How To Recalibrate Your Career
Episode 431 | Author: Emilie Aries
How exactly do you align your job with your values?
Three steps to start creating a job–value alignment that resonates!
This year has been the opposite
of chill
After three years of high-octane uncertainty, many of us poked our heads out from under our weighted blankets at the end of 2022, eager for the light that seemed promised (and was certainly deserved). But then, 2023 rolled up, bringing with it a fresh helping of scary economic hurdles and horrifying human rights crises. The urge to crawl back in is understandable.
The career conversation made its usual shifts amongst all this upheaval, welcoming in movements like “quiet quitting” and concepts like “lazy girl jobs”—essentially, push-back against the idea that work should be what defines and rules us. More and more of us have stopped accepting dissatisfaction and burnout as the way of things and started re-evaluating how we relate to work and how that relationship affects what’s most important to us.
Re-evaluation often leads to realignment, yet the common but vague prescription to “identify your values” can feel just about as overwhelming as the dissatisfaction that set you on this path in the first place. Recently I’ve tried three more tangible steps that proved to be very clarifying, and I’m going to share them with you here (and there’s a downloadable handout, too)!
Step one: write out your role
Before you start scribbling down your values, tackle this list instead. Flip open your favorite notebook or a fresh Google Doc and write down everything you do in your job. List out your regular tasks and responsibilities, as well as any projects you took on this year.
Highlight the items on this list that really energize you. Which tasks really make you feel like you’re at your best and of the most use to your organization?
Then, underline the items in this list that drain you. Which responsibilities leave you feeling disengaged or uninspired.
Then, analyze these results. Does sparse highlighting underscore a lot of disconnect between your career and what fills up your cup? Or, maybe this exercise shows you that you really enjoy most of what you do, and the cause of the overwhelm you’re feeling lurks somewhere else.
Step two: look through the lens of burnout
Now, let’s look at what may be lacking. Take some time to look at your life—both the work and personal parts of it—in the context of the four root causes of burnout.
A lack of rest
This one will resonate with most of us! For you, it might be too little sleep, too long sitting stagnant at your desk, or too few vacations. Identify the restful features that are MIA in your world these days.
A lack of community
Instagram DMs aside, can you identify a scarcity of meaningful connections? Do you feel isolated or alone, as though there’s no one you can turn to? Or do the people you have to turn to make you feel even more alone?
A lack of purpose
If some of your overwhelm stems from wondering how your current day-to-day fulfills your purpose, audit your life for the opportunities you have to support your most important causes. Sometimes, adding a new project takes time and energy but repays ten-fold in fulfillment.
A lack of agency
From micromanaging bosses at work to the smaller micromanaging bosses at home (aka, kiddos), feeling as though we don’t have full control over our lives is a formidable weight. Identify the areas where you don’t have the sway you wish you did.
Step three: assess and evaluate
Hopefully, these two steps give you a clearer idea of where your looming burnout is stemming from. Now, you can start applying your values to this more tangible data. Consider the gaps between who you aspire to be (outlined by your values) and who you are day to day (highlighted—literally—by your task list and your burnout analysis).
Whether the gap exists at work or at home, you have room to advocate for change. This doesn’t necessarily mean giving your two weeks’ notice and starting the job search. Sometimes, it’s starting negotiations for a role revision, or signing on to volunteer with an organization closely aligned with your purpose.
The trick is to be impatient enough to advocate for the changes you need, but patient enough to give the next steps, the toe-dipping of the new things, time to come to fruition.
My downloadable handout walks you through these steps in detail, so you can set your own pace on the first leg of this exploration.
It’s a lot of introspective work, but I know from my own recalibration that it is worth the energy. Getting clear on what is and is not serving you can smooth the way for radical acceptance of this transition and give you the space to begin fulfilling those essential but enigmatic values.
Related Links from today’s episode:
Downloadable Handout: 3 Steps for Recalibrating Your Career
How to Set Clear Expectations as a Leader, Episode 265
The Top Struggles of High Achievers, Episode 421
My book, Bossed Up: A Grown Woman’s Guide to Getting Your Sh*T Together
Bossed Up’s Take Action page to bring about systemic change
Brené Brown’s exercise on living into your values
Level Up: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise
Book Emilie for a keynote or workshop
Bossed Up job search resources
LEVEL UP FROM RECALIBRATION TO ACCELERATION:
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[THEME MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 431. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the founder and CEO of Bossed Up, and today I'm talking all about recalibrating your career.
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I don't know about you, but I feel like this year more than any, there is a lot of conversation about people renegotiating our terms with work and really with our careers overall. There's been the whole conversation around quiet quitting, which, if you look closely, is really just about setting healthy boundaries and, like, I don't know, not centering work in our lives. There's a very strong anti girl boss, anti work uprising that we've seen in various forms, both on social media and in the labor movement. Really, the rise of labor unions and strikes that we're seeing, I think, has people really pushing back on career centered living.
There's even been a rising trend around soft girl success or lazy girl jobs, as they've sometimes been called, which I don't agree with necessarily. But like, this bigger reevaluation around how we relate to work, has me questioning everything, personally. I feel like lots of us are renegotiating our terms, and it's part of a broader reevaluation about what is most important to us. It really does make sense if you think about it. It's been three years since 2020, which sent shockwaves through all of our systems. And I think for so many people, myself included, we were just kind of clenching, you know, like, holding on for dear life to get through 2020, get through 2021, and kind of come out in 2022 bewildered that, wow, the wheels are still on the wagon. In fact, our economic prospects globally have looked pretty good. And now this year, there's been a lot of turmoil, a bit of a hiccup, I would say. And so I've been going through my own broader reevaluation, oftentimes quite publicly, here with you, in this podcast.
I'm thinking particularly about my episode back in September, the Top Struggles of High Achievers with Chris Castillo, which you all loved, understandably so, because there's a lot to love about Chris Castillo. But, I've kind of been talking through a lot of the challenges that I've been facing and how it's just impacting me in a bigger way than I realize, giving me a little bit of a feminist existential crisis, as I've been calling it. So, here's the update and hopefully some practical activities, practical questions for us to all think about, if you're similarly reevaluating where you want to take your career next.
I've been going through our first major business downturn in the history of Bossed Up, and it happened very distinctly in Q1 and Q2 of 2023. That's when, as I have been saying to lots of folks, the bottom seems to have fallen out of our business. Diversity, equity, and inclusion budgets have been slashed across corporate America, particularly hitting the tech sector, where we had been very focused, in serving big organizations in tech who have a very clear gender problem. Helping them with gender inclusion work and leadership development of women and women managers internally. It just felt like all of a sudden, we'd been hitting revenue records for ten years solid, and then Q1 and Q2, boom. Massive drought when it came to our sales, that resulted in me having to lay off two of our three full time employees, which was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in business.
And then on top of all that, personally, I had been going through some health issues this year, losing two pregnancies back to back in July and then September, which I honestly think after having taken countless tests and met with countless doctors, and we're still very much in the process of figuring it out. But I think it had everything to do with the stress that I've been under this year. So it makes sense that in that overwhelm, as I reabsorbed two full time employees worth of work to keep the wheels on the wagon, to frankly keep this podcast in production, you know, of course, I've been feeling big existential questions of, in this overwhelm, what is it all for? Like, why am I doing this work? If the world doesn't seem to care about gender equity anymore, if capitalism doesn't seem to have a budget line item devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion in so many organizations anymore, is this really the best use of my, my one and precious life? Right? And I know if you're listening to this podcast, you're already someone who's like, no, no, no, I'm here for it, right, I get it. And I so appreciate you being here for me and for Bossed Up, and hopefully for everything you've gained from what I put out into the world. But it makes sense that in these moments of uncertainty, of scarcity, of fear, that we ask ourselves some really big questions.
Now, I'm happy to report, I'm thrilled to report, quite frankly, that we've turned the ship around business wise, in no small part thanks to the diligent efforts of Irene, our programs manager, you know, we've really kept the wheels on the wagon and then some. We've turned the ship around and Bossed Up is landing at the end of 2023 in a very solid position, thank goodness. That's part of the reason why I'm taking better care of myself. I'm starting to delegate more and get more off my plate and be less overwhelmed and frankly, feel better so as to hopefully get on the horse again, that seems like the wrong metaphor to use. But to get back on the bandwagon in terms of trying to grow my family and just, like, take care of myself and my loved ones and what I want in my life. And in that moment when sort of reevaluating what matters most to me. I've been thinking a lot about how that often requires a realignment in one's career. Whether you're a full time employee, an entrepreneur, somewhere in between, thinking about any of the above options. Like, the steps I've been taking to help realign my life and my career and my work, and how I'm showing up in this world, have been very clarifying to me. So I want to share those with you now and challenge you to spend some dedicated time this season reflecting and doing so either in a written form, like in a journal entry, or in community with your loved ones and your most trusted allies, whether they're at work or at home.
So there's three, really four steps to this great reevaluation that I've been going through. And I will present them to you as different, distinct questions in kind of like a handout version, like an interactive handout. In fact, I'll create an interactive, downloadable handout that you can find on today's corresponding blog post. If you want to have a printable version of this, just head to bossedup.org/episode431. So here are the main steps for me. A lot of books and guidance out there on aligning your life with your career. Start by identifying your values as, like, what do you really care about in the world? I find that way too overwhelming, personally. I find it sort of confusing. Like, it's so amorphous and so abstract. I need something a lot more tangible and tactical.
And so for me, what I found really helpful was step one, write out everything you do in your role. This is especially helpful if you're feeling a little disengaged at work, confused at work, burnt out at work, or just, like, generally not sure about your work being the place for you. So write out your role, all the regular tasks and responsibilities that you've done over the past year, any projects that you've done in the past year, you know, write it all down in the form of accounting for everything that you've been doing. And if you've listened to this podcast for a while now, you may recognize some of this from a past episode I've done called How to Set Expectations as a Leader, in which I talk about tasks and standards. It's been a really big part of my management style. It's been a big part of our Level Up leadership program. Go listen to that episode if you want more details on how to do this.
But for the sake of this exercise, all you really need to do is just write down your role as best you can, everything you've been doing, everything you do on a regular basis, or everything you've taken on as a project this year. And then, go down that list and highlight, when do I feel most energized? What is the work that actually energizes me? And if you're a color codey, girly like me, I have a couple of different color highlighters on me pretty much at all times. So one highlighter I use to color in or highlight the activities in my role that really leave me feeling energized. And then I busted out the other highlighter and highlighted, what makes me feel drained? What do I dread? And it's funny, as an entrepreneur, everyone thinks, like, oh, you must love your life. You get to do everything you want. Yeah, until you have to like, downsize and reabsorb every single piece of work you've ever delegated, and cut every possible cost you can to stay afloat. And all of a sudden, you're doing a lot of work that doesn't really light you up. Right? So that was really big for me this year. Is taking stock of everything that I'd absorbed that left me feeling drained.
Another framework for answering that question is what is not your highest and best use to the organization? So, whereas I don't technically mind doing the accounting work, I like making sure that all of our bills are paid in a timely fashion and that you know, money is still coming in the door. But is it my highest and best use to Bossed Up? No, definitely not. And so highlighting the things that feel like, yes, this is my best, this is me at my most highest operating level. And on the opposite end, this is what drains me, or this is what doesn't feel like it's my highest and best use to my team.
Okay, pause there and just reflect on what you see. When I did this exercise a few months ago, and poor Irene is like, watching her own boss go through a complete existential crisis over slack. I remember slacking her being like, hey, I actually do like my job. It's like the vast majority of things that I do, I really love. So why do I feel so exhausted? Why do I feel so drained? You know? So, once you've done that exercise, reflect on, is it really my job? I think we default to thinking that my job is killing me. My job is like, bringing my whole life down. And if you do this exercise, you can get really clear and specific about what elements of my job are bringing me down. And if it's not, then we got to go look in other places for what else is going on in our lives that are really bringing us down.
So the second step in this process is to look at your work and your life through the lens of burnout. If you've ever read my book, or if you've ever heard me give a keynote about burnout prevention, which I love to do, and is one of my most popular topics lately. You may have heard the four root causes of burnout that I talk about often, and those are the four root causes I want you to audit your life for. The first is a lack of rest. When do I feel a lack of rest? Now, this might look like not getting enough sleep on a daily basis, not having any breaks during my workday. Or it might look like, I haven't taken a day off in three months. You know, I haven't gone on vacation in a year. So think about the micro, but also think about the macro when it comes to rest.
The second root cause of burnout is a lack of community, which I think a lot of us are feeling lately, to be quite honest. Do I feel like no one really understands what I'm going through right now? Do I feel isolated and alone even when I'm around my family and loved ones? Do I feel like I haven't had any time to play with people and like, just meaningfully connect with people in a real way? I'm not just talking about on social media or through digital communication technology. I'm talking about neighbors. I'm talking about people on the street. I'm talking about feeling your commonality in your physical space. Do you feel like you have people here you can turn to? Root cause number three a lack of purpose. This really came up for me a lot this year, which is ironic because it seems like Bossed Up is so purpose driven and the work I do is very purpose driven here. But when you're questioning your purpose, like I have been a lot of this year, this really bubbled to the top for me. Where do I feel a lack of purpose in my life?
And I'll tell you the answer, at least for me this year when I look around and there is so much pain and suffering in the world right now, but also in my own backyard, in terms of my fellow Denverite, my fellow person here in Colorado. And people are struggling and people are on the streets. And we have a migrant crisis here and in many other cities and states in America right now when there is so much suffering that is so visceral and in front of us at all times, which a lot of us are dished out on social media and in the news and also in our own backyards. It makes you question, am I doing enough? Or is my coaching of this VP of marketing, you know, moving the needle on the big systemic problems that we face in this world? I've been talking a lot about systemic barriers to gender equity.
We launched Bossed Up's Take Action page earlier this year, because I've been craving a more systemic approach to advocating for paid family and medical leave for all people in this world and in this country. Let's start with America, perhaps, right? Or affordable, quality child care like, these barriers that I see literally get in the way of my coaching clients, I can't do sh** about from my vantage point in this nice little corner of the Internet that I've created for all of us and for myself, right? So, a lack of purpose is hopefully coming through loud and clear. You can hear the cynicism in my voice. It's not that I don't think what I do here is important, but is it enough? Is there something more purpose driven that I need to be focusing on?
And I've been expanding my horizons through joining leadership programs here in Colorado, where I'm getting a much needed education and kind of exploration of where the biggest needs are. What are the biggest problems in this world and how can I help solve them? Whether it's a full know transition or, like, in my spare time, how can I get more involved in meaningful, purpose driven work? What is underappreciated is how often burnout is solved by more work, right? Like, my burnout this year, if it's fueled by a lack of purpose, the answer is not mani/pedi’s and a vacation. The answer is doing something meaningful, purposeful, helpful, being of use to people when you see so much suffering in this world. So, that was really illuminating for me, reflecting on and auditing my life for. Okay, if I like my job and I like the tasks and I like the things that I'm doing on a regular basis, maybe there's a question here about, is the work I'm doing feeling as purposeful as other needs that I see in the world?
And then finally, the fourth root cause of burnout that I implore you to audit your life for, to look for these, if they show up in your world, is a lack of agency. That might look like having a micromanaging boss, a controlling partner, having, you know, responsibilities that tie you down. Being a mom certainly comes with a lack of agency. All of a sudden. The hours of 5:00 pm to 7:30 and 08:00 p.m. Oftentimes these days, they are not my own. They are for Max. And so feeling a lack of agency can really contribute to burnout. So just to recap, step one is to really review your role. Where do I feel energized? Where do I feel drained? But then in reflecting on your work life, we got to broaden the lens to our lives beyond work when it comes to identifying where you might be experiencing some root causes of burnout: a lack of rest, a lack of community, a lack of purpose, and a lack of agency.
And then at this point, I would really assess how those two reflections compare to your values. I think when we start with values, it feels way too abstract. But at this point, if I'm looking at, okay, well, something's certainly bubbling up for me around a lack of purpose, and, okay, my job description and the work that I'm doing feels pretty energizing to me. Where are there conflicts? Where is there tension between my values, what I stand for, what I want to contribute to, what I believe in, and how I'm spending my time? And so ask yourself, am I aligned with these values that I proclaim to hold near and dear to my heart in how I'm behaving at work? Am I aligned with these values in how I am spending time or behaving at home? Right? So, some of my core values that come up often are, integrity, respect, generosity. Right? Do I feel like I'm able to be generous and honestly? The answer at Bossed Up lately has been, no.
When things are scarce, I am focused on the bottom line. I am focused on digging out of business debt, I am focused on landing contracts and deals, and I am not as focused on giving right now. And that, I think is really, I don't know, I'm rubbing my hands together, maybe you can hear that, but it's creating some tension for me. And so the antidote for me has been finding opportunities for generosity outside of Bossed Up. Now, this is not to say that I'm not giving lots of things away for free. This very podcast is a good example. The fact that we've been able to keep this going in times of crisis has been a point of pride. And we still have our quarterly charitable contributions, but they're small because they're profit based. And right now, we're not having our best year yet.
So, it's just been a helpful set of reflections for me about trying to identify where it is that I feel out of alignment with my values. And there's some good, uh, exercises I'll link out to that Brené Brown has on her Dare to Lead website, around identifying your core values. I think the Gallup Leadership Assessment is a really helpful way of identifying your leadership values. We use that in Level Up all the time. Brad and I do an annual couples retreat in January. It's coming up soon. Last January, we did an exercise using that Brene Brown model, and we came up with our family values around like, respect and what's, growth. I'm laughing because I feel like we've had too much growth this year.
Sometimes there are growing pains involved in growth, right? But respect and growth feels so fundamentally at the core of who Brad and I are, and how we want to build a life together, and how we want to build our family. And so it's just I think identifying those is fine and good in this abstract way, but when you're feeling like you need to realign your life and career, I'm more interested in where there's friction and where you're spending time that doesn't feel in alignment with those values. So the final step in all of this, is to look at that dissonance. What needs to change? Where is there a gap between who you aspire to be and who you actually are on a day to day basis? Once you identify that change, it's hard not to start changing. Changing might look like advocating for change within your job, using job crafting, right? How can I advocate for more scope here, less scope there? Get this off my plate, let me operate at my highest and best by focusing over here instead. How can I advocate for whether it's a promotion or just a job shift or a role crafting exercise that you go through with your team members, with your manager, with your supervisors? Advocating for change where you are. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? Let's not overcorrect.
And then if that advocacy falls flat or if like me, you look at your job description and you're like, this ain't the problem. Like I’m doing, I like my job, I'm just not feeling like the impact is great enough for the need that I see around me at all times these days, right? And then if you are going to your manager, if you're making your case to craft a role that's a better fit for you and it's not happening, or you're given the, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk again in three months like, continuously, then it's time to commit to the job search. Then it's time to do your due diligence by seeing what else is out there that might be better aligned with a new chapter of where you are in your life. Our values change over time. What we need and want to feel effective, to feel sustainable, to feel whole, they're shifting all the time. And while we like to say that who we are is static and it's like at the end of the day, you know thyself there are elements of who you are that stay constant but there are also different chapters and different eras in our lives. And I think accepting that without judgment is really important in this process of being with what is instead of mourning what's lost or feeling bad about what's no longer true for you. And if that means you have to commit to the job search, then do it. And we have lots of free job search resources I'll link to as well.
If the job is not the cause of friction, if there's something else gnawing at you, if something came up for you when doing the burnout audit on those four root causes, then it's time to advocate for realignment in your personal life, in your free time, in your relationships. And that really means evaluating how you are spending your time in a way that feels out of alignment and what you need to do or want to try, let's put it that way. What you want to try to see if it gets you into alignment. I feel a million times better than I did three months ago just because of doing this kind of reflection. I don't feel like I have figured out the challenges of where I'm going or what I'm doing to have a bigger impact. I'm very much still in exploratory mode of seeing, like, what this next chapter looks like for Bossed Up, for me, for having a bigger impact, for doing more systemic level work. I don't have the clear answers but I have a lot more confidence that I'm heading in the right direction having done this kind of reflection.
And so, I think there's a place, and I write this in my book, there's a place for patience and impatience in all of this. We have to be impatient enough to not tolerate feeling stagnant or feeling out of alignment for too long. If you've been feeling out of alignment, your first job is to do this reflection right? And then we have to have enough patience to allow the next stage, the experiment of trying new things, to see if that gets us back into a feeling of alignment in our lives. We have to have enough patience to see those things to fruition, and that can take a way longer time than we want it to. We got to trust the process, as they say.
So, drop the shoulds, okay? I should have been doing this a year ago. I should have been a better leader. You kind of heard me working through that with Chris Castillo on that episode a few months ago. Like, beating myself up doesn't really get me anywhere. But being with what is radically accepting that we are in a time of transition and then not freaking out and overcorrecting and throwing the baby out with the bathwater and like, you know, making vast life changes quickly out of a place of desperation, but being really incremental and patient in how we explore, how to get more in alignment with who we are and who we want to be.
So if you felt the need to recalibrate this year, do this with me. Okay? Go download the interactive, handout it's at bossedup.org/episode431, and it walks you through these sort of three phases of asking questions. Journal on it, talk it out with your loved ones, tell me what comes up for you in this process, and tell me what questions you'd add. I'd love to always keep this conversation going in our Courage Community, on Facebook or in the Bossed Up LinkedIn group, and just see what comes up for you. This is the time of year when I think if you've had, like me, just kind of a rocky year or just a really unexpected year, I just feel like the rug has been pulled out from underneath me so many times this year. Let's be kind to ourselves. Let's be gentle with ourselves. Let's end the year with a soft landing, just, you know, not only macroeconomically, but also personally. Let's give ourselves the gift of a soft landing and of some deep reflection, so that we can go into the new year with an open heart and an open mind and some curiosity alongside courage to see what happens next.
Thank you all so much for being on this journey with me. It's been such a weird year, and I feel like, you know, I've been trying to keep it together on the podcast, but the more I share with you all, I think the better I feel. I hope you feel better, but I feel better for one, and, and I hope it kind of explains why there's been so many things that are evolving and shifting and changing here, is like I'm really asking some big questions about how we can have a bigger impact and how we can help the people who are struggling the most, right now. In addition to helping, you know my amazing clients who are already kicking ass and taking names. Do that even better.
[THEME MUSIC IN]
So thank you for being here and thanks for being part of this journey. Until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose. Whatever that looks like. And together, let's lift as we climb.
[MUSIC ENDS]
