Why you need an employer that genuinely wants you to bring your whole self to work

At the start of my career, I was doing something that I didn’t enjoy and didn’t gain any fulfilment or gratification from. I know many others in the same position. Even with a fantastic life outside of work, I was continually dispirited and stifled by my professional dissatisfaction.

I don’t believe that you can separate personal and professional happiness; the two are intrinsically linked and dependent on each other. I don’t believe that I was unusual; an unacceptably large number of people face the same disillusionment. And since I don’t believe that you can separate personal and professional happiness, what that means is that an unacceptably large number of people are destined to see their personal happiness continually stifled, and ultimately unfulfilled by their professional sadness.

This is a travesty.

I firmly believe that happiness is our raison d’être — it’s the most important thing worth aspiring to. So over time I created a professional life that supports and guarantees the fundamental, inescapable drivers of my happiness, which in my case are family and legacy. Everything else flows from these two things.

Becoming increasingly self aware of these drivers has been instrumental in increasing my own happiness.

Family and legacy. That’s it. Family is pretty easy to understand, legacy perhaps a little more difficult. I’m not interested in a legacy comprised of public acclaim, but rather I'm looking at this from a personal standpoint. When I assess and evaluate my portfolio, I need to be able to look myself in the eye and be proud of what I’ve done. Whatever I do over the next 10, 20, 40 and 80 years, I want those projects to be impactful, and for other people to feel and appreciate that impact.

Once I got clarity on that, my approach to professional and personal projects evolved overnight, as did my sense of autonomy and freedom.

Given the professional route I’ve taken (short summary — corporate law to venture building), I’m often approached by people looking for help with making similar career transitions. Primarily, I hear from people who are struggling to understand their options, to identify a viable pathway, to upskill in the areas that they consider to be necessary for the path that they aspire to, and to understand how to go about figuring out what those areas are. I love to have these conversations because I genuinely care about assisting and impacting with their development and transition. Why? Because contributing in a small way to increasing net professional fulfilment will form part of my legacy.

In my experience, a successful transition is always underpinned by self-awareness. So when I work with people, that is always the starting point. It’s the single biggest skill that’s required to start moving towards whatever your end goal happens to be — ie. whatever success looks like to you. Particularly in the context of career transition, it’s crucial to be completely cognisant of what drives you, what you can do (rather than what you can’t), and what are your non-negotiables in terms of professional circumstance.

For some people, that’s salary — for others, it’s the mission. For many, it’s prestige and the perception of others. There’s no right or wrong answer here, the only way is to approach it honestly. Mission or impact may be more romantic, but if that’s not how you’re wired then ignoring the reality won’t make you truly happy. The key is to understand what drives you, and to work within that framework — you gain nothing by being idealistic about it.

My personal non-negotiables are autonomy and meritocracy. There are plenty of other things that I’d also like to have, but it's not realistic to ask for everything, and if they don’t exist I can work around them. These are the rails that support my pursuit of legacy. But if you had asked me the question 5 or 6 years ago, you would have got a different answer. If you had asked me 3 years ago, you may have got a different answer again. For the last few years I’ve had this figured out and over time, increasingly validated. Now, I don’t believe these things will change.

But where I sometimes struggle when working with others, is in breaking through to a brutally honest assessment of their own drivers of happiness. This is self-awareness in action, and when you fail here you set yourself up to fail in the future. Understanding yourself is the first step. And doubtless you won’t get it right first time. But it’s like building a business: by continually hypothesising, experimenting and honestly validating, you will start to edge closer to the fundamental, personal things that drive your happiness. In the parlance of business building, that’s your product-market fit. But if you’re not able to effectively self-assess, it’s catastrophic.

All of this is acutely personal, and it has to be.

But once you've figured out what you want and what you need; once you've figured out what are your own non-negotiables, all of a sudden it becomes more than personal. Because without an employer and a workplace that supports you in the pursuit of both your professional and personal aspirations, something will inevitably have to give.

If you are to be truly happy, professional happiness and personal happiness are two sides of the same coin. So inevitably, you will need an employer that offers you the mission, environment and opportunity to achieve both of these things. You will need an employer that supports you to strive for a holistic happiness, built on your own non-negotiables.

And you will need an employer that wants you to bring your whole self to work. Otherwise, they will fail, since at best they will only ever be able to solve for your professional happiness.

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