Making a Big Career Choice

Susan, a senior executive, one of the best in the industry, is working as an independent contractor for many years. She is passionate about her work and she enjoys working with people she respects and admires in very challenging and complicated assignments. She just got married and she is now focused on creating a family so life work balance has become even more important at this stage of her life.

She has received an offer a few months ago to become a senior partner in one of the top four corporates of the industry but she struggles to make up her mind. Leaving a well-compensated, independent career and the life-work balance she has managed to create for herself for a senior role in a corporate environment is a tough call. The proposed role requires the cultural transformation of a department of over 150 people, an additional task that increases her reluctance to accept the offer. On the other hand, changes in the regulation of the industry complicate her options as an independent contractor, potentially limiting the possibilities for satisfying assignments in the future.

The last two months, she has managed to complete successfully a comprehensive partners’ recruitment process and she has been engaged in a series of meetings and negotiations with key stakeholders in her effort to improve the offer and make sure that this is the best career option for her at this stage. She gained time to think and make an informed decision but now she has only two days to give her answer. However, she is still ambivalent and describes her situation as a bigdilemma.

At this point she reaches out to AHUM for support which limits our options for intervention to only one session. Exploring ways to approach this last-minute call while sticking to AHUM philosophy and approach, I reflect on the use of the word dilemma which to my understanding, is a situation in life where none of the available options fulfills our dreams. I was wondering where Susan’s situation fits into her broader professional and personal aspirations.

Based on the belief that problems are frustrated dreams (Lang, McAdam), I am exploring the idea of a vision development process which we call “dream talk” and apply to individual and team coaching engagements to reveal client’s (or team’s) aspiration for an ideal position in the future. Expanding the scope of a situation by broadening the timeframe, provides the opportunity to think differently and create a different meaning around it. Our choices in the present depend on where we are heading long term. When we make decisions about our career, they have more meaning if they become a part of a broader aspiration. If we have outlined an “end” destination, certain choices in our journey become obvious in a way that our dreams for the future, steer our decisions and actions in the present.

At the beginning of the session I explain to Susan how I think we could approach this session to create a meaningful outcome for her, suggesting to engage in a “dream talk”. I ask her whether my proposal would be useful at this late stage of negotiations with the potential employer and if there is anything else she thinks would be even more useful to work on.

We invite people to participate and commit to our process by creating space to express their thoughts and ideas about how to meet their needs. We are prepared to be flexible and include their views regarding the kind of support they need and how they prefer to receive it. Many times, we are positively surprised by the inventive ideas that people bring, which we take on board to enrich our process and support. Additionally, securing consent at this early stage of the session, is the first step to engage them, make them feel heard and understood and create the space for them to take their share of ownership of the process.

 Susan is a very experienced and open-minded person. She has worked with many business coaches in the past and she understands that their input depends on their process. She agrees to the “dream talk” idea and commits to flow with it.

During the session, Susan articulates a dream, an ideal position in the future highlighting a condition of ultimate accomplishment, pride and fulfillment. Moving back from the ideal position through questioning and exploration of what choices and actions she had to take in order to manage to get there she revealed a whole road map with key milestones of her journey reaching the point that the answer to her dilemma whether to accept or reject the job offer became obvious. Susan was grateful and happy with the outcome looking calmer and relieved at the end of our session. She had enjoyed not only the content but also the simple, creative and structured manner of the process.

Three hours later, Susan sends me an email saying: “I am not sure what really happened during our session but it was very powerful and I made my decision. I have emailed already my new boss to let him know that I accept his offer.”

The session managed to inform her decision in a very profound way. Accepting the offer was an obvious step towards her long-term aspiration, making her decision in the present a meaningful part of a whole.