Change Can Be Scary

A few years ago, a candidate gave me a description of a career scenario he found himself in, and it was worth making note of. It all sounded very familiar—not only from the people I’ve spoken to about new job opportunities, but from my personal experience in dealing with big change. It went something like this:

“It was a drop-dead, gut-wrenching fear. The sort of feeling that one would expect to read about in a mystery novel—and certainly not the inner turmoil I had expected from a career decision. It was physical as well. Sweating, I walked to the window for a breath of fresh air while my wife continued to complain about the relocation and the problems it would pose for the kids. No doubt about it, Dave, this one was not an easy decision.”

This month’s column is about this fear and how you might deal with sudden change. It might just be the decision on a new job in a different location that becomes one of those very stressful events.

Change is inevitable

Change is the name of the game in highly technical businesses. As Benjamin Disraeli said, “Change is constant, change is inevitable.” I am faced with continual change in my business as our client companies, our key contacts, and our industry specializations all go through regular cycles of birth and re-birth. Escaping my “comfort zone” was one of the most difficult challenges of my professional life. This can happen to you as well.

One big aspect of change for individuals, and the example I keep going back to, comes when you must relocate for a new job. Post pandemic, candidates all speak about how important it is for them to work remotely. But I’m finding that companies are now going back to in-person work in a central location, with many job offers requiring a relocation once again. While I suspect that some categories of jobs—sales and marketing, business development, regulatory—will be working from their homes permanently, the core product development team and R&D staff will likely be offered a job along with a relocation package.

Managing your way through change

Let’s say that you are a product developer, a scientist or engineer, and your expertise lies in working with teams to get a new product on the market. Clearly, that’s a job that’s critical for the employer to have on site. Does this mean that you will not have any options, and that we’re back to the old process of moving to the backyard of the employer, even if it is hundreds or thousands of miles away? Not necessarily. There might be some middle ground.

Through the last year or so I’ve helped negotiate a few “in between” scenarios for certain hard-to-find roles. Some of these positions can be open for many months while the hiring manager and HR team shuffle through what are often inappropriate applications. After months of that, and realizing the cost of that open job on the company, the smart manager decides to be flexible.

Here are examples of how others have negotiated this “on site” work requirement:
For the “long commute” scenario: Instead of moving to the job location, some candidates can work from home on Mondays and Fridays, but travel to the office location on Tuesday through Thursday so that team meetings can be held in person. Typically, a person with this kind of schedule is in a project management role where those “home” days can be spent on phone and Zoom conversations with the team, both internal as well as vendors. The three days at headquarters usually is sufficient for all in-person requirements.

For the very long-distance commute: Certain situations involve quite the miles, but generally happen only for the senior level executive. While a San Francisco to Los Angeles weekly commute might be easily accepted for a certain level of status and job niche, there are some who are able to negotiate cross-country commutes, provided that they have local accommodations arranged for themselves while they are working at headquarters. San Francisco-to-Boston or the reverse has come up several times for my clients. Often it works out to be two weeks in one location and two weeks in another location—plus travel on and off as required.

For the hands-on scientist or engineer, it’s only at this time of negotiation that you’ll find any company flexibility. It might be possible for you to nail down one-day-a-week at home if you discuss it while in the recruitment process. But it’s nearly impossible to institute a change like this after the fact.

The fear of change

I’ve never met a person who didn’t have some heart palpitations at the thought of the stress they would be faced with upon taking a new job. Add extra stress if the position involves a relocation and that added burden for family. The worst situations that I’ve run into over the years are when there are teenagers at home. More than half of the time, parents are unable to make that work out and many recruiters don’t even engage in the conversation about the job if that is determined to be an issue.

You have probably seen a list which psychologists believe to be the “top ten most stressful life situations.” Up there, along with divorce and the death of a loved one, is making a job change. And bubbling along on the top ten list is the stress that comes from moving to a new area. So, if you’re going to consider this double whammy, you’ll need to face your decision with as much emphasis on the facts as possible, keeping your emotions out of the mix.

Instead of using the rational decision-making process which science instills, scientists and engineers often find that their emotional instincts take over. Depending upon the strength of our analytical nature, these emotions will either make the decision for us or color it dramatically.

Don’t let your emotions decide

One way to analyze these situations “sans emotions” is by using the Ben Franklin approach to decision making. One might think that a highly trained technical professional could analyze a situation for its positives and negatives without having to write them down, as Ben did. But I’ve found that if you truly want to separate out the related emotions, you must take the time to write up a list of everything that weighs for and against your decision. The process will bring out knowledge about why you’re leaning one direction or the other. Your decision might still have a significant emotional element, but at least you’ll recognize it.

Take out a pad and pencil and draw a large T, using the entire page. On the left write Negatives, and on the right Positives. Then, start writing down everything that weighs for your decision (the Positives). Do the same with the other side. Ben Franklin used to believe that not until every concern was written down would you understand the true nature of its impact upon you. Ben’s belief was that a certain amount of the fear was released just in the act of writing down those negatives. Then, and only then, could they be analyzed alongside the positives.

Start crossing out equally weighted negatives and positives until you notice where your decision seems to be going. This self-analysis has worked well for me over the years.

In closure

The fear of change can cast its tentacles over individuals or entire companies. For the scientist, the consequence of allowing this fear to take over the decision process is career stagnation. Career stagnation can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. It doesn’t always mean that you are stuck in one job in the same company.
The fear of change, for example, might mean that although you brave a change to a new position in a new company, you remain in some geographical location that restricts you to take positions that may not maximize your potential.

Through all I’ve read, and from my own personal experience, I’ve found that self-analysis using methods like the Ben Franklin approach can make it possible to recognize when the emotions are taking over. And in this recognition comes the power to do something about it!

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David G. Jensen
Contributing Editor
Dave Jensen is CEO and Founder of CTI Executive Search. He can be reached at (928) 274-2266 or via davejensen@careertrax.com; www.careertrax.com.