Signs You Need to Leave to Grow

Welcome to Navigating Your Career, the only podcast that blends personal development, professional skills, and psychology to help you get happy at work and live the life you want. If you want to stop feeling stuck and start feeling better, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Melissa Lawrence. Let’s get started.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. Now, something that most of my clients want, if not all, is their primary or one of their top things that they want to work on is to feel like they’re growing. And not always growth in title or money, but growth in learning and progress and development and feeling challenged and making a bigger difference. And it’s one of the biggest reasons that people want to leave their job. No big surprise, right? They’re bored. They don’t see any future growth opportunities. And Corn Ferry did a survey and found that 33% of those that were changing jobs cited boredom and the need for new challenges as the top reason why they were leaving. Number one, over, bad bosses, a toxic culture, and all of the other various reasons that people decide to leave their job. And listen to this according to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report, 94% of employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it’s simply invested in helping them learn. So for my managers that are listening to this, we’re both hats. As you listen to this episode, you may have employees that just need to feel like they’re learning and growing and not bored and feeling challenged and making a bigger difference to keep them engaged.

And if you’re feeling this way, how do you know if the boredom or lack of growth isn’t just a short term issue? Maybe you’re just missing something that you could be doing differently. Maybe it’s just a season of your life that will pass. Why is it even important to feel like you’re growing and learning? Think about it. When you do something new or overcome a challenge, it does a lot for your self-esteem and character. You’re more self-reliant, you’re resilient, you build self-confidence. And when you feel that way, you also feel happier and more fulfilled. You’re likely leveraging your character strengths, which is something that I work with my clients 1-1 on. So what does the opposite then? Tell us. If you’re not demonstrating that self confidence, the resiliency, and getting that dose of the happy growth sprinkles, then you’re not going to be as fulfilled. You’re going to be bored. Your brain and your growth muscle is losing its strength day by day, so you start to feel unhappy. How do you know if you should leave or if you will get the growth that you want if you stick it out? Well? Ask yourself these questions.

Ask yourself what growth do you want? What opportunities would you like to have? What do you want to learn? Are you specific on what it is that you want? Or are you unsure what you want? Once you know what you want, then what? Have you tried to meet those desires or goals that you have? Do you have to meet those goals that you have within your company? Or can you get them through mentoring or coaching? A class, a development opportunity outside of work? If your growth is, say, new opportunities or a promotion within your company, like there’s nothing you could do externally, that’s really going to change the fact that you’re bored and not challenged and your day to day is a routine, then you have to consider. Do you directly ask for what it is that you want? Because, yes, you do have to ask. I was speaking to someone recently and they said they felt that they were at a dead end. They get high performance ratings at work and they put in a lot of effort work, a lot of hours. But they hadn’t been promoted and they didn’t want to ask for the promotion because they thought their work should speak for itself.

They were feeling very prideful, so they were going to just leave because they didn’t feel valued to get that recognition without asking. But after we talked, they did go and ask directly. It’s a huge misconception that your hard work will be rewarded without asking. I’ve had to ask for every promotion that I have gotten with an industry. Every one. I wasn’t just granted one despite my tenure, my contributions, or exceedingly high performance reviews. If you’ve exhausted your options and you aren’t getting your growth that you want to have, then I think you know the answer. It’s time to move on and get it elsewhere. It isn’t a problem that you’ve outgrown where you are now and if you don’t know what you want, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, I talk very regularly about how important it is to know what you want before you make that move. So that it’s a move that you really feel good about and it’s going to meet those desires and needs that you have. So you can go back and listen to some prior episodes where I talk about how to know what you want.

You can also reach out to me. That is something that I help my one on one clients do. Okay, now, there are some additional signs that it is time for a career change, whether it be in your role or with your company. So if you’re questioning if it’s time to mix things up and go after a more fulfilling career, I created a solution for you that is going to help you simply and quickly. I have a new quiz and it is appropriately named, Is It Time for a Career Change? And this isn’t just an ordinary quiz. I made it fun and engaging with a little bit of sense of humor. So regardless of the answer or the outcome of the quiz. It will put a smile on your face. You can take it right now. It’s no cost to you. I have it online on my website and you will know within a couple of minutes what your answer is so that you can take action. Because that is what it’s all about, taking action. So to take the quiz, go to my website, www.melissamlawrence.com/quizsigns. It’s also currently linked on my home page, but the direct page for the quiz.

www.melissamlawrence.com/quizsigns I will put a link in the show notes for easy access. Head there now and get your answer. Have an amazing week.

Coaching with me is the best way to guarantee you get happy at work and achieve your career and life goals. Getting started is easy. Head over to www.melissamlawrence.com to learn more and apply. It is the first step to get you from feeling stuck to knowing exactly exactly what you want and have the tools to make it a reality. I will be by your side the entire way.