Helen Hanison
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Being successful to try something new is too late for me. What are the stories? Where have they come from? Are they social prescriptions? Are they things that your family brought you up on or maybe didn't? mean to, but inadvertently that's what you saw modeled. What are they?
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Because if you can make their origins, the origin story visible, then you start to give yourself permission to unpack them and really question. is that serving me to make my choices through the lens of these stories? So that's the past. The present is, again, this idea of persevering.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
And if you think, I'm feeling like I want to hold the book up again, but if you're that person in the circle and, you know, you're probably excellent at persevering in your profession because we have been absolutely weaned on this idea that perseverance is a virtue, but... It isn't if it's holding you stuck, violating your values, and has you loathing what you do, even if it used to make sense.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
So it's again, just giving yourself permission to meet yourself where you are today. not where your past self put you. And just question what serves, what is actually going to get you closer to the hopes and vision that you hold for yourself, because that isn't often the same as staying where you feel stuck. It's time, it's a call to action, isn't it?
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
It's time to at least open up about what career redesign might mean for your next chapter.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Yeah, easily. I think if I go through the apps, if I do it in order, then what I would say is the first thing that would not be smart would be not to take the time to get all that career clarity. Because really, I think for anyone, unless you can understand what you are strongest at, but also enjoy most that lights you up.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
and feels purposeful to you, then there is no career design that you know will be aligned with that. You haven't taken the time to understand what it needs to align with if you're going to feel fulfilled. So that would be the first big red flag for me. The second one would be to have an idea that you're very married to.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
People who have a singular idea that they're very married to often find it very hard. In psychology, they call it anchoring. And you've probably heard of this through the financial sort of side of life. But it's the same in this lane. Whatever idea you come up with first, you're not ever so prepared or flexible about moving too far from it.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
So that is why in career redesign, we start ideating and we come up with a minimum of three career life designs that you find attractive and appealing. You don't have to do them all. We're only one person. But we do have to come up with them and think about them and move into them in quite a bit of depth. So that would be the other unsmart thing, to be married to one hope or idea.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
There's a sort of part two with that one of not trying, not pilot testing the idea, not stress testing it, not understanding how you respond when you expose yourself to this idea that you've had for yourself. Because how can any of us know if we're really going to love that environment or this nature of work or...
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
be able to access it is very risky, I think, to give anything up without having first diluted the risk and tested it robustly. And then I think the final thing would be to think that you've done everything it needs, having gone through the thought process of aligning, but also redesigning. Because the truth is transformation takes more than that.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
It takes this resilience and knowing how you top yours up when it feels like the levels are getting dangerously low. And I think that would be unsmart. not to take account of.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
And I will admit bias, but I also think it would be unsmart not to put support in place, whether that is a coach or important others, mentors, people who you really trust, have your best interests at heart, but know you and understand what you hope for yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Not to abdicate responsibility for your ideas, but to have input and an influx of other ideas and fresh thinking on them that just provoke thought. Yeah, probably quite a lot, but that's four, I think.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Exactly. I couldn't have said it much better yourself. And it's a privilege, actually, to hear you saying that these conversations give you something. And that's very flattering. So thank you for saying that.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Nice. And that resilience will keep you in momentum, won't it? I think a lot of this is a momentum game, actually.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
I don't think I've got, we've covered a lot and that's been, I agree, it's been thoroughly enjoyable but really energising. I don't think there's anything I feel like that's a shame I haven't been able to say that. I suppose it's the thing of where do people find me? So maybe The website is the obvious one, helenhannison.com. But LinkedIn, I think I feel much the same as you.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Meaningful connections will always be important to me. And that's the space I collect people. So that would be great. And I think... To get the book, I would say, let's pop a link in for that because I've just done or upgraded my page about the book. There's a bunch of offers and opportunities only in there.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
So it is the right way for people to have a glimpse in and see if it's for them and get it if they want. I suppose the only other thing that we haven't talked about, but I don't know if you think it's a value add, would be there's a quiz that people might like to do to discover their act type. So if...
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
You're feeling a bit stuck in hesitation about where to start, and you're not sure what version of stuckness you're struggling with. You just have this sort of quite ambiguous feeling. The ACT quiz is literally one minute. It's quite light, but it really does a good job of signposting.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Whether you're stuck with the career clarity bit or you're stuck, you know, exactly what you need to align with, but you don't know the idea or how to move from A to B. Or it's this mindset mastery that is about transformation. So the quiz would be a fun, quick way to have an entry point into never getting stuck again.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Let's start with act one, the act of alignment. To me, the act of alignment is an important foundational step for everyone in career redesign. And... I'm pretty insistent actually that we give this proper time and attention at the beginning of working with somebody because otherwise if we don't
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
hesitate there on purpose and take inventory, what happens is I'm helping somebody kick the can down the road of what they think or assume the right problem to solve is. Now, maybe I'm supporting them, but I'm just supporting their own thought process that they would have had without me. What I'm trying to do very deliberately here is say, let's go back to basics and
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
We build a career compass, a very personal, highly bespoke, and it's made up of three components. One is strengths. And I find the professionals I work with tend to be pretty fluent at talking to their own strengths. They build careers on them. They've heard them in appraisals. They're aware of what other people give value to about them and their work.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
However, if you're feeling very disconnected from what you do, you might not be owning them as much as you used to, or you might feel very disconnected from them. You might be discounting them altogether, assuming everybody has them. So there's something there and that's important because for any
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
career redesigned to be robust it needs to be strengths based or else we're in fantasy land what we can do so it's important but it isn't as important as values so we very quickly move on to the value of values because they're directional we need to utilize our strengths in order to express our values so values are less easy for people to access they operate under the consciousness
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
But very simply for time now, it's what do you want to stand for? What are the most important drivers for you in life? Because that's what we need to your career to have synergy with. We need to have some kind of logic link between what you do and what you feel is most meaningful. And then we wrap it all up with a sense of purpose.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
So we start to get a bit more action-oriented about living into those values, if you like. What is going to feel purposeful? Now it's a verb. What are you doing to achieve that feeling, that alive and aligned feeling? Now, Act 2 is really like the meat in the sandwich, is career redesign. And it's a completely different gear again. It's all about action.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
How do we convert that radical self-awareness, that incredible career clarity we've got in Act 1 into our real world now? And we translate that into a series of pilot tests. We start thinking about a number of different career designs that that have merit, that feel resonant for you.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
So that starts to dispel the myth that there's one true pathway you should be on or used to be on or wish you were on. There's a number of ideas. And once you can start to see that, you can start collecting experiences or collecting conversations or both and just testing the... I suppose it's like stress testing your own ideation because there's no risk that way.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
You've already put yourself in the environments in some way or given yourself exposure to different ideas before you make any dramatic moves or big leaps. And so it's an agile, career design is very agile. You keep attracting incoming information, you keep testing, you keep tweaking. And so you're always iterating, always moving though.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
And that's the fastest route to transformation, which is the third act. The act of transformation is really because even the best of career designs are aren't enough all on their own. We need the mindset mastery to strive long enough to actually succeed, to understand how to encounter the inevitable obstacles and barriers and not get thrown off the track.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
And that takes a certain amount of learning to interrupt our inner critics and anticipating practical barriers and obstacles and having the resilience and the tools to keep moving forwards anyway. Yep, that's all three.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Yeah, sure. Hope mapping is in the act of transformation and it's an important part of protecting your plans. Because if we can anticipate obstacles and do the cognitive heavy lifting to decide how we would navigate them if they show up, it's not as hard when they do. Hope mapping is actually a psychology tool.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
I wish I could claim it as my own, but it's actually from a psychologist called William Schneider. And there's seven steps to it. And this is explained in depth. And in fact, I think the QR code in that chapter leads through to your own hope map. So you really get the chance to use all the tools that my one-to-one clients get to use in coaching, having had the explainer in the book.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
What it does is really help you
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
think about worst case scenarios and then what would you do if i make implementation plans so the happens is you've got away literally on the map it's a math of grids if you like when yes i wish i could have i had one quick enough to hold up but you'll see it's a math of grids it's a bit like one of those compete your own stories where if something happens you go to that box on the right and if the other thing happens you go to the box on the left what you don't do is stop
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
You don't need to get stuck again. You can have the answers already down. And I think that is really such an important part of getting into that final stage of action with career redesign, because it is challenging. It is disruptive. Inevitably, any change is. And If you get wobbled off as you go through, what you find is you're
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
lose track of where you are you'll lose hope you'll have doubts that settle in and start getting louder and that might seem like a reasonable valid signpost to abort mission and it's the thing you can do i think what i always say to people who are feeling at that point the problems are coming at them they're close but now there's this obstacle that threatens the entire thing the
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
You are that close. And the growth you actually want for yourself and the hope that you've held close for yourself is just the other side of navigating this. So don't stop now. The only short way to fail is to give up trying. So that's why the hope map is so important. It's actually a very practical tool and psychology backed. You asked about protecting hope. And I think...
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
That to me is actually all about the resilience involved. And that's a bit more self-talk. It's understanding. how to nurture yourself through what might become hard. And that can be about interrupting inner critics whose voice is almost indiscernible from your own thoughts about, this plan isn't good enough, this is too risky, it's not responsible to keep trying.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Whatever it is that comes up for you, It's important to acknowledge it. A lot of people want to avoid those thoughts and squash them, or they feel like they're actionable instructions to stop trying. And that is somehow valid, but what's important to know is those somewhat negative sort of dialogues that pop up for us probably stem from something that was valid in the past.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
We don't need to carry them. They're outdated stories for today. So it's about looking at them and thinking, so hang on, what's the anxiety here? If that's the message from my inner critic, fear of failure or... fear of success sometimes. What can I do about that? How would I dilute that? So we're not ignoring or avoiding the message.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
We're actually embracing it and using it to spark some kind of action. So it's a bit like the hint map, although that tends to be practical. But it's the same idea again. Let's embrace the things that threaten to hold us stuck again, albeit down the line, and do something actionable to make sure that doesn't happen. And then call time. That's enough from the inner critics. And that's enough doubt.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
So you back yourself. You've done the thinking by this point, really. quite in-depth thinking and you deserve to carry that through to its eventuality.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
Yeah, no, I love that, actually. It's not a full stop, it's a comment. I often say hitting, sometimes we need to hit the wall. If you think of a wall in terms of a swimming pool, you swim lengths, you do hit the wall, but it also gives you the impetus and the momentum you need to push up again in a different direction. And I do think career redesign, it is not linear.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
I don't think anybody's career or life for that matter is linear. It's more like zigzags. And so long as we understand, we keep, we're motivated to keep on point because we know our why. We uncovered that in the value of values and unpacked our purpose. And I think if you have that motivation behind you, you never want to stop figuring it out.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
And maybe career redesign is the problem you never stop solving and never want to. It's an agile, I think we're talking about career rigidity and it's that agile mindset of thinking about your career as if it's a series of projects rather than one ladder or one linear journey. That really helps people keep going.
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
So, I think we've talked a little bit about inner critics. Getting stuck in the past really, to me, means what stories are you telling yourself? What stories have you carried with you from your past? And it might not be your past career chapters. It might be way further back. But they are beliefs. They will appear as if they're beliefs you feel are as solid as truth. However...
Chief Change Officer
#278 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part Two
If you are stuck in work that's wrong and struggling or overwhelmed and disconnected, then it's worth tracking what stories are holding you there. Is there a story of, I can only do what I've always done? Is there a story of, it would be such a waste to just look away from everything I've achieved? Is there a story of, it's too long way down at this point of
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And the irony is not lost on me that I'm now collecting degrees and have a psychology, but also positive psychology certifications, my narrative therapy, and I'm still learning. And I will always be learning. And I accept that. And I think coming at your own life when you're in deep,
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
is probably one of the hardest things we do because it's tough to have perspective on that that's I think probably the very biggest benefit of having a coach is that you have somebody on the outside who's invested in illuminating for you so you can see for yourself what's going on and if there's a disconnect between what you say you want and what your actions are supporting so
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
That was really where the clarity came. And I think the aliveness came in year three, where I was explaining to my professor, look, I've been approached to go and do a master's, but it's, I don't know, it was in the therapeutic space. It was... For young adults, it just didn't sound quite right. In England, we operate with the NHS system, and it was like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg to me.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I went through the motions and got offered the opportunity, but every bone in my body was saying, I don't agree with this. And having lived in the States for a few years and seen people have experience of something so different, I just knew that was wrong. not going to have synergy, not going to be in alignment for me. So again, the self-awareness, you bump into it.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And I think it's a duty we have to ourselves to tune in and listen and shape our actions from there. And this amazing coach said to me, professor said to me, there is something that is less about problems and more about solutions. It's called coaching. And that's what started this whole journey. And she introduced me to people and I moved into that hook, line and sinker.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And for me, even at the beginning, before I jumped into what was a very rigorous training with CTI. It was the hope. I'd found it. I knew I had found it. And I knew I could bring everything I'm so passionate about, all my real life experience, but also the psychology and the neuroscience to help people get over their immunity to change when that's really hard. And I honestly...
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
have that aliveness every time a client of mine has a breakthrough. And it doesn't always have to be the big, dramatic, transformative ones. It's the shift for them that does it for me, that they move out of that oppressive feeling of stuckness and see a possibility for a different future and trust themselves to build forwards towards it.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Yes and no. I would measure the impact I hope to have on people by the number of individuals I help. But for me, it's not about scale. I will always have one-to-one work at the heart of what I do because I feel so strongly that is such a deep texture. And that's really important to me. The reason I wrote the book was it came out of lockdown. I was being asked by, I was at capacity.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
It was a very busy time for coaching. And I think that was a fantastic thing, obviously. Lots of people were in a very different situation with their work. And mine just went seamlessly online. And I loved that.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
But I'd got to a point where I just couldn't have taken on any more coaching clients and was being asked because I suppose a lot of coaches do have a book and a course and I didn't have any of that. So that was where it came from. I put together a very quick and dirty course with just obviously nobody could meet with anybody.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So I just recorded it on Zoom and put it together and let people have access to it and That became a pilot test of sorts. And what I realized was in structuring my online course, I'd actually written a book outline and I'd even called what other people might call modules or lessons I'd called . And I thought, wow, this could be a book.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So I started approaching sort of publishers and trying to work out as a whole new landscape. How would I do that? So the learning curve began there. I picked it up last year when I'd had a health hiccup and I came back to work with this sort of fresh energy, renewed appetite. I thought that's unfinished business for me. I want to get this book out of my head and into the world.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here, sitting in that blue chair behind you.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I always meant to, I was always too busy to. That's a shame. So that was it. I found a publisher who would help me do it easily and quickly. Game Changer Publishing were fantastic at doing that. Amazing coaching, although they wouldn't call it that. And there we are. The book was into the world and launched a bestseller within a few days last summer. So that was the motivation.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Lots of different reasons. And I do hope that anybody who feels... that work isn't 100% right. So there are an amazing amount of statistics out there that about 85% of us, if not more, feel that. So it's not that they're desperately and deeply, tragically unhappy.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
It's the beginnings of that sort of tug on the sleeve that work is feeling wrong, they're struggling, they're overwhelmed, they're disconnected. I would hope for those people to reach out and get this kind of a book that will introduce new concepts, very actionable concepts.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Every chapter has QR codes that lead to exercises or me talking through a tool or a way to get traction would be an easy lift. And that's the first step to getting unstuck is to start engaging with ideas that can help you do that, which of course is the title of the book.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Yeah. The first thing I would want to say to anyone listening, I'm feeling a bit daunted, but if that sounded too smooth, of course, everything sounds smooth after the event. And it's a bit like childbirth. You immediately forget all the pain. No, it wasn't that smooth. It was incredibly immersive. And you're right. That was even with those ideas already formed.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I knew exactly what I wanted to get down into this book and in what order. Yeah. And it still took absolute immersion. Four months. And I think the point of going with Game Changer was they say that timeline can be quite quick. Which it was. They were right. But they're for immersive. I've had to stop. Not stop. I had to look away. And here's an irony to watch war. I've had to look away from...
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
important people and my relationships to have the time to get the book done. Now, I think you probably understand at this point in the conversation how important people are to me. And that's where my energy comes from. So that's what's meaningful. So it was a trade-off. It was a trade-off I accepted to get it done. The challenges were You're on a learning curve.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And although the publisher was fantastic at supporting me, the decisions are mine to make. It's my book. There's a discomfort in any growth, I always think. And I certainly had several points that I was very stressed on making decisions. And actually, if I hold it up, the cover was one of them. I found this image, which I absolutely love because to me it... It just says everything.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Yeah, sure. My name is Helen Hannison. You've already said I'm in the UK. I think what's probably more relevant for your listeners to know about me, though, is that I used to think that I was defined by that thing I did, my PR career. It was a 20-year tour of duty, as I call it now, in global PR firms. So always enormous budgets and global remits and market leading brands.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
This person's walking or these people are walking, they're moving. It's not necessarily the same as taking action. The analogy with that and what people often explain, they don't necessarily use the word stuckness, but they explain they are stuck in a cycle of solving the same career problem over and over again on their own. And they can't figure out how maybe they've achieved situational change.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
They've moved from one corporate home to another, and maybe nine months down the line, they've noticed the same or similar story seems to be unfolding. They've carried the problem with them. So they're solving the wrong problem, but it takes a couple of goes of that.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And remember, I only really work with very bright, competent careerists, so of course they're going to have tried a bunch of things before they tip into sort of a coaching relationship. Once I saw that image come together, it made sense.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Whereas before that, the designers were quite understandably showing me things with tape that was peeling off because that was unstuck and all kinds of other ideas they made that just weren't resonating for me. And I was struggling to explain what I meant. I don't think I'm very visual. I think I'm all about words. So it was a difficult thing. And actually the technical...
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Bits and bobs of almost anything to me is very stressful. So there was quite a bit in that. It wasn't really about the writing. To me, the writing was the organic bit that just, it was almost therapeutic to get it out. But yeah, it's a journey. And I think to do it with support is clever as a debut also, because I think otherwise you're shooting in the dark a bit.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And to have the thought partnership and guidance of someone who's been there before or many times before takes a load off.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Let's start with act one, the act of alignment. To me, the act of alignment is an important foundational step for everyone in career redesign. And...
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I'm pretty insistent, actually, that we give this proper time and attention at the beginning of working with somebody because otherwise, if we don't hesitate there on purpose and take inventory, what happens is I'm helping somebody kick the can down the road of what they think or assume the right problem to solve is.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
It was fantastic and I loved it all the way up to when I didn't. And for me, I hit this career crossroads that is a big part of why I now do what I do today. Success is really what it looked like from the outside. I was on the board. I was on and off planes all the time. I know people looking in felt it was successful and glamorous even. For me, I was bumping into a wall.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I don't know how else to explain it. It was very incompatible with becoming a mother for the first time and that junction of mothering and careering was tough to navigate and I hadn't seen it coming, which might be my own naivety, but there you go.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I had thought a lot about replacing myself at home because I assumed in the opposite direction and then found it excruciating not to be present hardly at all for my little one. So what do you do with that? Those jobs are the most important. That's an incredible amount of conflict to live with if you believe you're defined by the one that is less important to you.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So that's where that started for me, that sort of pain barrier and puzzle that I had to figure out. There were a number of lost years in the figuring out, and I think we will probably come to some of those as the conversation goes on. But long story short, I created a second jumping off point eventually and worked out that I needed what I did to be meaningful to me, to have congruence.
Chief Change Officer
#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
with my career and life. And that integration was the secret sauce to defining success for myself, actually. So the psychology degree going all the way back was what began that second career. And today I coach people who find themselves stuck or struggling in work that feels wrong, overwhelmed, or disconnected, or perhaps they've been laid off.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So whatever their crossroads might be, and they can be many different things because we're all situated differently, what I help them do is redesign their careers so it realigns with the things that actually matter to them most. And sometimes that's a little shift, and sometimes that's a great big aligned career transformation, but it's never about throwing out
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
all that experience and knowledge that they've gained along the way so far.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I think even that career in public relations I fell into. I had briefly been in human resources before that. And I think that had shown me that I was interested in people. Unfortunately, being junior in human resources is a lot about admin rather than the people themselves. It turned me off fairly quickly because I was frustrated and had all this ambition and I didn't want to wait. And then...
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I went to do my first degree was in media and communications and really my love of writing, my love of communicating, the idea of planned campaigns that really speak to your target audience, getting into the psyche of that target audience. That was what tipped me into public relations in the first place.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And I think when you're junior and your career building days, no matter what sector you choose, You're there to absorb the institutional knowledge, the career skill set, grow your own sense of gravitas within whatever field you are. It's not a lot about being choiceful. Certainly within public relations, you could be in so many different areas.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
I was in quite a broad area called consumer, and even that can be split into so many areas. But it was clear that I wanted to be people-focused. That stayed. Over the course of the career and the 20 years, you're quite right, I discovered at a few different points that I still wasn't doing anything that was actually intrinsically motivating to me.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So if I tell the story of sometimes PRing cars, I mean, I drive. I'm not ever so interested in cars. That didn't turn me on or light me up. And it was the same with... Something like Yellow Pages, which, I mean, doesn't, I don't think even exist in the same way now because it was before the internet days, if you can even imagine. A great big book of contact phone numbers and details.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
It just wasn't... making me feel alive at all. So this is where I started to notice, not that I could have articulated it this way at the time, that being competent at something, building a career on strengths alone is not the right way to go if you want to feel lit up by what you do. So I moved in the sort of more senior end of my PR career into food and health and nutrition.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Because I was engaged. And I think one of the most important campaigns I ever worked on and led was launching the first functional foods to market in the UK and Europe. And it was all about cholesterol lowering benefits. So it really had some meaningfulness infused through it, as well as being a big budget and a big sexy sort of thing to introduce people.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
functional foods against the backdrop of a lot of fear actually about genetically modified organizations back at that time. So I started to feel lit up and really notice the difference then. And I never looked back. I specialized in food and health right to the end of my PR career.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So I think hindsight is a beautiful thing, isn't it? Everything is obvious with the benefit of that vantage point. But I think at the time I was onto something. I wouldn't say it was as conscious as I've probably explained it to you today. I think I was very self-aware. I could tell my own energy levels, my own sort of appetite, that aliveness as I call it now was either up or down.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
There was no denying it. So I was very aware. of where I was on that sort of energy matrix and riding the waves. And it was often about people. So I started to notice what is now obvious to me. Either the campaigns have to be people-focused campaigns In a real way, hence health. It feels like the most direct line you could possibly have to having a meaningful impact on people's lives.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And at the time I was launching that functional food with cholesterol lowering, my uncle was going through some heart health issues. So it really, that to me says it all. There was a personal significance there. within what I was doing. Now, I could also say I was propelled along by promotions and that is also true. And I think the career builders, that's what happens.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And that's how actually we don't notice sometimes for years. Often I'm coaching people who for 20 years have, much like I was, have built to a place of seniority and realize they're at the top of a ladder they actually don't want to be on because they've been
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
seduced a bit by those success markers until then and I think for me the other piece that kept me going and I hear this a lot as well in my coaching is the people that I worked with so the leadership aspect of it because I was becoming more serious and fostering a culture where people thrived and wanted to work with me and we all got energy from each other and there was a certain amount of succeeding in a different way in an interpersonal collaborative
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
culture and what i would say is even back then without all this awareness of psychology or organizational psychology or any of it i would move in as a director to a new team and take every single person off site to coffee from the most junior graduates right through to my number twos and ask them what would they like to happen in their career after this stop
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And it's really interesting to me when I look back on that now, that even then the emotional awareness or intelligence was there to understand that people need to feel purposeful about what they do. That wasn't special to me. People lit up and leaned in because I had asked. And that is a thread that carries through to this sort of career too of mine.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So I think what happened for me is what happens for a lot of people. We, professional people, and I really, my top tier work is one with seasoned professionals. And seasoned professionals are excellent at persevering, even when they are, as you say, stuck in work that is feeling off, that is no longer feeling aligned, because they can do it.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So it's a very ambiguous line and it feels like it's a high risk line to draw. If you believe you can only do what you've always done and it's a long way down from the sort of the heights that you've achieved in your career, that is a massive decision. And I think what happened for me is what I still see in my clients today and recognize for them.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
In the end, it's such an undeniable feeling to feel that disconnected from what you do every day, that stagnant, that it bleeds out of the career space and into the rest of your relationships and life generally. And it becomes undeniable so that in the end, the fear of inaction, the fear of staying stuck another year, every year until you retire...
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
feeling like that, knowing it's going downhill and affecting everything is actually the bigger risk than protecting the status quo. And that's what happened for me. It just felt undeniable and untenable and suddenly clear that I had to make change happen. Now, Having said that, there were the lost years I alluded to earlier and it wasn't a smooth process.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And that's actually where an awful lot of my formula for purposeful career redesign came from. There was a lot of throwing mud at the wall and seeing what stuck. It wasn't a great process and it took too long, but it also taught me everything I know today and have distilled in the book and the course and coached people through. So it's also hard to say I regret any of it.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
Oh, it's absolutely all worth it. Because really, once I had the clarity about what I was aiming for, and I think that came for me in the final year of the psychology degree, where... I was still stimulated and more lit up than I had been for years learning, but it was very challenging learning compared to my first degree, for sure. It was tough.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
And there was definitely a point quite early on where I thought, oh, have I done this wrong? Maybe I should go and pivot to a journalism master's or something that is more logical with what I did before. And then by the time I'd gone through the motions and spoken to the people involved that could have made that happen for me,
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
The next electives had come out for psychology, and I happened to have a word with myself. I was bumping into clarity almost by accident that I was not prepared to look away from those psychology electives, no matter how hard it was. I had to solve it and back myself, actually.
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#277 Helen Hanison: Outgrowing the Career Everyone Else Envies — Part One
So I did what I do for my kids and put a bit of extra support in place and got over the challenging curve with statistics and neuroscience and never looked back. So... I think that's a really important lesson. And I think you're right. The self-awareness isn't just there for anybody.