Episode 24 How To Overcome Setbacks in Your Leadership Career

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Welcome to Unstuck and Unstoppable,

the podcast for ambitious female

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leaders who want to create more impact,

income, and influence in their careers.

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feel connected to their passion

and purpose, but without

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selling out or burning out.

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I'm Sarah Archer, a leadership coach

and career strategist, helping women

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like you thrive in leadership roles

while staying true to your values.

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I'm the founder of CareerTree

Coaching and have over 15 years of

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coaching experience and significant HR

leadership experience to share with you.

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I know as a female leader it can

be hard to find time to focus

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on your career aspirations.

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The day job can be all consuming.

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Plus, no matter how senior you are,

there are always going to be times

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when you feel stuck, when you have

self doubt, or feel like an imposter.

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And that's where unstuck

and unstoppable comes in.

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Each week I'll be sharing practical

strategies, insightful interviews and

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inspiring stories to help you boost

your confidence, lead with purpose

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and achieve sustainable success.

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If you're ready to stop playing

small and unlock the incredible

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potential you have within you and feel

unstoppable, you're in the right place.

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Let's get started.

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Welcome to episode 24.

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I'm so glad you're here.

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Today's topic, is how to overcome career

setbacks in your leadership career.

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I thought about covering this one

because in the last 16 years of being a

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career coach, I have worked with people

who've experienced a whole variety

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of career setbacks, and I thought it

would be useful to pull together.

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Some of the observations that I've had

from working with those people into a

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bit more of a strategy that you can use

if you are experiencing a career setback

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of some sort so that you can turn that

setback into a springboard for success.

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And often clients I've worked

with who have experienced a career

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setback can look back and see that

actually it was something in the

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end that was helpful for them.

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And I know that's hard to connect

with when you are immersed

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in the middle of a setback.

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Thinking about different

types of setbacks.

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'cause obviously there are lots

of different types of possible

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career setbacks and it's

all relative to you as well.

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The big one is redundancy.

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Probably most people in their

career lifetime are going to

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experience redundancy at least once.

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More rarer is dismissal,

but that can happen.

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That can be definitely

a setback for people.

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Or it might be not getting promotion that

can feel like a career setback or not.

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Getting that job that you went for,

that you felt was your ideal role

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that the job was meant for you.

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Or it could be that you've been sidelined,

so maybe you've been on a career break

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or you are returning from maternity

and you've been sidelined, you've got

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less responsibility, you've not been

given the influence that you, had

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prior to your break, it might be that

you've had a break and you've stopped

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working for a number of years and you're

coming back into the job market, and

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that can feel like a career setback.

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Or it could be something around a

shift in the organization's values

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or directions or the leadership.

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Teams values or direction that just

doesn't feel aligned with you anymore.

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And maybe you thought, this was my

role, this is my springboard role,

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and suddenly it just doesn't seem

to have that same opportunity.

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So you don't feel like you want to be part

of it in the same way you did previously.

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Or you have a nightmare boss, they're

micromanaging or they're very

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political and you are feeling the

effects of that, and it feels like it's

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inhibiting your career progression.

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Or perhaps your peers or even your

team, you just don't gel with and

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you feel like you are isolated.

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That can also feel like a career

setback or it could be something else.

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And I've experienced various career

setbacks in my career have been made

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redundant and that at the time felt.

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Very difficult to navigate and I'll

talk a bit more about that later on.

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I was talking to a client yesterday

who went for promotion while she was on

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maternity leave and didn't get that, and

now is having to navigate what she does

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in response . And so we're gonna talk

about the strategy you can use if you're

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facing a career setback at the moment.

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But it's important to, to acknowledge

that you are going to have a

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reaction to that setback, and it's

going to be an emotional reaction.

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First of all, it can rock your identity.

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It can make you question who you are

what your purpose is, what you're doing.

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It can shake what might have felt like

quite a firm foundation previously.

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And it can also, as I said, bring

up lots of emotions for you.

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And you may or may not be familiar with

the Kular Ross curve, which was developed

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to help people navigate grief and loss.

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And obviously a Chris setback

can feel like a kind of loss.

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And on that Kular Ross

curve, , you experience shock,

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denial, anger, dejection.

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Depression until you eventually

start coming outta that and get

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to acceptance of the situation.

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But you can ping pong along

those various emotions.

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For a period of time while you're

processing what's happened to you.

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And we can also, while we're in

that phase of experiencing those

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emotions, look for someone to blame.

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So we don't necessarily want to take

responsibility for that setback.

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We can look at the organization,

we can look at other people.

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We might even seek reassurance from

people around us that it was not.

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Us it was not our fault.

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But what that does is it stops us looking

internally and to really be able to

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navigate a career setback effectively,

to build a resilience that you need,

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you do need to do some internal work.

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And that's what we're gonna

talk a little bit about today.

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To rebound from your career

setback and create success.

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'cause that's ultimately what we

want, isn't it, is to be able to

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move past it and get to something

better than we had previously.

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The first step is to actively review

what went wrong and how you contributed

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to it, and was there anything you could

have done differently in that situation?

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Doing some reflection to think about,

did I assess that situation accurately,

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particularly in a leadership role where

you may have been party to discussions

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around whether business was going, if it's

redundancy, you know that's gonna happen.

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Were you reading it right in

terms of what might happen to you?

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Or if it's your boss

who's causing the setback?

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Did you ignore some of the signs

that may have been there for you?

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I was talking to a client a couple of

months ago who'd had a horrible experience

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with a boss who was very political and was

basically blocking her career progression.

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And when we unpacked it, she could

identify that actually when the interview

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was taking place, there were some red

flags that she in hindsight notice,

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but chose to ignore because of some

other things that were going on for her

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that meant she needed to take this job.

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And so what that did is that she

just ignored the things that could

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have helped her recognize that

actually this perhaps wasn't going

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to be the right opportunity for her.

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What we want from this setback is to

be able to take useful things from

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it that will help us in the next.

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Role the next setting.

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And often when I'm working out placement

clients, so when I'm working with

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people who've been made redundant, I

do encourage them to think about what

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they've learned from the experience

and what they might do differently

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next time so that they can take that

into their choice for the next role.

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, it is important to think about what

would you do differently and also if

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you can to ask for feedback because.

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It's always useful to know , in terms

of leadership style, management style

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are there things that you could learn

from change, do differently that's gonna

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make you even better in the next role?

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And it's a hard thing.

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It's a brave thing to do, to ask for

feedback, but it can be really helpful,

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particularly if you frame it in terms

of I would like constructive feedback.

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I'm not looking for consolation

or blame, I'm just looking for

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some things to help me grow.

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Then we want to think about objectively

considering what next and in the frame of

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what's going to be the best thing for me.

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So the temptation might be just

to, if it's redundancy or you've

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lost your job is just to go out

and find something straight away.

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I just need a job, which

is quite a normal reaction.

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Or if it's promotion I'll just go for that

next promotion as soon as it comes up.

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Or I'll start applying for other roles

that are that level because I didn't

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get it here in this organization.

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But it's actually good to do that

reflection in terms of what do I really

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want and check in with your values and

your why, because they help guide you

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in terms of choices that you have made.

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Or going to make and then

do that exploration.

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So really focused exploration

of what the options might be.

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For example, when I was made redundant

I was made redundant as a career coach.

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I've been working for Social

Enterprise as a coach, and there weren't

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hardly any paid career coach jobs.

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My options were either go back

to HR into a paid employment

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or set up my own business.

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Now my identity had always been.

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As an employee, I'd never

even on my, radar had the idea

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of running my own business.

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So I had to do some

exploration around that.

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And I knew from my values and my

why that HR wasn't an option for me.

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I wanted to be making a difference

to people in a direct way.

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I wanted to have that one to one,

one-to-one group, work with people

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to help them create career success.

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I had to do the exploration about how

I could make the business a success.

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And, it is important to think about it

in terms of your career success criteria.

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I was working with a client about a

year ago, and her career set setback

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was a very difficult boss who claimed

a lot of the credit for her work, who.

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Didn't enable her to be successful

in the role that she was doing

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as in a very big organization.

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And this boss was very political.

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And with her career success criteria, when

we worked it through, what she recognized

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is she a, she wanted to earn more money.

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She was being kept at a sort of ceiling on

her earnings and she wanted more control

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over her work and the difference she

could make to the people she supported.

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She was working in project

management and she wanted to be

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able to deliver to her standards

not be controlled by her boss who.

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Didn't really value the service that

they were providing to the organization.

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And so she decided that the right

thing for her was to become a

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contractor and take on contracts that

really spoke to her in terms of her

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values and what she wanted to do.

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And that required a big mindset

shift for her, which I'm

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gonna come on to in a minute.

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But just to work through her career

success criteria what she wants

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to do, helped her understand.

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What the options were for her out there

and how she could then move towards that.

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If she hadn't had that boss, pushing

her and not enabling her to do

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what she wanted to do, she probably

wouldn't have taken that route.

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And then, the next thing is

to do is the mindset work.

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Reframing this as an opportunity to

reinvent yourself, to do something

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different, to release your career

dreams, to expand your identity, to

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create more career success for you.

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Because the setback is

really chance to pause.

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It's like a pause button on your career.

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And it's also a push to

do things differently.

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And from a neuroscience point of view

our brains like to chase dopamine.

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Dopamine is the feel good

chemical in our brain.

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It's the reward chemical that we get.

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And so our brains like it

because it makes us feel good.

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And so if we're doing things that give us

that reward on a consistent basis, with no

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motivation for us to change that at all.

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Now when we have a career setback

that results in a dip in dopamine.

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And the brain doesn't like that.

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So it wants to solve the problem

of how to avoid the dopamine dip,

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which makes you more creative.

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It increases your problem solving

capability and your reasoning.

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And actually the more career

setbacks and you don't wanna load.

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But the more you've navigated, the

more creative and problem solving

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abilities and reasoning increases.

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It enables us , to

think differently about.

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Where we're going to take our career.

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Whereas if you don't have that pause

button or that push to make something

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change, you're probably more likely

just to continue, which might be okay,

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but it might not enable you to get the

career success that you really want

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because you're not having that reflective

time to think what's not working?

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What don't I want?

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What do I want?

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What, could more look like for me?

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And , the reframe is also being okay

with uncertainty because it could be

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that you're gonna make a shift of some

sort or, change something in your way

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of approaching your leadership role.

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So it's getting that

uncertainty, being okay with it.

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And then the next thing is to

be prepared to take action to

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address any changes needed.

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If you've done that reflective

piece at the beginning, did

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I contribute to this setback?

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What have I learned from it?

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What would I do differently next time?

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What feedback might I have had?

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You've then obviously got to think

about what do I need to do to address

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some of that so that I'm not taking

any of that with me into the next role.

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For example, with my client that I

was talking about earlier who wanted

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to go contracting, her mindset was

firmly in an employee and becoming a

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contractor felt alien and we had to

do a lot of work around her mindset and

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her confidence to enable her to feel.

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Ready to go down that route, which

she then did very successfully.

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Or it could be around

leadership style again.

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So if you've got some feedback or

you've recognized, something needs to

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change for you to be more successful

in your leadership style or your

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management style that it's thinking

about, okay, how am I gonna do that?

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I'm gonna take an interim role so that I

can experiment with my management style.

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Am I going to get some

coaching to help me with this?

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Am I going to do some, UPS

upskilling in terms of some of

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the areas that I want to improve?

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And then the fifth thing to think

about is making sure you're seizing

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the right opportunity for you.

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Not just taking the next role,

but making sure it is going

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to give you what you need.

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Because once you've got it, you've

got to go in every day and do it.

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Or making the right choice about when

to go for promotion and what kind of

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promotion or deciding how you're going

to navigate a difficult manager or a

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shift in the organizational values.

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So making sure the right opportunity,

you're seeding it at the right

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time for you is not a knee jerk

reaction to what's going on for you.

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And then my final point is to invest in

a resilience strategy so that you are.

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Consistently building your resilience.

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So when you then experience the next

career setback, you are in a much

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better place to be able to navigate

it and to feel more in control of it.

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That would be things like prioritizing

a visibility strategy for you in

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terms of your leadership roles.

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Thinking about both internal and

external visibility and making

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it a habit, a regular habit to.

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Keep in touch with people.

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So constantly building your connections,

consistently keeping in touch with people

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fostering those relationships so that

in your connections, you've got door

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openers, you've got sponsors, you've

got potential mentors, you've got.

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Cheerleaders, you've got people who

will be there to support you with your

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next career setback, should that occur.

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And, , allowing your values and your

why to drive you and your choices so

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you can have that wonderful feeling

of looking back on that career setback

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that you might be in right now, or you

might have experienced recently, and

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be able to say, actually it was the

best thing that happened to me in my

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career, or it enabled me to create the

career success that I really craved but

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didn't know how to access previously.

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To remind you of the key things.

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First of all, to recognize it is

going to bring up emotions for you

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and to be prepared to allow those

emotions to, play out, but not to

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get stuck in them to actively review.

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What you can learn from the experience,

how you might have contributed to it.

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What signs you might have ignored

that you want to pick up on next time.

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Objectively consider what next.

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Really think about what you want,

letting your values and your why

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drive you reframing the opportunity.

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To think about it as a positive being

prepared to take action around mindset,

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leadership styles, upskilling, et

cetera, seeding the right opportunity

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at the right time for you, and then

investing in your resilience strategy.

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If you are in a career setback at

the moment and you're struggling with

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it and you would like some support,

some coaching support, please do

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get in touch and do reach out.

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Really happy to have a

chat with you about it.

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And I hope that if you've had a career

setback, you can share that with people

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so that they can see that sometimes these

career setbacks can be springboards to

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the career success that is right for you.

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Thank you so much for listening

to this episode of the Unstuck

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and Unstoppable podcast.

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I have lots of free resources you

can access on my website, ww.career

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tree coaching.co

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uk, and I'll also put

links in the show notes.

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If you found this episode

helpful, then please subscribe

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so you don't miss the next one.

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And please do share it with a

friend and leave me a review

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and I will personally thank you.

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Remember, you're capable of

more than shine brightly.

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Lead boldly and unlock the

extraordinary potential within you.

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Be unstoppable.