People are changing jobs at the fastest pace in 17 years. Wage inflation is finally here, and many vibrant changes are going on in workers’ professional lives.
I’m now publishing a cautionary column about making big leaps like this. Of course, I am a massive proponent of change. Change makes you more resilient. It exposes you to new stimuli and circumstances that grow your skill set and confidence in being able to conquer obstacles. It allows you to migrate to conditions that better match your needs. Perhaps most importantly, change keeps things fun and interesting. I am also a big advocate of following your passion, and I coach people toward their true north in their careers.
However, I know how much time can be needed to find that true north, and even more, to leap.
A LinkedIn survey shows that only 30% of workers around the world are pursuing their passion in their chosen occupation. That reinforces what we already know. Money aside, when making a career change, at least half of people are running from, rather than toward, something when changing careers.
Now, I am not categorically discouraging anyone from changing jobs. After all, an average salary bump of 30% can certainly be necessary. But be careful not to improve one tangible aspect of your professional life only to carry other long-standing albatrosses with you: lack of interpersonal and business skills, destructive self-talk dynamics and poor time management. In our experience, leaving behind tangibles for a new job can clandestinely be well worth more than that 30% salary bump.
Here are our four most important questions to ask before making a major job change to ensure that you do what is appropriate for your situation:
Can you make it right?
They say people don’t run from a job. They run from a manager — that is, relationships gone bad. And bad relationships are often fraught with incorrect assumptions.
People think that cleaning up bad assumptions is a messy business. I think it’s an opportunity. Consider the power of walking into someone’s office saying, “I know things have been uncomfortable between us for a while. I would like to understand what you are observing so that I can take full responsibility for the situation and move forward.”
If you are thinking that accepting responsibility for a visible dispute will compromise your reputation or worse, get you fired, there is great power in it.
How admired, capable and ready for a big promotion could you become in the eyes of your superiors by showing this type of good sense and boldness? Better yet, taking responsibility for the troubled relationship will put the outcome within your control. This also gives you power.
According to former Navy SEAL and leadership author Jocko Willink, “There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.”
How are you spending your time?
How many times have you seen others make a job change because their work overtook their personal life? A Monster.com poll shows 42% at one time or another. And how often did this turn out to be a “same problems, different day” situation?
Your time is yours. No one can take it unless you give it away. Your time allocation paradigms evolved over years or decades and are likely now deeply ingrained. Rather than going on a dubious quest for more personal time in another job, consider using an energy chart to discover work-life integration. You may even try creating (1) a life energy chart, (2) a work energy chart and (3) an integrated life-work energy chart.
What will more money do for you?
Now, maybe you took all the proper steps to determine that an increase in pay is essential. Still, a matching exercise would further validate your hypothesis:
1. Who you are: In one column, list your core values.
2. What you want: List the things you would do with a 30% extra salary over the next year.
3. Match them: Match your list of financial outlays with your core values. This is a moment when you will be subconsciously inclined to force matches, so it may help to show your results to someone you trust for a second look.
Having a list of items that don’t match is common, so consider finding replacement items that truly map your core values. If you have a high-dollar inventory of unmapped expenditures on your list, you would likely be better served staying where you are, making deliberate tweaks to improve your standing.
Decided to go? Then go… on vacation.
I have published a satirical plea for people to use their vacation days, as the trend in the U.S. painted a picture of the opposite. Alas, the situation does not seem to have improved much. On average, U.S. workers used only 54% of their eligible vacation time in 2017, leaving a total of over $66 billion on the table. This is obviously not good for you. In the end, it may ultimately even cost your employer more as you are less productive and healthy from overwork. Time magazine claims it is even killing you.
Now, how to take more vacation is something we’ve lectured about in keynotes and is available all over the internet, but if you are leaving a job, you have a golden moment — a moment when no one can deny you a well-deserved getaway. If you have been burning the candle at both ends, looking to your upcoming salary bump for a much-needed break is just what the doctor ordered.
So, if you’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to change jobs, the environment is better now than it has been in over a decade. That said, a few simple exercises might lead you to think like Michael Beckwith, who says, “If the grass is greener somewhere else, start watering your own lawn.” Just don’t use vacation days to do it.
This article originally appeared on Forbes August 7, 2018.
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