Life has three certainties, change, taxes & death!
I have come to experience tremendous amounts of change in the last few years and the change has consistently increased in it's intensity from a professional standpoint. I have had to change jobs, take up studies(at one point I was doing three different things at the same time), go through potential retrenchment, and ultimately be re-deployed to a new position. It didn't stop there, I changed organisations and took on an entirely new line of career, where lots of learning ensued and lots of adjustment followed.
I entered an entirely new environment to what I had previously been exposed to and it meant having to make some adjustments in terms of learning about the new environment, getting accustomed to the new people I was privileged to serve, and not forgetting the politics of the day that is always present in all organisations. The people component came naturally given that I am and always have been passionate about developing people, but learning about the new environment was the tricky bit. The landscape was vast given that we serviced an entire bank, and as one can imagine, it meant being slap-bang in the middle of power struggles, politics and good old fashioned backstabbing. Some of the new learning curves were steep, and others were not too bad, but all in all, it required a level of growth and I embraced the journey. I got to engage really awesome people and some not-so-awesome people, but more importantly I was able to interact with a team who challenged me in many ways and caused me to dig really deep in terms of how I nurtured and developed them.
I saw some spectacular results and also saw some really sad and often disappointing ones. I was yet again served a lesson that not everybody wanted to be a participant in their own rescue, and more importantly, I was consistently taught that not everyone in your boat are after the same results. Some people just really want to watch the world burn, and would sabotage you at every turn without batting an eyelid. I had to take some hard lessons in always seeing the good in people, often having to deal with individuals who were willing set out to gossip about me and also tried to discredit me for whatever reason. It was really hard learning to navigate people who smiled to my face, but rubbished my name when I was not there.
I think my saving grace however were the individuals who defended my name when I was not there, as they always fiercely silenced those who felt comfortable doing shady things behind my back and talking badly about me.
I was a part of elevating individual performances beyond what others thought they were capable of and just being able to watch them grow and blossom was such a privilege for me to have witnessed.
I was able to see the clear differences between management and leadership, and I was privy to many debates on the subject which helped me hone my own skills and master my own craft and in so doing stamp my brand on all I did and touched.
I had been so fortunate to be invited to facilitate the organisation's re-branding exercise along with many other awesome individuals who I was just in awe of, and to have sold the new direction the brand was taking inspired me and also re-established my belief that I was a part of something special. The journey brought with it a renewed vigor and belief that things were looking up.
Sadly things took a decidedly left turn after that! I was pulled into a disciplinary process for something really frivolous, and I was able to defend myself and have the charges against me dropped. The nett effect sadly for me was that I realized that company politics and cliques were really getting to me and I was really just tired of the need to conform to what others expect of me and I also came to the realization that I just didn't prescribe to the supposed values the Company tries to palm off on the staff.
I had through this process found who my true friends were, and I was also clearly given the indication of who exactly it was that was out to wreck things for me. I was able to reflect on my career to this point and some of the realizations I made were not exactly new to me. I had always known that no employee had ever gotten rich off a 9 to 5 job, I was fully aware of the fact that having someone dictate to me how much I was allowed to earn, when I was allowed to go to lunch and when I was allowed to take leave would never bring me contentment. I have made the same experiences in corporate at different companies, simply because the politics is always the same, it's just wrapped in different guises at the different companies. I had to go back to myself and have one of those "come to Jesus" talks with myself around what my future required of me.
The reset I had experienced professionally pointed out some clear things to me about my career, first of which was that I needed to be in a space that spoke to my values.
I can only be my best and true self in an environment that speaks to my belief system, and allows me to express myself in that way. The second thing pointed out to me was that I needed to stop trading my time for money, and instead I needed to start earning residual income or in other words, I needed to find ways to make money while I sleep. Warren Buffet famously said that "if you don't find ways to make money while you sleep, you will work till the day you die".
I also realized that I wanted to live life on my terms and not on the terms of my employment contract, principally because I noted that there were still so many things I wanted to experience in life.
I realized that I need to travel more, have more fulfilling relationships with my kids and provide peak life experiences for them.
The reset of my professional life is fully in effect and I still have some hard questions to answer for myself, but one thing is for sure, and that is simply that I have to do something different if I want something different. We all can agree that if nothing changes, then nothing changes!
I have a new Business Venture I have invested in, and right now, that is one of my biggest "Pull" factors, as it has aligned me with my purpose again, and I just have to push on with my purpose. I am building a Legacy for my kids!
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