Career Change & Self-belief: Why the two go hand in hand

This week I have been checking in with some career coaching clients that I have worked with on a 1-1 basis since the start of this year. Although all of these individuals are very different in terms of their skills, professional experience, personality and outlook on life I have noticed a common theme that keeps cropping up and that is “I want to change career/ I want to move to a new role/ I want to go for an internal promotion but I don’t have the confidence to do it”. When I dig down further into what people mean by confidence, often what they mean is believing in themselves enough to initiate a change in their career. When we dig down further again to find out why self-belief is lacking, this generally comes down to two things:

1.      Lack of perspective or clarity due to burn out or having been in the same organization or role for a very long time.

2.      Holding beliefs that are limiting or unsupportive and which hold the individual back from moving forward. Examples of these are:

• “Colleagues who joined the company after me have been promoted before me”
• “I know that I’m really good at my job but I’ve been with the same company for 15 years. What if I move to a new company and my experience turns out to be not as relevant in a different environment?”
• “I know that I’ve had a successful career to date but I’m worried that the fact that I don’t have a degree will rule me out of a lot of roles if I put myself out there”
• “I really want to move to a completely different career area but is it too late now, am I too old to make this kind of change?”
• “I want to go for a promotion but I’m worried that it will mean an increased workload and will have a negative effect on family life”

I could give many more examples of the beliefs that hold people back from making changes in their careers. To illustrate this I will give a personal example of a time that my own limiting beliefs held me back from making a career change and how I eventually overcame this. In 2018 I had been working in the recruitment industry for 18 years. It had been a great career with lots of opportunities and I was working for a very supportive organisation but I finally reached burn out stage and had to make a decision as to what direction to take. I knew that I wanted to set up my own career coaching & training business but could not get past what I believed to be a huge financial risk. No matter how many long walks I went on I could not get the clarity that I needed in order to make a decision. As often happens in these situations, things reached a head one weekend and I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with my youngest sister in tears as I explained how exhausted and trapped I felt.  She listened for a long time and although she is 17 years younger than me she then asked me the type of reality check questions that any qualified coach would be proud of:

• “What will it cost you personally if you stay?”
• “Is it worth it to stay on just for financial reasons if you are really not happy?”
• “You love coaching and you’re really good at it. What makes you think you won’t be successful?”
• “You’ll have way more time to spend with the kids and won’t have big childcare costs if you work part-time. Have you factored this in?”

This conversation with my young and very wise sister was a key turning point for me as through the very effective questions that she asked I walked away with clarity and a new perspective. I went on to have other great conversations around my career decision with other family members and close friends and this all helped to build my self-belief and feel more supported in making the decision. I went on to set up my new business in 2019 and of course there have been ups and downs as with anything but it was the right decision and I have never looked back since.

There are many ways in which we can build self-belief but if you want to make a career change internally or externally and you feel that limiting beliefs are holding you back it can be beneficial to build a “board of advisors” as recommended by author Ethan Kross in his excellent book “Chatter: The voice in our head and how to harness it”. He recommends that you pick advisors who will let you vent if you need to but will then step in and challenge your thinking and encourage you towards taking positive action. My sister Kate will be on my personal board of advisors forever more and I cannot thank her enough.