Career Choices Start Before Decision

Career decisions take shape before you ever name it as a choice. That shape isn't just from what's happening. There's perspective forming based on how it's being interpreted, what's been noticed or overlooked, and what hasn't been fully addressed yet. When you take the time to make sense of that, you move in a direction that matches what's actually going on and towards something that serves you better. Hi, I'm Becky. Welcome to Short Story Long. In this podcast, we discuss ways you can integrate who you are into how you lead. Today I'm offering strategies for building your skills as a leader. Let's break down what's important as you make sense of your next career choice. You are not alone if you are uncertain about your next steps or feeling stuck in your career. It's a mix of things that don't quite add up. Parts of the role still work, parts don't. There's progress, but also a sense that something has shifted. It's hard to tell whether that's about the situation or whether it's something inside of you. That's what makes these decisions harder than they look from the outside. You're not just choosing between options. You're trying to make sense of what's actually going on while you're in it. What's changed, what hasn't, what matters now that maybe, maybe it just didn't matter before. And without that, it's easy to jump in to a decision that feels right in the moment, but doesn't really reflect your bigger picture. Instead of deciding quickly, you want to understand what you're working with before you decide at all. In my last episode, I was talking with Shanaz, and it made me think less about what decisions she made, and more about how she was making sense of what was happening before she made them. There's a pattern in her story, but it's not just growth followed by some change. It's growth, success, and then a point where something starts to feel different. She didn't immediately turn that difference into a conclusion. She didn't jump to this isn't right or it's time to move on. Shannonaz gave herself time to sit with what was actually changing. And that's not how most of us operate. Something shifts and almost immediately we're telling ourselves a story about it. Something's wrong, this isn't working, I need to do something. But there's usually more going on than just that moment. There are all these underlying ideas we've been carrying for a long time. There are things like what a career is supposed to look like, what success should feel like, what we think we should want next. And those don't always get questioned, even though they are absolutely shaping how we see the situation. And then there's the stuff that's just easier not to deal with, the conversation you keep putting off, or the tension you've just learned to figure out how to work around. And there are parts of a role that you tolerate instead of really addressing them. All of this has a way of influencing what you decide, whether you realize it or not. Most career decisions aren't just about the opportunity in front of you. They're about how you are interpreting what's happening, what you've been noticing or ignoring, what you believe to be true, and what you haven't actually even addressed yet. The ability to step back and make sense of all of that without rushing is what shapes whether the next move actually fits or just repeats the same pattern in a different place. When making career decisions, it's easy to mix up what's actually happening with what we think it means. It might mean that a role changed or your leader left or feedback starts to land a little bit differently. Those absolutely are observable realities. What often happens next is immediate meaning making. This must mean the role is wrong. This must mean something is off. This must mean it's time to leave. The discipline here is to slow that process down. Really reflect for a moment what specifically changed and what was consistent. What is it that is known versus what are the assumptions that you're making? When you isolate the facts, you begin to see the situation with more clarity and less of the emotional distortion that we put on things. It's not about removing the emotion from the decision, it's about preventing emotion from being the only lens. Decisions made from unexamined interpretations tend to be really reactive, and your options get narrowed, and it creates this urgency that may not actually exist. And when you operate from a clearer read of your reality, you can respond with intention rather than trying to escape what is really just discomfort. Leadership starts with an accurate interpretation of what's happening. It means that you read the situation and it allows you to navigate some of that complexity without over-correcting. The more that you're able to develop that skill, career decisions become less about fixing something and more about consciously choosing a direction. There's a steadiness that comes in those moments. Shannon shared an example where she described it actually during a time that was sort of a happy accident. Admittedly, most of us might not describe this as a happy accident since it's when the housing crisis occurred and the industry that she was in crashed. She was operating a mortgage company, and that crash actually gave her the space to move into a decision to go back to school and get her MBA. That's sense making in real time. It's the same event. Other people also went through that housing crisis. Their interpretation was probably not that it was a happy accident for them. But it wasn't about what the decision was. It was how she made it. She turned the lens of what her work experience was into an evaluation of where is my silver lining and how can I move forward in this. Meetings I was normally in, yeah, now I wasn't. Decisions were getting made without my input. I wasn't thrilled. I wasn't happy. All of these things felt like a signal about my role, my influence, and my place in the organization. And my reaction wasn't a neutral one. And my internal narratives started telling me all sorts of stories. Only later was some distance, it became clear that what was happening had more to do with how the organization was restructuring and how decisions were being centralized than anything about my performance. Now, do I still think it was a little bit based on relationships more than merit? Absolutely. And here that was an object lesson that career progression isn't just about getting the work done. It is also about the nature of the professional relationships that you build. The situation didn't change. The understanding of it did. I needed to open my eyes to all the factors that drive promotion. I needed to shift my perspective to get what I truly wanted. Career decisions are rarely made in a vacuum. They are shaped by beliefs about what is responsible or successful and what is expected of you. Many of those beliefs are inherited early and reinforced through your experience. There are messages like staying where there is stability and don't leave something that works. And while these ideas can be useful, they can also become limiting. They're a bit of a cage when they're followed without examination. The issue isn't necessarily that the assumptions exist. The issue is that they often operate quietly in the background, influencing decisions without you consciously going through them. You might believe that you're choosing the most logical path when in reality you're staying within boundaries that you didn't intentionally set. It matters because those assumptions can restrict your possibilities. They keep you in roles that no longer fit or push you toward decisions that align with expectation rather than alignment. When you start to look at those things, it creates opportunity for you to choose differently. And I don't mean recklessly, I just mean intentionally. Thought leadership requires your self-awareness at a belief level, not just at a behavior level. It's not enough to evaluate the options on the surface. You have to have an understanding of what is driving that evaluation. When that becomes clear, decisions start to shift from compliance with some sort of internal rule book that you didn't intentionally write to alignment with current values and direction. That shift is what allows you to make more authentic and sustainable choices. When I was talking to Shinaz about this, she was talking about her relationship with her parents and how there was this short list of professions to be considered, like doctor, lawyer, engineer, professor. And she hadn't really taken the time to figure out who she was before she was in college. And so she was sort of anchored to these expectations and these directions that had been architected for her. This wasn't just about her making a career decision. It was actually undoing a bit of a belief system. Her upbringing, the the cultural expectations, she could accept those as hers, but she wasn't obligated to do that. She was able to separate what was expected of her from what was actually true for her. For me, within my career, there was a time when my boss actually wanted to put me onto a succession plan. She wanted me to be taking her role as she moved on to her next step, whatever that might have been. In all honesty, my career to that point had been absolutely directed toward exactly that outcome. Much to my surprise, and quite honestly, maybe greater for hers, was when I looked at her and said, I don't want to be on your succession plan. It was the expectation, it was the goal, it was everything that I was aiming for throughout my career until I got there and realized that that wasn't going to fit me. And that comes with pressure. It turns out it's not very easy to tell someone that what the two of you have even talked about, the direction that you've gone, suddenly isn't the thing anymore. And you don't want that role. You don't want the responsibility and you don't want the experience that you've witnessed. That was a very difficult day for me. But there was also a recognition that just because something was the expected move didn't mean that it was the right one. And importantly, that I wasn't obligated to take it. If someone were to ever ask me if I regretted turning down that opportunity to be in that succession plan, I would honestly say that it still to this day, many years later, feels like relief. I couldn't have defined exactly what would not have worked for me in that role in that time of my career, or quite frankly, even where I am today. But I see it more clearly now. It would have meant being in a narrower focus of a role, even though what I call my span of control or scope of impact would have been larger. I would have been in a smaller box. Or at least I believe I would have been in a smaller box based on what I saw then and based on what I have seen since then in roles like that in that organization. So no regrets, no thinking about what could have been if I had taken the other path. I am a firm believer that whatever path we take, if we are thoughtful about how we make that decision, not necessarily what the decision is, we find ourselves kind of designing this path in the direction that serves us the most. When we stop following the expectations that other people set for us and we start to tune in to our own, we don't need to worry as much about, at least my belief, is we don't need to worry as much about making some dramatically wrong decision because we're trusting ourselves to be able to navigate into it. And if it doesn't fit, we trust ourselves to navigate out. What looked like progress externally wasn't something that I needed to do. And that decision stopped being about the opportunity and started being about whether the assumptions and the stories that I had been telling myself were even valid. Because all of those stories were based on the progression that I believed was the right one to do, not necessarily the one that I felt would fit me. And sometimes these career decisions, they're framed too narrowly. The focus can be on the visible choice. Do you stay or do you leave? Do you take the role or decline it? While those decisions matter, it's not usually the real underlying issue. Beneath them are deeper drivers, like the need for growth or your desire for an impact, a shift in your identity, like when I turned down being on that succession plan. Those drivers are not always identified. The decision is very difficult when you don't absolutely know what is causing you to feel and think about a situation in the way that you are. Sometimes we create these binary choices when in reality there may be multiple ways to meet that same need. Without clarity, you might make a move that looks correct, but doesn't actually address what was missing. And so you still feel stuck. You still feel that absence of that impact, maybe that you wanted to create. Shinaz talked about this whole journey that she went through in terms of making sense or sense making, as she put it, for the purpose of sharing her skills, sharing her expertise. Coaching and teaching were the two categories for her. And she was able to see it more objectively in that point. She was able to empathize and look at things at a more systems level. What was important to her was to be able to connect to that human experience side of it, not only for herself, but also for the people that she was working with. It's not just should I stay or should I go. It's understanding those patterns and what your role or your experience plays in something bigger than the immediate choice of this role versus that one. There was a point where staying or leaving wasn't the real question in my career as well. The role sort of worked. I knew how to operate in it, and I could have continued to be somewhat successful there. But I'm sure that you hear all of the, well, maybe sort of, kind of, so it wasn't the right fit for me. And there was a growing tension in how I made decisions, not only for myself, but as a professional as well. I was recognizing that I was becoming less and less of the person I needed to be to be successful in that role. Externally, people may have seen it, they may not have. I knew that that alignment was off within me. And that created a whole different kind of friction for myself. It was a little bit about the work, but it was really how I was expected to operate within that environment, within that role. And it was becoming intolerable to me. And I had to start to think about where was I willing to make some of those compromises and where wasn't I? The decision wasn't really about the role. The decision was about me. Was I going to continue working in a way that no longer felt consistent with who I was or who I was becoming. Once that tension became clear, that choice wasn't nearly as ambiguous for me. I was able to define what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be, and start progressing in that direction. It was deciding that I was no longer willing to carry forward all of those things that other people were expecting, and I was able to lean in more to the things I wanted to do for myself. It was a time in my life where I recognized that most career conversations or most career decisions really focus on attraction. It's what do you want, what excites you, what feels aligned. More often when I'm talking to people about their careers, they're talking to me about what they don't want and what they don't like. That's great because it tells you what not to do, but it doesn't give you that focal direction about where you want to go. And that is the other half of that story. Avoidance does carry information, and it's about what work someone keeps putting off, the conversations that get delayed, or the risks that don't get taken. And those are signals that are worth examining. When you're avoiding things, it might look like a lack of discipline. Or a lack of motivation. When I'm working with my clients, one of the things that I do in those moments is I ask them to invert the situation. If you're actively avoiding X, then what is the thing that you would strive toward? What is the thing that is pulling you in a positive direction? When you're ignoring something or avoiding something, you're staying at a surface level. When you flip it and start to say, if I'm not doing that, then I will be doing, or I would alternately choose to do this other thing, you start to find the yes instead of the no. This matters because avoidance shapes decisions quietly. You might believe you're choosing a new path because it's more aligned, when in reality you're moving away from something uncomfortable instead of toward something that's interesting or exciting. When you aren't recognizing that you're moving away from something instead of towards something, a pattern tends to repeat in the next role or environment, like that luggage that you packed from the earlier role and carried it into the new role. When I was talking to Shannaz, she was reflecting on this a little bit indirectly, but talking about it when she was mentioning that when she had gone into college, she hadn't really done the work, because admittedly, not a lot of time, to discover who she really was and what would feel authentic for her. And she was following that track that had been designed for her. She described it as being guided toward a narrow set of acceptable professions and realizing that she'd been moving in a direction that didn't fit who she was. It wasn't necessarily actively avoiding making a decision, but it was not having the tools, not having the skills to recognize the difference between avoidance and attraction, but also that lack of recognition of what I really like, what I really value. And there's an opportunity there to really connect yourself to what are the things that I actually enjoy. And these are things that can be difficult to identify when you're in a misaligned role or something that you have outgrown. It's difficult to identify. These are the things that I actually still get joy from doing, but not necessarily in the way that I'm doing that. When I'm coaching people, I watch for words and body language that show that they are avoiding something. I see these surface conversations about the topic and resistance to going deeper. I might ask a question and they answer a different question, or they answer it but sort of in the same way that they've been talking about it. And sometimes they even probably get annoyed because I already told you that. Right, except there's an opportunity to go a level deeper and to really start to do that consideration. So I change my questions to ask them about something different. Okay, so you don't like this, you do like that. How is it that you can structure your circumstance so that you can do more of what you really like to do? Sometimes those responses that I get to those questions sound more like excuses than reasons. People who have worked with me know that that's one of the things that I'm going to point out to them. Are you making an excuse? Are you telling me why something happened? Often, those excuses are an effort to rationalize what they are avoiding. And I'm wondering how often you might recognize that in yourself. When you think about the conversations that you're having about your career and about the choices that you're making, where is it that you are maybe making the excuses sound like reasons for yourself so that you don't have to go a little bit deeper into it? When you step back and look at it, these decisions are rarely just about the opportunity in front of you. There's usually a lot more baked into it. It's about how you're reading the situation and what you've been paying attention to, or those things that you're just brushing past. It's the beliefs you've been carrying about what you're supposed to do next and the things that you just haven't been dealing with. None of that shows up neatly when you're looking at it. You have to really go in and dissect it a little bit more. Even those moments where it feels like there's just something a little bit off. It's an opportunity to spend some time reflecting about that. It's pretty easy to make a move that feels right in the moment, but doesn't really solve anything underneath it. What really makes the difference is taking a beat and getting a little more honest about what's actually driving that feeling. You don't need to overthink or get really stuck in your head and start spiraling through. It's just about an opportunity to understand it well enough that you're not reacting to something that you don't properly understand. Once you do that reflection, the decision usually feels different. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's more like it actually fits. Not just for now, but for where you are right now. Thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone who could benefit from it. Until next time, I'm Becky Fraser, reminding you to integrate who you are with how you lead. Okay, bye.