"Many of us have anchors holding us back. It can be hard to find the courage to talk openly about them with the important people in our life.
A big anchor is fear - fear that the boss will regard you as a troublemaker and label you as such and then your career will be doomed; fear that the conversation you have with your partner may mean that you agree that you you are no longer compatible; fear that your children or siblings won't want the conversation straying into dark places; fear of failure, recrimination and uncertainty; fear of being vulnerable.
At work, what holds us back on a pragmatic level is a $400,000 mortgage or other financial imperatives, even a negative world view. We are captured by all sorts of things in our lives and what people know about us.
These are all very natural feelings and totally understandable. We tend to seek safety and certainty and consistency. It can be confronting to bring difficult things into a conversation.
I used to tell people, quite flippantly, to leave their job if they were unhappy. These days I am much more comfortable suggesting they change jobs or quit work for a while, do something else, and figure out what's important to them. I know this is a BIG deal for many. However, the alternative, when examined from a deeper level, particularly by exploring what is important to us in life, to what are our core values, may actually trigger courage. I have seen this so often in my leadership development workshops. Interestingly, age or cultural differences do not seem to be impediments once someone has discovered that, "yes, I can take a leap". I have never had a participant in my workshops come back to me and say they took the leap and it failed.
Many people from, say, mid-thirties onwards are not questioning what they are doing. The world is changing and we're starting to learn more about the value of living an authentic life both inside and outside work. It becomes a question of how prepared you are to take ownership of your stuff; how willing you are to commit to learning to be a better person and to hold yourself accountable."
Dr Peter McClenaghan is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and Leadership and a Master Coach in Leading Managing and Coaching by Values, based in the Business School at the University of New England. He consults to industry on human resources, strategic leadership, Crucial Conversations, values-based leadership development and team building. He has delivered strategic leadership programs for the Australian Institute of Management (now IML), the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the ESADE Business School Barcelona Spain and the School of Economics and Business University of Tartu Estonia. Peter also presents programs in Malaysia, China and Vietnam, as well as a wide range of other public and private sector clients within Australia.
UNE offers a variety of leadership and management courses to suit your individual expertise and future career needs, including the Bachelor of Organisational Leadership, Bachelor of Business, Graduate Certificates in Business, Human Resource Management and Management that articulate into our Master of Business Administration and Master of Strategic Organisational Development and Human Resource Management. For more information, head to the UNE Business School website.
Go back to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7 of this series for more.
