Career Conversations | S2 EP3: Navigating Career Transitions (part 1)

Our work informs our sense of self. Changing careers — or even jobs within a career — can affect how we see ourselves. When we go through a career transition, we are likely asking ourselves questions about who we are, who we are becoming, and who we want to become. Leadership coach and educator Helen Chung walks us through the intense, sometimes unexpected emotions that can come with a job or career change.

Show Notes

Navigating Career Transitions
with Helen Chung

Our work informs our sense of self. Changing careers — or even jobs within a career — can affect how we see ourselves. When we go through a career transition, we are likely asking ourselves questions about who we are, who we are becoming, and who we want to become. Seattle Pacific University professor Helen Chung walks us through the intense, sometimes unexpected emotions that can come with a career change.

Dr. Helen Chung is Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology in the School of Psychology, Family, and Community at Seattle Pacific University, where she teaches graduate courses in organizational behavior, diversity, leadership, and values in the workplace. Her research interests include leadership, diversity and inclusion, employee resource groups, subjective time, and the role of narrative in organizations. She is also co-owner and principal of Pathways Coaching and Consulting and works with individuals and teams in the areas of leadership capacity, career transitions, and organizational effectiveness. She has coached numerous leaders in a variety of organizations and industries, including serving as a leadership coach with the Center for Strategic Leadership and Thinking at the University of Washington. Helen’s work as an educator and coach is driven by her passion to build learning organizations and communities where individuals’ gifts and differences are integrated into the broader culture.

Music by Lesfm from Pixabay

Creators and Guests

Host

Michaela Gormley

Michaela Gormley (she/her) is a proud alum of the University of Washington, graduating in 2009 from the Foster School of Business with a degree in Business Administration – Marketing and a minor in Spanish. She recently started a new role in tech sales after 10+ years in marketing. She served as a member of the UWAA GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Council for two years, including one year leading the diversity, equity and inclusion subcommittee. As a proud member of the UW Alumni community and as a first-generation college student herself, Michaela is passionate about increasing the inclusivity and accessibility of higher education. She is excited to be back for the second round of UWAA Career Conversations and is grateful to be part of a resource that helps others achieve their personal and professional goals. In her free time, Michaela is an avid fan of Husky Athletics and has been a football season ticket holder since graduation. She loves spending time in the sunshine of Eastern Washington with her family and friends and prides herself on being a cool aunt to all of her nieces and nephews.

Guest

Dr. Helen Chung

Dr. Helen Chung is Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology in the School of Psychology, Family, and Community at Seattle Pacific University, where she teaches graduate courses in organizational behavior, diversity, leadership, and values in the workplace. Her research interests include leadership, diversity and inclusion, employee resource groups, subjective time, and the role of narrative in organizations. She is also co-owner and principal of Pathways Coaching and Consulting and works with individuals and teams in the areas of leadership capacity, career transitions, and organizational effectiveness. She has coached numerous leaders in a variety of organizations and industries, including serving as a leadership coach with the Center for Strategic Leadership and Thinking at the University of Washington. Helen’s work as an educator and coach is driven by her passion to build learning organizations and communities where individuals’ gifts and differences are integrated into the broader culture.

What is Career Conversations ?

Frank conversations to help you take control of your career.

Going beyond resumes, interviews, and cover letters, each conversation brings a unique perspective on relevant topics for you and your professional development.

Presented by Pepsi, Career Conversations is produced by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

Learn more: https://www.washington.edu/alumni/career-conversations/

Thank you for tuning in to Career Conversations. An audio series created for the University of Washington alumni community, where we focus on deeper topics to help you create and sustain a fulfilling career. I'm your host, Michaela Gormley. I'm a proud University of Washington alum who graduated in 2009 from the Foster School of Business. I'm an active member of the UW alumni community, a former member of the Alumni Association GOLD Council. I'm so excited to be back as your host for this series. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Helen Chung for a discussion about career transition. Dr. Helen Chung is an assistant professor of industrial organizational psychology in the School of Psychology, family and community at Seattle Pacific University, where she teaches graduate courses in organizational behavior, diversity, leadership and values in the workplace. Her research interests include leadership, diversity and inclusion, employee resource groups, objective time, and the role of narrative in organization. She is also co-owner and principal of Pathways Coaching and Consulting and works with individuals and teams in the areas of leadership capacity, career transitions and organizational effectiveness. She does coach numerous leaders in a variety of organizations and industries, including serving as a leadership coach with the Center for strategic leadership and thinking at the University of Washington, how its work as an educator and coach is driven by her passion to build learning organizations and communities where individuals’ gifts and differences are integrated into the broader culture. And thank you so much for joining me today.

I feel it's great to be here.

I'm so excited that we get to chat. OK, so before we jump into our more serious conversation for the day, I want to start with something a little bit more lighthearted and I just read your bio, so we know about your professional background a little bit, which is very impressive, but can you tell me a little bit something you enjoyed doing just for fun or to relax when you're not? Not working and doing all of your academic work.

Absolutely, so I feel really lucky to live pretty close to Puget Sound. And so one of my regular go to things for relaxation is to walk with my labradoodle. We walk to the beach. I usually have my ear buds in and I'm listening to one of several of my favorite podcasts. And then in addition to that, I often sort of get the wanderlust bite. And so then I want to go exploring. I love to travel new places like café shops and seaside towns ar some of my favorite things to discover. And a friend of mine once told me that she gets better acquainted with places by walking them. And I think that's, you know, really true for me.

I think so true. During the pandemic, I found I was going on lots more walks. I think probably a lot of people were. And I started seeing my neighborhood in such a different way, seeing houses and buildings and trees and things that I just had driven past a million times. I think that's really true. OK but most importantly, what's your dog's name?

Her name is Ellie.

Oh, that's such a cute name. I love it. OK are you ready to jump into our conversation?

Yeah ready to go.

All right. So I mentioned earlier, we're going to be talking about career transition. But to give us a level ground before we really get started, can you start with how you would define career transition? Talk a little bit more about that. That's a really good question. So a career or work transition and I'm probably going to use both of those phrases. So a career work transition is really a job career work-related event that causes some level of change in one's job, role, work identity, daily routines or relationships. And these transitions can, they’re sometimes planned. Sometimes we anticipate that they're coming, and sometimes we totally don't anticipate, they surprise us. And I am very much drawing from the transition search work of Schlossberg, and I will be drawing from her throughout our conversation and to go into a little bit more depth ground definition. I do want to share that these kinds of transitions that can be small, medium or big--micro and macro--and these transitions require something from us, right? Emotionally, cognitively, physically, sometimes if we're moving and they require us to leave or separate from something and then move towards something else. So there is this movement of leaving or separation moving towards the new thing. And then in the middle, there's what's happening in between. So that's the short squeeze space, which is that very much that liminal space. And at any point in the process of a transition, we can experience a lot of emotions. For example, we can be excited, we can worry about what's happening or what's going to happen. We can feel fearful. We can even have some level of ambivalence, which is this very odd mix of positive and negative emotions experienced simultaneously. And that can be pretty uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then in addition to the emotions that we can feel, we're also presented sometimes in these transitions with the possibility of our identity changing and the work of Hazel Markus suggests that as human beings, we're not just one thing, we're actually made up of multiple selves or multiple identities, and those identities are informed very much by our past, our history, our present, what's happening right now, as well as our future. And then all of the relationships, hopes and fears that are tied up found with our past, present and future. Just to give you an example, I think of myself and I am comprised of multiple identities. I think of myself as the daughter of Cree immigrants. I am a partner. I'm a mom, I'm a friend. I'm a teacher in Higher Ed, I'm a coach. All of those things are part of me. And I think most of us think of ourselves in those sorts of ways, though when a transition happens, we're feeling a lot of things. We're thinking a lot of there's the possibility of ourselves changing in the process. And I love the work of our Herminia Ibarra, who is a management scholar who shares that, change prompts all these questions around who we can become. We are becoming. And so transition is not just about what's happening right now, but it's also about our possible future selves. And so there's a lot bound up in-

Yeah.

That's all around this sort of career or work-related event that causes some sort of a change.

Wow. I really love that, because I think even though most people have an idea in their head of what career transition or work transition means, having a clear definition can be really helpful and enlightening in a way, I think. I know I just personally went through a career transition a few months ago and having some of that definition probably would have been helpful. I wish we could have done this conversation, you know, last spring. I think that will be a helpful definition for people who are listening and maybe even if they went through something previously, maybe that helps them in reflecting on that. So now that we have it defined, can you tell me more about how people tend to move through a career or a work transition?

Yes, I love that question because it definitely gets at--and I think the heart of our conversation today, which is how do we move through transitions, how do we adapt? And Schlossberg suggests that how we go through transitions, I mean, really is just as important as where we end up though destination is important, but how we get there is equally important. So in terms of how do people tend to move through transitions, there are sort of three responses that I have observed in myself as well as in other people just visions with friends or with clients about transitions. Number one, I think there's a tendency to move right away to problem-solving mode and ask ourselves the question, what should I do?

Sure.

And that question is sometimes helpful, but can often hinder us from actually making sense of what's going on and thinking about alternatives, like what are what's actually possible here? And so that question, I would say, let's move that towards the end. I have that tendency to just want to figure it out and solve it right away because and here's another response. We don't like the dissonance that we feel cognitively or and sometimes the dissonance that we're, you know, that we experience cognitively or emotionally. And that dissonance is really kind of a natural and normal part of going through any kind of change or contemplating any kind of change, because there is this gap between what is and what could be, between who we are and who we could become. And that dissonance brings a lot of different emotions kind of back to the ambivalence we can feel sort of both positively and negatively about something, and that can be rather confusing and an uncomfortable truth. But that dissonance can be a good cue for us to then recognize something is going on here and I need to pay attention to it. It's really just using emotion as information, as feedback, just about let's dig a little bit deeper and understand, unpack what is going on. And that third response that we sometimes tend to have and I kind of heard this in your example, when you said you were going through a transition, is that we feel like we're all alone and we can't share what's happening with other people for a variety of reasons, or we feel like nobody's ever gone through this before.

Right.

We can feel that way. But in reality, it's pretty likely that other people have gone through some version of this transition and can offer us at least their experience and perspective. Maybe not so much advice, because maybe it might not be the most helpful thing at the moment, but they can offer their perspective and their experience. We don't have to go through things on our own. So those would be some of the typical responses that I have observed again in myself or just in other people as I converse with them.

Yeah Yeah. I think especially the last one, feeling like you're alone, especially in a work situation. Oftentimes wanting to make a transition is challenging because you feel like you can't tell. Maybe you can't tell your manager or your other co-workers, even if you're close with them or feel comfortable with them in sort of other ways. And so it can be isolating and finding someone that you can trust to have those conversations with. Even like you said, maybe it's not for advice, but just to talk it through can be really helpful. But yeah, it's kind of like you said, that dissonance is uncomfortable. We definitely I shouldn't say we-- I definitely don't like always sitting in that and want to say like, OK, how can I fix it? But taking, taking the time to sit in it is sometimes helpful. OK so when we're kind of in this transition, are there--what do you suggest are questions that people can ask themselves to think through? Think through the transition.

Yes, so there are some questions related to four S's and I'm going—

Oh, OK. I love a good reminder tool.

Yes, so the four S's. Let me give them. I'll name them first and then I will.

OK.
Offer questions for each of them.

OK.

The first S is Situation. The second is Self. The third is Support and the fourth is Strategies. Going back to that first S, so when we are going through a transition, anticipating one, planning one, it can be helpful to ask ourselves, what is the situation, my current situation, and what else might be going on that is adding to difficulty, complexity or stress. There might be other stressors that are present that are added to the particular change event that I also need to account for. The second S is related to the self and I can ask questions around what internal resources do I have to navigate this change? Do I feel like I have a level of resilience to be able to move through it? How am I my feeling? It's really kind of taking stock of my internal resources and also asking myself the question, what do I have control over? Where can I exercise my influence in agency and sometimes in certain situations, we have lots of control and sometimes we have very little control. And so kind of thinking through that piece of control can be very helpful. The third S has to do with support, and this is really looking at a beyond myself what social support is available to me. So a good example of this. Let's say I want to move. I'm making a career change and I'm moving to another location.

Sure.

One of the questions that I might be thinking about is, gosh, do I have family or friends in that geographical location?

Yeah.

Help me settle in transition. Not so much to the job, but to the new location and all that that will mean for me. And if there isn't that kind of social support. But that's something that's critical for my well-being. Maybe I won't make that job, that career move.

Right? Yeah Yeah. Moving to a new place, even if it's not, you know, obviously moving across the country or across the world and not knowing anyone, maybe, you know, maybe it's just a few towns away or whatever, even a few states away, can be huge if you don't have the support and you and you are a person who really values that community.

Yes Yes. And then the fourth, as is on Strategy. So it's thinking about what my options are and. Even in situations where we feel like we don't have a lot of control, there's usually there are usually some things that we can do. So might be helpful to think about. What can I do to cope with or manage the stress of this particular event is creating for me and I reframe the situation. If I can't change it or, you know, what alternatives might I have to actually make some changes with regard to this particular situation. So thinking through, gosh, what are my options? How can I manage or cope with the stress? Can I reframe the situation? What is in my power to do? These these are just looking at various strategies that I could employ to navigate the change.

Sure that's so helpful. OK I want to make sure I got them all for us: situation, self, support strategy. Did I get them?

Yes, you did.

Yay! Gold star for me today! I think I'm going to put them on a sticky note or on my computer desktop or something so I can have them as a helpful reminder because I really I love that framework of questions. I think it's helpful to have a strategy, for lack of a better word, to think through and to work through those types of things. So next can we talk about examples, maybe what a few different major types of transitions are that you see your work or maybe just in your life experience as well.

Yeah Michaela, I've got kind of three examples.

Perfect right. I'm ready.

Yeah, so these are sort of common transitions that I think we see in the literature and research. And also just in our experience of moving through things ourselves or seeing other people, family members, friends, coworkers go through things. So the first example or first had a major type of work, career transition is really moving from school to the job, that early career trajectory piece.

Right.

And so I have an example of that and I have names in each of these examples. My pseudonyms. So George, I’ve imagined this person, George, has just finished a master's degree and is beginning a career in HR, human resource management, and they're very early in their career. So their role in the firm is as HR Coordinator and their job is really to support the HR generalist.

Sure

And the work of the team. So, George enjoys the job, gets to do lots of different things, gets to have sort of his eyes and fingers in a lot of different cookie jars, if you will. Different kinds of projects, is learning how to support the team, but ultimately feels like his skills are being underutilized.

Sure.

You know, some thoughts are going through his mind like I can do more than this. And so he's wondering, how do I do this job but quickly work towards a promotion? And so the change that George wants to see is a promotion. That's what he desires. So how can he start moving towards this? Well he has several options on the table. One would be, OK, I'm just going to put my nose to the grindstone, do my best work, and hopefully I'll get recognized and promoted for doing my best work. Sure, it's a bit of a kind of active passive response, which is I would do my best and that's very active. But there's also that passive response of we'll wait and see. We'll wait for people to recognize me.

Right.

That's an option. And maybe that'll work. Who knows? A second option would be, well, maybe you are just feeling really impatient. And, you know, three months have gone by and decides, I think I need a different job. So he could leave the firm and take a different job. Sure, that's an option. A third option could be, well, maybe I'll stay for a while and I can reframe the situation as this is a really good opportunity to do my best work, to be collaborative, to support others success, the success of my team. And figure out ways to leverage my relationship with my manager to be able to get some different experiences that will enable me to stretch to actually do more of what I feel like. What George has, I could say either by George, I feel like George feels like he's been trained to do sure and experiences where he can stretch and grow his capacity and be in situations with other leaders who can for whom he will be more visible. That would be sort of an active way to build towards a promotion. And even as he's developing, his relationship with his manager is leveraging that person's influence to be able to have an expanded role, get a promotion and et cetera. So I guess in that example I just wanted to share here is a major kind of work-to-career early job and how George might navigate that.

Yeah, Yeah. That is such a challenging place to be. And you've been in school. Your whole life for most people. Right up until then, you start working and it's just. You have all these skills, you've learned all these things, but navigating the work and career world is just different. It's just a different place to be in. And so navigating that can be a little bit challenging sometimes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah OK, so we've gone. Early career to or excuse me, school to early career. What other types of transitions? Do you see people experiencing?

Yeah so a second one that I often see is a role change within an organization that requires more of a person. And this could be a lateral or a vertical move within an org. And so I'm going to call this person Mary.

OK.

Mary is part of an organization where she's been recently promoted to be a manager.

Great.

very exciting.

Congrats, Mary!

Yeah, she really hasn't had formal managerial training. Doesn't have an MBA. She's like, oh, my gosh, I don't know how to do this job. I feel like a total imposter. So what does Mary do? Is she going to fake it till she makes it? What can she do? So this transition is really one where the role demands more of her in ways that she just doesn't feel ready. So it's like she's being tasked with the job of flying the plane and building it at the same time.

Yes.

Yes. I think it’s a pretty familiar experience.

I think so. I think so.

Yes. And so, you know, Mary is not looking to change jobs. She wants to really do well in this position. She wants to succeed. So if I was coaching somebody like Mary, I think I'd want to have a conversation with her about where can she get the support that she really needs and-- both support and feedback. And so she probably is looking for some support in terms of getting possibly some mentorship, some informal training, if you will, on how to lead, how to be a manager, how to influence people on a team and motivate them to do the work to reach the goals of the team. Getting some of that support could be really helpful, but also getting feedback on how is she showing up and she's learning to do these new things and stretching herself. How are her tactics? How are her strategies landing on other people? You're going to need feedback so that support and feedback is going to be really important to her. And so, you know, Mary could have a conversation with her manager about that. Is there some is there some mentorship opportunity I could take part in? Is there mentorship opportunity that this organization provides that I could take part in? Can I set up a weekly check in with you, a 15-minute check in just to get some feedback on how I'm doing? Yeah, that's really helpful. Mary could also check in with her team members, do a check in with them in terms of how she's showing up. And I would want to tell Mary, feeling like an impostor. You're not alone in that.

Definitely not.

When we're all over where we're asked to do more. But we don't feel trained, we don't feel ready. We're going to have that sense of imposter syndrome, if you will, and it can be an indication that we're on a growth edge. But here we are doing something that is somewhat new and unfamiliar to us, and how can I grow in this experience? The good news is that most developmental leadership experiences that people have are on the job. Just like actually going through things we call sometimes we call them trial by fire. Experience is right and they feel risky, right? Yeah, we're really on a growth edge. But if we had the right support in place, we can learn so much in those experiences.

I love that. OK so we've talked about student to early career and then we've talked about within your career, within your work. Making a change within the same organization. I am not going to guess. I have a feeling what your third example is going to be. But you you tell me what the third scenario is that you had it mind. This has been part one of career conversations, a conversation about career transition. Be sure to listen to part two for the rest of this conversation.