These are the stories that come into the coaching career line every day. People hanging at the end of their career rope who are fed up and ready to take this job and shove it! They want a fast track out of an intolerable situation and are ready to move heaven and earth to make it happen. So they find a new job or business, turn in their notice and jump ship (not necessarily in that order). Freedom at last! Or not. Unfortunately many discover that an unwelcome stowaway jumped on board when they packed their boxes on that final day: the problem came along with them.

Don’t get me wrong. Change is good. The slowest road to promotion, top salary and high job satisfaction is to stay in the same job or company year after year. But when change is driven by the need to escape from a bad job, you often miss the mark. This “move away from” strategy has several major flaws:

First – you assume that you are not part of the problem and miss out on learning an important lesson or two. Maybe you are working 60 hours a week and being taken advantage of by your team members because you haven’t learned the art of saying NO when you should. Maybe you are overly resistant to change or tend to blame others when things go wrong. You can run but you cannot hide from yourself. These issues will keep cropping up no matter where you go!

Second – you move to the opposite end of the spectrum, assuming things will have to be better there. If you think your boss is demanding, just wait until you become your own boss! While a 60+ hour job is a huge challenge, a really boring job with no overtime can be twice as draining. Two years later you’ll be on the job hunt path again.

Third – you don’t take the time to figure out what you really want. Trial and error is a common method and many people spend their whole lives searching for the perfect job without taking time to stop and think about what it really is. If you don’t know what you want, you’ll never find it.

Ready to look before you leap?

1. Own your part of the problem. Job issues are never one-sided and righteous indignation just gets in the way of seeing how you contribute. Even if leaving your job is ultimately a good strategy for you, stick around long enough to use your current challenge as a learning opportunity. As in the examples above, you may choose to develop stronger boundaries, improve your communication skills or learn how to adapt effectively to a rapidly changing environment. Changing your approach often dramatically improves the situation.
   
2. Check your attitude. A bad attitude feeds off of itself and makes things unnecessarily worse. Once you begin to use this job as a training ground for the next one, you can move your energy from hating your current situation to seeing it as a way to prepare for the next one. Done well, this attitude shift buys you the time and energy you need to do it right.
   
3. Design your next job purposefully and from a positive perspective. Rather than focusing on what you don’t want, consider all the criteria that you need for a great job match. Begin by designing a perfect day at work, right down to the last detail! Here are some ideas to get you started: role, work hours, commute, challenge, flexibility, work environment, team dynamics, promotion opportunities, travel, skills used, pace of change.
   
4. Use your shopping list of perfect job criteria to measure each potential opportunity against what you really want.

Read Manage Your Attitude and Advance in Life, an article by John Alston

A personalized career assessment can provide great insights into your optimal work style and environment. Call the Transitions For Life office at 972.208.0577 to order yours today!

Develop your perfect job criteria using this Job Satisfactions and Values checklist or the Work Values Checklist.

Interested in other articles on career planning? Check out the new People in Motion archives!