How leaders navigate their career cycles

It's not unusual to hear people close to burning out complain that their professional life is 'relentless'. They know they're expected to continue ever upwards in a straight line, but they are becoming exhausted. 

Cycles are more real than lines.

Life, of all kinds, is cyclic. We share with all mammals a natural rhythm to living, but for some reason set ourselves up for work that disregards this fact. The result, leaders who break, or who break their organisation. 

It's hard to find time to sit back and assess where you are in your career, what kind of leader you're becoming and what to do next, when immediate demands, both professional and personal, rush at you and absorb all your time and energy. 

The three most important phases of the professional career cycle are: 

• Getting the role.
• Going well in the role. 
• Transitioning well to the next role. 

Each of these phases entails a set of strategic career tasks that must be done regardless of everything else that is going on in your life. 

Get

Getting the role means testing a potential role for its match to your strengths, doing your due diligence on the organisation (just as the organisation is taking references on you!), planning your induction, engaging with your stakeholders and shaping your team. 

Got

Performing in the role means building the team not only to work well with you, but with each other, doing the core design work, working the vision, embedding standards and achieving the big goals (not just the KPIs). 

Go

Transitioning is a process all to itself. It can feel lonely, unguided and endless, but properly designed enables you to reconnect with your professional community, reframe and find your ideal role and negotiate well to win it. 

Strategise each phase

Each of these phases calls on you to know yourself, maintain your equilibrium and sustain a long term view of your career despite many short term demands. Each also lays the foundation for the next. Starting well leads to sustained performance, which in turn gives you clarity and control over your transition, which in turn enables you to find the next level of leadership that excites and sustains you. 

Getting this clear in your career strategy is tricky, as it's hard to answer questions like 'what do I need in my next role?' when your current role blinds you with detail. Finding good answers, however, means that you'll approach significant changes, such as leaving a long-term role, moving internationally or retiring from your core career, with movement and direction rather than stuck. 

This is the meat of my 1:1 work with CEOs, executives and professionals. You'll spot that the leaders who seem most calm, focussed and effective move through these phases of the cycle with ease and a plan. But you'll also notice that they are working their career, which means doing essential 'career tasks' to gain increasingly interesting roles, rather than jolting from job to job. It's tougher than it sounds as it calls for a good deal of self-honesty but is something any passionate professional can emulate - as well as doing 'a good job'.