The Great Re-evaluation as an Annual Practice Earlier in my career, prior to starting my own business, I had a fantastic mentor/sponsor, Aaron S. Williams who shared with me his annual year-end practice of reflection to prepare for the next year of career development. He asked himself five questions to help determine if it was time to make a change: Am I learning at my job? Am I making a difference? Do I like the people I work with? Am I having fun? Does this current job continue to contribute to my long-term goals? If the answer to any of these questions was “no”, he knew it was time to make a change. In addition, he shared the practice that you should always be looking for your next opportunity. Not to mean that you shouldn’t be content in your current role but to mean that you never know when your talents could be maximized in a new way. This approach to integrating work into life has stayed with me for more than 20 years. It supported my path to make job changes and career changes. It led me to start my own business and become a certified coach. Arianna Huffington wrote a recent post on Life-Work integration, highlighting that what is really at the heart of the “Great Resignation” is a “Great Re-evaluation”. The pandemic has been a jolt to the previously unquestioned construct of work driving our lives in the United States. We see the negative consequences of this drive to work excessively in poor health indicators, including burnout and mental health crises. Half of the American Workforce report that the pandemic has had a negative impact on their mental health. April is Stress Awareness Month, dedicated to raising awareness of the impact stress has on our lives and ways to manage it. It doesn’t have to be this way. In Europe, there are significant differences in the relationship between work life and personal life. Europeans do not attach their sense of purpose as strongly to work as do Americans and are said to be happier, healthier and more productive. One unexpected result of the pandemic is that it has challenged assumptions about the role work plays in our lives. The pandemic forced us to blur work life and personal life through working from home, which allowed us to see that we could have more flexibility in managing our productivity. It gave us back those hours of commute time to use as we choose. It may have also raised our awareness on how happy we were in our current job because the added stress of the pandemic forced us to pause and re-evaluate all aspects of our lives. As a coach, I support many leaders who are at a crossroad asking themselves, “What next? I know what I am doing right now isn’t right but I don’t know what to do.” Throughout the pandemic, I have supported leaders in their “Great Re-evaluation” to move toward life-work integration. If any of these questions are surfacing right now, you are among millions. Let’s connect to chart a path to life-work integration that allows you to say yes to those five questions! To learn more about the career journey of Aaron S. Williams, check out his recently published book, “A Life UnImagined: The Rewards of Mission-Driven Service in the Peace Corps and Beyond”.
