Podcast in Marathi on “How to stay relevant and employable in the market?”

In today's career-oriented world, how should one approach upskilling? What skills are crucial when entering the corporate sector? Why personal branding is necessary? How should one approach a job interview? How important is networking? What are the current trends in the job market? We have covered these topics and more with Vinod Bidwaik, People & Culture Director at Sakal Media Group. 

Tune in to gain valuable insights and strategies to navigate and excel in your career journey.

Click on a link below to listen the full podcast:-

https://youtu.be/XnvHeACk47I?si=9g3lIJ3WRPnm1Kcc

 Click on a link below to listen the full podcast:-

https://youtu.be/XnvHeACk47I?si=9g3lIJ3WRPnm1Kcc

Reskilling

I'm delighted to announce that Sakal Prakashan, the book publications division of the Sakal Media Group, has published my Marathi book titled "रिस्किलिंग, कामातील प्रगतीसाठी, स्वतःच्या आनंदासाठी" ("Reskilling, For Career Progression, For Personal Fulfillment"). This marks my 7th book (4th Marathi book) and is a compilation of my column articles published in Daily Sakal in 2021.

Key Messages:

Unlock Your Potential: Reskilling goes beyond just adapting to new technologies; it's about tapping into your full potential and discovering hidden talents. This book takes readers on a transformative journey to realize their true capabilities and achieve their dreams.

Future-Proof Your Career: Stay ahead in the rapidly evolving job market by acquiring new skills and knowledge. "Reskilling" offers actionable strategies to future-proof your career and find success in any industry.

Adapt and Thrive: Embracing change can be daunting, but it's also an opportunity for growth. "Reskilling" instills the mindset and tools necessary to embrace change, conquer challenges, and thrive in any situation.

If you're a Marathi reader, I invite you to grab a copy of the book by clicking the following link. Additionally, the book is also available on Amazon & Flipkart for your convenience.

Please click here to buy the book >> Reskilling

How do we learn?

Learning is a lifelong process. We always keep learning by observing, through experiences, reading or listening to others. The person who stops learning is irrelevant in the world; those are the people who are always suffering in life. There are people who observe, read, experience, and listen to others, but never learn. Those are the people who go for bathing in the river without getting wet. They are faking the learning. They take feedback but ignore that.

David Kolb published his learning style model in 1984. He says, “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb, 1984, p. 38).

Learners’ internal cognitive process decides how the learning is effective. When you get any experience, encounter any situation, your mind is conditioned, and programme is created in the mind. It is used when similar types of situations occur. First time is experiencing the situations, responding to those situations, demonstrating the behaviours which the person thinks right. In this process the person learns, and that learning is replicated in similar circumstances. According to Kolb “learning involves the acquisition of abstract concepts that can be applied flexibly in a range of situations.”

Kolb's experiential learning style theory is typically represented by a four-stage learning cycle in which the learner 'touches all the bases':

Concrete Experience - a new experience or situation is encountered, or a reinterpretation of existing experience.

Reflective Observation of the New Experience - of particular importance are any inconsistencies between experience and understanding.

Abstract Conceptualization - reflection gives rise to a new idea, or a modification of an existing abstract concept (the person has learned from their experience).

Active Experimentation - the learner applies their idea(s) to the world around them to see what happens

The learning is effective when a person progresses through a cycle of four stages:

• Having a concrete experience followed by
• Observation of and reflection on that experience which leads to
• The formation of abstract concepts (analysis) and generalizations (conclusions) which are then
• Used to test hypotheses in future situations, resulting in new experiences.

This can be shown in a graphical way as under.

However, effective learning only happens when a learner can go through and demonstrate the behaviour in all four stages. Therefore, no one stage of the cycle is effective as a learning procedure on its own.

One interesting point we should note is that whenever we approach the task or experience, we have certain approaches and attitudes for the tasks, this is called, Processing Continuum. Another dimension is while experiencing the situation or approaching the task, we have responses in terms of our emotions. Situation triggers emotions, we respond emotionally, this is called Perception Continuum.

Based on these continuums, there are 4 different styles of learning which are described in the following model.

We need to create learning initiatives based on the different styles as above. Those 4 styles are as indicated in above graphic are:

Diverging (feeling and watching with Concrete Experience and Reflective Observation)

These people can look at things from different perspectives. They are sensitive. They prefer to watch rather than do, tending to gather information and use imagination to solve problems. They are best at viewing concrete situations from several different viewpoints.

Assimilating (watching and thinking with Abstract Conceptualization and Reflective Observation). These people are concise, have a logical approach. Ideas and concepts are more important than people for them. These people require a good, clear explanation rather than a practical opportunity. They excel at understanding wide-ranging information and organizing it in a clear, logical format. People with this style are more attracted to logically sound theories than approaches based on practical value.

Converging (doing and thinking - Abstract Conceptualization and Active Experimentation)

People with a converging learning style can solve problems and will use their learning to find solutions to practical issues. They prefer technical tasks and are less concerned with people and interpersonal aspects. They can solve problems and make decisions by finding solutions to questions and problems.

Accommodating (doing and feeling - Concrete Experience and Active Experimentation)

The Accommodating learning style is 'hands-on,' and relies on intuition rather than logic. These people use other people's analysis, and prefer to take a practical, experiential approach. They are attracted to new challenges and experiences, and to carrying out plans.

Knowing a person's (and your own) learning style enables learning to be orientated according to the preferred method. That said, everyone responds to and needs the stimulus of all types of learning styles to one extent or another - it's a matter of using emphasis that fits best with the given situation and a person's learning style preferences. 

(Article is based on David Kobe’s Learning Model)

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

https://store.pothi.com/book/vinod-bidwaik-vitality-human-resource/

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. Income from books is used for social cause. 

Executive Presence

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.com 

In the last two articles, we spoke about Gravitas and Signature style. Both are imperatives of leadership and creating authentic leadership. Authenticity, gravitas and signature style make your leadership presence impactful, also called as Executive Presence. 

Executive Presence is a persona that lets everyone around you know that you, as a leader, are in charge, confident and capable of leading others. Executive Presence is not related to the position, power, or hierarchy. It is about creating the impact in a meaningful way. It is about your ability to inspire confidence, in your team that you’re the leader they want to follow, inspiring confidence among peers that you’re capable and reliable and, most importantly, inspiring confidence among senior leaders that you have the potential for great achievements. So executive leadership is not about what position you hold.   

ABC of Executive Presence.

Attitude: It starts with the attitude. The attitude of taking proactive actions, continuous learning, acumen and leading the self and others.

Behaviour: Demonstrating right behaviours and being flexible enough to adjust the mindset in the changing world. For example, during the pandemic, you may have demonstrated behaviours which you might not have demonstrated during the normal course. 

Credibility: It is about how you build a trustworthy relationship and atmosphere around you. You need to build trust, earn trust and gain trust. There are different methods. Being credible also means being consistent in your approach. People will trust you when they know that whenever they approach you, you would give them attention and support to solve their issues. Being knowledgeable in your area, sound in the technical competencies will help in building credibility. 

As per the research, elements of Executive Presence are 

Gravitas: How do you Act? 

Communication: How do you speak?

Appearance: How do you look?

     

Though the major impacting elements are Gravitas and Communication. Appearance also plays a role to some extent in developing the Executive Presence. Most of us say that appearance doesn’t matter much and that is true to some extent. “Simplicity has the glamour when you are a celebrity. It doesn't always work for common people. People will be judgemental and hence it is necessary to create simplicity with elegance and beauty”. Here, appearance doesn’t mean physical personality. It is about overall grooming, dressing sense and cheerfulness. 

“Always remember, people create perceptions. Everything we do, impacts perception and perception impacts credibility. Hence your overall leadership persona has to be developed considering the impact on others’ perceptions.”  

Few more tips to develop the Executive Presence,

• Create your own signature style, 

• Have a personal vision, and articulate it well,

• Understand how others perceive and experience you.

• Build your communication skills, learn storytelling technique, Use proper body language. 

• Become an excellent listener,

• Cultivate your network, understand socio-political dimensions of the organization and be political savvy,

• Be emotionally intelligent, learn to operate effectively under stress,

• Be polished & poised. Dress professionally, pay attention to your clothing style & grooming.

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga. Income from books is used for social cause. 

Leadership Role Needs

Leadership is always a hot discussion topic in spite of having a lot of theories and material available on it. There are different views, different opinions, and different theories, still organizations are struggling having the right leadership in place.. Every research, every survey done internally and externally has some views on the leadership. On the other hand, if you search “thought leaders” on LinkedIn, you will get millions of profiles which list leadership and thought leaders as a strength of those individuals. This is a contradiction.

Leadership is a behaviour. Leadership has to be proved in the organization, then only it gets the recognition. However, one of the flaws one can say is that leadership is subjective, it totally depends upon the organizational context. That’s why employees and managers working in MNCs are not interested in working in Indian companies and vice versa. In both organizations leadership behaviour expectations are different. The great leader in one company may be a failure in another company. However, a true leader is someone who is flexible, resilient, adaptable and adjusts his/her wavelength with any type of culture and atmosphere.

I would like to make the leadership simple for you if you are managing a team directly or indirectly.

In any organization, there are three overlapping needs that have to be focused by the leader. Fulfilling these needs is the right recipe of leadership. 

Task Needs: These needs are mainly related to the results leader and his/her function needs to achieve. This is a typical management function where you are expected to set up targets, define workflow, define the task, planning, briefing, controlling, etc. but moreover aligning the team with a larger purpose.

Team Needs: to achieve the task, you have to build and maintain the team. You need to identify the right talent which is diverse in your team. Your team needs to be cohesive but still diverse and should be able to work together.

Individual Needs: Here you have to understand the individual needs, their aspirations, motivation. It is good to understand what are the driving forces that are motivating employees to come to the job every day, what are their development plans and how they can contribute to achieve the tasks.  

Leadership is not a rocket science, you have to prepare your right recipe which can be cooked whenever required, but sometimes you also need to change it as per the context and create new one. You have to add other dimensions in the recipe as and when required. Your leadership behaviours are spices that make the recipe best to consume. 

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga 

Influencing without authority

(Source of image: https://arbre.je/2017/08/21/the-power-of-positive-influence/)

Being a team leader or manager doesn’t mean that you get the authority to do what you wish or what you think. After taking a role, within a few days, managers realise that nothing is in their control, especially when they are working with a networked and large organization. In a knowledge economy where your knowledge has value, you need to influence them with mindfulness. It is not an easy job nowadays. There are a lot of high-level individual contributor roles where you have to work cross functionally with different people where the team comes together for common purpose. In both cases, you have to influence others to get the job done. As organizations are becoming more matrix and web, there is no other option but to work in the ecosystem where you are successful only when you coordinate, collaborate, and consolidate.

You can make it by:

Coordinating: You have to invest your energy to coordinate with different stakeholders for informing, interacting, and educating them on your initiatives. Once you create a situation where coordination is smooth, it is easy for you to collaborate.

Collaborating: Once you are successful in coordinating, you can expect some reciprocation from others. In the collaborating stage, you set up a context, agenda, and expectations. In this stage, you need to create a common purpose. Your compelling story will create a more appealing purpose.

Consolidating: In consolidation, you work on common strength, complement each other’s strength, and support each other in case of development areas. Here you take actions of combining a number of things into a single more effective or coherent way.        

Once you consolidate your relationship with others your influencing journey starts. To become a truly effective influencer you must be able to choose the best ‘influencing mode’ for any situation and use that mode skillfully. You can choose your influencing mode based on your relationship and where you are, i.e., in coordination, collaboration or consolidation stage.

You can use your “influencing mode” in three ways,

Driver mode: If you set up your purpose and both are aligned, then you can use this mode. It’s about what you, the influencer, think and feel, and what you want. It’s about expressing that to another person in a way that shapes their subsequent behaviour.

When used well, people may refer to you as dynamic, someone who drives things forward. However, use your driving style properly. If you are too pushy in driving mode, people may not feel comfortable, and they may feel that you are trying too hard, and they may be defensive.   

Peacemaker mode: You can use this mode when you want to influence the person towards a common goal but in an amiable way. It’s about focusing on other people and what they need, want, or expect of you. Whilst you may not agree with them, you genuinely want to understand what they are thinking and feeling. However, be careful while using this. People may perceive you as a manipulator if you overuse this.  

Withdrawer mode: In this mode, you don’t think that interacting with another person is going to be productive for time being and hence you give the space to others. You withdraw from the conversations. However, if you decide to do it tactically and temporarily, your style may be considered constructive, but if you use this mode to abandon your influence purpose, it is unproductive. Use this wisely.    

You have to influence every day and every time when you are interacting with your team, with your manager or peers. However, when you don’t have direct control or authority you need to be more agile while dealing with different types of people. Emotional intelligence still remains an important skill while influencing when you don’t have any official position. Along with your skills, competences, and knowledge, you also need to think about your behavioural style while influencing others.    

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga 

Vitality in Human Resource is now available in paperback edition. Please click here to buy

Buy Industrial Relations Strategy Framework For Every Manager on amazon. Click IR Strategy Framework.    

Please read "College to Corporate via Interviews" to prepare for your next dream job. Click here to grab the copy of book College to Corporate Via Interviews

Feel the heat.

The million-dollar question is why people change? People don’t change easily. They are driven by the habit they follow. Habits can be hard to break and hard to create new. However, we continue to acquire & create new habits unknowingly all the time. Accordingly, we demonstrate the behaviour. The behaviour is seen by many people but very few give the feedback to correct the wrong behaviour. This needs courage, courage to challenge self, challenge the status quo and challenge the overall assumption we follow every day.

It starts with the tasks and jobs we do, questions we get and answers we give. In our life all the events, all the tasks, jobs, question etc can be classified in three categories as under:

• Doable
• Stretched
• Broad possibilities

Doable: You do it easily. You have required skills, competence, and experience to handle such events or questions. 60% employees, 60% people in this world are happy doing things that they know. They are happy to handle regular jobs, in fact, maintain what they get in the legacy. You have the knowledge, skills, and experience. If you are a production engineer, you don’t go beyond that and the same applies to others. This doesn’t mean that you are not doing your job good. You are perfect; however, you are not eager to stretch yourself.  

Stretched: You have the right skills, competence, and experience but you have to take extra efforts to perform. You have to do some research, benchmark with peers, learn from others, network and influence others who are not related to you. You have to find the solution based on your skills, competence, and experience. But your current knowledge, skills, experience may not be enough to get those answers. For example, you are comfortable working with the customer to whom you are working for the last few years and all of sudden your boss assigns the new customer who is very notorious and difficult to manage. 20% employees, people come in this category.

Broad possibilities: Sky is the limit. You don’t know anything. This is a new territory, new company, new function, new geography, new people, new customers. Your existing skills, experience, competence may work or may not work. You have to reinvent yourself. Growth mindset is the requirement of such events. You have to stretch beyond your limitations and beyond your imaginations. For example, working on a greenfield project in another country, or taking a different role, which is not your functional domain, or handling the strong union, strong situation and leading the team during crisis events like pandemic. 

There are no ready-made answers, but you have the mindset where you use your skills, experiences, and competence to find the new solutions. In this process, you have pressure and stress. You feel the heat, but you learn a lot. The heat you feel may burn you, but you become comfortable afterwards. If the heat is not comfortable, you are doing too much and take a pause to think and ask the question, what are you looking for and what is the purpose? Great leaders and successful people go through this process. If you are managing such events, questions, situations, you are among 10% of employees. 

If you want to do something extraordinary find out your possibilities.

The question is where the remaining 10% have gone? Do you know them?

Author's book are available on Amazon, Flipkart, Pothi and BookGanga 

Vitality in Human Resource is now available in paperback edition. Please click here to buy

Buy Industrial Relations Strategy Framework For Every Manager on amazon. Click IR Strategy Framework

Break that idiot psychological space.

We all have that idiot psychological space which keeps us away from the progress. It restricted human beings to be adventurous and kept them where they are. People who broke that space became successful and rich. Few of them built their career. 

That psychological space that we don’t want to leave is our comfort zone. We all know that when we are out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot. Just observe your day, what you do? We always sit at the same place; we always take lunch with known people in the office; we always use the same route while driving. Why is this so? We don’t want to break the routine because of the comfort zone which we create. Because when you use the different route, then you have to think and have to take the risk. When we sit with different people, you have to stretch further to interact with them. If in such small things we become so comfortable, then imagine when somebody asks you to take the risk to do something you never tried.   

During one of the internal conferences, one of the senior leaders attended the first day morning in a short and t-shirt. Everybody was wearing a formal dress, but he was with the clothes like he is in a picnic. He mentioned in his speech that he just wants to make a point that he wanted to stretch himself and come out of the comfort zone. That was a simple symbolic message given to the participants. Most of the time, we worry about what people will say. 

Once a wise man was just screaming and walking around in search of somebody. One of his disciples asked him, “Oh great master, to whom you are searching for?”

“I am searching for those 4 people.” He replied.

“4 people? Who are they? And why?” asked the disciple.

“My parents and elders always asked me to think about those 4 people, to whom I had never seen?”

Disciple got confused. Looking at the confusion on the face of the disciple, the master said,” See, whenever I used to do something different, my parents and elders used to interrupt me saying, “If you do that, what those 4 people will say or think.”   

Those 4 people have almost ruined our life. We never gave justice to our dreams only because of those 4 people who are representative of the society. We have the capability and potential but we never challenged ourselves to go out of the comfort zone.

Over time, we have created that psychological space called, comfort zone.

Along with those 4 people (society), we have 2 more villains in our life. Those are your assumptions based on your own experience or somebody’s experience and fear of unknown things.   

Our mind is conditioned to use the known paths and not to create a new one. Human beings normally follow the crowd. Good news is that if you think, you can come out of your comfort zone by creating a little bit of anxiety. Leaving the comfort zone will increase productivity when you are experiencing the healthy amount of anxiety.

You can break your comfort zone just by starting something. For example, if you want to start the exercise, just start doing it; if you want to wake up early in the morning, just start waking up early in the morning.

Another measure you can take to break the comfort zone, is just change the routine, like take a lunch with different people on different days in the office, just speak to somebody to whom you think he is difficult, just break the routine and regular habits and start a new one. This looks simple, but very difficult to follow.

It is about the intention and creating habits, once you create habits you can think something big. It starts with one step.  

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle, Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)         

Difficult boss

We always believe that managers who inspire and empower their teams are good bosses. Working with them is fun. They also focus on the development of the team. High performance is expected easily while working with such inspirational leaders. However, working with a difficult manager is always challenging. Generally, you can’t choose your manager. You have to work with the manager who is assigned to you and you can’t complain or change the manager unless you change the job. Changing the job frequently is also not a good sign. Sometimes organizations are good, and your role is super, but the challenge may be the manager. What you do if you get a difficult boss. There are different types of difficult bosses. Perhaps you may not be willing to work with the toxic boss who is political, takes the credit, micromanages or bullying. It is good to be strong with such bosses. 

However difficult bosses are not always bad. We may perceive managers as difficult if they are demanding, result oriented, perfectionist and with a lot of expectations. They are always on your head. So first it is very important to understand the personality of the boss. Ironically, a bad boss can motivate members of a team to bond with each other and provide encouragement and assistance since they know that they won’t be receiving positive attention from their superior. 

One of the facts is that executives get developed while working with the difficult boss also. Of course, your development chances are more when you work with a highly competent and talented boss. But not necessarily, you will always get the inspiring boss. Sometimes you will have those managers in your life. If you find out the silver lining, you can convert the situation into an opportunity for learning. 

Jay A. Conger and Allan H Church have written a book, “The High Potential’s Advantage.” These two gentlemen have written this book after a lot of research of high potentials who are in leadership positions. This book mentions one of the traits of high potential is “Situation Sensing: means observing and responding to the task priorities, work styles, habits and behaviours that your boss values most.” In the case of a difficult boss, it is tricky. If the values of the boss don't match then it is a big conflict. However, it is good to identify the traits and behaviours of a difficult boss and decide the strategy to deal with. If you think that the value system, code of conduct and business principles are compromised, then you can take the appropriate call to escalate it at appropriate forums including whistle-blower. If your boss is just difficult because of his strong work habits, his behaviour is aggressive and certain traits are different than yours or inspirational boss to whom you role model, then it is good to have the discussion and learn from him. He may have his own perspective, he may not be aware, he may lack insight and you can help him to understand that.  

While dealing with a difficult boss, you get the opportunity to stretch yourself. You may learn:

• Understanding human beings. You may get a different insight of the personality. 
• Learning to deal with difficult people,
• Communication skills while dealing with such people,
• Conflict management as conflicts might be common,
• Understanding the socio-political dimensions of the team and organization,

In the career you will not get only amiable peers, team and bosses. Sometimes you will have challenges and wise people learn to deal with that. It is always good to find the silver lining and adapt to the management style suitable to the difficult boss.

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle, Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)     

Purpose 3: Make your job more meaningful, it is in your hands.

There are millions of people who go to the job daily. During covid19 they are still working; the office location might have changed to home. Among them millions of people lost their jobs because of the pandemic and economic turbulent. Are those organizations too fragile that they could not sustain and were unable to retain their employees? On the other side, organizations approached employees, communicated the consequences, took them in confidence. They exercised cost measures but not asked employees to leave.

That is the difference between “living with the purpose” and just “speaking about the purpose”.      

On the other side, who are those who lost their jobs? Were they bad? definitely not, but unfortunately, they might have chosen the wrong organization? For a few, it might have the right organization, but then why were they in the exit list?  Were they not fit?  Or were they fired because of just cost issues? There are a lot of questions. 

Once people get the job, they look for the compensation and then they look for more compensation. They compare with their peers and friends and then they change jobs. Sometimes they make excellent progress, sometimes not. During this process few people get the insight and find their purpose. However, most of us just perceive our work as a job. This is called a “Job Mindset” where employees perform all types of transactional duties for getting the compensation. You attend duties for a particular time and you get paid.

There is another set of people who have a wider spectrum of their visions and they focus on the career. This is a “Career Mindset” where they focus on expanding their career by advancing salary, title, power, team size, and/or span of control. They become managers, few of them also become business leaders.

Third mindset is employees who find purpose in their career. They ask why? Why am I doing this? For money, for career or for making the impact and bringing the difference in the organization, life of the people and surrounding? They are creative, passionate, innovative and committed to a meaningful job and engaging workplace that benefits all stakeholders. This is called the “Purposeful Mindset”. When we find the purpose, then it is easy for us to decide the next course of action.   

When you focus on the job and career. Sometimes you as an employee are aligned with the organization, sometimes not. But imagine where you find the role and organization which is totally aligned with your purpose. Working for the cause about which you are passionate makes life enriching and happy. Further results will be amazing.

We all think about the job and then career, but very few reflect on the purpose. If you are able to find out the purpose in a day to day job to make it more interesting, more meaningful and having a positive impact on others, then you are excelling towards finding your purpose. By doing this you are insulating yourself from redundancies and insecurities, but to do this, you need courage, curiosity and conviction.  

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle, Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)     

Mid-Career Crisis: Inevitable but manageable

I keep getting a lot of calls of friends, professionals, peers, consultants, journalists, professors, training & placement officers, conference organisers and many more. Purpose of calling varies from asking career advice, asking views to selling their products or services. After a few interactions, they become comfortable with me to share their personal achievement and sometimes ask for some help in career development. At a certain point, most of them mention that they are working hard, they are doing good in their current job, but they feel they are stuck and they are not enjoying what they are doing today. 

Have you experienced a similar feeling sometimes in life? You are successful, you are earning a good salary, you have everything with you but still you are unhappy and looking for something different in life. You are unhappy because you feel that opportunities you should get in the organizations are given to somebody else. This happens typically when you are at mid- career at the age of 40-50. 

There are 5 stages in career development: 

5 stages in career development

Exploration: Your initial period where you decide about your career.

Establishment: You gain the experience and you settle in the career you choose,

Mid-career: this is the stage where your struggle starts. You are established but you are not enjoying the job. You don’t want to change the job because now you are comfortable doing what you are doing and scared to take the risk. 

Late career and decline are the different stages of career and most of the people are at these 2 stages accept the fact of life and don’t do much. 

However mid -career is the stage where the mind-career crisis starts popping up in your life. 

Mind career crisis is defined by a sensation of feeling stuck, specifically in your career. People going through a rough patch in their professional development will commonly perceive a lack of growth and opportunities in their current work environment. Further at this stage life seems to settle, but you feel that nobody in the family, spouse, children etc or peers and superiors understand you. And you feel that nobody values your contribution. This is a strange situation. 

This stage is a normal phenomenon but can lead to disappointment, self-destructive behaviours and depression. It may also lead to making wrong decisions about the career like changing the job desperately without thinking much or starting your own venture. 

How do you deal with mid-career crisis?

First recognise the situation and face that. Believe that this is a temporary situation.  

There are two strategies to deal with this. Quit or Cope.

If you quit, there is no guarantee of solution. Your career crisis may go worse. People who are trapped in mid-career crisis mostly go for their own business, consultancy or alternate career. Before doing so, please review your situation and take a calculated risk.   

In our careers one of the issues is we are known for the position or title we hold and not really who we are. We have an identity which is associated with the job and company we work. Nobody knows us except for family, relatives and few co-workers. Ideally this should not be the case. This happens because we miss the larger purpose of the job and career and are held in the trap of the competition. 

So, find out the purpose. Go for the self -reflection journey. 

Invest in yourself. Learn new skills, read a lot of books, upgrade yourself.

Network strongly, there are a lot of people who may help and support you in your career journey. If you don’t share with them, how will they know that you need their support. It is reciprocal. Keep investing in building relations.

Find a Mentor or coach. Not necessarily we have all the knowledge and awareness about life. Get the mentor and if required Life Coach. You may have to invest some money here but consider this as an investment. 

Pursue your hobby, your “me time” is very important to reflect. Give some time to yourself and work on your hobbies. 

Finally, patience is the key. You have to learn to take the ownership of your career and life. Opportunities come silently, grab them.

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle; Vitality in Human Resource