Do you struggle with moving on?

Have you been unhappy in your job for a long time but somehow can’t quite bring yourself to leave? Possibly stuck in a personal relationship that you know is broken but you’re still hanging in there? Or can’t summon the courage to have a difficult conversation with a colleague in case the relationship becomes so dysfunctional you can’t work with them any longer, or you’re ostracised by other colleagues?

I’ve been there. I’ve stayed in jobs where I spent quite possibly three or four years moaning about how unhappy, unfulfilled, unappreciated, bored I was. I definitely stayed in a marriage that was well past its sell-by date before I found a way to end it. I mean by about seven or eight years. I’m nothing if not a ‘hang in there because the alternative is too scary’ kind of person.

Loyalty is an excellent trait. So is not giving up at the first hurdle. Stubbornness can see you through enormous obstacles and out the other side to successes you couldn’t have dreamt of.

But fear - of failure, being alone, upsetting someone else - is not a good way to make big life decisions.

Of course, we don’t all do it like this. Some people are out of there at the first sign of trouble. No questions, no excuses, just gone. Decisive, no nonsense, possibly too hasty?

Which are you? And why are we like it?

Psychologists put this down, at least in part, to our Attachment Style. In other words, the relationships we had with our earliest care givers (usually but not always parents) influence the way we behave in relationships for the rest of our lives. If we couldn’t rely on our care givers to reliably meet our needs, or if they were ‘critical parents’ or just a bit neglectful or absent, it can set the pattern for how we form, and end, relationships.

Did you feel unconditionally loved, even when you behaved badly? Did your parents withhold praise in case it made you big-headed or complacent? Was your parents' affection dependent on how hard you worked and the grades you got at school? (This is the classic ‘I got 98% in an exam and my dad wanted to know why I hadn’t got 100%' parenting approach that often gets recounted to me in coaching sessions - if you’re a driven high-achiever, this might be where it comes from!)

Having spent a lot of time working through this stuff for myself, I now understand where my tendency to hang on long beyond the point where it makes any sense comes from, whether it’s a job or a personal relationship. I would constantly worry that I wasn’t good enough for anyone else to want me, that if this relationship broke down, I’d never find another one, that I couldn’t possibly leave this job because the next one would surely be worse. Objectively, of course, these things are almost never true. I did find love again, and I have moved from one job to another perfectly successfully, often to my great benefit. I’ve had to work hard to learn that people won’t run a mile if I hold a contrary opinion to them and it’s okay to say I don’t want to go to that party or no, that isn’t the right decision for this team. In fact, I have found to my delight that people respond well to knowing what I will and won’t put up with and often have a great deal more respect for me when I say no to something, or hold my ground on a point of principle, than if I vacillated with the wind and was unclear or unpredictable.

So it’s worth spending a bit of time thinking about how your early experiences might have made you feel and how they show up today in your life. Especially if you’re a senior leader, you need to avoid inflicting your early conditioning on the people who work for you. They deserve a leader who can set aside their own triggers and give a team what it actually needs to function well.

If you’d like some help with that, drop me a message and let’s have a chat. I guarantee the chat itself will be interesting, even if you decide I’m not the right person for you.