Job hopping? How to make your career matter.
Posted on October 05, 2022 by George Miller, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.
A client that I have had a few sessions with is thinking about a career change, again. She just changed jobs and discovered she is still not satisfied. Uh oh. Now what?
Toni made the switch because she wanted more purpose in her life. She thought working at a nonprofit for a third of her usual income might do it. It didn’t. She is realizing her purpose has to do with a very personal why and how more than with a where. This little career detour is turning out to be a valuable mistake. Toni now knows what it takes for her to be an effective leader. In her brief stint in the non-profit world, she needed to risk being rejected from the organization by implementing new policies that would transform it—not to mention making her happier in the process. Thus, she realized her personal satisfaction and not a personal sacrifice, is key to her purpose. Toni got a taste of being an agent of change.She knows she is not defined by where she works. She defines who she is by how she engages. She sees she can create her purpose in the corporate world and that she will likely be able to contribute to the world in a bigger way!
Toni’s existential crisis
As we talked, Toni could see she has a habit of working separately from others while doing a lot to contribute to the team. In order to be more effective, she would need to rely on others more. Toni is also understanding that even if she does not become the CEO here and ends up moving to a different organization, that, for her to feel the satisfaction she yearns for, she will need to take bigger risks. It is clear that she will have to face the realization that her unhappiness has to do with her not being authentic or true to who she could become, not the space within which she works.Toni has been successful in her career. She is happily married. She could retire. Yet, she wants more. Her family and friends may think it absurd that she continues challenging herself, even to the point of hiring a coach to do so! This points to what Soren Kierkegaard, known as the father of existentialism, refers to as a “powerful leap of faith.” It’s not about doing what society deems as proper, but doing the right thing by oneself. Toni is facing an existential crisis – uncertainty about the meaning of her life. In response to this she feels compelled to take-action. Her willingness to face the judgment of others in order to satisfy her personal standards shows her having what the German-American philosopher Paul Tillich, conceived “the courage to be.”
A fundamental component of authenticity as the existentialist understands it is to ask, “am I becoming who I can become?” “Authenticity is an attunement to our possibilities.”1 Once we understand ourselves and our connection to the environment we grew up in, then we can begin making intentional decisions to “pursue our new freely-chosen goals and purposes, (as we do so) we gradually replace our conformist selves with new selves of our own creation.”2
Toni wants to make a difference, and in order to affect real change and to be recognized for her accomplishments, in the long run, she is willing to be criticized by those around her in the short run. By experimenting with different ways of interacting, she is developing herself as a leader and stepping into the limelight of being celebrated as such.
Being authentic as the existentialists mean it requires courage. Paul Tillich wrote, “The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.”3 Even though Toni does not accept herself as the leader she wants to be, she is beginning to take the leap of faith to try. Her current boss and husband want her to use her skillset, plus her employees would benefit from it. Her challenge is primarily having the courage to be herself—who she really wants to be. Toni has shown the courage to leap by changing jobs, but now must recognize that the bravest leap for her will not be from one type of work to another, but an internal leap, one where she faces these challenges where she is every day, instead of externalizing them and seeing them as occasional, monumental decisions. They are monumental – but they take place every day, if we can just recognize them.
Given that Toni has a sense of the kind of woman she wants to become, she can influence her destiny by looking at her life as a project. This is a concept used in many schools of thought. For the existentialist, it means understanding where you came from, how you got to where you are now, and choosing where you will go. Dr. Gordon Medlock, a faculty member at the Wright Graduate University, addresses this concept in his dissertation. Our life is a “project of overcoming or transcending circumstances and existing as the source or creator of (our) project.” Dr. Medlock says this another way: “We are the being who is defined by our lack of being—our existence as Nothingness—and who strive to give ourselves being.”4 This is how Toni determined to ask her husband to do things for her so that overall, she becomes more willing to expect more of others. Not just at home, but at work too—ultimately setting the stage for her to step into the next level of leadership.
The story I shared about Toni is an example of how Wright’s emergence coaching unfolds. Wright Integrative pulls from existential thought and helps people apply these lofty ideas into measurable outcomes in their day-to-day life. Considering the concepts above, Dr Rich Blue, WGU doctoral WGU doctoral graduate and Founder and Clinical Director at the Center for Christian Life Enrichment, designed a module: “The Blue Funnel of Truth.” By using this tool, anyone can walk themselves through how to be more authentic, from lying by omission, like Toni was doing by denying herself advancement as a leader, to sharing deeper truths. Perhaps even telling the truth with emotion and allowing more vulnerable hungers—like being recognized—to be known.
1 Dodson, Eric. “Existentialism and Human Development.” YouTube. May 01, 2015. Accessed April 4, 2019. [link removed]
2 “Becoming More Authentic. The Positive Side of Existentialism.” Tc.umn.edu. [link removed]
3 Tillich, Paul, and Harvey Cox. The Courage to Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
4 Medlock, Gordon. “Sartre’s Theory of Existential Psychoanalysis And Its Implications For Existential Psychotherapy.” PhD diss., Yale University, 1986, 171-173.
