It took me two years of incubation to shape my dream and align it with my values; none of my three pregnancies have lasted that long. During a leadership workshop I attended in 2004, I was asked to write my “Story of the future”. At that time, I envisioned myself in ten years as an Executive Coach with my own Coaching school.
Then life happened. I got promoted, moved to a new city, remarried, and settled in the corporate world. From time to time I would think about my dream, usually when things started to get rough at work. As I was more and more involved in living the life I had chosen, eventually that dream faded away.
Until two years ago. I had been dissatisfied with my job for quite some time; I could not find meaning in what I was doing. I was struggling to align with the company vision and the behaviors that seemed more and more common among leaders of undermining employees’ self-confidence and the distrust that permeated in many teams.
The company for which I worked for had transformed into a familiar monster I was not able and did not want to fight with. Or had something changed in me?
I went on a crusade to discover what was going on and started sharing my opinion and observations with other fellow employees and peers in other companies and industries. The answers were surprisingly easy to cluster; people around the age of 50 and above, felt more or less like me; the younger folk somehow had made peace with the new paradigm and had adjusted better to the environment.
I told myself that I was the one who had to adapt to the new situation. Over the years I had praised myself for being very flexible, resilient, and able to cope with anything the fate would hand me. In the end, I had survived a divorce, brought up three accomplished sons on my own and made a career for myself!
However, the harder I tried to fit in, the less it seemed to work. For the first time in my professional life I found it hard to get up in the morning and once at work I counted the minutes until I would be able to say goodbye. I was missing a purpose, a higher sense of contributing that had very little to do with another promotion or a higher paycheck. I felt I had so much to give to the younger generation, yet what I did never seemed enough to satisfy that hunger.
The imperative in the company was “to get rid” of the “old elephants” and invest on the next generation or, even better, “skip a generation”. Tough it seems fair and even healthy to equip the new generation with the skills that will be required in the future, the truth is that a lot of companies prefer to hire young people because they are paid less. In fact, I witnessed burn out among new hires or newly promoted employees, just because nobody had really checked if they were ready to take the next step in their career!
Here is the thing: I am not saying that companies should invest in the older population. I get it, we cost more, we may have some family issues – care giving to aging parents, for example – or health problems, which make us less available for business traveling, long hours, or weekend overtime. Nonetheless, the state of the art in pension laws in Europe is such, that people that have worked for 35 years still have another 7 to 10 years to spend at work. What if companies found a way to make the most of these unwilling “hostages”? What if, instead of getting rid of them, many times through coercion or mobbing, they used the seniors to raise the next generation to their fullest potential? What if they shared Co-Head positions so that the most experienced would act as a mentor for the less experienced?
All these questions rumbled in my head for months until I realized that, if I could not influence my environment, there was one thing that depended on me, fully!
I could choose to make the difference, to have an impact on my own. And suddenly my dream of becoming my own boss was within grasp! Something had shifted in me; I stopped the venting out, the self-pity and the blame toward “big cruel companies”. I still had to work on my mindset. After 30 years an employee, the biggest change was internal: I had to create my new identity as a self-employed worker and embrace the uncertainty that comes with it.
It is still an ongoing process. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I ask myself: “How will I show my clients the value I can provide?” “Will I be able to meet ends?” “Will I have enough clients to support my lifestyle?” These and other questions can seem overwhelming, but they have helped me understand what is unique about my services and which talents will serve my clients best.
More importantly my deep self-reflections have connected me with the purpose I so much longed for, they have given me meaning. I wake up every day with a smile on my face and when I coach individuals or teams, I feel I found where I belong to!
My journey has taught me to look inside, rather than outside; to search for my distinctive way to approach life. There is no recipe that fits all; we are all different, yet we are more similar than we think we are.
Find your unique voice and make it heard. If you courageously embrace the unknown and enter uncharted territories, somehow, along the way, you will discover how to proceed. And probably you will enjoy the ride, tough it might be apparent only afterwards.
I am sharing this to lift up the spirit of those who are at an impasse, who feel that the society does not need them anymore. There’s hope, after the first step.
Stay tuned for more on my journey.