Accidentally in Code

After the first cohort of DRI Your Career I wrote that the first time you do something, you can believe in it but you can only really hope. But we just wrapped up our second cohort of DRI Your Career and have two other courses we’ve run full cohorts of. I’m going to call it because I’ve read a lot of submissions now – this system is working.

Confidentiality is core to what we do, so I’m not going to name any specifics. What I want to do, now I’ve seen enough people go through the full arc of DRI Your Career, is talk about not what each module is (aka more marketing material) but what I have repeatedly seen change for people (the impact).

This market is chaos and people are feeling less supported and more stressed than ever. In a good market, maybe this thinking was for the unlucky. In this market I really believe it’s for everyone.

Away -> Towards

To varying degrees, most people come in thinking about the problem. What they want to get away from. What’s draining them, what’s not working, what their manager isn’t doing. Sometimes they think the only possible answer is a big change.

Some people do make big changes off the back of this – me included. But the change isn’t the thing we try to drive – we’re not going around telling people this will change their life – what we’re trying to drive is clarity.

Sometimes clarity means a big change – but by then it doesn’t normally feel as huge so much as necessary. Sometimes it means approaching things differently, and seeing small, possible changes that can add up to a significant improvement in the way you’re experiencing work – and life.

You have more power than you think

Questions that coaches love to ask: “what can you stop doing?” and “what will you start doing?”

These might seem trite, but they are about reorienting energy away from what drains us, and towards what we want.

At work, it’s so common that we give energy to things that don’t matter. Petty dramas or trying to fight battles that are beyond our pay grade, that cause us to miss the places where we can actually have impact.

Many people anchor hard on their manager. What the manager does, doesn’t do, should do. I would be the last person to say managers don’t matter; they do. But your career can survive a mid or even bad manager, and building a support network beyond your manager is within your control.

This course skews toward introverts, which means our sample set is biased, but one of the most common realisations is isolation – but specific. Whether it’s lack of local community, peers, or role models. Getting specific with this kind of problem is so helpful. The general version of feeling isolated is overwhelming. The specific version is something you can do something about.

Values: the structure underneath the feeling

We love the values exercise, because values are the underlying structure of what generates emotion. The thing you’re excited about? That’s a value. The thing driving you up the wall? Also a value – but in conflict. The exercise of naming and elaborating on all the values is the one people seem to find hardest – but most worthwhile. Which makes sense, because once you can see the value, the emotion stops being noise and becomes information.

This is the difference between coaching and venting to a friend. A friend wants to support you in the moment. A coach wants your future self to thrive. Coaching makes you get specific, and it pushes you to action.

The arc underneath the whole thing is simple: what actually matters to you, where the gaps are, and finally – most importantly – what you want to do about it.

There is a huge difference between “I need to quit because my job is stressing me out” versus “I’m working somewhere that isn’t aligned with my values, I want that to change, and in the short term I’m going to manage it in the following ways.”

One of these people knows their power and is at choice. The other is poised to move from one bad situation to another.

Less dramatically (and more common) we see people go through an orientation – not from unhappy to happy – but from a diffuse sense that things could be better to a specific understanding of what they want and a next thing(s) to actually do about it.

That’s the whole point. Not to talk you out of how you feel or into some plan. To help you get specific enough that the next move is yours and you know why you’re making it – not the thing you “should” do, the thing you want to do – so you’re more likely to actually do it.

The next cohort starts next week. There’s never a right time for this – there’s just the time you decide to make. We set deadlines because the structure is what does the work, but we’re flexible about them, and if life comes up, ping us, we’re always happy to work things out. As coaches, our goal is to see you thrive.