When 'happily ever after' met 'once upon a time'...

The first few months in a new job can be fraught, both for the person walking through the door for the first time and the person on the other side. As employees, we’re intent on absorbing and understanding absolutely everything; the minutiae of the role, the intricacies of the relationships, the day-to-day headache of software and systems, the cultural norms that are discussed openly and the ones that aren’t. It can be exhausting.?

But why is it that some individuals take those first few months, with all the collateral madness, in their stride, whilst others struggle with overwhelm and some even crash? Undoubtedly, many factors are at play, from the personal to the structural and even the cultural, but there is one factor that may underpin many of the difficult starts to new jobs... we don't always leave our old jobs properly.

We are a culture that has its eyes trained so squarely on the prize that we move from one job to another the way Jason Bourne walks away from a beautiful city or a burning building; without a single backward glance. Sure, we do the obligatory exit interview, but we rarely stop to think about what we’re leaving and the many feelings this might evoke. In coaching speak, an exit interview gives us the opportunity to share what has happened, but it doesn’t go further and ask: “...and what’s important about that?”. As my alma mater, Barefoot Coaching would say, it’s important to engage deeply, not just with the ‘what?’ but also with the ‘so what?’. This makes it infinitely easier to think clearly and make good decisions about the ‘now what?’.

And does this play out beyond work? Invariably. Our determination to march forward at pace without taking the time to ‘sit with the discomfort’ of the thing we’re moving away from can yield challenges later on. When we move away from difficult relationships, we are often so keen to find a new relationship that fits us better that the extent of our evaluation of what’s gone before amounts to what we hated about him or found annoying about her. We haven't necessarily considered not just what happened, but how it impacted how we felt, thought and acted and what that tells us about ourselves.

A couple of weeks ago, I worked with a group of women who had been through breast cancer treatment, and who were readying themselves for life back out in the world. For everyone in the room, myself included, allowing ourselves to think this way was enlightening. A period of serious illness can be very difficult to move forward from. Even after successful treatment it can be hard to feel excited about getting on with life. The participants worked on the process of thinking about what they’d been through, even though it was painful to do so, and accepted that this had been their reality. They thought about everything they’d achieved during that difficult period and how they hadn’t, at the time, recognised how brave they had been. They acknowledged the things they'd lost and made peace with the fact that those things were gone. They considered the many things they were relieved not to be dealing with, that they could wave goodbye to and the surprising number of things they simply hadn’t realised they had gained... resilience, a dark sense of humour, even some practical skills that had become superpowers. The process of evaluating everything had uncovered a realisation; many things had been out of their control during treatment, but the ability to make some choices – what to leave behind versus what to take with them – brought a feeling of empowerment, a spirit of decisiveness and best of all, it brought clarity.

What can we take from all of this when we think about work? Well, there are many lessons that you may already have discovered on your own journeys. Mine go something like this: be less Bourne. Turn around, sit down and be in the mess for a while. Take stock. Ask yourself what you see and how you feel. Sure, think about the achievements, the moments of growth and the hard lessons; but then be intentional about which elements of each of these you want to take with you and which you want to leave behind. And think about what doing that might give you. Then, stand up and walk towards the next adventure.