What To Do When It Stops Feeling “Like It Feels Like Me”:
Five Steps to Help You Make the Change You Seek
In November of 2005 I walked into a ballroom dance studio and learned the basic step of a foxtrot.
By August of 20o6 I was 50 pounds lighter and featured on a segment in The Today Show about women in their 40’s who found a hobby they were passionate about. The other featured 40-something liked to fly airplanes as much as I liked to do a magic left turn. I loved the editors of that piece because at the end, they sped up the film so it looked like I was spinning way faster than I actually could. It looked like glorious fun.
Fast forward to today. I had scheduled a phone call with an entrepreneur who is in the early stages of building something great, a company with quality products and a real reason to be. A client of mine and friend of hers connected us, thinking perhaps we might have something to talk about.
I do a lot of these calls. The older you get, the more you come to mind as someone “my friend who just started a business should talk to.” 99% of the time I’m happy to do it but I also need to find a way to make sure these calls are worth the investment (for both parties). While it’s hard not to be swept away by the energy and optimism of a true entrepreneur, you have to find a way to filter. You could spend your life on these calls, listening and giving free advice. Filtering is a time-saving skill.
I usually start with a trick I learned from an old boss of mine.
“What do you care about?” I usually ask before we get into anything else. This question always surprises, and it usually gives me a fairly good indicator of a lot of what I really need to know in about twelve seconds. Everyone should have a “filter question,” something that will help you get to the core of what matters to the person (and help you understand how you might help).
As the set time for this particular call approached I pulled out the list of questions I’d prepared. These questions ranged from sales velocity to competitive set to five-year goals to what kinds of resources she needed to how could I help. But the first question didn’t need to be on the list. It’s my old standard.
The phone rang. We said hello.
When she started to tell her story she talked about a job she had in New York that “stopped feeling like it was me.” I felt a smile come over my face and a feeling of complete and total connection come over me. This was a stranger. I’d never spoken to her before. But I knew exactly what she meant. She talked about making the switch, and then she talked about discovering the niche for her product, not the way a business school student would, but the way a concerned mom would. And then she talked about how she had too many ideas and her big issue was to find a way to make the best choices and set the right priorities.
I never had to ask the filter question.
I never had to ask her what she cared about. I could feel it through the phone. Positive energy. Learning. Collaborating. Finding the fit. Filling needs. Smarts. Unique ideas. Making things happen.
Whether she knew it or not, she’d already done the hard work.
Back in the day, before I made the decision to leave the safety net of a big job at a Fortune 500 company, we were privileged, as officers, to have a fancy executive coach come in and do a really extensive 360 evaluation. We went through a long, thorough and laborious process. What I got back was really accurate. But it struck me odd that what they told me I needed to change to “be successful” (I was a senior officer at a Fortune 500 Company, but OK) were many of the things I actually liked about myself.
They told me I was “too passionate.”
They told me to “focus on my own accountabilities.”
They told me to “slow down.”
Then the really concerned people who take me aside and whisper (this part wasn’t written down) that I should probably be more patient with people who didn’t catch on as quickly and I should definitely talk more slowly.
I heard them. I agree those things might not have set me up for future success there. And hey, talking more slowly was definitely a good tip. But I also felt like, outside of the talking speed thing, if I changed a lot of those things, it wouldn’t feel like me anymore.
And there it was.
Time to go.
I’ve told this story many times over the years and I always make sure it is clear that it was not a criticism of that place or the people who worked there. It simply became clear that ultimate success there wasn’t something I could probably pull off in a way that felt like me.
You don’t always have to leave. Learning something new, developing yourself, or making serious making changes in yourself serve you as strong strategies. In this case, though, I just knew it wasn’t going to be the right fit, and the powerful thing was, it dawned on me that it was my choice.
When a big company tells you they are concerned about your “fit” or that you “need to change a few things to be successful here” (one time I was called aside and told to “be more serious” because I made a comment that was supposed to be funny in a meeting) it is a prediction…. that unless you want to seriously change how you behave (and probably when you get down to it, who you are and possibly what you value), you may from then on stay in the very place you already are.
They will point it out to you and tell you why it matters. Then it’s up to you to change. In my case they did their job and did it well; the feedback itself was really valuable.
Jim Collins eloquently and powerfully identified this as the key to great companies: that they know who they are and what they stand for and that they just have to find people who share those values. My experience is the other side of that — if you find you are ultimately a “self-ejecting virus,” as Mr. Collins describes, how do you know and what do you do?
I’ve been helping my teenager study biology lately. Right now we are learning about communities and ecosystems. As the text gave example after example of characteristics of species that thrived in certain places with certain biotic and abiotic factors, but also had to change to grow more, the contradiction struck me hard. Species have to find a place where they can flourish in the first place. But then, species evolve to survive, often prompted by other species in their communities. There are certain things about your environment that when right, will feel just like you. For me, a good laugh along the way is definitely one of them. Just like in biology, though, in our work lives, human nature is about the hunger to learn — to “grow or die,” as they say.
“A place that feels like me” means you are in your niche.
If every meeting was 100% serious and no one could ever say anything funny, no problem… but it wasn’t going to be the place for me. I went to that job because it was an amazing opportunity in what on the surface was a highly creative place. For me, though, humor and light are a critical component of a creative environment. It was creative for others, but it wasn’t right for me.
When you are a consultant, as I am now, if you are less patient you often get things done more quickly. Clients like that. When you are passionate, people want to come along, which makes it easier to manage by influence, which matters when you are a consultant. When you can take a broad view of the business (the opposite of “focus on you own accountabilities”) your recommendations can be more powerful. Yes, you guessed it, for a consultant, that matters a lot. When you don’t slow down, it’s possible to squeeze more out of this one life.
After I realized it was time to go, I spent a lot of time figuring out what mattered most, what biotic and abiotic factors (I just didn’t know to call them that then) defined the right environment for me. The first step took a lot of time. It occurred to non-patient me that “time to go” didn’t mean “go right now.” It meant it was time to do something about it, to make a plan, to learn to define myself and my own success differently than a Fortune 500 company did.
I figured out the first draft of what I thought of as my calling and my guardrails (the calling hasn’t changed, but time and experience have helped me articulate them differently). It took a while (by a while, I mean a lot of airplane rides over several months). I incorporated a company. I got some really cool business cards. I found some clients I could really help. I co-founded a charity.
And, I learned to dance.
Since our purpose is to help people figure out who they are, what they do and how to do it better, it helps to have gone through it. My ballroom became a perfect metaphor for my own transformation. While I was setting up my company and learning what kinds of clients benefited most from our services, I was learning to find my frame, the difference between leading and following, the power of “muscle memory,” and seeing the magic of what it means to “dance to the dress.”
I craft strategy. I teach creativity. I help people uncover and discover ideas. I turn thoughts into things. And I dance.
It’s not perfect and there’s a lot of different kinds of stress. but I can honestly say that nearly every day, it sure does feel like me and when I look back on it, I feel like I did self-eject. But I did it happily and I did it by choice.
So recognize it first. That’s actually the hardest part. When you do, begin these steps. It might not mean you make a change immediately, and remember, there is no harm in doing these exercises anyway. Doing them may help you discover that you are actually already in the right place. You won’t know until you try.
Here is the recipe. Allow yourself time and multiple drafts, particularly for the first step.
- Determine the three things that matter most to you.
- Figure out your leap (as in “leap and the net will appear”). What kinds of leaps could you take?
- Articulate your net (see #2). What kind of safety net would you need to have enough confidence to take the leap?
- Make a list of three friends who know you well, value you for much more than your title or resume, and put them on speed dial.
- Write a one page business plan for the first year of your new adventure.
You don’t have to quit your job tomorrow but you might want to start working on step one. If you do these five things, and you do them well, believe it or not, you now have yourself a plan and you too can have the pieces you need to begin to happily self-eject.
If you’re interested in learning more, give us a small green heart below and we’ll share some more detail on how to attack each of the five steps.
Jane Melvin is a strategy consultant who helps her clients figure out who they are, what they do and how to do it better. She also teaches creativity. And she does a pretty OK foxtrot.
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