St.Louis Business Journal
DON’T THROW AN ILL-FITTING CAREER OUT WITH THE BATHWATER

By Anna Navarro October 2009  

Examples in this column are fictionalized to protect privacy.



People who are very unhappy with their work often assume the only hope for achieving satisfaction is to throw out everything they’ve done to date and start over. The intensity of their feelings, which may have been on hold for years, often propels them to believe only radical changes will solve the problem.

But in fact, there are many situations where less dramatic changes might lead to work satisfaction. The challenge is to put your feeling on hold long enough to sort through your needs in a calm and thoughtful way.

Adam was a senior associate in a law firm. When he joined the firm, it had a growing practice in the divorce area. He was assigned to work in that department, and over time developed expertise.

He didn’t like the confrontational nature of the work, but he quelled his feelings by telling himself it was part of the difficult apprenticeship young lawyers go through. Now, seven years later, he was about to be nominated for partnership in a field he intensely disliked. That freaked him out.

All he wanted at that point was to get out, and quickly. He often fantasized about chucking his professional career entirely and doing something like becoming a delivery truck driver.

Most of our first session was devoted to helping him calm down enough to consider studying his situation and sorting out exactly why he was so unhappy and what he wanted instead. It was tough to persuade him because he believed he already understood the source of the problem: he hated the law and needed to get out. But he finally agreed.

As we explored his likes and dislikes, he was able to discern that while he hated the constant adversarial nature of the writing and thinking he did in his current job, he actually liked writing and solving intellectual puzzles. But he wanted to do it in a context where he felt he was helping people. That was a breakthrough.

The analysis also surfaced the difficulty he had with his boss’s management style. His boss set subordinates up against each other, constantly making comparisons. This created rivalry, and ruined any chance of camaraderie or teamwork. That robbed Adam of something he really wanted.

As Adam sorted all this out, he developed a more nuanced understanding of his predicament. He realized it wasn’t necessarily the law itself, but the specialty he was in, and the way his boss operated that were creating problems for him.

Since he was likely to make more money in the law than in most fields, I suggested he consider other areas of the law that were less likely to lead to adversarial encounters than divorce. \

He explored several ideas, and concluded working in estates and trusts would enable him to use his writing skills and his ability to sort out challenging intellectual puzzles, while working directly with clients in a positive way. While the field requires some litigation, his research revealed most practitioners devote a minority of their time to such activities. He would have preferred no litigation, but he thought he could handle a little. The fit was a good one otherwise.

Armed with those insights, he was able to look at his firm with new eyes. He realized the partner in charge of estates and trusts was a man he really respected. Discreet inquiries revealed this partner’s management style was to build camaraderie and a team spirit. And the practice area was booming.

So he approached that partner about the possibility of working for him, indicating that he understood he had a lot to learn. He said he’d be willing to take a step back in pay because of it.

He was pleasantly surprised to be met with a welcoming response. The partner was enthusiastic about adding an associate who already knew the basics of being a lawyer, whose positive work habits were well proven, and who was so interested in his area of the law.

Adam was soon able to make the shift. He didn’t like the reduction in his income, or having to be a beginner again, of course, but he liked the work and the spirit in the department.

Adam came close to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But his willingness to slow down and analyze his situation carefully, despite his overwhelming sense of frustration, enabled him to reconfigure his career in a satisfying way without having to start from scratch.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that works with clients on an individual basis to help them find more satisfaction and fulfillment in their work-lives. She can be reached by phone at (314) 367-0008 and her e-mail address is email@worktransitions.com. For more information visit the worktransitions.com website.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.