no matter what you do, there’s always someone who directly benefits from your tenacity—and hopefully you’re proud of that. Remind yourself of the person, the community, the big picture. Even if all you can think is, I make someone’s day easier, you win. You did that.
We all have parts of our jobs we don’t enjoy. You might hate writing up quarterly reports or loathe the lighting in your office. Those are expected and manageable dislikes. If your answer to this question is something larger, my pay or my hours, then you have reworking to do. Ask for a raise or negotiate flexible hours. Do what you need to do to get back to the point where your biggest negative is that you need to buy a better office lamp.
Just like when you spend too much time with a friend and start using their favorite words or phrases, the longer you work in any role or office, you’re bound to develop habits—some good, some bad. Self-reflection is about celebrating, yes, but it’s also about evolution. Think about ways you’ve been cutting corners or have been negatively contributing to your work life. Be honest, but don’t be overly critical. It’s normal to gossip with coworkers too much sometimes, get a lazy with paperwork, or respond to emails too slowly. Recognize the problem, acknowledge how it could impact your career, and plan how you’ll change that behavior. Easy peasy.
Values are simply what you’ve deemed to be important in your life (travel! kids! working for a mission you believe in!), and they’ll change throughout your career, which is why continuous self-assessment is so important. You need to know what your priorities are and be able to adjust yourself when they shift.
Try asking yourself the basic, What is important to me? Then look at how your career and job align or diverge with your answers to that question.
Do you value a company with a mission and often feel like your job doesn’t impact lives they way you’d like it to—or perhaps compromises your integrity in some way?
Do you need a more flexible time-off policy so you can get your bucket-list travels in?
Do you value self-care and wellness highly but not think your current company meets those needs?
Decide how you can best live up to these values and talk to your manager. And if you can’t achieve them while working where you are, start taking steps to make a career or job change.
Part of having a fulfilling career is building other people up. Scientists consistently study this feel-good-do-good phenomenon, and it’s as important at work as it is outside of it. How are you finding ways to make sure other people on your team are recognized and taken seriously? You don’t have to be a mentor necessarily, but you should find consistent ways to support others in both big and small ways. Did you read over your intern’s resume before they started applying to full-time jobs? Did you give coworkers kudos when you admire their work? Do you speak up when you see discrimination or harassment taking place in your workplace? Ask yourself whether you’re doing enough to bolster success and break down barriers to advancement.
Sometimes when you ask yourself this existential question, it can feel like you’re staring unknowingly into a void. But the question of happiness at work is less metaphysical than it implies. What you’re really asking is, Do I like what I do? Do I like who I work with? Do I like the company I work for? Do I enjoy work more than I dread it? (You will dread even your favorite job sometimes.) And finally, Am I getting everything done that I want to do?
That last question can be tricky because it’s not always about work. It’s also about carving out time for whatever it is that matters to you: your kids, your partner, volunteering, that book that’s been on your shelf for three years, more work. All valid responses. All worth pursuing.
#UNDERUTILIZED: You don’t feel challenged. You kept growing and your responsibilities, scope, and pay haven’t kept pace. Your job feels like a waste of your time.
#NEWPASSION: You were struck by a lighting bolt, and your new interest is drawing your career in a new direction. Now you feel ambivalent about what you do everyday.
#FAMILYCHANGE: Your home life has changed. You have a new child, your children left the nest, or a family member is sick and needs caregiving. You have less or more to give than before, new requirements or possibilities need to be considered.
#NEWBOSS: Your boss has changed, and you aren’t getting the support and resources you were before. They aren’t advocating for and coaching you, the way you know you deserve.
#WRONGDIRECTION: The company has changed direction and you are not as inspired by the latest vision or are concerned about the long-term stability of the organization.
#THREATENEDBOSS: Your boss is competing with you, instead of supporting you. They are threatened by your skills and confidence. You feel unappreciated and undermined.
#BURNEDOUT: You’ve been busting it, and instead of giving you resources so you can adjust back to a sustainable pace, they keep counting on you over-delivering. You are exhausted.
#OVERPERFORMING: There are business issues that need resolving that you see clear as day, and you’ve started to work on them. You are now doing the work of others because it wasn’t getting done. Your efforts to influence leadership to make adjustments to give you authority to fix the problems or solve them another way just isn’t going anywhere.
#STUCKCOMPANY: Your business owners are not focused on growth because the business is producing a comfortable lifestyle for the owner, or is being prepped for sale. They listen to your ideas, but don’t do anything. You are tired of waiting.
#HELICOPTERBOSS: You work for a founder or leader who has a high need for control to his initial vision, and isn’t willing to hear your ideas and give you room to innovate and build on what they have done. The micro-management and limits on creativity are tiresome..
#OVERQUALIFIED: You took a role that was beneath your skills and experience level. At first, learning a new organization or industry was challenging, now you are bored.
#BROKENPROMISES: The company or hiring manager made promises that just haven’t been kept. You imagined things growing different over time to become more fulfilling for you, and you now see that dream you had for this role won’t be realized.
#TOXICCULTURE: The lack of teamwork is de-motivating. Negative energy and unneeded barriers are everywhere. You realize you just can’t be your best self at this place, and maybe in this field.
#DISRUPTION: The industry or occupation you’ve called home is being disrupted by automation, market, or global forces. It is bigger than your company, you need a new path.
#EARNMORE: You have personal goals for your family or yourself that can’t be achieved without more income. Your skills, talents, and interests can earn you more, to accomplish your dreams.
With any of these reasons, the impact on you is the same. You are growing progressively negative and frustrated. You see the impact on your sleep, habits, relationships, and stress-level and know you need to make a change. Deciding what to do can be scary. You’ve got bills, loans, and people depending on you, right? Relax. That angsty discomfort could turn out to be a great thing.
We tend to think of careers as linear—climbing the corporate ladder ever upward, for example. If we’re not making more money each year and getting flashier titles, we’re not successful, right? Actually, not so much.
Careers need to bend and adjust to meet your needs at different life stages. Sometimes a secure, low-demand job is a blessing—allowing you to put more energy toward other things. Are you caring for young children or an aging parent? Longing to go back to school? Renovating or building a home? Look at the whole picture of your life. Figure out what you really need right now, and move in that direction with a solid sense of peacefulness.
We get so hung up on job titles that it can blind us to jobs and careers that might otherwise be fulfilling. What’s more, according to Forbes, chasing job titles might actually bring you less success over the course of your career. There are just as many advice articles arguing job titles are unimportant as there are articles promoting job title worth. Step back and focus instead on what you get to do in a job.
Sometimes that “dream job” doesn’t live up to your hopes and expectations. It’s a bummer, but it happens. Don’t get paralyzed. It’s time to decide how to make the best of the situation, deal with it in a professional manner, and then move on.
William Hawkins, now the CEO of medical device company Medtronic, is refreshingly up front about jogs in his career path. During a Parents Weekend event at Duke University a few years ago, he described a job that was a bad fit to aspiring engineers. He had left a position where he was very successful for what he thought would be a dream job. He quickly discovered the company culture and direction for the position just didn’t match what he wanted to do, or what he had been promised. So for two years he buckled down, did a good job, and then left for a better situation.
If you’re working well outside your job description, but there is no way the company is ever going to pay what you’re worth, then it’s time for a pause. Yes, the company loves your contributions, but how is that helping you? This is a passive way that even well-meaning managers and companies can inadvertently exploit stellar employees. Perhaps this is a reasonable way to gain new skills and experience en route to a better position. Your future at the company is something you should regularly be talking to your boss about. If you can’t envision a route you could take after discussing options at the company, this may be a signal that it’s time to make a change.
If you’re really punching above your pay grade, ask about negotiating a new job description and salary. You can also negotiate other benefits if pay is off the table.
If you’ve always dreamed about being your own boss, a dead-end job could be the catalyst to go solo. Whether you start a small venture on the side or want to work full time on the new business, your current boring, stable job still has a lot to offer for a while. Take time to build up financial resources, develop a business plan, get incorporated, talk with other business owners, and find a mentor. Then, when you are really ready, you can close this chapter of your career.
Wondering if you’ve got the “right stuff” to be an entrepreneur? Check out Foundr’s 3 Reasons Why Not to become an entrepreneur.
