So much wasted talent and potential! Why experienced professionals need a new approach for life beyond large organisations.
Whether it’s the great resignation* or experienced professionals choosing to leave or being pushed out of the workplace, what comes next after life in a large organisation for those professionals is a challenge.
Along with my former colleague, Mike Mister, I have been focusing on this issue for several years now. So much so that we wrote a book: From work life to new life – reinventing retirement for smart professionals. Life beyond large organisations
But how did we get to this place (and why a book)? Over our careers working inside large organisations, we observed a great deal of highly experienced** talent leaving organisational life never to return. Many of them having spent most of their careers in one or a handful of organisations. Some left to retire, and some had to leave due to redundancy. Most left because they knew they no longer wanted what they had but were unsure what they wanted to move towards – beyond potentially a few advisory or board roles, spending time with family and friends, and some rounds of golf.
During our working lives, the age at which we have seen experienced professionals leaving large organisations has been getting increasingly younger. Where once they might have worked to their early to mid 60s, we are seeing a trend towards early 50s and even mid to late 40s. We can feel the wasted potential walk out the door in a world that desperately needs the skills and experience these individuals have to offer.
We knew we had to do something to support these individuals to harness their potential as well as work with organisations to identify different approaches for them to support professionals on this major transition. Through our coaching and consulting work, we started to explore further to understand the issues and what might be needed – this ultimately led us to writing the book. Crucially my co-author and I have also trod the path out of large organisations into creating fulfilling encores in our late 40s and 50s.
What helped us and others like us on this transition? A blend of surrounding ourselves with experienced, supportive professionals (oftentimes referred to as our personal board of directors), focused coaching and a firm understanding that this was not it for us – a belief that we had so much more of value to offer to a world that needed our skills, experience, and a commitment to experiment and iterate in order to find a fulfilling encore career that works for us. But many experienced professionals are not so fortunate and quickly get stuck and even lost in this transition as received wisdom and the supporting infrastructure has not caught up with the current reality.
In our book, we distilled our research, experience, and insights into a practical step-by-step guide to inspire and support experienced professionals before or at the point of leaving organisational life to understand, explore and plan their next steps into fulfilling encores for themselves.
If you’re thinking of leaving or have left large organisational life due to retirement or for other reasons and could do with some help to work through your options on how to create a fulfilling encore for yourself, we would love to hear from you! Equally, if you think your organisation could do with some help in this space, let us know.
There really can be life beyond large organisations – life is too precious to not have the encore you deserve!
#coaching #businesscoaching #midlife #transitions #midcareer #fromworklifetonewlife
*WEF forum The Great Resignation is a phenomenon that describes record numbers of people leaving their jobs after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.
** 50 plus
If you’re interested in learning a bit more about navigating mid to later life transitions as part of a coaching conversation, I would love to talk further. You can contact me at rebecca@wisesherpa.co.uk or www.wisesherpa.co.uk
A bit more about the author –
Rebecca Hill, founder at Wise Sherpa, is an experienced respected, trusted, sought after and award winning coach, consultant, facilitator and mentor.
Her passion is working with purpose led and impact focused leaders, professionals and organisations (including start ups and scale ups) in London and internationally in a thoughtful, collaborative and considered way guiding them to successfully realise their aspirations and achieve their goals. Rebecca’s approach is highly personalised and tailored to the needs of each client which is why clients report strong outcomes and she is considered one of the best leadership coaches and consultants.
Rebecca is also an author and speaker. She speaks on a range of issues including mid-life to later life transitions into fulfilling encores, navigating major life stages from a career perspective and women’s economic empowerment to name a few.
She holds an MSc in Coaching and Consulting from HEC Paris (in association with Said Business School, University of Oxford), as well as being a Chartered Marketer and qualified coach. She has lived and worked in several countries including France, US and Switzerland and speaks several languages. In her spare time, she also sits on a number of boards and committees.
