In the last post we offered tips for helping your team during times of general economic uncertainty. In this post, we’ll show you how to help them manage something more personal: job uncertainty.
Several years ago, I found myself working one-on-one with an accomplished marketing executive. Let’s call her Kate. After two decades at her company, it had recently merged with another firm, and she took the change as an opportunity to think more deliberately about what came next.
Not that “figuring things out” was all the straightforward—or easy. In fact, I look at my role in her life at the time as part consultant, part business coach, and part therapist. There was a lot to think about, to say the least.
After some self-reflection, she decided that she’d spent enough time at the company, so she accepted a severance package and parted ways. Within weeks she had multiple offers for senior marketing roles, including a CMO position, which she’d always thought would be her dream role.
When I spoke more candidly with her, though, it seemed to me that she really didn’t want this. There wasn’t a lot of excitement in her voice when she talked about this supposedly amazing opportunity. Nonetheless, all of the fear-based signs were telling her to play it safe. To step up the ladder, ever higher.
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Just because that’s what people do. But if that was the right move, she wondered, how come she was still feeling anxious?
When she thought about the areas where she spent her time, the work she loved, and the impact she enjoyed making, the signs pointed in a very different direction. She got her greatest professional enjoyment through creative work, especially teaching others how to unleash their own creativity.
So in a moment of inspiration, she decided to take a leap. She spent several months trying her hand at teaching graduate-level classes in creativity for entrepreneurs. A year later, she established a center focused on creativity for entrepreneurs in partnership with a local university.
The moral of this story is twofold. One, it’s that “progress” isn’t necessarily linear. A more-impressive title doesn’t mean much if it leaves you uninspired and purpose-less. Two, it’s that periods of job uncertainty can, with the right mindset, also be times of deep personal growth.
How to Help Your Team During Periods of Job Uncertainty
With that in mind, here are five helpful tips to teach employees during said times of uncertainty.
1. Worry about the right things (or don’t)
Job uncertainty stress can present itself for very legitimate reasons. But in my experience, it’s also quite possible that some (even much) of this stress is, on closer inspection, unwarranted. Put differently, people are worrying when they really don’t have to be.
This kind of worry usually takes the form of obsessive career rumination. Someone goes over every potential outcome of every decision with a fine-tooth comb, over and over again, until they drive themselves into a state of paralysis.
These people hear colleagues say things like, “I want to make a difference” and “I want to feel like my work is meaningful,” but privately fret, “Well, I want those things too, but is there something wrong with me if I don’t know exactly what that is?”
I’m here to tell them there’s not. In reality, most people just don’t know either, even if they act like it. “Making a difference,” “having a purpose,” and doing work “that’s meaningful” are all subjective. Lots of people mistake meaning as something that a job provides—not as something that the person creates from it. So X job is meaningful, while Y job isn’t.
In a way, people search for meaning like a drunken person searches for their lost house keys—next to the lamp post, not because that’s where they dropped them, but because that’s the only easy place they can see. When uncertainty strikes, we’d be better off keeping an open mind and seeing where it takes us. This receptivity is crucial for team purpose.
2. Embrace the (liminal) space
There’s value in sitting with a feeling of uncertainty—the liminal state between present and future. What if, instead of fretting about the unknown, you allowed yourself to embrace discomfort? To accept, even if only in some small way, the stress and anxiety that comes with job uncertainty?
By facing ambiguity head-on, you weaken its grip, making the unknown less terrifying. Instead of asking, “What threat do I need to mitigate?” in the face of the unknown, ask, “What does this ambiguity free me up to do that greater certainty wouldn’t?”
For example, rather than focusing only on opportunities for which you’re already skilled so that you feel more “employable,” maybe you consider roles or industries where you may be less skilled but you’ve always been curious about and have the drive and motivation to succeed in.
Ambiguity is an inescapable part of life. The more open you are to accepting it, the more likely you are to survive and thrive, even in the face of the most challenging circumstances, like an unexpected job loss.
3. Change your relationship with the unknown
The unknown doesn’t need to be a boogeyman. Not having a specific destination to fixate on (e.g., “I want to be a life coach” or “I’m going to be a veterinarian”) allows you to step back during the process of job searching and wonder about career paths you might never have considered.
Credit: Pexels
Take another client I worked with, Deborah, a former HR executive. When she was trying to figure out her next chapter, she allowed herself to explore a variety of possibilities before jumping into anything. Along the way, she conducted informational interviews and traveled internationally to see the “on-the-ground” work related to causes she cared about.
Consider the moments throughout your career where you felt you were doing your best work and feeling the most satisfied. In what other contexts might such moments be possible?
Maybe you’re in a financial role that requires complex analyses of data, and the times you feel you’re at your best are when your insights lead to breakthrough solutions. Consider what other environments outside the financial realm might benefit from your sharp problem-solving skills.
Tip
Unfortunately, there aren’t lots of courses out there teaching people how to deal productively with uncertainty (i.e., life). One useful model, though, may be exposure therapy, a cornerstone of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
It involves slowly putting yourself into situations that make you uncomfortable (whether it’s flying, public speaking, or taking on a new role)—the idea being that the more you are exposed to these situations and discover that nothing truly bad happens (apart from discomfort), the more you’ll be able to tolerate them. This is a tried-and-true way to build resiliency.
4. Be flexible
As many of us have learned the hard way, so much of what we thought we wanted or needed turned out to be wrong. You don’t need to have a PhD in psychology to recognize that the desire for status, money, or respect from peers is often a mask for deeper insecurities; there’s a reason many people who have found all three of these are still miserable.
All of which is to say, “career satisfaction,” whatever that means, can come from places you’d never expect. As mentioned above, our skills, honed over many years, are often more transferable than we think.
Are you a good speaker? Well, maybe you could be a crack communications professional or personal coach. Great at sales, but hate what you’re selling? Have you thought about trying to . . . sell something else, like a cool new product from an up-and-coming company or cause you believe in?
To be sure, there’s a basic level of mental and psychological maturity needed to embrace uncertainty and acknowledge what you don’t know. But as Voltaire famously noted, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
By increasing your willingness to adapt, you make yourself that much more attractive to the countless hiring managers who are looking for certain personality traits or sets of broadly applicable skills, not narrow experience in a specific industry.
“Once in a while you get shown the light / In the strangest of places if you look at it right.”
– Grateful Dead, “Sugar Magnolia”
5. Redefine what “living with purpose” means
While the hyper-specific nature of a personal “purpose statement” is alluring, it’s often rooted in false precision. Frequently, personal purpose devolves into generalized sloganeering that feels inspiring but offers little practical guidance.
What if having a purposeful career means having time to be home for dinner with your kids every night? To have time to exercise and recharge on weekends or to meet with friends? To have the flexibility to go hiking every now and again on a whim?
Source: Pexels
Purpose is important, but we need to be careful how we define it. I think providing medical care to people in rural villages is incredibly purposeful, but it’s probably not something I’ll ever be able to do.
But maybe having a job that’s good enough, and allows for a rich outer life beyond work—a job where I can cultivate meaning through relationships with friends and family, and, perhaps, allows me to donate time or money to a cause I’m passionate about, such as helping people in rural villages—is purposeful enough.
In summary, it’s not having the best resume that will best prepare you (or me) for navigating professional challenges and disappointments. Dealing effectively with job uncertainty (and trying to organize in uncertain times) is not an easy task for anyone.
But with an open mind and a willingness to look beyond the known and comfortable, you’ll be well on your way to your new path—wherever it may lie.
Tap into the Power of Change and New Opportunities
Change comes knocking, whether we want it to or not—and our professional lives are certainly no exception. But with change comes the opportunity for growth and honing your skills as you consider new opportunities.
Tap into your strength and leadership potential with the help of coaches that have worked with over 160 companies and spearheaded a wealth of leadership transformation projects.