Midcareer Career Change: 3 Places to Start When You Feel Stuck
This month I turned 40! So it’s only fitting that a few weeks ago, I came across a Harvard Business Review research article by Lynda Gratton: As Careers Get Longer, Midcareer Work Needs to Change. Today, careers are extending into people’s 70s and many organizations are discovering that their most experienced employees, their key leaders— those who are midcareer—are burning out.
Cue the collective eye roll; we could have told you this. But…the research validates exactly what I’m hearing, anecdotally, in my career transition coaching practice with millennials considering a midcareer career change.
While the article addresses the organizational changes required to support midcareer pros, we know that systemic change takes time. Too much time. Especially if you’re approaching burnout now.
Having spent 10 years as a Learning & Development leader at high-growth start-ups, I would always think about the impact of my work on three levels: to the organization, to teams, and to individuals.
Now, as a coach I’m here to remind you that you don’t have to wait for organizational level change. One-on-one career transition coaching can offer relief when you’re exploring a midcareer change.
For Corporate Millennials midcareer career change feels impossible because we’re afraid to disrupt the status quo.
We endure the job we outgrew. We put the career pivot we’ve been dreaming about on pause because even thinking about making a change feels like it will detonate our entire lives. And yet, we can’t imagine staying in our current job for another 30 years.
The Squeeze: Why Midcareer Career Change Feels So Hard
I don’t know about you, but I feel like all of a sudden, life is “lifeing.” From raising kids and pets, caring for aging parents, trying to maintain wellness routines, friendships, and, if we’re lucky, hobbies, it seems like work is now the lowest priority on the list yet takes up the most of our time and energy. It’s like the career path we designed for ourselves at 22 years old no longer fits the reality of our lives today. No wonder why we’re feeling disengaged, checked out, and burnt out.
So what’s the impact?
Organizations are losing talent from their most critical cohort of employees. The high-performing, institutional knowledge-carrying, mid-career leaders (us!).
And at the individual level, even considering a career change feels like you’re being selfish, or completely wasting 20 years of time, energy, and money, or just plain scary because the grass is not always greener.
And you’re not alone. Gratton says: “People in their 40s are suffering as a cohort because they’re trying to soldier through careers that might last 50 or 60 years.”
If you’ve been thinking about making a career change for months, maybe even years, but you feel stuck…that makes sense. You’re also likely:
Experiencing peak responsibility at home and work
Feeling time pressure and time scarcity
Wanting to adapt but also fear, as one of my clients put it, “that the learning curve will be too steep.”
Feeling so overwhelmed without the mental capacity, space, and time that’s needed to step back and reflect
You feel like this isn’t the right time to experiment yet the decisions you make at this stage have the potential to shape everything you do for decades to come. Naturally, there is tension between the need for stability and the urge to explore, the fear of the status quo and the fear of change.
What if I told you that you don’t have to “soldier through” and this same research also points to a more graceful way to navigate the midpoint of your career?
You don’t have to solve this alone and you don’t need your organization to start first. Gratton's findings show three specific places to begin and they map almost exactly to where I start with every one-on-one coaching client.
3 Findings That Make Midcareer Change Possible
Participants in Gratton’s research consistently described three challenges when it comes to midcareer. There is little time to reflect, our old success metrics feel outdated, and we don’t know how to separate who we are from what we do.
1. Reflection is rare and changes everything
Between the battles won before breakfast, actually making it to the office on time, supporting your team, hitting your deadlines, commuting home, and the evening routine, when is the last time you took a moment to reflect?
One client described her career decisions as “being on autopilot,” like they just happened to her without much thought or intention on her part.
Reflection is key because it helps you to clearly name your strengths, skills, what you enjoy, and what you actually want out of work. If you’re considering a career change, being able to zoom out and look at your work experiences holistically builds not only your confidence, but gives you a sense of clarity about what’s next.
Take my client “Jessa.” When asked what changed since our last conversation, she said: “Since our last session I’ve experienced a profoundly helpful mental shift. I know that I am resilient. If I decide to make a career shift, I know that I would want me on my team.”
Reflection and clarity alone aren’t enough. And if you’re still measuring your new insights against your old definition of success, it’s likely they won’t line up.
2. Rethinking Your Definition of Success
The version of you you’re becoming may require an updated definition of success.
You get to define (and redefine) success on your own terms for where you are in life right now. And sometimes that means choosing fulfillment over a number in your bank account. Or more rest and recovery over burnout.
That’s exactly the shift my client “Sam” made last year. After over 20 years in the working world, it was not easy. Her ultimate goal was to leave her corporate CFO role and shift into the nonprofit sector. It was a massive mental leap to go from a 6-figure salary and the typical “trappings” of success to a completely new definition that was centered around passion, purpose, faith, and giving back to her community.
By owning your updated definition of success, you’ll likely start to see that your identity becomes less about your job title and more about who you are.
3. Identity is “Who” You Are Not “What” You Do
If you’re reading this, you’re probably not trying to figure out how to perform better. Instead you’re trying to figure out how to become more yourself by finding work that aligns with what’s most important to you, supports the life you want to lead, and lets you continue to grow.
That’s what it looked like for my client “Anne.” Anne had been at the wrong company for months. Every decision conflicted with her personal values. She felt like she was sacrificing who she was and what she believed in to make the company run. In one-on-one career transition coaching, we worked on developing her values, identifying which ones were in conflict, and confirming that she needed to leave her position. At first she wasn’t sure what was next but stayed true to herself and leveraged her expertise by founding an LLC and becoming her own boss.
Where 1:1 Career Transition Coaching Fits In
As Gratton’s research shows: “Midlife is the point at which change is most necessary but least likely to happen.” And I agree. Midcareer transitions are normal and expected, especially over the course of what’s become an extended working life.
My clients are all feeling this. They’re balancing major responsibilities, expectations at work, plus the fear that makes deliberate career change impossible.
If you are looking for dedicated time to step back and reflect, or if you’re afraid of what other people will think if you change course, or if you’ve been in your job so long that it’s become your entire personality, no wonder you’re feeling stuck.
That’s where one-on-one career transition coaching comes in.
Most of my clients come to me exactly where you are now. They’ve been thinking about making a change for anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. They’ve been ruminating, they say they can’t get out of the “thought loop,” they feel stuck. They end up spending months and years thinking about making a change, worried about making a change, resentful, and completely drained.
Now we know we’re playing the long game. Now we know it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Which means staying stuck isn’t sustainable either. We need real, long-term ways to build careers that can carry us for another 30 years.
If your goal is to make an intentional choice about what’s next, if 6 months from now or 12 months from now, you want to have told me “I finally quit” or “I landed an interview that supports my career pivot,” or “I no longer dread Monday mornings,” one-on-one coaching might be the right fit.
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