The Work You Loved Isn't Dead. It's Your Secret Sauce!
There can be a point, especially mid-career, where you realize you’ve become distant from the work you used to love. You’ve gathered experience, built skills up the wazoo, earned respect, led teams and delivered results. It all looks right on paper, but something still feels out of reach.
The research backs this up. Gallup’s latest global workplace study shows that only about one in five employees are engaged in their work, and managers report even lower levels. So, the irony is that the further you move into leadership, the easier it becomes to drift from the work that you love!
I know how this feels: it was my reality in 2014.
I was leading two teams, leading multi-year, multi-million dollar projects all while pitching new business. On the outside, it all looked good - and I enjoyed those who I worked with (including an inspiring client). However, I began to realize that I was losing sight of the work I truly loved to do, not just succeed at. Most of all, I couldn’t see the impact of what we were creating, which made me question the 60+ hour weeks I was giving.
"Reaching back" gives you vital clues
We can sometimes hesitate to look back in our lives. But, the thing is, reaching back isn't a sign of failure, in fact, it can help us identify clues about what genuinely lights us up - and what we can offer more of to others.
Think about the roles or moments when you felt most alive in your work, the most like YOU. What was happening around you? What were you doing that brought out your best thinking? What helped you feel capable, creative or fully involved? When you break those moments down, you start to see patterns that still matter today, even if your job has evolved.
If, for example, you loved project management earlier in your career, it might not have been the schedules or templates you miss. Maybe it was helping other people be successful in their roles, or solving a complicated problem.
Even if you can't necessarily "be" a project manager anymore, are there components of that work that you can bring into your job today?
It may be a mindset shift about how you manage your team, or it may actually be getting your hands happily dirty again with the details. Perhaps it's joining a committee, or volunteering outside of work where you can apply some of that skill and that love for what you did in a different way.
This is really what We Reach Back to Move Forward is about. We spend so much time building our careers that we forget to honor what lights us up. We file it away, update the title on LinkedIn, move on to the next thing, and never stop to ask what that earlier work gave us.
Because if something lit you up years ago, there’s a chance that passion is still there, and it can fuel where you go next.
A question for your journal
Was there a time in your career when you did work you truly loved? Perhaps it was the way the work was done, or who you did it with, or the end result. What was that work, and why did it light you up?