Is it less ambitious to walk away from the corporate ladder?
A client of mine apologized to me recently. Her words: "I don't know if you coach less ambitious people that don't want a corporate career path."
She is a senior Program Manager. Decades on large-scale international projects with the kind of career that a lot of people strive for. Then her contract ended, and instead of diving head-first into a #job search, she stopped and asked what she actually wanted next.
We spent the first part of our #coaching #work on self-awareness. What came up had almost nothing to do with program delivery or any other corporate path. Turns out, she loved cooking. She lit up talking about community, about feeding people and giving back.
So when we got to career direction, she landed on an unexpected path: Part-time advisory work, enough to cover what she needs and the rest of her time volunteering with a meal service for people in need, and maybe building one herself further down the line.
Truth be told, her decision itself did not surprise me at all. I had been noticing the patterns while we worked together, and I have watched this same switch happen many times in my practice. What did surprise me was her apology about being "less ambitious".
Years of #performance conversations, and managers who only ever recognized one direction of growth: upwards. The idea that has been implanted in our minds since we first join the corporate world that success is only defined linearly.
That is exactly what my client felt she needed to apologize for. Breaking the linear pattern, recognizing what you truly want and stepping out of the well-trodden path for something that genuinely makes you happy.
Which, admittedly, can be even harder when you lead people. When you reach that point in your career where you are responsible for others, you feel like you just can't let go. Not only have you worked your butt off to get there but you also feel a sense of duty towards the people you lead, you can't simply abandon them.
And yet, it's not just possible but doable. In psychological currency, it actually costs you more to stay than to walk away.
That's exactly what my client came to realize when she chose her next career move and I was lucky enough to be her strategic guide through this transformation.
So if you are coming back from a break wishing you were returning to a different work reality, something you would genuinely feel excited to come back to, let's talk.
The question I would start with is this one: If nobody was watching, and nobody needed an explanation, what would you actually want the next few years of your work to look like?
🌟Sparking Leadership # 60: a weekly series on human-centered sustainable #leadership. Reach out if you're stuck in your #career and need a change or follow for more sparkling content. In the meantime, lead with spark! ✨️
