Taking Care of Business, the Email Newsletter of the Center for Career and Business Development, Volume 3, Number 11, December 17, 2004

The August issue of Taking Care of Business focused on stories of women in transition.

We didn't want to close out the year without giving equal time to the other sex, so—

This month's issue is dedicated to telling the stories of three men in transition: an entrepreneur, an actor, and a man who wears many hats.

It is popularly believed that men are not as willing to seek help in dealing with challenges in their professional lives as women. How true this is in general, I don't know. I can only say that my own clients are pretty well equally divided between men and women.

My experience has convinced me that men are just as capable as women of staying the course in a transition process. Just like women, they are not looking for the next job that is simply a rehash of what they've already done—they are seeking a genunine new beginning.

This desire for a new beginning cuts not only across differences in gender, but also in age. Right now I have a couple of male clients who represent opposite ends of the career spectrum. One of them is has been in the work force for only about three years; the other could retire, but doesn't want to.

The younger man landed a "good job" right out of college which, as it turned out, was a good fit neither for his interests nor his nature.

The older man, after selling his business, languished in a series of sales roles where he could not be who he was.

They both entered our work together knowing they did not want to repeat the past and this conviction has allowed them to do the work of making endings in themselves which has provided a new platform for how they go about their work search.

Two years ago, Sean Summers felt stagnant, bored, unchallenged, like he was beating his head against the wall. The revenues from his cleaning business were stable, but the business wasn't growing. Just the act of managing it had come to seem like an intolerable burden and the only solution he could envision was to sell it and then try to figure out what to do next.

"I only saw one choice," he says."I couldn't see the forest for the trees. I was way too enmeshed in my business at the operational level and I couldn't find any opportunities in it, nor could I see any way to grow out of it."

Sean found help through reexamining what he had been doing and identifying what was most important to him.

"I was skeptical at first—it's not in my nature to seek assistance. I had a background in the mental health field and I tended to see it in terms of therapy, which I soon learned it isn't. Basically I came because I felt stuck and it seemed like I had nothing to lose."

For Sean, taking a "straight business" approach to resolving his professional issues was a necessity. Discussion of the kinds of things he enjoys ("people, projects, salesmanship, recruitment—everything but the day-to-day grind of operations") led to "snippets of self-discovery". The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory identified him as a personality type which is energized by future possibilities and big projects, and de-energized by having to deal with a lot of detail.

Through his understanding of the transition model, Sean decided to embrace being in the gray area of the "neutral zone": he put off selling his business while he commited himself to trying out some new things within it. This worked out well, "but without help staying in the process, I wouldn't have been able to do it."

In 2003, Sean's longstanding interest in policy and government, which had its roots in his experiences traveling to Eastern Europe to recruit seasonal guest workers for his business, led him to consider politics. He ran for selectman of the town where he lives and won.

"The hard part was deciding to run. I knew I had to trust the voice inside me, but I also needed to spend a lot of time talking about it. I needed to think out loud with someone else present to help me focus my thoughts."

Being an elected public official has been "extraordinarily rewarding, interesting and fun." Sean has been approached about running for higher office and, although he has no expectations along those lines, he wouldn't he rule it out, either.

Recently, Sean has leveraged his experience recruiting seasonal employees from overseas into a brand new business, Cape Labor Solutiions, which not only helps other area businesses find guest workers, but also provides housing for them, a critical need in a region where all housing is at a premium, and even more so during the summer months.

"It's working out very well, now that I've learned that it's OK to delegate. Before I had always taken my strengths for granted. Now, I know that not spending an inordinate amount of time on the things I don't do well, like paperwork, will free me up to do the things I'm good at, like business development."

Alex Nevil has been an actor for a long time: as he puts it, "Professionally since 1985, successfully since 1988."

When asked to explain the difference, he defines as "successful" those roles which have exposed him to a national audience, and there have been quite a few, including feature films and hit television shows, such as "Cheers", "Third Rock From the Sun", "ER", "Crossing Jordan" and "Law and Order".

Initially, Alex found it tough to get started as an actor, but eventually things picked up and he began to work steadily and gain confidence in his abilities.

After a few years, however, the jobs came more and more sporadically and he found he wasn't feeling the same satisfaction in his career. It wasn't that acting was less fun, but that it was getting harder and harder to land roles: as he matured, he found himself in a kind of in-between zone where he looked too old for some parts and not old enough for others.

Despite his successes, Alex had never really had a game plan for acting. All he knew was that he wanted to act and he had no goal beyond getting the next part. Now his career seemed to be drying up. It was time to do something.

One of his first steps was to take the Strong Interest Inventory® to try to identify avenues for career exploration. Not surprisingly, the Strong® profiled him as someone with very sharply focused interests.

This helped him come to the realization that, if he had to do something other than acting—at least until he changed physically enough to get him out of the limbo he seemed to be in—he wanted it to be within the entertainment industry.

And so he put together his first "non-acting" resume. "It's an impressive piece of paper—In fact, it's so good I'm afraid I won't be able to live up to it. Looking for non-performing jobs in the industry hasn't been easy. It's like grinding gears when you shift from first to second, but I'm shifting anyway."

This past summer Alex worked with a cinematographer trying out as a camera person. It's something he might like, but it would require training and he's not sure yet whether he wants to make the commitment.

He recently worked as a second assistant director for a holiday special for the Disney Channel and found it intriguing.

He has been auditioning for commercials, "which can be fun if everything works out OK."

Alex's understanding of transition model has provided him both with a new approach to acting and the awareness that he might be able to do other things. Before he had never believed that would have been possible.

Jon Fuller is man who is comfortable wearing many hats: he has had a long career with the Naval Reserve; he has helped to found and served as executive director of a non-profit organization; and he has been a locksmith.

It was his role as a locksmith that Jon chafed under. He had a successful business, but the work was physically demanding and he was getting older. Being a locksmith meant he worked mostly with his hands and he was feeling more and more like he wanted to work with his head. And finally, the industry was changing, moving from being mechanically-based to electronically-based, and to keep up he would have to take on an educational commitment he wasn't sure he wanted to make.

He had always been interested in town government and he thought he would try to get "a foot in the door" by working as an administrative assistant. His experience in business had already proven to him he had management skills. His experience in the military covered both the development and administration of policy—both making decisions and carrying them out. A job in town government would give him an idea whether he had the necessary aptitudes and interests for local politics.

Through focused conversations on his background and on the transition model, Jon was able to see that his experience actually gave him much stronger credentials and more leverage than he had thought. An administrative assistant was setting his sights too low.

As luck would have it, while he was revising his plan, he was approached by some people who wanted him to run for selectman of the town of Orleans, Massachussetts. He agreed to run.

"They were pitching me to be a spoiler," he says, "someone to knock another candidate out of the race. As it turned out, I got the most votes. That surprised my backers. It didn't surprise me."

Jon has found his new position fascinating. "I bring something to the table that others haven't been able to," he says. "To begin with, I keep my promises."

Peace

The Center for Career and Business Development
wishes you a happy holiday season
and all the best for the coming year!

Beverly Ryle
Michael Ryle