“That’s so unfair”
“How does my coworker have better benefits even though I’ve worked longer?”
“I need to learn to negotiate better” “I’m not good at negotiating”
All these thoughts were running through my head as I lay sleepless at night.
One part of me wanted to shoot off an email to my boss asking for a meeting right then. And then I started running through scenarios in my head. “What would I say? How would he respond? How could I respond to that? How could I effectively ask for what I felt I deserved?”
Anyone feel this way? 🙋🏻♀️
I’ve had these or similar thoughts several times over the period of my career.
And so I did what we’ve been taught to do when we don’t know something. We try to learn.
I took course after course and workshop after workshop in leadership skills, in negotiation skills, in ‘speaking up for myself’ skills ….and at the end of it, I still had not significantly negotiated any of my job contracts.
I kept waiting for my bosses to recognize the work I was doing and reward me. I went above and beyond to deliver more and work harder, and yet, apart from a few words of appreciation from nursing colleagues, there was no other overt sign that I was doing anything different.
BUT something happened the last time I felt this way.
I decided to seek help.
I’d heard glowing reports from several of my colleagues who had been coached and were raving fans of coaching to up their career game.
Until then, I had equated coaching with therapy and had no intention of heading down that path.
But when several colleagues reported life changing results in their career, I thought to take another look.
And found out what Coaching was.
And as we tend to do, we believe recommendations from our peers over what we read online and so I signed up for a Coaching session.
The first inkling I had that this would be different from anything I’d ever done before was the questionnaire my coach sent me before our first session.
It had me dig deep into things I had not thought about in years. Things about my work, my life, about what I was happy about, what I wasn’t ….
What happened in that session and the ones that followed, completely caused a sea change in me.
So much so that, after a few sessions, I recognized that so many of my peers would benefit from this. And I decided to train as a coach myself.
Did I learn the exact language to negotiate my next raise or my next ‘ask’ at work?
No.
What I learnt instead is to look at why I felt the way I did, and I learned to look deeper and I learnt that more money was not what I was looking for.
And I learnt to start looking at where I wanted to go in my career, what was important to me (not necessarily a promotion to a higher position or more money) and how I could get there.
I learnt to ask myself hard questions:
What did I want? Was it more money? Was it time? Why did I feel things were unfair?
And I learnt to dig deep.
And I learnt to wait for the answers.
And I found myself in a more contented frame of mind, going from stressed and unhappy, back to enjoying what I do.
And did I have that meeting that I was so desperate for in the beginning, that I had mentally rehearsed so many times for?
Not yet. Because what I want now and what I THOUGHT I wanted then are different. And I’m content with things the way they are right now.
I am in the beginning of this new and exciting journey helping myself and helping others like me and loving every moment.
What are you looking to change in your career?