I was catching up with a dear friend, talking about all that had happened in her life since she was laid off from a company where she’d worked for many years. Although she had been restless long before the layoff, she had postponed taking action (despite my urging), hoping that seniority, a track record of glowing reviews, and being well-liked in the company would allow her to hang on for a few more years, long enough to cross the retirement “finish line.”
No one but you can be the author of your story. Although others can help you to articulate it, you are the only one who can dig through your professional history and identify those parts of it that you want to build upon. This is very hard work. Most people are so focused on keeping a job, even one they are not happy with, that they neglect this critical step in building their career infrastructure.
Unfortunately for her, the race ended three years short of her goal. She went into a panic and deeply regretted not being better prepared, but with guidance and support she was able get back on her feet quickly. She set out to learn about herself and what she had to offer in the marketplace, and soon landed a consulting position that both energized her and paid her bills. In other words, she found meaningful work that met her financial needs.
Yet she kept telling me how stressful it was no longer to have a “guaranteed income”. She spoke as if her situation was some kind of anomaly, and finally I had to interject, “A lot of us live that way all the time—it’s called self-employment!”
My friend had become self-employed by necessity, not by choice, and as a result her thinking hadn’t changed. She was still thinking, “Job, job, job,” neither calling her new form of work by its right name, nor claiming its full potential. She was looking at her new role as a temporary inconvenience, and had not yet embraced its opportunities for self-leadership.
PRACTICAL REALITY
Keeping your head down and doing your job well won’t protect your paycheck, and sticking our head in the sand and pretending that the “rules of engagement” in the world of work haven’t changed won’t protect your career. As Cliff Hakim warns in We Are All Self Employed, “The belief that any job is safe is unrealistic”. He goes on to say that “habitual responses are not going to work," and that "a leap of thinking, trying new things and living in the world a new way” is required.
It’s no longer enough just to do what you do. You have to be able to articulate how it makes the organization you work for more productive, how it benefits those around you. You have to be able to market “You & Co.” in ways that connect what you have to offer with the needs of the workplace, and you have to be able to do it as effectively as any CEO.
SELF-DISCOVERY
No one but you can be the author of your story. Although others can help you to articulate it, you are the only one who can dig through your professional history and identify those parts of it that you want to build upon. This is very hard work. Most people are so focused on keeping a job, even one they are not happy with, that they neglect this critical step in building their career infrastructure.
Often it takes a crisis to propel a person toward self-discovery. Only after she had lost her job did my friend begin to think about the things she had done in her life that had the deepest personal meaning for her. When she did, she discovered an interest in social services, and with it the realization that she possessed interpersonal skills that were underutilized in the work she had been doing. She began volunteering for hospice and learning more about non-profit organizations.
Hakim foresees “wasted energies and needless frustration” for anyone who hasn’t looked deep enough inside to know “what they want and what they bring to today’s workplace.” Self-leaders embrace an ongoing process of learning about themselves and others so that they can speak clearly and specifically to their strengths.
MOONLIGHTING
Frequently when someone is starting a business, they will continue working their “day job” until the business generates enough to support them. In other words they “moonlight” as a business owner.
Shortly after I spoke with my friend, I heard from her that she had been hired as a full-time employee by the same company that had contracted her for consulting work, yet rather than revert to her old pattern of settling into the false security of a job, she has continued to “moonlight” as a hospice volunteer and has expanded her involvement to include speaking at fundraising events. Now, instead of counting the days to retirement, she is actively positioning herself for paid work as a fundraiser—work she would love to be doing for years to come.
“Successful people are working two jobs: one is the position they hold in their daily lives, and the other is self leadership of their work life,” Hakim observes. This doesn’t mean that every thing they attempt to accomplish as a self-leader is successful. It does mean that as self-leaders they consciously seek to develop the “mental perspectives, practices and systems” to keep moving forward.
