Great at Your Job? Change Before it's too Late!

During a period of high unemployment and low job security, you might think it's crazy to change your job because you're too good at what you do. However, if you're so good that you are bored, it may be time for a career change. In general, most people have a strong desire to make a significant shift in their careers (more than a promotion in the same function) about every seven years. Ignoring this desire for change in order to play it safe can be even riskier as it can lead to career burnout.

If you are great at your job and love it, keep doing what you're doing. But if you are great at your job and increasingly bored, read on!

Start by asking yourself the following questions:

1. How steep is my learning curve? When I ask people to tell me about the most exciting time in their careers, they inevitably point to a time when they were on a steep and challenging learning curvea time when they were fixing the plane while flying it. Humans are learning machines. If you are both excellent at and too comfortable in your job, a flat learning curve may be leaving you unfulfilled. Even getting a promotion that increases your responsibility, both in scope and complexity, may not satisfy because it does not necessarily mean you will be facing completely new challenges requiring new skills. For example, one of my coaching clients came to realize that as she was promoted from product group manager to director to senior director, she received increased prestige, compensation and larger profit and loss responsibility, but she came to feel she was fundamentally doing more of the same just at a greater scale.
2. Is the passion still there? For 20 years in my own career, I loved marketing and couldn't get enough of it. I remember how excited I was to land my first brand management job and how exciting it was to be taking on new marketing challenges at different organizations. Eventually, I became a marketing executive as well as an adjunct marketing faculty member for a top MBA program. Then one day, it hit me; I was no longer passionate about marketing. Love turned to like. My new passion was leadership development and change. At first, it was hard to acknowledge the signs because my entire identity was wrapped up in being a marketer. Had I continued to ignore my new passion, I am certain that today I would be experiencing a severe case of career burnout. It is important to recognize that even with a career we once loved, that was then, this is now.  
3. Am I using my creativity?  Like humans thrive on learning, they thrive on being creative. When you have mastered work activities and they become repetitive, your creative drive may be suppressed. One of my coaching clients is an executive who loved strategic planning. However, he now dreads it because at his company the planning process is fundamentally the same from year to year. Even though challenges facing the business have never been greater, he has strong feelings of been there, done that.  Another coaching client, a management consultant, feels like she is just walking through the motions because, in her eyes, the next five engagements have blurred together to be just a variation of the previous five. When what should be engaging isn't, it may be time to dive into a completely new set of challenges and take on a higher level of risk.
4. Am I fulfilling my mission? Sooner or later people ask themselves what difference they are making in the world. And it is critical to reflect on this and get a handle one one's personal mission. If what you are doing is not aligned with how you are meant to make a difference, with time, your regrets will only get bigger. A wise friend once told me, If we don't hear the wake-up call when we are 40, then it hits us with a vengeance when we are 50. The earlier we make changes that create greater alignment with our mission, the more time we will have to make progress toward making the impact we want to achieve in the world.
5. Am I trapped by other peoples' expectations? Identity and career are tightly interwoven. It is the rare person who doesn't privately ask themselves, What will other people think? Our social circles can be highly tied to whether we are an accountant, lawyer, human resource professional or engineer. Our identity can also be tied to the organization we work for. We take pride in being associated with a top company or firm. Even our families can be a source of expectations. A highly successful attorney and her family's main breadwinner, dreamt of starting her own business. She never pursued her dream because she knew her husband took great pride in her accomplishments as a lawyer. The family pressure doubled when she mentioned her ambitions to her kids, who pleaded, But Mommy, does that mean you won't be a lawyer anymore?  Even though the pressure can be great, we must pay attention to our own internal compass regardless of what others think, because the calling will only get stronger.

What this boils down to is can you envision being on your current path two years, five years or 10 years from now? If the thought of still doing what you are doing now several years from now fills you with a sense of dread, it's time to start working on changing your career. The sooner you can recognize that it is time for a change, the more time you will have to research, plan and build the skills needed to make your change unfold successfully. Ironically, many clients that come to me thinking they need to leave their organizations because it is time for a change, end up staying in their organizations but in new roles. Once they can articulate what they want in their next career, they find that it can be achieved in the organization where they are currently working.

In life, if we wait for conditions to be perfect to take a risk, chances are we will never take it. As the saying goes, the only thing you live to regret are the risks you didn't take. Change can be less imposing if we simply start moving forward in small ways. Begin by taking even small steps toward your career shift such as exploring possibilities, engaging a career coach, or enrolling in a relevant class, and you will start to feel a sense of a sense of progression, an increase in positive energy and excitement about your future.

Curt Wang is executive coach and founder of Make the Leap! Coaching. For more information, visit www.maketheleapcoaching.com.