Career Change: Making the Big Leap
Often people contemplate a change of career with some trepidation,
holding fears such as:
- Will I be able to achieve what I am aiming for?
- What if I don’t earn enough money?
- Will I regret my decision?
One common tool for helping you to decide whether you are right in
wanting to change jobs is for you to draw up a list of costs and
benefits of making the decision to make a big leap into a new career.
Whilst this approach is useful, it is unlikely to resolve the fears or
anxieties you have about making the big leap. In order to help with
those, I would suggest the following approach:
1. Make a Risk Assessment of the most significant risks of
deciding to change career. In your Risk Assessment, for each potential
risk you think of, set out:
– What will be the potential negative consequences if the risk
materialises
– How likely you think it is that the risk will materialise (You can
either use a scoring scale or else define things in a range of
probabilities – e.g. ‘Very likely’, ‘Quite likely’, ‘Possible’ etc.)
– Then give each risk a Priority Rating (e.g. 10 means you need to
treat the risk with the highest priority, 0 means it is of no
significance at all). Note that in order to assign priority you will
need to balance the two factors listed above (potential consequences
and likelihood). For example, if a risk is very likely to materialise
but the potential negative consequences from it are very small, then
that risk probably does not need a particularly high priority. because
it will not jeopardise your success even if it materialises
2. Once you have assigned your priorities you need to create a
Risk Management Plan, to deal with all the risks but in
particular for those risks which you have judged to be of highest
priority. In the plan for each risk set out:
- What you can do now to reduce the likelihood of the risk
materialising at all (e.g. through advance planning and research of
the option you are pursuing and how to achieve it).
- What can you do to limit the impact if the risk does materialise
(this might for example include having a contingency plan in place for
what you will do if the new career does not work out as expected).
You can use your Risk Assessment and Risk Management Plans to help you
decide for each risk whether it is a risk that you are prepared to
take and use your Risk Management Plan to help you plan and implement
step by step actions to help you maintain progress if you do decide to
pursue your dream.
If you find it difficult to be objective about what the risks are or
about how to manage them, then you may benefit from the support of a
coach to help you work through the options and decide what you want to
do.
The other element where a good coach may be able to help you is in
dealing with your mental inhibitions about taking action – for example
by showing you practical techniques to assist you when your motivation
is low or when negative thoughts are running through your mind.
It is important to include mental or emotional aspects amongst the
risks that you assess, if these are significant for you. For example,
one of my clients who decided to create her own business in a creative
field identified as one of the main risks:
Risk of feeling lonely and isolated and loss of confidence.
Through discussion in coaching we were able to create simple
elements in the Risk Management Plan to help her plan for how to
deal with this risk if it arose, including:
- identifying and making use of possible support systems she might use
- deciding not to be over critical of herself if she did start to lose
confidence, but to learn from situations
- reminding herself of the benefits of achieving her career change
when difficulties arose
- following the Project Plan she had created in coaching sessions to
facilitate her career change in a step by step manner and updating it
at regular intervals.
Through the assistance of the Risk Management Plan she was able to
make the transition from a stressful, unfulfilling career into a
career which she found creative and meaningful.
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