Welcome to the May edition of The Inbox Coach. This month I want to take a step back from focusing on ourselves and explore the impact the context in which we are working has on our career development.
I’ve had a great week, both in my work life and in my personal life. Nothing particularly eventful or amazing has happened but sitting in the sunshine today I’ve been reflecting on how different my life is to 4 years ago when I was still commuting to London every day.
Finding my community
I moved to Kent in 2005 and commuted to London for the next 13 years. I loved my jobs and the opportunities that came from working in a busy city, but I was unhappy at home. I was struggling to build a community in Kent, with my friends and family being further away. It got to the point where I thought I just wasn’t very good at it. In 2018 I was made redundant, and I decided to take the opportunity to shake up my career, starting my coaching business and taking a local part time job.
The extra time and energy I had from not having to commute meant I could join another choir and say yes to lots of new opportunities. Fast forward 4 years and I have an amazing community where I live, treasured friends who helped me through lockdown and planned and impromptu social arrangements. This last week I really felt the benefit of all that change, and I’m so pleased I decided to shake up my career back in 2018. Looking back, no matter what I did in my work, I wasn’t going to find the sort of fulfilment I had today as I wasn’t addressing the wider context of my career development.
The importance of context
I’ve been having lots of coaching conversations this year with my clients about the impact the context in which they are working is having on their choices. We don’t work on our careers in isolation. Our lives outside of work determine how much energy and brain space we have to focus on our career. At work, the workplace culture and the relationships we have with our colleagues also play a part in how we feel about our jobs.
The focus of a coaching session is on my client, and what they think, feel and do, but the wider context they are living in can’t be ignored. You can work on your confidence all you like, but if you have a manager who is patronising or an overly critical colleague, your confidence will take a knock. I know from personal experience of how challenging it is to work within the context of being chronically unwell. My choices about my career changed when I burnt out at work and I had to accommodate my health into work plans.
This month I want to explore the wider context in which our careers are situated to think about how that might impact the decisions we make about work. Whether you are looking to make changes in your personal life, or you are feeling like the environment you are working in isn’t helping you to be your best self, I want to think about the control we have over our situations and how understanding the context in which we work can help us to make choices that better serve us.
Reflection
*If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add this email to your calendar
I’ve noticed a tendency in the personal development space to put all the onus on the individual for achieving success, but I don’t think we can ignore the context in which we work. There are structural inequalities, practical considerations and particularly at the moment, health issues that all impact our ability to succeed. If we don’t recognise these challenges, the effect can be to think you aren’t good enough or you are failing when in fact the situation you are in is working against you. Think about the context in which you view your career develop and reflect on these questions…
What is the context in which you think about your career development?
What other factors are influencing how you show up at work?
How do you feel about your career in the wider context of your life?
What do you need to consider when planning your development over the next few weeks?
How are the other experiences in your life impacting your choices at work?
The context in which you are looking at your career development could be positive and exciting, challenging and frustrating or a complete mixture of emotions. When you are aware of the wider considerations in your life, and the impact of your workplace and colleagues, it can help you to adjust your expectations to ensure you are giving the right amount of time and energy to your career to feel good about the choices you are making.
Action
It can be easy to dismiss the impact of the factors beyond your control on your ability to work on your career development. Like so many things in life, the focus we can give to our career development will ebb and flow based on a whole variety of factors. Learning to tell the difference between things you can work on and those which impact you, but you can’t control, will help you to find more ease in your career.
Task
Spend some time this week reflecting on the context in which you are thinking about your career development. Consider what this period in your career looks like, and what sorts of things you need to be doing to support yourself. Think about the things that you have control over, but also consider the impact that factors outside of your control might be having on how you are feeling.
Inspiration
“I don’t know if we can make the world a better place, but we can definitely have the audience think about it.” – Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
This quote comes from an interview with Dance Tabs about the piece Annabelle Lopez Ochoa choreographed for the San Francisco Ballet's Unbound festival in 2018. The piece came about when Annabelle saw news footage of the devastation of a tiny village in Syria, and she was reminded of how Picasso had used his painting Guernica to comment on the devastation in that village during the Spanish civil war. Being a female choreographer in the ballet world is rare, of the twelve featured in this festival Annabelle was one of only two women. The English national ballet also commissioned Annabelle to create a piece for them, along with Aszure Barton and Yabin Wang as part of their She Said programme.
I often find that it is easier to think about certain career development topics through the lens of people with very different careers. It is why I started my Unconventional Mentors project. Artists in particular are sensitive to the context in which they are creating their work. They don’t seem to work in isolation but are influenced by the world around them and understand how the context in which they live their lives comes out in their work.
In a more office-based career, I think we have the ability to influence and make change even if it isn’t on the scale of an artist. We can respond to the context we find ourselves in and find a way to make the most of our career. We might not be able to singlehandedly transform a toxic workplace, but we can role model positive behaviours to our colleagues and make a positive impact on those around us.
Thinking about your career development and the context in which you are working is a both/and situation. You can both take responsibility for your own development, using coaching and reflection techniques to grow and develop, and you can also recognise that the context in which you are working will help or hinder your ability to succeed.
I’m really looking forward to exploring this idea of the context of your career development and I’ll be back next week with more thoughts
See you then
Laura
P.S. I’ve listed all the previous editions of The Inbox Coach emails on my website which you can find here. Each email has reflection questions and action tasks, so if you need to revisit a topic you can now browse them all in one place
