The traditional job is dead, thank goodness

As coaches we’re often talking to people we’ve never met.? It’s striking when I ask people to tell me a bit about themselves how many usually default to their job title.

During Covid when I was helping out with Talk Club, a men’s mental health group – look them up by the way and check out their excellent work, there were quite a few ex-military guys who still knew their regiment and number.

We are of course more than just a job title.?? And we do more than just one job.?? Some of us work full time but we’re also mothers and fathers or carers, we volunteer at community groups, through our church or temple or mosque, we may serve on a local council or be a fundraiser for a charity.

?

How you see work is up to you

As we move through this decade, more people are embarking on portfolio careers.? Covid changed attitudes to work, when we work, how we work.?? If you’re so inclined, you can even be a digital nomad on a cruise ship – working your way literally around the world.

It’s maybe not one for me – two hours on a cross-channel ferry is quite enough.

I have one big regular paycheque kind of job – one I love and is deeply meaningful and fulfilling – and there’s a lot to be thankful for knowing every month an amount of money will arrive in your bank account just in time for things to go back out again.

The job has title for sure.? But I don’t think of myself in that way.? Who I am, what I do and what I bring means different things to different people.??

You have a choice to define yourself through its meaning and purpose or just be a job title

?

How you define yourself is also up to you

In a way the word job is unhelpful, the French and Spanish words for jobs imply hardship and toil.? I accept there is some work that’s tougher than others.?? But purpose drives performance.? In studies of hospital cleaners, those who saw their role at creating the environment that allowed patients to recover felt more positive about their work than those who defined it as cleaning.??

Same task, different thought process, different outcome

But most of us do many other things than whatever drives the primary pay-cheque.??

Alongside my ‘job’ I run a coaching business with a modest but fine for now number of clients that I can know personally.?? I write self-improvement courses that people I’ll never meet are completing sometimes when I’m sleeping.? I write and publish research.? I speak at events on that research into reverse mentoring.? I’ve run two no-for-profit community enterprises.? I lead a running group in my local area.? I help people get started in running from literally the couch to 5k.?? And I’m a Dad which is the best job of all, benefits always outweigh the lack of pay.

And I write this not to be boastful.? That’s just the start of how the things I do bring some kind of value to other people.? And it’ll be the same for you – you just may not have taken the time to think about all the different things you do.

We’re all in the world of portfolio careers.?? You may sometimes feel stuck thinking that job means office, switch on switch off, go home.?? This article is about getting unstuck.

?

The positives of having a portfolio career

There is a lot to love about portfolio careers once you get your head around them.

All jobs have their own ups and downs.?? I think of it sometimes like a wave – you’re bobbing up and down and life in your ‘job-job’ will bob up and down.?? And sometimes you’ll be in sync with each other riding the crest of the wave.

But sometimes you’re not in sync and the waves feel like they’re crashing over your head, or maybe you’re getting that sinking and drowning feel to things.??

If you believe your identity is solely your ‘job-job’ that inevitably you will rise and fall on things that are often outside your control.? And that’s where feelings of detachment and helplessness start to kick in.? But remember it’s your choice to see things that way.

Having a portfolio career means sometimes some things are up, sometimes, some things are down but you can bob above the waves instead of seeing them crash over you

?

The risk of getting too attached.

A common area for coaching is during periods of layoffs and redundancies.? It’s striking how fundamentally people link their whole identity with their job-job.

It’s hard, because if you really love doing something, often your passion for the role is what makes you successful and the drop when you’re let go feels hard.

It’s striking how fundamentally people have linked their whole identity with the job-job.?? I coach people who feel utterly devastated, betrayed, bitterly questioning how their undying loyalty to the company that they have their best years to, has come to this.

Others act like they are re-enacting scenes from a prison break.?? Partying like it’s 1999, Dancing on the Ceiling and another pun song title will come to mind eventually – they’re thrilled to finally be released, but the question I guess is why did they stay so long in a place they really didn’t want to be?

The central issue is how we define ourselves.? My challenge to you is that you’re more than the job-job.?? Once you start to recognise and focus on the value you bring to others, you’ll realise you’re more independent than you think.? But that independence has to be worked on and earned.

?

Portfolio working makes you more creative

Every organisation thinks it has a unique set of problems.? Most like to feel special.? But in truth, go to any industry conference and your peers elsewhere have a lot more in common with you.?

When you’ve a portfolio of different interests, solutions you take for granted in one context often solve intractable problems in another.?? Anyone who has mentored or coached leaders in not-for-profits but has worked in the corporate world can easily see solutions that come from all that expensive training lavished upon us.

But the lean and necessary efficiency of a not-for-profit, that careful husbanding of resources, the creativity that comes from not have as many levers to pull can often also translate into finding those efficiency savings you need in your corporate role.

As a parent, you’re developing emotional intelligence that you bring to your leadership.? As a member of your church or mosque, you’re learning to forge agreement without relying on hierarchical authority, as a local councillor you may be bringing disparate views together, even if you don’t completely understand them and you may be having to make decisions on data, knowing it’ll never be perfect or complete.

Everything you do in these other jobs becomes part of you, part of your development and part of your growth.?? If you keep these skills only within the context they were gained, that’s your choice.

?

But portfolio working can also be really confusing.

Most senior leaders are challenged with time-management.? But time-management is just a function, a diary behaviour and often something that’s delegated to others to manage for you.

The bigger challenge is staying on top of ideas and concepts.? It’s much harder to delegate your thinking, synthesis and decision making to others.? You’re increasingly exposed to more information.? And if you take on roles growing your portfolio, you’re just increasing to the buzz and load.

So, what’s to do?

?

Holding down the hatches

I was a project manager.? My upbringing taught me to manage scope.?? And the way we do that as project managers is to lock stuff down.? We have a sixth sense for scope creep and distractions so we can chase them away.?? Even ?in Agile this still happens, we just gussy it up with ‘put it on the backlog’.

You have a lovely project plan or Kanban telling you everything you need to do.?? But if we’re not careful we keep everything in isolation.?? We’re not looking for the synergies and connections with other things we do.

?Our thinking process is lock this thing down and get it delivered.

?

A better way of leveraging your portfolio of roles

There are of course ways you can leverage the portfolio approach.

Working in a corporate, there are times when inevitably organisational structures and expectations feel a bit like wading through treacle.?? When those moments come, instead of feeling frustrated you can be grateful for the relative freedom to act, experiment and try stuff out that surfaces in my other roles.

Similarly, that corporate experience gives you lots of training in the structure of goals, commitments, checking in on one’s own performance, considering accountability.?? You don’t have to replicate the exact same processes but if you run your own business, who else is going to hold you accountable for achieving your goals if it’s not you?

The truly senior people will likely have non-executive director roles or be on multiple boards.? There are many charities, not-for-profits and schools that likely need and want your experience and you’ll develop skills through that you can bring back into your pay-cheque job.

But the trick is considering synergy – thinking of yourself as the glue between these two environments, how can you make both richer and more successful through your unique ability to see what’s in common and what they can contribute to each other.

?

How portfolio careers increase your curiosity

It’s hard to be curious if you never go outside.?? Having a portfolio of different roles allows you to observe commonality and contrasts.? Those observations and curiosities are the seed-corn of innovation.

Why does this work here but just bombed over there?

Why do people react to change in this way here but over there it’s completely different?

Why is this treated as normal here but as a life-changing risk over there?

If you’ve ever felt frustrated by working with management consultants who just seemed to replay your ideas back in a fancier power-point slide you miss the point.? You think they’re just re-representing ideas but their big advantage is seeing wider examples and contexts so they can compare, contrast, identify synergies and opportunities.

You can be the management consultant to yourself, I just can’t promise you the lavish salary.

Tactic:? Become more observant and curious.?? Start an ideas diary, mind-map the curiosity.? Where did you see it, where else are you seeing this, what variations are you noticing, where could this concept be applied?

?

Become both a dreamer and a doer.

Portfolio careers will test the quantity of information you’re presented with, and you can’t keep it all in your head.?? We think faster than we write.? Ideas are fleeting.?? If you’re just a dreamer but can’t also be a doer It’s really no good.

Tactic – connect your ideas to your goals – identify small actions, sometimes the smallest possible action that will take you one step closer to making that concept a reality.?? Marathons are run by putting one foot in front of the other and repeating it, a lot.

?

Final thoughts

This article isn’t really about dismissing the job-job.? It’s just a wake-up call to remind you that you are more than just the job title that drives the major pay-cheque.

And far from that being a rebellion or a resistance to ‘the man’, by reclaiming the independence we should never have given up in the first place, we’re also retaking personal responsibility for what we do, how we show up and the value we bring to people and communities in the round.

And for sure it can be confusing and sometimes a chaotic jungle of competing demands.?? But if you choose to see it this way it can also be a place of deep inspiration, creativity, and a reminder of why you’re on this planet.?? And make good things happen.

?

Found this useful?? Please share it.

These articles are written for everyone who is new to leadership or transitioning to their next leadership position.

As more is expected with you, what got you this far is just the start.? And you can help others by sharing this article.? You can also find others on this website www.ianbrowne.com

?

Do you have more potential?

There are thousands of self-improvement books.

Common to all of them is the single biggest thing that holds every leader back from truly being great – and that’s themselves.

All of us, every day, do things that sabotage our potential success.? We don’t always know we’re doing it.? You need a special mirror to know what these things are.??

And the good news is if you follow this link, I’ll send you a questionnaire that’ll help you understand what your saboteurs are.?? It’s free, it’ll take ten minutes, it’ll unlock your performance.

https://ianbrowne.distribute.so/wwwianbrownecom-for-ian-browne-coaching

?

Are you ready to unleash your potential?

If you’re driven, determined and ambitious to make your leadership the best it could be then why not consider Positive Intelligence, that’s helped over half a million people increase their confidence, productivity, conflict management, decision making and leadership at a fundamental level.

Every two months I invite a small group of no more than six leaders to join me on a six-week programme that’ll transform your leadership capability, productivity, and performance.?

Drop me a line for a no-obligation chat and see if you’d be a good fit.

[email protected] ?and learn how to unleash your potential here www.letsunleash.it