BONUS: What is an Intentional Career Change? (+ How It Differs from a Job Change)

Introduction 00:05

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast with Scott Anthony Barlow. We hope you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does, and make it happen. We help you define the work that is unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you feel like you were meant for more, and you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:29

A while back, just a couple of months ago, we released a bonus episode called "How Long Does An Intentional Career Change Take?" The feedback we got from that episode from, maybe even you, was astonishing. What I heard over and over again was it changed how people thought about what it takes to make an intentional career change. And then we started thinking. We started thinking about, "You know what? We actually haven't done that many episodes to really help people understand what's the difference between any other type of job change, career change, unintentional career change, or less intentional, versus an incredibly intentional career change, and how does that differ in terms of the life that you can create once you start doing things that vastly differently, that vastly intentionally. Well, if you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to guess that you might not be completely satisfied or fulfilled with your career. You might even be wondering what else is out there. And what I'll tell you is that when I started on this journey in learning more about fulfilling work, way back in 2005, has been a continuous learning experience ever since then. At that point in time, I had what most people would call a good job, one where I had a steady paycheck and I didn't love it. I certainly didn't derive purpose from it, and most definitely did not describe it as meaningful. What I learned over the years is that the process of making a change toward more meaningful work, and ultimately, a more meaningful life, is not just about improving your career. What I found is that many people struggle to understand how every single person that you've heard on this podcast is someone who has not just made a career shift, but now they're actually living life more intentionally. And so we have made a three part series of bonus episodes they're going to air over the next few days. This one plus two more. Where we break down what is intentional career change, and what do you have to do to be able to do life and work on a whole different level, far more intentionally.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:44

In this episode, I'd like to help break down what is the difference between a career change or a job change versus that intentional career change. But first, let me just point out that the whole reason our name of our company is Happen To Your Career is that intentional is built right into the title. A lot of times people here happen too, and they think I'm happening to things as opposed to things happening to me. But I would point out that, in some ways, is part of the definition of being intentional. It's proactive. It's you making things happen, versus just allowing them to happen to you. That, in itself, is part of the big difference between intentional versus unintentional. Let's walk through that a bit here. Let me just give you some examples of intentional versus, shall we say, less intentional. Unintentional career changes often happen due to external factors rather than a deliberate decision. They're usually reactive and influenced by circumstances or opportunities presented by others versus intentional. Intentional career change is about identifying what creates fulfillment for you. This often means looking at the bigger picture of the life that you want to build, and understanding how your work fits into that vision. Very different, right? Decisions with an unintentional career change are often made without thinking through what's most important to you, what you need out of your career, and how you want to fit it into your life. Very often they are myopic or narrowly focused. Versus intentional career change, that's where you're deciding what you want in your life and your career, and then you're actively seeking out those opportunities that align with those goals. Again, very different approach. Okay, so let's give you another example. Unintentional, well, these changes often occur when someone else, like a job, or a friend, or a recruiter reaches out and says, "Hey, guess what, I have this job opportunity that you'd be perfect for." Well, this can be a good thing. We also need to recognize that this is someone else's agenda. It's not a decision that is solely based on your own life goals, because it puts you in that position where now you're evaluating, "Do I accept this or not?" And what I've learned over the years is, if I'm in that very narrowly focused, binary type of decision, "do I do this or not", that's an indication to me that I'm probably not looking big picture enough, and it probably means that I'm just about to make a decision that is more focused on settling as opposed to what I really want.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:24

Okay, now on the other side, doing it intentionally, this would have your focus on creating a fulfilling life, not just finding a job. This means for example, instead of, you know, somebody else reaching out and say, "Hey, come do this thing that I need you to do that I think could be a great fit for you, but ultimately it's sort of about, you know, what I need from you." Instead, this might be happening in reverse. You are deciding, here is an organization that I want to work for. Here is the type of opportunity that I want to spend my time in a role. Here are the types of tasks that I'm interested in. Now, with that organization that might potentially be in a fit, that might be you seeking out them and building relationships in the organization, and then determining where is going to be a great place for you in that organization, much more difficult to do, for sure. But arguably, if the goal is to build a life that's intentional and ultimately much more meaningful or more fulfilling or supports the goals that you want, then it's far more effective. So I guess you know that can be the difference sometime. Intentional, if that's the goal, then are you looking for effective, or are you looking for a job? Sometimes you need a job to serve temporarily until you can get to effective. Let me give you another example here, unintentional career change. This is like a huge game of this and that, right? Okay, so unintentional, it might provide immediate benefits, but often lacks a strategic approach to achieving long term fulfillment. Where intentional career change, it might be about considering all aspects of life. We've talked about that, but let me give you some examples. That might be finances, in terms of, "what income do you want to be earning?" Usually, people are looking at that the opposite way. They're like, "What can I earn?" As opposed to, "What amount of money do I need to support my longer term goals?" And then backing into that, and then saying, "Okay, well, how do I find what is going to allow me to earn that?" Very, very different approach. Another aspect would be, "What is the type of work functionally?" Or, "What are the types of tasks?" Or, "How do I work best?" "What is the type of situation?" You also might be considering, what are your personal goals, or what do you value most. I'm not just talking about this set of what people might call your core values, but ultimately, what are the pieces that you value most. What are your highest priorities? It's not just about the work itself. It's also about aligning your job with those broader life goals or broader life priorities. Setting up the foundation there and making strategic moves that align with longer term aspirations is what allows you to perpetually move closer and closer to that. So that can be done with your career, but it's difficult to go that way, which is why most of us tend to end up in a more unintentional type of approach.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:28

And here's another example. Okay, so, you know, I mentioned the friend earlier. One example of that is your friend calls you or texts you and says, "Hey, guess what? I just started working at this organization. You know, I'm a director over here, and maybe this is somebody you used to work with at some place. They have a working relationship with you. They know that you would be amazing in terms of performance at that company, at that role. So they're reaching out to you to try and fill one of their needs." Now this is great. This is how it normally works. And you know, I think that I will speak to myself and say that, "I've had some really cool experiences that way." I really have, but it's not been me being intentional necessarily. Yes, I intentionally decided, "yes or no". Do I decide that decision? But by focusing on just that one tiny, little, micro decision, and do I say, "yes or no" to that, I'm distracting myself from the bigger picture of where do I actually want to be. It's kind of almost like, okay, like, let's talk about it in terms of financials as an example here. So I might spend... This is something I've actually done, so this is kind of absurd. But long time ago, I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, obsessive amounts of hours trying to find what is the, you know, what is the best deal I could get on this TV. And this has been a long time ago. This is like pre-LED, you know, screen TVs. So I spent all this time, and I probably did save, like, $50. Amazing, right? That's $50. However, if I'd spent that same amount of time deciding where to place money into investments, and then actually placing money into those investments, then it would have been a far, far, far bigger impact in my life. One saved me $50 for, let's just say, it was like 20 hours worth of research and everything else. If I'd spent that same time and effort and ultimately, you know, put that same $50 into, say, ETF that was an index fund for the S&P 500, then I would have a very, very, very different amount of money to show from. Or let's say that I put that same amount of time into assessing where I want to invest overall and focus on the broader picture. It's a similar scenario, like, one basically saves me pennies, and then the other makes me, you know, far, far, far, a large amount of money. So that's part of what this is about. Like, are you penny wise and pound foolish with what creates fulfillment for your life? If you want to think about it that way. It's not just about the finances. That's just one example. But instead, how do we be much more intentional by looking at the broader picture, as opposed to focusing on just one tiny little aspect, like, the friend who says, "Would you like to do this?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:34

Another example, vice versa. Let's say that you're looking at it as, "I want to spend the majority of my time with my family, and I want to prioritize flexibility. That way, I can be there for the small things, not just necessarily the school plays and things like that, but the smaller things too, like picking up my kids from school or dropping them off on a daily basis. That can, in some circumstances, feel like a huge luxury, but what if it's my priority? Well, then I need to know that going into my job search, my career change and intentional career change would focus on finding a job, finding a role, finding an organization, finding an environment, finding the people who also value that that's going to support that type of lifestyle. A job that would support all the must haves that I've defined, those things that are highest priority to me." Okay, very different than that offer from the friend at, you know, this company that they just got to, right? So you can sort of see the difference. An intentional career change is where you're spending time figuring out that destination in a different way, not just I'm looking for a job, not just an arguably better situation, but figuring out what is the life that I want to build, and then how does my work support that. When you do that, it's really the definition of not settling, versus when you don't do that, when you're not looking at that larger picture, then by definition, you are unintentionally settling.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:13

Okay, let me give you a couple examples, and you can actually go back and listen to these episodes. You can go back to Episode 532 and 533 and you can listen to Nancy. Nancy in her case, by the way, 533 was called Creating Your Ideal Career by Asking For What You Want. You can actually search that or just search ideal career and a lot of times, you'll find many of our episodes that pop up here. Okay, in this case, Nancy co-founded an event planning company where she worked and grew her career and the company for over 20 years. When she realized she wanted a different degree of autonomy, she actually left her role as a VP there, and she was able to create a new role and align it with everything that she had defined that she needed in her next opportunity, and did so at a company that she was really excited about. And in fact, she actually, what you'll hear, if you go back and listen to those episodes, is that she experimented and figured out, as she was making the transition, what was really going to create a great situation for her. And that's one of the really fun things when you start to live work and life more intentionally, you realize that part of how you get to living a more intentional life is you start doing some things intentionally. Those things provide you feedback, and then that feedback a lot of times in the form of experimentation and exploration, that feedback then allows you to make different decisions going forward, and this starts to provide a compound effect. And that's exactly what Nancy experienced. She ended up trialing a couple of different things, and realized that what she thought was going to be amazing for her actually was not as amazing. And once she got into that, she realized, nope, she needed to make a different decision. Both of them were better than her previous situation. However, it allowed her to get that feedback to make better decisions that she couldn't even imagine back show and she was thinking about changing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:17

Okay, here's another example, Michael. Michael's story, I really love Michael's story. Partially, just because I've gotten to meet Michael numerous times and he's become a bit of a friend. And so Michael, we mentioned his story in the book. His story is also back on Podcast Episode 395 it's called Executive Burnout: Making A Midlife Career Change. You can go back and listen to that. Just search midlife career change, or search executive burnout in your podcast player. Or go into 395, we'll have it linked in the show notes too, so you just click back there. In his case, he was a former finance exec who went from... He worked with a studio. He went from, burned out, and he was, oh my goodness, he was so stressed, it was affecting his health. He lost 20 pounds, and he went all the way from that to learning that work can be fun. I remember him saying that when my wife, Alyssa, and I got to meet him and we had breakfast with him on Pacific Beach in California. Anyhow, he's like, "You know what? I didn't actually know that work could be fun. I had enjoyed, you know, quite a few different pieces of my career, and it had certainly been good for me. But I didn't actually know that it could be fun." And could add to his life in that particular way, versus taking away from it. So, of course, in his case, he did the work to figure out what was more fun, what fell more into that category, and realized that that was part of what he wanted to build for his life. Fast forward, he's continued to iterate on that over the years. It's been pretty cool to see what has continued to progress, even beyond that episode when you go back and listen to it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:59

Okay, Cheri, whose story you can listen on a much more recent episode too, 572. Well, after finding herself in a role that she didn't love, Cheri figured out the type of work that she needed to be doing to align with her strengths. The type of people, this was interesting too, she delved deep into who are the type of people she wanted to work with, and even the amount of money that she needed to make and wanted to make, and then she found an organization where all of that came together, and she ended up making a change to that organization. And then the work, of course, not a surprise, this was a much more intentional approach, so the work was not so magically, checking all of those boxes. She's a much happier person, and is able to enjoy her life outside of work at a different level too. She even went on to say that she's a, you know, she's a better parent and partner because of it, and so she shows up differently too. A fun fact about her story too. If you go back and listen to her past episodes, we have a couple of them on the podcast, but you'll hear that she ended up making another transition inside that organization because she was already a great fit that showed that led to a promotion, and then she was able to, instead of just accepting that promotion, consider go back to her what we'd call an ideal career profile, all that work that she did to figure out what intentionally creates a better situation and life for her, and then she was able to use that to evaluate the decision right in front of her, which is very different, very, very, very different when you say yes to something like that versus just, you know, the friend that calls up and you're like, "Yeah, well, I guess it seems better than what I'm doing. Maybe." So Cheri was able to take that situation and flip it around and say, "You know what? Here's what I actually can do. This does mostly line up, but there's a few things that I'm concerned about." And she was able to work with her leader, her boss, to make sure that the promotion was going to be structured in a way that was truly going to be good for her. Pretty cool, right? Perfect example of being able to flip the script and do things very intentionally, even when those opportunities pop up. Now, it's truly an opportunity that's gonna build on the life that you want to create, right?

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:16

Okay, so, Karen. Here's one more example of what intentional career change looks like. Karen, she was in episode 561. She stepped away from her all encompassing job as a dean and redesigned her career and life to revolve around what she considered to be her true priorities. Her new role has the student interaction that she was missing from one of her previous roles, but isn't as stressful in the ways that are negative for her. So it allows her to spend the extra time that she would have been spending. She now gets to spend that with her daughter, which is ultimately what she determined was one of her highest priorities. So you can imagine that this allows her to be able to spend more of her time overall in the ways that she wants to, which adds up when you do that day after day after day, that adds up to a much more intentional life.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:08

So if you're here considering making a change, know that it's not just about the job, it's not just about the tasks, it's not just about finding the work that fits. It's also about creating a life that fulfills you, and you can make that happen. It takes practice. It takes courage. It takes a very, very, very, very different way of thinking. But if that's something that you're interested in, we'd love to help, of course, it's what we do. It's what we love to do. And my hope here is that I've helped you understand a little bit more, just a tiny bit more, in this episode about what intentional versus unintentional looks like. If you want to live more intentionally, if you want to do work that fits into a more intentional life, then by all means, I would encourage you to schedule a conversation with our team. You can send an email to Scott@happentoyourcareer.com and I'll put you in touch with our team, and you'll be able to meet them, they'll have a conversation with you. We've got a few different team members that are really wonderful at putting together the right types of custom support that fits your world, fits what your needs are, your challenges, like what kind of industry and everything that you're coming out of, your budget, etc, all of those things, and then creating that custom type of approach to allow you to ultimately do things more intentionally. Now, one thing I should probably mention too, now that we've been 11 years into this organization, and people are starting to share our podcasts and share our books and everything else with their friends and co-workers and family, we're pretty booked up. So what I would encourage you to do is we're booked through the end of July, we're now booking into August and September and October at this point, so if you're interested in working with us anytime before the fall, then I would encourage you to send that conversation email now, put 'Conversation' in the subject line. Send it to Scott@happentoyourcareer.com and then if you want to, feel free to tell me a little bit about your situation. I will connect you with our team. And then we're basically now scheduling for that remainder of time, August through October, and that scheduling closes July 19. So do it sooner rather than later. But in the next episode, come back for that. It'll be released tomorrow. We'll discuss why you can't do this alone. And I'm not just talking about a career coach. I'm talking about it's gonna take more than just you. It's gonna take a different type of support to get a different result than what the rest of the world has. So we'll chat about who needs to be involved in your journey next time right here on Happen To Your Career in our next bonus episode.