My Philosophy

If you’re reading this then you’re likely curious about how I approach my work and the philosophy it’s based on.

It’s also likely you’re making good progress in your career. You keep getting promoted, despite your self-doubt, but you’re left feeling dissatisfied, exhausted and uninspired. You long to feel a greater sense of joy and ease in all parts of your life and to feel excited about your career and where you’re headed, but that seems out of reach.

I have an opinion on this based on twenty years in the field working as a leader, coach and trainer across multiple sectors.

The pyramid below sums up the broad factors I see at play.

Why a pyramid? The ‘tip’ represents what you want your experience of work and life to be (joyful ease), but, without the three layers that support it, it’s difficult to achieve in the corporate world.

Whilst the route to to the ‘tip’ is not a straight line from the bottom of the pyramid to the top, without doing the work on the foundation (inside-out confidence) no matter how meaningful your work is to you, and no matter what your quality of life is beyond work, the underlying sense of something being ‘off’ is likely to remain.

The Middle of the Pyramid: Meaningful Work

This isn’t about achievement for achievement’s sake. It’s about having a career that makes your heart sing. That is aligned to who you are as a person and what is most important to you. And it can be hard to see what this is without strengthening the base of the pyramid first (inside-out confidence), which is why it comes next.

At its heart, this level is about achieving the four career goals most of my clients come to me with.

• CAREER GOAL #1: You want to inspire the people you work with. You want to make a positive difference to their lives. You want to be the boss that people talk about round their kitchen table in the evening for all the right reasons. Because you genuinely care about them and they feel it. Because you make it possible for other people to enjoy their work and fulfill their own ambitions.

• CAREER GOAL #2: You want your opinion to be valued at work. To have people from across the organisation come to you and ask for your input. You want to have your voice be heard, valued, listened to and acted upon (e.g. shaping the strategy at a national level if you work regionally, or an initiative you kick-start being adopted across the company). You want to make a difference beyond your immediate job role.

• CAREER GOAL #3: You want your work to matter. You want to deliver work that makes a tangible, positive difference to people’s experience of life and work (e.g. implementing new technology that makes it easier for people inside your organisation to collaborate. Or to have led your people to deliver incredible service that thrills customers). You want to fix things that are broken and walk away knowing they are better. You want to help underperforming parts of the business turn around and find life anew.

• CAREER GOAL #4: You want your career to have left the world a better place. You don’t want the end result of your career to just be that you made shareholders richer. You want to deliver results that have a wider positive impact on the community/world (e.g. leading the charge on fairtrade/ethical buying practices).

The Tip of the Pyramid: Joyful Ease

And finally, the tip of the pyramid is how life and work feels if you have the foundations described above in place. At first glance, this may seem similar to the base of the pyramid, which speaks to the inside-out confidence required to show up powerfully in your work. But this is far bigger. It is all encompassing, and is where your whole experience of life starts to feel completely different.

What does it look like?

• Step into the bigger job without it taking up so much of your bandwidth. For it to feel less stressful and more joyful. To learn and grow at a pace that feels right for you. To feel a kind of expansiveness inside you.

• Feel a kind of wild freedom: For your life and work to feel like riding a bike downhill with the wind blowing in your hair, rather than peddling up the way and it feeling like a slog. To go further in your career, have more choices available and actually enjoy the ride.

• Switch off (guilt free) at the end of the day and have more time and energy for life beyond work. Spend quality time with your family, and savour it. Have more space to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. Time to just stop and be. To do things, purely for yourself, that energise you. Maybe creative things you used to enjoy in your younger days. Or simply a walk in nature before you start your working day.

• Feel a kind of deep contentment and ease with yourself and where you are in your life and career. To have ambitions that excite you, and at the same time love where you are right now.

  So to sum up, to experience your career as life-giving, rather than soul sucking, focusing on creating confidence that radiates from the inside is the place to start. As you build your capacity here, you’ll be better positioned to move towards more meaningful work, whilst having a quality of life beyond it that nourishes you.