Follow the pregnant woman
Have you ever felt lost in your career, wondering “do I really want to be an engineer/a teacher/work in a corporate?” Or “how do I move from a job I like to a job I love?
10 years ago, I moved back to Ireland, right into the middle of the Global Financial Crisis. Interesting career roles were not easy to find. People were afraid to change jobs and the job market had become stagnant. I was fortunate to find work in customer service in a large global multinational.
I knew I really wanted the role of Manager of Learning and Organisational Development, but that role was taken. I soon discovered that this manager was pregnant, and I very cleverly deduced that she would shortly be going on maternity leave. I realised I had a number of choices. I could:
sit back and wait, hoping to be discovered
talk to my manager or HR to share my interest, or
pull out all the stops to make sure I was the natural choice as her replacement
Internal conflict
And so I started to ‘follow the pregnant woman'. I shared with her my mission and she was incredibly supportive. I shadowed her, I learned everything I could about the role, and made contact with everyone connected to role. She also saw the value to her in having identified someone to take over from her, in a smooth transition. It worked, I got the job and have never looked back!
Lost
Changing or building a career can be very overwhelming. This can sometimes cause us to feel a bit paralysed. We don’t know where to look, who to speak to, what to do next. We may also feel blind to opportunities, as a result of an inflexible mindset.
Living
There are many influences to deciding on our career – personal, financial, family, location, and very often we chose to accept the role we’re in. We are surviving. When we have a lot of factors affecting our careers we may feel, or even behave, blinkered to opportunities.
Like
When we like our jobs, enjoy the environment, like the people we work with, feel challenged in our roles, we tend to see the obvious opportunities. We are aware of changes around us, and we make informed career decisions.
LOVE
To find the role we love will likely involve some discomfort. We are very aware of our environment, we ask questions, we open our minds, we are creative. As *Carol Dweck says we “persist in the face of setbacks”, we have a “growth mindset’”. We must seek out the unobvious opportunities.
Need - Opportunity - Timing
When we acknowledge our need to do something different; when this need aligns with the (often unobvious) opportunity; and we build awareness that timing is everything, this is when we find the career we love.
“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”
- Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Of course, we need to be very sure it really is the career we'd love. We can look to President Trump as an example of pursuing a highly unlikely opportunity, and then winning unexpectedly (depending on what you read). "Trump didn't want to win the election because he thought losing could offer 'untold opportunities'. - Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump Whitehouse.
Special thanks to Jackie O'Regan. I followed this pregnant woman!
If you'd like to know more, I'd be very happy to discuss it. Just message or call me.
