Communicating
When we further explored why he was particularly looking at the people manager role, he added saying he has an overall experience of 10+ years in the IT industry and he has had an opportunity to work in various different job roles over the last few years i.e. Operations, Project Management, Escalation Management, Consulting Engineer, Enterprise Account Management and so on. The one role he wanted to get exposure was people management, since his long-term goal was to head a support organisation and he understood people management was an important skill he lacked experience in.
Again, I took the opportunity to acknowledge him for 2 reasons, the fact that he had successfully done so many different roles over the last 10 years and that he was aware about the areas he needed to work on to move ahead in his career. He had also defined a long-term goal for himself. It was clear that people management was a skill he wanted to develop, his mentor too had pointed out this as an area of development. But the fear of job security & the future of his department made him think whether this was the right time to make a career move. To add to this he had a new manager who couldn’t help him much.
I noticed when he talked about the future of his job there was a significant change in his voice & tone, I told him that I sense some fear and anxiety regarding his job and what he had heard about the escalation departments future. He went on to explain that the current role he was doing would be taken on by another group of individuals from the sales team and only a few highly experienced escalation managers would continue doing the same role, ideally who have been escalation managers for at least 6-7 years. He saw this, as a direct threat to his job as he had only been an escalation manager for a little over 3 years now and this was the reason for his fear & anxiety. He went on to say that he is the only earning member in the family now since his wife had taken a break after they had their first child last year. They took a decision that his wife would stay home to babysit their son for the next 18 months, which means he couldn’t be out of a job and it was very crucial that he makes the right decision about his next career move, he later admitted there was no doubt he wanted to be a people manager, he had enough information from his mentor and previous manager to support the decision, what was crucial was the timing rather than the move itself. This was the underlying issue. It was evident in his voice & tone when he spoke about his family & the responsibility he had towards them.
To lighten up the discussion we talked about his achievements and what his manager thought of him. His was thought of as one of the best escalation managers’ in the department and he was the only one who was assigned high profile and sensitive customer accounts, he was regarded as one of the high potential employees in the organisation. I suddenly noticed a very confident and proud person speaking to me, I immediately acknowledged him.
We then explored what were the different options if he wanted to pursue his aspiration as a people manager in the current organisation. He decided to explore the same with his current manager. In the next few sessions we talked about his strengths that would make him a good people manager and he discussed the same with his manager. After a couple of weeks, he heard from his manager that there were no opportunities currently available in the organisation for people management roles and he would have to wait for at least 3-4 years before they became available. This got Amit anxious about his career growth in the company and he begin contemplating if he should continue working there.
It was evident by what he explained so far, that he wasn’t learning in his current role, there were no opportunities for him to grow as a people manager, the department was downsizing and he couldn’t afford lose his job being the only earning member. The anxiety levels were building up and it was affecting his ability to work. That’s when Amit decided to look for opportunities outside his organisation and started his search for a people manager role. We were now focusing on how Amit could make the right move without hampering his current role & responsibilities.
Within a week he was approached by a very reputed multi-national company for an Engineering Manager role, he attended 2 rounds of interviews but unfortunately didn’t hear from them after 2 weeks. He anxiety level was increasing and he couldn’t focus on work. I made him reflect on his strengths in the current role and the fact he was considered the best manager in the department, I worked with him to keep his focus on the current job and not think about what was beyond his control. He came up with a suggestion to take a couple of days off and spend time with his family. In the mean time a job consultant approached him for another opening as a practice manager for a US based company. He jumped at the opportunity and was successful in the first 3 rounds of interviews. His confidence levels shoot up again and he was optimistic about the future.
Amit was very excited and was looking forward for the next round of discussions with the Sr. Management. We brainstormed some questions to help him prepare for the discussions;
To help gain clarity and focus, I decided to do a visualization exercise with him. I asked him to visualize how working in the new company as a Practice Manager look likes? What would he be doing, what would it feel, who would he interact with? He started describing the situation, it was a little difficult at the beginning, I particularly made him focus on his key strengths and apply them to the visual. He slowly started describing the visual and getting into details.
The more details he gave out the more confident he was sounding. He had never done such an exercise before, he thought it was every motivating, energizing and helped him gain clarity. He later summarized his observations and sounded very confident and optimistic.