4 lessons I learnt when I left my Executive role

A year ago wrote an article that talked about my departure from the job I loved at Avanti Finance to concentrate on my recovery from spinal fusion surgery which was scheduled for 3 March. As at 3 March 2020 New Zealand had only 1 case of COVID19.

What a year. The good news is the spine is fabulous- I'm back to bouncing like tigger!

Bad news is we're still in the pandemic. Life as we know it is forever changed.

I can't say I'd given much thought to what would happen to my body, soul, and brain when my corporate identity life came to an end, and I hadn't had much advice from others either. Perhaps I could have done a simple google search on lessons since leaving a corporate job I get a staggering 66.2million results- perhaps if I'd done that I could have skipped the learning part of the last year..... well perhaps.

In some respects I'm rather grateful I was gleefully staring into a rose coloured tea cup rather than the more stark reality of the last year.

Lessons I didn't know I needed to learn

1. You identify with your role more than you thought you did
2. It takes time to find out what you think and feel
3. Your corporate 'break up' feels more like a mourning
4. Choice is a privilege

You identify with your role more than you thought you did

If anyone had asked me whether the 'title' I had was important to me I would have laughed at them and said "of course not!"

I now know that I was lying.

The title of my role, and why I was hired in to it, gave me a particular persona. It gave me permission to have a voice and, given I'd been hired as the 'different' one I was also able to be courageous with it.

When I left my job I quite literally lost the ability to express myself and what I thought. I'm usually the bouncing enthusiast in any meeting- keen to connect, listen and achieve things. But it vanished. I had meetings where I had knowledge, experience, and value to bring- but I couldn't open my mouth.

Looking back now I can see that this happened because I'd unconsciously attached my voice to my role, rather than my soul.

I lost my voice and my energy and Nora Batty became louder in my head. I should probably pause here and explain my love hate relationship with Nora. She's the personification of my internal critic voice.

She gets louder when she thinks I need to be safer, more conservative, quieter, and more 'blended in'. And she been loud this last year. In her abrupt tone, she convinced me that I was a stupid girl to leave my career and that I had no business having an opinion about anything!

But, you see, thankfully I also have an internal coaching voice who steps up to the plate with a kick up the bum (she's my Mums voice for those of you who are curious) and so I reconnected with my grounded, values driven self, and, after some gentle persuading Nora went off to the same place as my childhood imaginary friends.

It takes time to find out what you think and feel

How often have what other people say influenced what you thought? I'd argue it's much more than you'd imagine. In his book, Invisible Influence, The Hidden Forces that Shape Behaviour Johan Berger explains that "without our realizing it, other people’s behaviour has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous. Even strangers have an impact on our judgments and decisions."

For a long time there's been a quote attributed to Jim Rohn that says you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. But, reality is that you're the average of all of the people you surround yourself with.

It makes sense then that being surrounded by the same people for 40 hours per week would therefore have an influence on what you think. Without those people being around me, I then questioned everything- were they really my thoughts, my opinions, my drivers?

I think that the anxiety ridden experience of learning this lesson was compounded by lockdown and the lack of connection. And on reflection I think that this was a good thing. By sitting in this experience and taking more time to listen and reflect than act I am much clearer around where I stand on the continuum of life and my opinions, and that makes me more grounded in the decisions I now take as I continue writing this next chapter.

Your corporate 'break up' feels more like a mourning

I cried, lots, when I left Avanti. Buckets in fact.

I thought it was about my team, the customers, the love I had for the business and what it stood for. But the grief ran much deeper than that.

When I look back on the meandering path of my career I can logically explain each step. In the early days it was about finishing my training as an accountant and earning enough money to pay the bills, then I stepped into leadership roles, moving away from technical leadership (except for the year I spent in the Serious Fraud Office!) until I at at the Executive table.

Each step has been a baby step in vaguely the right direction.

What that has meant is that each stage has had enough stretch in for me to be uncomfortable, but not to the degree where I was overwhelmed. I've changed industries before, job titles, specialisms, but all from the safety net of employment and a relatively stable pay check at the end of each month.

This move has been so different.

I wasn't leaving one corporate job to go to another. I was leaving corporate to work out how I could fit into the entrepreneurial world. A world I'd never been in before, with people who felt like they had been in that world forever- with their own acronyms and way of being.

I became unlike my previous community and connections, and alien to the new community. I felt like a misfit. This has meant that I have been in a state of mourning, on and off, for the last year. And finally, I'm OK with that as I am slowly starting to feel connected to the alien world of entrepreneurship and I don't feel so alone on my mission and the next baby steps I know I need to take.

If you're debating the move please know that the feeling does pass, and it doesn't mean you made the wrong decision. Keep taking one step.

Choice is a privilege- and it feels like a heavy responsibility

Leaving my job was a choice I made- for my health, but also because I knew I needed space for the next chapter to be written at Avanti Finance, without me there.

I always knew that having a choice is indeed a privilege- the lesson wasn't in that.

But the weight of be able to make that choice weighed heavy on my shoulders. It meant that I felt the need to use every minute wisely- be busy, be useful, be recovered from the surgery, be there for the kids, be fit and strong, and be impactful and world changing (after all I'd just become an Edmund Hillary Fellow!)

My husband would come home and I'd rattle off an endless enormous list of things to demonstrate my value.

The irony is that without leaving space the next chapter couldn't even start to be written on my own journey. In slowing down and creating space the first few words of the next chapter are now written.

If you leave your job intentionally, don't fill your day. Give your brain space to reconnect with your soul, and then the next step, vaguely in the right direction, will appear.

And finally

I've spoken before about authenticity- what it is and what it isn't. Through my work at Authentic Alchemy I work with people and businesses to find out what that is for them as like Oprah Winfrey, I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time- taking time to be more fully present. This means that we can live an intentional life.

So, here's to taking baby steps, in vaguely the right direction. Without them we wouldn't make the giant leaps.