How To Assess If Our 'Career' Problems Are More Than Professional Issues

Part of Kathy Caprino's series "Becoming The Most Powerful and Positive Version of You"

In the pursuit of career advancement and satisfaction, many professionals find themselves grappling with serious challenges that seem to be connected directly to their jobs, including their relationships with their managers, their professional trajectory and difficulties in their current work culture.

But in coaching thousands of professionals over the past 17 years, and through my 18 years of corporate life and later as a therapist, I’ve seen firsthand that a significant portion of these “professional” challenges are actually not “career” issues, but are based in deeper behavioral and personal ones.

They often have profound origins in personal, emotional and psychological aspects that manifest in our behavior and responses—to people, challenges, and key stressors. I certainly don't mean to imply that we are directly "causing" or fully responsible for all of the challenges we face, as much of life is out of our control. But I've seen (in my own life and career, and in working with many others) that the way we perceive difficulty and challenge — and the manner in which we approach it — can pave the way for success or thwart the achievement of our goals and visions.??

Below are some helpful ways we can think more comprehensively about our “career” problems and gain a greater understanding of the often deeper issues to explore when we’re facing chronic career difficulties, and how to address them.

The Deeper Layers of Career Challenges

Career problems are frequently perceived as arising from job-specific factors—such as role dissatisfaction, overwhelming demands, and what we perceive are limited advancement opportunities.

Yet many of these challenges are influenced by our deeper personal and emotional state, including our mindsets and self-perception and the ways we interpersonally relate and communicate.

Here’s a closer look at why the real underlying problems of professional difficulties are often not just career-based.

1. Self-Esteem, Self-Confidence, and Internal Beliefs

One of the central issues affecting career satisfaction is self-esteem. Individuals with low self-esteem and self-confidence or negative self-beliefs often encounter recurring difficulties in their professional lives. These internal beliefs can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to challenges in asserting oneself, enforcing healthy boundaries, negotiating for more, or confidently pursuing and landing new opportunities.

For instance, I’ve seen that folks with low self-esteem and failing self-confidence often remain far too long in roles that are wrong and hurtful for them. They can stay put in these damaging situations for years rather than interviewing for and exploring new jobs because they fear risk and rejection in the interview process or in making a move.

2. Communication and Positivity

There’s been a good deal of research on positivity and how that impacts our life and career outcomes and I’ve seen that there are 10 core ways increased positivity expands our success.

And the way we communicate with others and deal with conflict can make or break the results we achieve. As a leadership coach, I’ve observed too that the communication patterns people follow are typically the same whether they’re at work or at home. For example, people who engage in open, transparent and empathic communication at work tend to engage in those same practices in their personal lives.

3. Boundaries and Work-Life Integration

Another significant factor is work-life integration. Stressors from personal life—such as family responsibilities, health issues, or relationship problems—can heavily impact our career performance and satisfaction. When our personal lives are out of balance or fraught with stress and anxiety, it can lead to decreased focus, productivity, energy, greater anxiety, and overall diminished job satisfaction.

Achieving healthy work-life integration involves addressing personal issues and ensuring that professional demands do not overshadow our commitment to our personal well-being. Finding ways to balance work with personal life—and restore and re-balance ourselves regularly—can reduce stress and enhance our career satisfaction and our ability to proactively shape what happens in our lives.

People with a certain behavior that I refer to as “perfectionistic overfunctioning ”— doing more than is healthy, appropriate and necessary and trying to get an A+ in all of it — typically find that their work drains and exhausts them, without their recognition that their overfunctioning behavior is often self-induced rather than externally demanded. And for most people who demonstrate this behavior, it's prevalent in both their personal and professional lives.??

4. Unresolved Past Pain and Trauma

As a former therapist, I’ve seen just how unresolved pain, trauma or emotional challenges from our past experiences (including how we were raised and treated in our childhoods and early life) can directly influence our career dynamics. These unresolved issues can dramatically affect how people perceive and handle their workplace conflicts, and how they receive feedback or embrace new opportunities.

Emotional pain and unresolved hurt can lead to heightened aggression, as well as anger, defensiveness, a lack of empathy and compassion and other potentially damaging behaviors. These behaviors can negatively affect our resilience, which in turn impedes career fulfillment and advancement.

Here's more about this challenge, which I view as one of the 7 most damaging power and confidence gaps that negatively impact a staggering 98% of professional women and 90% of men today keeping them from reaching their highest and happiest potential.

This particular gap is what I call "Power Gap #7: Allowing the Past To Continue to Shape and Define You." I share more about it in my podcast Finding Brave :

Uncovering the True Issues: First Steps

To help identify what might be the true underlying issues to career problems you’re facing, here are some strategies.

1. Engage in Self-Reflection

Engage in practices such as journaling, meditation, or introspection to explore how personal issues might be influencing your career. Reflect on recurring patterns, problems that you chronically can’t seem to resolve, and your typical emotional responses and ways of communication in work and life, and consider their origins.

Ask yourself the question, “How old is this problem?”

Reflecting on this question often brings up important and surprising revelations about when and where this challenge originated and why.

I’ve seen in my own professional life and in the careers of many others that when a serious problem chronically repeats in our lives and careers, there is virtually always a key reason and it’s not random. Often, we are co-creating, attracting or sustaining a dysfunction or challenge that feels familiar based on what we experienced in our past.

2. Seek Professional Support

Often, we cannot adequately see or address a chronic challenge alone or in a vacuum. Professional support, such as therapy, coaching, or group work, can be invaluable in addressing personal issues that are affecting your career. Therapists and coaches can help you uncover deep-seated emotional challenges, improve self-esteem, and develop strategies for personal and professional growth.

Also seeking external support from great mentors in your life whom you trust—and who have overcome similar types of challenges that you’re facing today—can offer fresh perspectives and tools for addressing personal issues that manifest as career problems. Professional guidance can be instrumental in overcoming internal barriers that we cannot see on our own.

3. Prioritize Personal Development and Well-being

Investing in your personal development and taking concrete steps towards greater well-being is essential for overcoming career-related issues rooted in personal challenges. Focusing on building self-confidence, improving emotional intelligence, and building stronger boundaries will help you speak up for yourself and navigate through challenges with more calm, balance and self-mastery. Developing skills such as assertiveness and emotional regulation can positively impact career advancement and overall job satisfaction.

Practical Strategies for Addressing Underlying Issues

Set New Personal Growth Goals

Establish and work towards several new personal growth goals that are distinct from your career objectives. Achieving personal milestones can boost self-esteem and provide a sense of fulfillment and hope, helping you see yourself as a proactive agent of change and the true author of your life.

Build a Robust, Inspiring Support Network

Create a strong support network of family, friends, and mentors, both inside your organization and beyond. Having trustworthy, inspiring people to confide in and seek advice from can offer emotional support and new perspective just when you need it most.

Realize the Person and the Professional are Inextricably Linked

Overall, if you’re facing career problems that seem intractable or challenges that repeat over and over, it’s helpful to understand that

“You are a person when you show up to your professional life.”

As much as people may wish to believe otherwise, we cannot separate who we are as a person—including our personalities, communication styles, mindsets, beliefs, fears, attachment styles , etc.—from how we operate in our work professionally. They are inextricably linked.

Tackling the true sources of dissatisfaction and challenges – including examining if you’re facing any of the 7 damaging power and confidence gaps (here's a quick Power Gap survey to help you assess that) — can lead to meaningful improvements in both your personal and professional life.

Take a moment today to reflect on the career challenges you’re facing. Ask yourself if there might be deeper personal issues at play. Then, commit to one small step—whether that's seeking new support, sharing your challenges with a helpful mentor, going for a new “stretch” goal with more hope and positivity, having that one difficult conversation you need to, engaging in deeper self-reflection, or setting a new boundary.

Move forward in a new way that will help you address any underlying issues and create a more rewarding approach to building a career you’ll love, with meaning, purpose and success.?

Kathy Caprino is a career and leadership coach, author of The Most Powerful You , host of the top-ranked podcast Finding Brave , and leadership trainer helping professional women build their most rewarding and impactful careers of significance.

For hands-on help and support to expand your confidence, self-esteem and positive impact and overcome your current challenges in your career, join Kathy in the next session of her live 8-week course The Most Powerful You .?