I Left My Job Before I Wanted To

Imagine dedicating an entire year to intentionally bringing your real and best version to work, only to come to the end of that year to be told: “Yeah, we all saw the great work you’ve been doing, but you’re not getting recognized or rewarded for any of it”?

What is the feeling beyond devastation?

Yep! That's the one I felt.

To have worked with an organization for 5 years and finally arriving at a place where you are so certain of the value you are best suited to offer, and after you showcase that value, you get rejected. That felt like a dagger to the heart?.

However, what was more shocking for me was when I found out that I wasn’t the only one experiencing this atrocity.?I learnt that scores of other brilliant and talented professionals were leaving too, for similar (if not the same) reason that I was. Promises were made to them and never kept, and they weren’t being given the opportunities they knew, and had proven, they would thrive in.

You know what was more shocking? Those same professionals were not just walking away, they were walking straight into the doors of the competition for the roles they had been fighting to occupy “back at the ranch”. Strangers had more confidence in their abilities than “family” did. I’ve even witnessed them getting the promotions they rightfully deserved, in shorter periods of time. So it wasn’t their incompetence or lack of experience that was standing in their way after all.

Everyone who follows my content closely knows that I experienced some grief after leaving my job. It was hard to accept that I walked away from a place I truly loved because it seemed the real me didn’t “belong” there. And although this really hurt, I licked my wounds and took some time to confront the reason I felt like leaving my job when I did was the best alternative to stifling and even ruining my career doing work I'm not designed to do. It’s easy to get sucked into complaining about the system, that one ends up missing the opportunity that the disgruntlement has to offer.

The reason I walked away from Corporate is now the thing that wakes me up every morning:

To Illuminate - and eliminate - the hidden costs of misaligned careers in Corporate, and to help organizations stem their talent bleed and profit drain by harnessing the power of purpose alignment.

I've seen organizations with great intentions fail at developing their talent.

Talent development doesn’t end at earmarking or acknowledging someone as “talent”. It extends to being nimble enough to position that talent for prime success - not just of the organization, but of their career too.

It involves believing the ones who are brave enough to express that they have nothing left to offer their current role but know without a shadow of a doubt where their zone of genius is. And then giving them all the support and resources to transition into those roles - irrespective of whose cost centre will absorb the cost of this move?. Compared to the hefty and far-reaching cost of misalignment, this cost is inconsequential.

Talent development is realizing that true management is not “how well you can get someone who is not in a suitable role to suddenly perform magic”

It is creating a runway for your talent to soar into their ideal role, even if that role is away from your team, and you.

I know that corporations across the world are dismally failing at this alignment task because 77% of the world’s employees are disengaged with their work*

In all truth, it’s not just their work that they are disengaged with; it’s their core. Their professional purpose!

And this is unfortunately not just hurting their careers but it is costing the organization more than what meets the eye.

Given the chance, these disengaged employees would leave. In fact, they are already quiet quitting. Those who, like me, were rejected, even after grabbing every opportunity to prove our sheer passion and talent, are not afraid to quit loudly. And this quitting is impactful because it sets in motion a domino effect of talent bleed. The bravery of the first domino to walk away after they have woken up to the undeniable truth that what they have to offer is game-changing, lends the rest of the dominos the courage to also go where they are welcome and valued.

My unfortunate “early-departure” experience has lit a fire in my belly. I can’t sit and watch as corporations continue to hemorrhage talent and profit. Not when there is a way I can contribute to stemming it.

There are staggering costs that come with misaligned careers in corporations and I’ve made it my reasonable service to not just illuminate them, but help corporations eliminate them.

My Signature Talk:?“Bleeding Talent, Draining Profit: The Cost of Misaligned Careers in Corporates”?is ready to be shared with your team/business unit.

This talk is set apart in its action-oriented approach. We won’t just discuss the problem at length; we'll delve into solutions.

You'll discover strategies to pinpoint misalignment within your organization and strategies to realign roles with purpose.

We'll create a roadmap towards a corporate culture that thrives on purpose-driven success. Where no-one feels like fulfilling the organizations purpose comes at the cost of betraying their own.

Contact me via direct message and let’s arrange for me to pay your team a visit.

References:

*State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, Gallup