I enrolled in some qualifying subjects for a Master of Arts degree with a particular emphasis on the sociology of organisations and anthropology. The plan was that I would return to work for the eight-week required post childbirth period to qualify for a maternity leave payment, which we needed to support ourselves. (This was the arcane system in place then—you qualified for your maternity leave pay once you had been back at work for over two months.) Then I would resign and return to full-time motherhood and part-time study.
The choices that were never made…
I started my secondary school teaching career in one of Sydney’s toughest high schools suffering from lacklustre leadership. It was a newly established school where the principal and his deputy were both out of their depth in terms of dealing with its many challenges. But two years later I found myself on the staff of an inner Western Sydney girls’ high school with great leadership.
So, when my eight weeks post-maternity leave was up, I found I was getting physically nauseous trying to resign. I went to see the Deputy Principal, Marie Lynch, for some advice.
Marie asked me what I really wanted to do the most: study, spend more time with our son David, or keep working full-time. The answer was I just did not know yet. She suggested I keep doing all three till I figured it out.
It was some of the best advice I have ever had—and she continued to ask me how things were going from time to time.
Three or four years later, my master’s was completed, we’d had a second child, a third was on the way, and I was still working full-time—broken by short bouts of maternity leave. I’d never had to make that choice amongst the three options.
When Robert finally finished his PhD and got a paying job, we moved into our first home with a mortgage in the mid-1970s—a classic three-bedroom fibro with a sunroom added along the back. We had lived very frugally for many years to save the deposit we needed. We had to completely furnish the house as we had been renting furnished ‘half-houses’ till then, and the only pieces of furniture we owned were a piano and a roll top desk, which probably says something about what we valued at the time!
A sense of purpose and direction: more useful than a detailed plan
You have to work out what is best for you—and deal with situations as they arise.
My friend and former Gartner colleague, Robin Kranich, calls this the WHY, what is it that makes you want to leap out of bed and take on the world? Robin is Gartner’s Executive Vice-President and Chief Human Relations Officer. Last summer, with two kids away at summer camp she took some time to reflect on what drives her, and her WHY in terms of the mark she wants to leave on the world. In her case, ‘her world’ is her family, friends and the 15,000 or so people she works with at Gartner. She wrote down a list of ‘Truths I know about me’ and the result was that she did figure out her WHY. It was about discovering the unique and differentiated talents of others, helping them to tap into it, and then harnessing the collected strengths of many diverse people and perspectives to achieve their full potential both as individuals and as a company. That is her WHY.
This WHY energises her, gives her purpose, helps her to work through the difficult situations and provides clarity that counteracts the occasional inertia.
We each need to find our WHY, our sense of purpose. This helps you to understand your comfort level with your career, personal choices and options, and the trade-offs you are prepared to make. It helps us to have the perspective to adjust to changing circumstances. Sometimes we make trade-offs consciously, sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes just intuitively. It helps to clearly articulate your strengths and trade-offs to yourself, and those around you.
If you have real career choices to make, you’re already heading in the right direction, but, yes, making those career decisions can be challenging. It’s about the level of risk you are prepared to take, your options, how others see you, and your own reality check about your strengths and the things you are not so good at. I am well into my fifth career (I did start out a long time ago) and some choices have been easier than others.
Luck can certainly come into it too: sometimes you can be lucky, sometimes not, and sometimes you will have to work at making your own luck.
First career choices: just a starting platform
Some people always have a sense of what they might want to do.
One of our sons, Patrick (aka Paddy) is a professional musician and music educator. His goal from about age nine was to be a jazz trumpeter—he announced this as soon as he picked up and started playing a trumpet.
When he was about thirteen, in his first year of high school, he had to write an essay about what he might want to do when he grew up. He wrote that, when he was in his mother’s womb, he heard Louis Armstrong play trumpet and he knew then what he wanted to be.
While his teacher was quite concerned about the origins of his career choice, it made sense to us as his parents. And yes, being a jazz trumpeter is part of what he does today. But that clarity and follow-through is relatively rare.
When I was growing up there were generally two choices put to young women—teaching or nursing. I had always wanted to do teaching so that was fine with me at the time. I completed a Bachelor of Arts degree and then a Diploma of Education. My high school teaching ‘methods’, as they were called then, were History, English, Library Studies, and what was called ‘New Media’ in 1969. A few years later I also completed a course of study and exams to qualify as a professional librarian.
Unlike some of my school friends, I had parents who assumed that, if bright enough, I would go to university—though my parents both finished their formal schooling at fourteen. The very special thing about my parents was that they understood that each of their seven children were quite different. What was good for one of us, was not necessarily good for another. We were each encouraged to do what was right for us, and there was no pre-defined path. My eldest brother was the first of our generation to go to university, and all of us completed university studies, professional or technical training.
No matter your path, finding that sense of purpose and playing to your strengths helps you to navigate, redirect or expand your options when you hit those difficult inflection points in your career.
2
Risk: How Much Are You Prepared To Take On?
Making career choices: some safe, some very risky
Some of my career choices have been safe, but some have entailed a good level of risk.
In my work as an Executive Search Consultant we look for diversity in our candidates, some risk-taking, the extent executives and managers have been prepared to take on stretch roles, experienced very challenging situations or market conditions, or perhaps started a business, led a turnaround, or had to close one down.
My career might look at bit meandering to some. To me, it was always important to be growing and learning in a role. The initial threads were about education and managing information sources. This shifted over time to working with executives, initially in areas related to advising, coaching and coaxing. And later, leading services that did all those things.
I took on new roles as a bit of a stretch, and sometimes because they gave me the opportunity to do something I had not done before.
Let me share with you some of those career choices—the inherent risks that had to be assessed, and the career inflections they came to provide—so that you may hopefully gain some insight into the types of things that can occur, and to think about what direction you might have taken, given the same opportunities.
Generally, I stayed six or seven years in the one organisation taking on different or broader roles within it before moving on. It is really important to stay long enough to have built a solid track record of achievement, or in the words of a colleague of mine, ‘To clean up the mess you might have made the first time around’.
Inflection