Page 48 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

36 COACH YOURSELF TO A NEW CAREER

Elizabeth, a fifty-something senior executive, hired me because
her company had recently merged and she was now working with a
new executive team. These folks weren’t like her old team, and she
didn’t have much respect for them. They swore frequently, didn’t
listen, and didn’t give her the respect she felt she deserved. She was
passionate about her work but was so certain that she’d never get
along with the managers that she hired me to help her find a new
career. One of the assignments I gave her was to write down her
ideal job description (you get to do that later!) and to work on getting
her personal and emotional needs fulfilled at home, not at work.
So, Elizabeth took the Personal Requirements Quiz and discov-
ered that her number one need was to be appreciated. She certainly
wasn’t getting much appreciation at work these days, so this state
of affairs contributed to her frustration. I gave her an assignment
to ask five people to meet her need to be appreciated at least once
a week for the next eight weeks. She started with her sixteen-year-
old daughter, who presented her a handmade card the first week
telling her how much she loved her and appreciated her. She asked
her closest friends to call once a week and leave a message regard-
ing something they appreciated about the friendship. Her mother
called weekly as well. Also, although she hadn’t asked her husband
(their relationship was on the rocks), he said he wanted to be part
of her appreciation team and voluntarily wrote her a long letter
citing all the things he appreciated and valued about her. Some of
what he wrote took her by surprise. All this appreciation on the
home front had an interesting effect at work: she no longer needed
the appreciation in the office and was able to detach from her work
emotionally—it was just a job now. This new detachment had an
interesting effect as well: the new management team noticed her
cool professionalism and liked it. In fact, the managers said they
thought the coaching was really working and offered to reim-
burse her for it. They didn’t know that she was actually trying to
find new work altogether. Then, when a plum position opened up
to be regional director in another state, they offered her the job!
Elizabeth took it and loves it! So much for quitting.
If you are emotionally involved with your work, then you defi-
nitely need to take the Personal Requirements Quiz in this chapter