Each quarter I post a review of a leadership/motivational book I recommend to colleagues and friends. Some may be old favorites, others are hot off the press. I am always open to suggestions for books to review. If you have a favorite you'd like to share with others, please contact me.

BACK IN CONTROL
How to Stay Sane, Productive and Inspired in Your Career Transition

By Diane Grimard Wilson
(Review by Jerilyn Willin)

Ever try holding a ping pong ball under water? With concentration and focus it’s easy. However, let your attention wander and the ball pops to the surface. This is what can happen with your emotions, says author Diane Grimard Wilson, if they are not given the attention they deserve during career transition.

Back In Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive And Inspired In Your Career Transition focuses on a crucial tool that often takes a back seat to job search externals, yet is the foundation on which successful transitions are built---our inner selves.

Most people do not expect the hidden psychological challenges career change can bring. Most books about career transition deal with the externals of the job search: resumes, cover letters, and networking techniques. Back in Control is an easy, ten-chapter read offering practical ideas, tips and insights to increase emotional balance, confidence, and productivity during a chaotic time.

Grimard Wilson believes career transition is a learning process. She uses “voices of real people” to help the reader connect with and better understand what may be going on in their own hearts and minds. For example, she gives a name to what many have experienced when asked in an interview about a long past project and stumble to remember the particulars: “career amnesia”. We need to review our resume as if we were interviewing ourselves.

Career change is surrounded by misconception. Grimard Wilson identifies four truths:

• Most who experience career loss move through Kubler Ross’s stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance.
• There are predictable phases in career transition which parallel Bridges work on change: endings, the neutral zone, new beginnings.
• Adults continue to grow and change.
• Be smart about the external side of the job search. Identify what you have to offer, know where you’d like to work, research what potential employers are looking for and sell yourself.

In this last truth, the mental and emotional underpinnings of career change are critical. Addressing them will increase confidence and control.

Back in Control is rich with rituals and resources to keep the reader on track during the transition journey. Included are chapters on behavioral styles, patterns of thinking, strengthening the connection to intuition, and keeping focused.

Because we see the world and act in it according to our own personal paradigms and perceptions, behavior style can affect the external components of career transition:  interviewing, networking and relationship building.

Using the DISC model, Grimard Wilson examines each style in terms of strengths and barriers. Readers are directed to certain chapters based on their identified style.

While we endeavor to be logical, during transition one’s mind can become an “undisciplined little monkey”—drowning the intuitive self with endless mind-chatter and creating troublesome thought patterns. Patterns include:

• Lack of identity:  We connect identity to our work. When we lose or leave a job, identity goes with it.
• Regret:  Focusing on “shoulds” which keep us from exploring what we’d really like to do.
• Negative self-talk:  “I’m not good enough.” “I’m too old.”

Career transition not only carries its own trauma, it can resurface unfinished business in other areas of our lives. Hence the aforementioned “Ping Pong Ball Effect.” The author examines emotions that can surface and gives simple, yet effective ideas on how to deal with them. One of my favorites was “distract the baby.” Allow yourself something one might offer to help a despairing child. Nap? Snack? Movie? Giving yourself a reprieve can allow a return to task with a better frame of mind.

A focus on internal work improves the results of external work, but does not remove it from the critical to-do list in finding new work. The “real people” share what helped them stay focused when the traditional structure of going to work was no long there. Some suggestions:

• Make a list on Sunday of three things to accomplish in the coming week.
• Schedule something to get you up and out on Monday morning.
• Summarize at the end of the day to hold yourself accountable
• Keep in mind the WHY of your job change.

Individuals who have long been “square pegs in round holes” need time to reclaim pieces of themselves and skills they folded inside to fit in the hole. Allow yourself that time.

Career transition is not something to be done in isolation. Grimard Wilson encourages readers to stay connected in positive relationships and ask for what they need. Every career transition has different needs.

Back in Control acknowledges and addresses the fear, uncertainty and most of all, the inner strength we all experience during life’s changes. It is a valuable read for those in career transition. It can also be a rich resource to a broader audience. The concepts, resources, and strategies it offers can be applied to help navigate transitions of all sorts.

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