Six weeks into my new role, an uncomfortable thought kept growing stronger by the day
This job was not working out.
My organisation had appointed me to a senior overseas post as a Regional Director. On paper, it looked like an excellent opportunity. In reality, I already sensed it was not playing to my strengths.
I had just moved to a new continent. I was struggling to find somewhere permanent to live and was working flat out trying to build a new life both professionally and personally.
For the sixth year running, I had also left my husband in London to concentrate on his academic career. The distance between us felt even greater because the internet connection where I was living was so poor we could only reliably speak on video early on Sunday mornings, before the city awoke.
I was stressed, unsettled and increasingly unhappy.
Then one morning an email arrived inviting employees across the organisation to apply for voluntary severance and leave within the next six to twelve months.
Questions immediately started circling in my mind.
Could I really apply so soon after taking up a prestigious overseas posting? Would the organisation even accept my application? And if they did, what on earth would I do next?
I had spent nearly twenty years in the same organisation. I could barely imagine myself anywhere else.
For weeks I agonised over the decision. In the end, I applied. The severance package was generous and we had been told there would never be another one like it. Part of me also wanted the organisation to decide whether it truly wanted to keep me.
Even so, it came as a shock when my application was accepted.
At first, I carried on as though nothing had happened. Looking back, I think I was in denial. But as the months passed and my departure date drew closer, reality began to set in.
I took a hard look at my finances and realised retirement was not an option. I needed to find work.
My organisation offered a small number of sessions with a career counsellor. I was sceptical at first. How could someone outside my sector possibly understand my situation or my options?
I was wrong. The conversations proved invaluable.
One piece of advice in particular stayed with me. At my stage of career, my counsellor said, I was far more likely to find my next opportunity through my informal network than through formal job applications.
Networking for personal reasons did not come naturally to me. I was not someone who felt comfortable broadcasting uncertainty, let alone the prospect of impending unemployment. But with encouragement, I started telling friends, former colleagues, collaborators and family members that I was looking for a new role.
For a while, nothing happened.
As my leaving date approached, I became increasingly despondent. Then, completely unexpectedly, I received an email from a former close collaborator in a partner organisation.
She had been speaking to a senior leader in a major UK organisation who was looking for someone to undertake a year-long consultancy project to explore setting up in India.
She had recommended me.
I was both surprised and delighted that she thought I had the skills for the role. But there was one obvious problem: I had never worked professionally in or with India. I simply wasn’t qualified for the role.
Or so I thought.
As I reflected more deeply, I realised I knew far more than I had initially assumed. In my early twenties, I had spent a year travelling extensively around the Indian subcontinent. The experience had exposed me to the extraordinary diversity and complexity of a huge country that felt more like a continent.
After intensive preparation, I attended the interview in London and was offered the consultancy.
I remember being struck by something profound.
An experience I had once pursued purely out of curiosity, adventure and a desire to understand other cultures had unexpectedly become relevant to my professional life thirty years later.
The consultancy turned out to be exactly the right bridge at exactly the right moment.
It enabled me to return to the UK and live once again with my husband. It gave me time to understand how a new sector operated and allowed me to build credibility and relationships within it.
Eventually, I secured a permanent role through the formal application route. But without that initial consultancy stepping stone, I was told by a sector leader my CV would never have been convincing enough for employers in the sector to take me seriously.
Looking back now, there are a number of things my career transition taught me.
- Your network matters more than you think
Many opportunities never appear publicly. They emerge through conversations, recommendations and second-level connections.
Research consistently shows that weaker ties — people beyond our immediate close circle — are often the source of new opportunities because they move in different professional worlds from our own.
This was certainly true in my case.
2. Your past experiences are rarely wasted
One of the biggest surprises was discovering that experiences from outside my formal career history became unexpectedly valuable later in life.
We often underestimate the relevance of things we have done simply out of interest, passion or curiosity, often from much earlier in our lives. They are all still a part of us.
Working in a role that does not play to your strengths or make you feel valued can easily lead to underestimating ourselves.
This can interfere with the confidence with which we communicate ourselves to our network and the self-belief that we can find the next role.
3. It can take more than one step to establish your next career
At the beginning of a transition, we usually want certainty. A clear plan. A fully visible future.
But many career pivots do not unfold like that.
Often the next step only becomes visible after we have had the courage to leave the previous one behind.
4. Having space to think with someone else is invaluable
Looking back, one of the most important things I had during that period was the opportunity to think aloud with someone outside my organisation.
A career counsellor helped me with practical decisions and challenged assumptions that were limiting my thinking. Coaching can go further still — helping people process uncertainty, rebuild confidence, reconnect with strengths and begin imagining a future that initially feels impossible to see.
Career transitions are rarely only practical. They are also emotional and deeply personal.
If you are contemplating a career pivot, facing redundancy or voluntary severance, or simply beginning to wonder whether your current role still fits, you do not have to navigate it alone.
If this resonates, I would be very happy to arrange a complimentary chemistry conversation to explore whether coaching could support your future. Do arrange a complimentary clarity call LesleyHaymanLimited@gmail.com
Lesley Hayman Executive Coach 