The Dilemma we Face in Careers: Do I Commit to Security or Happiness?
Have you made the right choice?
I still remember the day like it was yesterday. I walked into my office that morning and said, “Today I am not going to give a sh*t.”
I’m not going to engage with people or contribute during meetings. Simply I am not going to care. Let’s see how this feels.
With a massive restructuring taking place(the third in 4 years), most of my mentors in the company had been replaced with leaders I did not know well. I was frustrated that I did not get one of the new regional leadership roles and that someone less qualified(in my opinion) but better networked got the job. Frankly, it pissed me off. So I was considering leaving the company and thought why be engaged and committed to the company when the company does not support me and all I have done for it? (silly me, right?)
I had never, not given a sh*t. I was the poster child for employee engagement; always high energy, driving results, cheerleading my teams on, and working long days. Yet after 4 restructuring events in 5 years I was a little tainted.
Today was gonna change things. My ego was in my way and I needed to understand if I could actually not be engaged in my work. I saw it all the time around me and it usually frustrated me, but I had to try. It was like I was taking my toys home and not playing today.
Every meeting I was involved in, I was reserved, quiet, and not engaged. Noone seemed to notice. Crap, somebody needed to say something to me! Everyone was looking out for #1 and would not notice that I wasn’t in the game that day.
I had a leadership coach who was helping me assess my career options. He was an amazing guy with tons of experience not only leading businesses but also coaching other executives.
I had reached a point in my career where I was questioning the leaders of the company. As a younger exec, I had always thought: “Well those guys have a lot more experience than I do, so they must know what they are doing.” Well, now the experience difference was not that much and I was thinking, “hmmm, that move doesn’t seem to make any sense, so what the hell are they thinking”.
My coach asked me how I viewed the current situation in a very insightful manner. I answered him and he then stated: “ this happens to many leaders at this stage in their careers. You are mid 30’s, ~15 years into your career, and you have as much or more experience than most of the leaders in your company.”
He continued, “You are at an inflection point. You have a right to question the decisions vs. just accept what others decide. You probably think you could make better decisions and you might be right.”
He then said, “you have two choices, you can decide to stay and start over building relationships with this company’s new leadership or decide to leave the company and start over and build relationships with your new company’s leadership. But, Mike, either way, you have to build relationships at senior levels across the entire organization.” Have you found yourself in a similar situation?
So simple it hit me like a brick! It was all right there in front of me, yet I needed my coach to say it to provide perspective. This was my wake-up call.
I told my coach about my “don’t give a sh*t day”. He asked how it went. I told him I only made it to around lunchtime and then was even more frustrated trying to be someone that I was not. He chuckled. “Go figure” he said.
So my experiment was a bust. I sucked at not giving a sh*t.
I was not happy and I felt I was staying at the same company to maintain financial security and hope for a big payoff down the road. I had a fairly large role, yet no real authority, and in big companies, there is little risk. I was insecure trying to avoid the corporate networking game and I was not willing to succumb to it.
As I saw it, if I stayed, it would be for the money and I would continue to be unhappy with the role I was given, the leadership, and my lack of courage to do the hard and right thing.
I left that company a few months later.
Having chosen a new path, happiness over wealth, I began to transform.
Chapter Two: The “New Healthcare VP/GM”.
After running an ~8-month job search, I took a leadership role at a company to lead its healthcare business unit. There were snickers from my new colleagues that taking this role was a death wish. Internal people believed the company was exiting the healthcare segment.
On my first day, over lunch, the VP of HR sort of stumbled his way through telling me that all but 4 people had left the healthcare division. In shock, my first internal question as my mind wandered was “oh boy, I wonder what type of martini I should have this evening?”
He then introduced me to the 4 folks who stayed and we collaborated on what had happened over the last year or so to put the division in such a tough spot.
I regrouped overnight and when I arrived the next day in my office I was now tasked with turning this business around with only 4 other people. I wanted them to experience a fresh, confident, free-agent type leader joining a new company and team with a totally different attitude & style. I was a little on the cutting edge for a company that was conservative, Canadian-based, and was not performing to expectations. The division I took on was getting crushed in the U.S. market, having just learned of the loss of its biggest contract. Ok, well, here's your sign.
In the following 4+ years, I changed my approach to work. Yes, I still worked long hours and traveled a lot, yet I had fun, took risks, owned the results, built a great team of healthcare experts from across the corporation. We were bold with our new strategies and became the fastest growing division in our company to the amazement of senior leadership, the Board of Directors, and the marketplace. I wasn’t ever going to look back.
The moral of the story is, at least in my life, I had to pick a conservative get rich model or one that would allow me to be happy, with a lot more risk involved. I made the right choice.
Check out the EQ Growth Solutions website and let’s get connected.
https://eqgrowthsolutions.com/
#Listen, #Learn, #Lead, #Adapt, #Win
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