Set, and Reset.
Hi all!
Thank you for the warm welcome back to the “To-Woo” List last month, I loved hearing from many of you and thank you for letting me share my little corner of the internet with you all. And as promised, here we are with a monthly update - July!
How are we all doing? Can you even fathom that we’re at the end of July? Summer feels like it just started, and suddenly it feels like we’re hurtling into the scary abyss of concepts like “Q4”, “Year End” and “November of an election year”.
Hopefully you’ve managed to enjoy a shred of a summer season where the days feel just a tiny bit slower and more spacious… though to be very honest, I’ve personally felt limited slowdown, which is a bit unnerving, as social media sometimes makes it seem like everyone else is on a fabulous luxury European vacation or enjoying glorious languid lake life. Is it just me?
Social media brainwashing aside, I don’t think I’m alone on not feeling a profound summer slowdown. In fact, I’ve actually noticed a spike in the number of people in my network (friends, coaching clients) and in the broader LinkedIn universe making some meaningful mid-summer job changes.
While I often associate job changes with the beginning of the year, I think middle of the year job transitions are fairly common, and occur for a number of reasons - the later in our careers we transition, the longer the search can take. Even if people start looking when their year-end bonuses are paid, or when year-end quotas have been met, it often takes a while for the full logistics of a job change to get underway, and the stars to align in matching us with the next step.
Also, for those making job transitions a bit later in their careers, there’s usually a longer break in between roles. Sometimes there’s a legal/non-compete reason. Sometimes it’s a personal choice to take time off to spend time with family before jumping headfirst into a new adventure. This is definitely a dynamic I’ve noticed within my network - and the time lapse before a new role can represent an incredibly valuable opportunity to thoughtfully calibrate how one shows up at work in the new gig. I mean, you can’t show up in a new role as an entirely new human being…
But there’s a number of things to really consider in advance of a new role. A new role represents an opportunity to potentially design - with a new set of stakeholders - new routines, new behaviours and new expectations.
What do I mean? Read on!
Musings
For me, in the past, my decisions to make job changes have felt more like a push (i.e. I am pushed to the edge) vs pull (i.e. pulled towards the appeal of a new role). I’ve typically left jobs where I’ve ultimately felt overwhelmed and unhappy, and when I go to start the role thereafter, I find myself having a myriad of hopes and dreams for how, “this time things will be different”, EVEN IF there are scores of precedent people there to tell me the culture and the company aren’t necessarily a miraculous cure-all.
What I’m saying is - Yes, environments definitely and actually matter. Some workplaces, cultures and their stages are factually more intense than others. They are environments conducive to overwhelm. BUT, I can guarantee you, I have personal culpability in how I end up showing up in many (if not all) of my roles. If you recall, I’ve worked in companies of varying profiles and focus areas, so it can’t be entirely the external context that causes my behaviour.
I admit (and perhaps this won’t surprise you), that in many areas of my life, I enthusiastically take on a lot, and exercise the same responsiveness and frenetic cadence, even outside of intense work environments.
You might be the same… maniacally project-managed toddler birthday parties? Fantasy sports leagues managed with the precision and intensity of a CIA Black Ops mission?
What I’m trying to convey here (besides extending a heartfelt “I see you” to all my fellow Type A homies out there), is that when we encounter life or career transitions, presenting a perfect opportunity to recalibrate our ‘bad’ behaviours with KNOWN adverse consequences.. we sometimes just can’t help ourselves.
You know that saying “Wherever you go, there you are?” If we are used to exercising certain behaviours, despite a brand new role in a brand new setting, we will eventually mean revert to some of the habits we’re entrenched in, if we don’t take a beat to recognize:
What drives that initial behaviour in the first place
What tactical counterbehaviours we can implement, to prevent the initial default behaviour
Let’s explore this in the context of some real-life job transitions!
Conversations
As mentioned, a number of people I know and coach are starting new roles. Many are mid-career, and the transition to a new role was very carefully considered, with a process that took multiple months. Some have been a bigger pivot (full change of location, role and industry), some have been more adjacent to their previous role, but many involve a pretty substantial change to at least one parameter of their lives (for example similar role, but in a new city).
This is often the case in mid to late career changes - there are more conditions one has in their life to satisfy (and often those of ones’ family as well). The career transitions I’m witnessing are all substantially different enough to induce some serious navel gazing.
Here are three dynamics I’ve witnessed (obviously there are many more), and wondering if any of these resonate with you:
Seniority
I alluded to this in one of earliest editions of the newsletter - regarding the decision to quit (“Should I Stay or Should I Go”). New roles often represent an opportunity to drop in a level that doesn’t come with the accumulated historical perception. Your colleagues didn’t witness you ‘come up’ from Associate through Director, they meet you Day 1 as a more senior level hire. By the way, this dynamic of continuing to envision someone as the notetaker/organizer/coordinator is especially persistent if you are female, or present as young (i.e. not a gray haired executive).
Starting a new role is an opportunity to calibrate the level of seniority you want to show up as, and slowly teach your new colleagues what that means. Even if your default is to take the notes, or organize the troops.
Why do we exhibit these behaviours?
As mentioned, likely because we’re used to doing certain “juniorized” things, and people are used to asking certain things of us (AND, we deliver)
Often when we don’t feel confident in what we know, we tend to speak more, or act more rather than sit silently with the not-knowing. We’re eager to impress and be helpful.
Counter behaviours to offset our default:
Observe how someone ‘senior’ in the new organization show up in team meetings, client interactions, and in the ensuing follow up actions.
Ask yourself, what does ‘senior’ feel like to you that feels authentic? Agency over your time, taking your time to respond, delegation?
Earlier this month, I completed an Executive Leadership Development program at Stanford, and there was a great course on ‘Acting with Power’, taught by Benoît Monin who is both a Stanford professor AND a stage actor and improviser, (classic underachiever *eye roll* ). A lot of his work on ‘Powering Up’ suggests that the following behaviours establish a sense of assertiveness (often what we associate with seniority):
Pauses
Eye contact
Slower speech
Observation
Do less and be ok with it! It can feel unnatural at first, but it works!
Availability/Responsiveness
This one hits especially hard with me. The behaviour of responding to emails right away (aka throwing the email boomerang right back into the ether), being the ‘catch-all’ for the team, and being enthusiastically available and reliable at all times.
This is common of many people I work with in demanding, client-oriented industries where responsiveness is, in fact, highly valued. How many times have you rushed to answer an email to get it off your plate, only to kickstart a firestorm of reply-all’s with everyone responding/agreeing/adding/counter-proposing for hours afterward? It is impossible to untether from the email boomerang.
Why do we exhibit these behaviours?
Many of us feel like our value is in our responsiveness… but our value is also in our perspective, wisdom, subject matter expertise - things that can wait to be shared
We don’t want to be perceived as dropping the ball, or being the bottleneck in a process
Counter behaviours to offset our default:
Don’t be the first to respond. Take a beat to observe others’ responses. The same research that supports the point on ‘Power’ dynamics above applies here: observe before jumping in with the answer - even if you’re the one with the answer, let others frame out their questions first
We teach others how we operate - we each have individual preferences and a preferred way of doing things. If we only answer to their way of doing things, we don’t have an opportunity to teach others how to get the best out of us
Consider this: there is a higher likelihood that the role will be sustainable if you do not constantly put yourself at the mercy of someone else’s timing. It’s less valuable to your company if you are responsive and perfect all the time and last for 1 year, vs metering your energy and bandwidth to say 80% (aka being the bottleneck 20% of the time) and lasting longer than 1.2 years… (OK I KNOW the math is imperfect here, but you get what I’m saying)
Try dropping the ball. Not every time, but once or twice, drop the ball and let the chips fall. What happens? An annoyed email comes your way? My guess is once it happens once, it reduces anxiety around the concept in general. It may even allow you to take a beat to think about how and when you want to respond -i.e. when you want to rush to respond, and when you can take more time. Remember - if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
Approach to Work/Time/Productivity
Ah, 9-5. Or in some of our cases, 7-6 or 7-7 or longer! The typical workday schema, that many of us are completely locked into. Often, we’re embedded in the intricate network of a job’s stakeholders and norms. When we start a new role, there’s usually already a slate of existing meetings that we step into. This is compounded if you work for a multi-office company (with multiple time zones to accommodate), and this is compounded even more by working in a cross-functional role where you might be part of multiple team meetings.
If you are able to (perhaps you’re pivoting to a smaller company, or one with less complexity), a job transition can be an opportunity to evaluate if the standard 9-5 structure, (kicked off by team meetings, which triggers the endless all-day stream of Slack/Teams notifications) is really the format best-suited for your own brand of productivity. When you start a new role and your entire calendar isn’t yet etched in stone, are there opportunities to set up your day to maximize your energy levels and productivity?
Start by dividing your to-do’s up into some loose categories:
Tasks that require less brainpower (administrative, personal tasks/scheduling)
Tasks that more brainpower and solo thinking (strategy work, complex problem solving)
Tasks that require collaborative problem solving (aka interacting with other people)
For me, one day a week, I try to carve out 1-2 hours in the morning (well, some mornings) to tackle category 2, before I start getting on calls/meetings to tackle category 3. Category 1 I can do later in the day when I’m on autopilot. Of course, not every day is in my control (Mondays for example - impossible), but the intention is valuable and results in some actual quality blocks of work time. And, if you’re starting a brand new role where you initially get to architect your days, block off time in your calendar and choose who gets to schedule with you and when - take advantage!
You might have read this far, and are thinking to yourself ‘I’m not changing jobs, and therefore this is completely irrelevant to me.’
BUT, I tend to believe we’re all agents of free will, and everyday, we get to choose how we show up and how we interact with the ecosystem around us - Even if it’s a little different from how we showed up yesterday.
You don’t need to completely upend your current role to effect some evolution of your personal operating model in the direction you want it to go.
For your reflection:
What are some of the “boomerangs” you’re tossing out into your role on a daily basis?
How do you continue to hold the pen in architecting your role (even in a high stress/high intensity role)?
What are the ways we are setting boundaries and expectations early on in jobs? It can be as early and as simple as start date negotiation. Asking to push a start date out can be hard and uncomfortable, especially at the beginning when your interactions with the company are limited (1 out of 1 interaction - which can be interpreted as being difficult or not showing initiative), vs a year later - 1 of 500 interactions, there are many more positive counteracting datapoints)
Short of changing jobs entirely, are there things you can reset in your current role right now, to recalibrate how you are operating and feeling? If it feels daunting, are there smaller things you can tweak that are won’t be profoundly felt by those around you) - (blocking a certain hour on your calendar, delegating certain tasks, letting others speak first)
Can you live with the initial discomfort of people raising eyebrows at your prioritization and tradeoffs for longer term comfort and alignment in your role?
Resources
User Manuals - the template and why behind teaching your team how to interact with you. Also very helpful with spouses, friends and partners (NYTimes)
A Guide to Setting Boundaries - discusses our ‘hard’ boundaries (non negotiables), and our soft boundaries (those where we have more flexibility) (HBR)
If you’re currently considering a pivot - Explore working with me! I spend a lot of time with clients on career inflection points and navigating transitions into new roles