Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Henrieta Riesco, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Are you staying in your current position too long? Should you move somewhere else? Up the ladder, across departments, or to a different company? Maybe you are considering a different change in your life.

There is a simple process that can help you decide whether you want to stay put or to move towards a specific change. It has four steps; four questions to ask in a particular order:

1. What’s good about the Status Quo? You have to acknowledge what’s working. How else can you know what you value and want to continue having as a part of your life? Maybe you like the money, the commute, the colleagues, the flexibility, the way you provide value…

2. What’s not so good about the Status Quo? These are the reasons why you are considering the change. What are you missing? What will continue being an issue if you stay?

3. What’s not so good about the change? This is where you can express your fears and look them in the eyes. Call them for what they are. And this is where you can also acknowledge what you may be losing by changing.

4. What’s good about the change? As you can see, we left this question until the very end. Only after you put all the bad on the table is our mind ready to see the possibilities, the opportunities, the potential. State what you know for sure as well as what this change would allow you to explore.

As you can see, you start and end with the positive – the advantages. The disadvantages are next to each other, which helps you compare the risks of staying put with the risks of changing. We usually have all these pros and cons in our head talking to us all at once and this process helps to isolate them.

You can use this process on a team meeting, randomly dividing people into four teams, giving them space to present their case, or together moving through the steps, considering carefully each of them.

Whether you decide to stay or go, you’ll have a greater insight as to why. Your decision will be intentional. Here’s some music to cheer you up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqH21LEmfbQ&noredirect=1. As you see you are not alone in having life dilemmas :-)