How to Decide Whether or Not to Leave Your Job, with Becky Farone

Are your Sunday evenings filled with dread over having to go back to another work week because of a toxic or upsetting work environment? If so, it’s time to make a decision on whether to stay or leave. Find Your Dream Job guest Becky Farone is here to share how to know when it’s the right time to leave and when you should try to hang on. Becky says you need to go back to your core values, analyze whether there are any areas that you can control, and check your confidence so that you don’t make a fear-based choice. Your career is your own, so trust yourself to make the right decision. 

About Our Guest:

Becky Farone is a credentialed career coach and the founder of Fireworks Coaching. Becky helps professional women over 40 decide to stay or leave distressing work.

Resources in This Episode:

• Are you stuck in an upsetting work situation and ready to feel energized and peaceful in a job? Let Becky help you; visit her website at Fireworks Coaching.
• From our Sponsor: Find Your Dream Job is brought to you by TopResume.  TopResume has helped more than 400,000 professionals land more interviews and get hired faster. Get a free review of your resume today from one of TopResume’s expert writers. 

Transcript

Find Your Dream Job, Episode 421:

How to Decide Whether or Not to Leave Your Job, with Becky Farone

Airdate: October 18, 2023

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life.

I’m your host, Mac Prichard. I’m also the founder of Mac’s List. It’s a job board in the Pacific Northwest that helps you find a fulfilling career.

Every Wednesday, I talk to a different expert about the tools you need to get the work you want.

Find Your Dream Job is brought to you by TopResume. TopResume has helped more than 400,000 professionals land more interviews and get hired faster.

Get a free review of your resume today.

Go to macslist.org/topresume.

You dread going to your job.

Not only on Sunday but every day.

What should you do next?

Becky Farone is here to talk about how to decide whether or not to leave your job.

She’s a credentialed career coach and the founder of Fireworks Coaching.

Becky helps professional women over 40 decide to stay or leave distressing work.

She joins us from Hillsboro, Oregon.

Well, let’s get started, Becky. What are common reasons to consider when you’re deciding whether or not to leave your job?

Becky Farone:

There really are generally three main reasons, or maybe decision points is a better way to phrase that.

And so, the first one is really to get really clear about, what is the situation you’re in? I know it can be very common for a job to start off just completely full of potential where you’re excited to join the team, the manager, the overall company, and then something changes, and it can be slow, and you may not be fully aware of what even happened. So, really, the first thing to consider is to get clear about the situation that you’re in. What changed?

I would say the second is to really beef up your confidence. So, as things maybe potentially deteriorate, you can start really doubting yourself. Right? Maybe you make up some stories about, oh, I’m causing this, or I’m doing a bad job. None of those things could be true. And so, I work with people to really help make sure that their own confidence in themselves is strong.

So, for example, one thing that you can do is an exercise where you ask family and friends to really talk about what are your strengths. And what are the value, the different ways that you bring to your work that people really appreciate? It could be in your home life. It could be in past organizations or volunteer experiences, and that would really help you remind yourself of who you are, separate from what could be going on in your current job situation.

And then the third thing is really making a good decision. It’s so tempting when things feel terrible, and you’re so stressed to just want to escape. We all do this. That’s a very human reaction. But what if you had a little more confidence, and strength, and grounding to make a really well-thought-out decision? That gives you more time to see, well, maybe there is something to save in the situation I’m in. Maybe I could make some small changes that would really make a difference.

And if that’s not the case, after you’ve thought about it, then making a decision to go somewhere else, it doesn’t have to be an urgent rush. You can take your time and really find the next thing that is gonna be a better fit. So it’s all about feeling really strong in who you are and resolving your own stress to make a good decision.

Mac Prichard:

Okay, well, those are the three steps I know you take your clients through when they’re trying to decide whether or not to leave, and I want to dig into each of those three parts later in the conversation.

Going back to why people leave, you said there’s a change in the situation, and one thing I’ve heard, Becky, and I know you have as well- it’s quite common. It’s often said that people don’t quit jobs. They quit bosses. Has this been your experience in coaching the clients you serve?

Becky Farone:

Absolutely. I’ve had conversations just this week with probably two out of the three clients that I spoke with this week. That is exactly what happened. They based their decision to join a company and a new role based on a particular hiring manager that they really connected with, and then either before they arrived in the new job, that person left or shortly thereafter. It’s a little disturbing how frequently this happens. It’s part of the big change that companies are going through right now. So I would say it’s probably one of the top reasons that people are in a distressing job situation.

Mac Prichard:

And is it a deal breaker, Becky? Is there no solution if you find yourself in that situation where you’re not happy with a boss, and perhaps it’s even a new boss? What’s been your experience in coaching people?

Becky Farone:

It probably depends on the culture and the structure of the organization. So, I advise people to see, is it an option to move to another team. A lot of companies maybe don’t want you to do that until you’ve been at the job for a certain period of time. So, that may or may not be an option.

Or another option could be really getting to know this new manager, if there is one, and trying to reestablish that relationship you thought you were beginning with the person you had selected.

Another option is, and some of these you can do simultaneously- who are other people in the company that you can connect with either in a sort of mentor or guiding way or a supportive colleague? And sometimes, companies don’t even fill that role for a number of months. So you might not even have a manager. Where can you get support you need while you’re deciding if it is a dealbreaker, Mac?

Mac Prichard:

You mentioned length of service. Often, people might think they need to stay in a job that they don’t enjoy anymore because they’ve only been there for maybe a year, year and a half, and they worry that there’s an expectation that you need to stay in a position for a while. What would you say to someone who’s in that situation, Becky?

Becky Farone:

I would say several things. One is, who is giving you that expectation? Is it yourself? Is your family? Is it an assumption that you’re making? Is it the company? Maybe a lot of people have signing bonuses, for example, that you won’t get or some other monetary agreement that you won’t get until you stay for a certain period of time, and a lot of this comes down to self-authority.

So, who cares? This is me saying this after being in the work world for a while. If you think it’s a reputation thing, there’s so many other things going on in the world, and people aren’t really paying attention to how long you’ve stayed at a company. So that’s one element.

So, the next time you go to apply for a job, that recruiter has a goal, which is to make their boss happy. They’re not gonna overly be concerned about how long you’ve been in a job because that’s not how things are in 2023. There’s an exception to what I’m saying, though, which is a lot of folks are here on Visas.

So, you may not have this complete choice to either push back against a societal expectation or not because they literally couldn’t stay in the country without a certain job Visa. So, that is a different situation, and with those kinds of people, I really work with them to make the best of where they are until the legal aspects can be worked out for something new.

Mac Prichard:

Okay, let’s go back to your opening remarks, and you laid out that wonderful three-part process that you take people through in deciding whether or not to leave a job.

And the first step you said is to get clear about the situation that you’re in. Tell us more about what. What steps do you recommend to your clients to get clarity about their situation?

Becky Farone:

Great question. The first thing I like to do with people is walk through a timeline. We can do this verbally. I can have them get a giant piece of paper or a whiteboard at home, and from the very beginning, from when they were at first thinking about this job, maybe a friend referred them into the company. What was exciting about that? What was meeting their needs? And really go through, depending on how long they’ve been at that company and that job, either week by week or month by month, and really note down, what are the highs and what are the lows, and what changed?

So, for example, for one of my clients, she’d been at a company for a number of years, and then her company was acquired. So that was a very abrupt change. And so, that really changed how she felt about the job. Maybe her timeline wasn’t as hard to figure out.

Maybe someone else, they’ve only been there six months, everything is still quite new, but in that time, maybe their manager left, maybe they got another manager, maybe they had no manager. I mentioned this a little bit earlier, or their job changed in maybe some subtle ways that weren’t obvious in the moment. So, putting that down on paper really makes it more concrete and objective, and not something that a person has to take so personally.

Mac Prichard:

What do you do with that information? You go through that process. You note these changes. You’ve got this; maybe you’re seeing things that weren’t apparent before. What happens next?

Becky Farone:

Sure, one of the first exercises I do with everybody in my coaching practice is we really identify their core values. The top three to five that we all kind of know, but they tend to be more subtle, even to ourselves.

For example, someone might really value autonomy, and perhaps their job changed so that they had to do eight more steps, for example, until their work could be submitted. Maybe there’s more oversight, and that wasn’t something that was an agreement in the beginning.

So, these are things that, if we get really clear on what your values are, then you can figure out, so what percentage of the top things I really need to be true here are actually being met? And typically, that number has gone down quite a bit from the beginning of this job experience.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s take a break, Becky, and when we come back, I want to talk more about the other steps in your three-step process for figuring out whether or not to decide to leave your job. So, stay with us. When we return, Becky Farone will continue to share her advice on how to decide whether or not to leave your job.

Whether or not you’re thinking about leaving your job, it’s always a good idea to keep your resume up to date.

Go to macslist.org/topresume.

One of the professional writers at TopResume will review your resume for free.

Go to macslist.org/topresume.

Learn how you can update your resume yourself.

Or hire TopResume to do it for you.

Go to macslist.org/topresume.

Now, let’s get back to the show.

We’re back in the Mac’s List studio. I’m talking with Becky Farone.

She’s a credentialed career coach and the founder of Fireworks Coaching.

Becky helps professional women over 40 decide to stay or leave distressing work.

She joins us from Hillsboro, Oregon.

Now, Becky, before the break, we were talking about how to decide whether or not to leave your job, and at the start of our conversation, you outlined three steps you recommend everybody take before making this choice, and the first one was to get clarity about the situation that you’re in, and you walked us through some of the steps you take your clients through to do that.

The second recommended step in your process is to, and you mentioned this as well in your opening, is to get your confidence strong. Why is it important, Becky, to do that and to be confident when you’re making this choice?

Becky Farone:

So you can make a good choice versus a fear-based choice or a running away choice. A lot of times, people in distressing work situations, they’re just so stressed. They’re waking up at three in the morning, and they’re maybe revisiting things they said in a meeting or wondering what’s gonna happen next, when the next shoe might fall. Maybe there’s another reorg, and we just had one a month ago.

So, the more confident that you can get in who you are, what you bring to the table, and what part of the situation is or is not a result of anything you did, then the better decision you can make about if this is salvageable or if you need to go somewhere else.

Mac Prichard:

One of the steps you mentioned in the first segment to get that confidence is to go out and talk to people who know you well and ask them questions about your strengths. What are other steps you recommend to get that confidence?

Becky Farone:

There’s something called saboteurs or gremlins that we all have in our minds. Those are the voices that tell us we’re fat, or we suck, or we didn’t do enough today, or go to the gym, and I am trained in something called positive intelligence, which is a specific coaching technique to help people identify what these saboteurs are, who they are. And there’s actually a book of this same name called Positive Intelligence, and you can take a saboteur assessment, and you can also measure what your current level of saboteur thinking is versus something called sage thinking.

And so I have my clients take these assessments. We go through them together. For example, a saboteur name might be controller, or pleaser, or hyper-vigilant. And then, I help my clients learn how to talk back. There are specific skills for if you bring out your sage mind that really helps do that.

And so, just one or two examples, one of the sage powers is empathy. How can you have empathy for yourself in this really distressing work situation? Or when you feel calmer, what are some innovative ways that you can think about what’s going on? And when you’re stressed and really in the thrall of the saboteurs, that mental energy is just not available. So, I help my clients almost right their ship, as it were.

Mac Prichard:

How long does it typically take to go through a process like this? You reach out to people, get a sense of what your strengths are. You identify these saboteurs, and you start addressing that. Is this something that can happen in a few weeks? Does it take several months?

Becky Farone:

I have a structure, or in other words, a package set up that is a ten-session coaching intensive, and we already talked about those three phases, and some people might go through them faster or slower. Some people do often come to a decision before the full ten weeks, in which case, we could repurpose those sessions for something else. But that is a general sense of how long it might take.

I also give my clients the option to either meet every week, or every two weeks, or once a month. People are busy, and they may or may not have the mental fortitude to really tackle this all at once. So, I give people choices.

Mac Prichard:

And for people who might not have the opportunity to work with a coach like you, are the steps you’ve outlined things that they can do on their own?

Becky Farone:

Much of it, yes. Absolutely. So, particularly, the thing that’s available to anyone publicly and for free is the Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment, as well as the, it’s called the PQ Quotient, and, of course, anyone can get the book and read about that.

It is helpful to have someone to bounce the ideas off. I will tell you that as much as we might intellectually know that our thoughts can really get in our way like this, these saboteur thoughts, it’s so easy to forget when you’re in the middle of it. That’s where a coach or trusted family friend can really come in handy and say, remember this thing you learned? It’s happening now. And then there’s other tools that I use as well that anyone who wants to check out my website can definitely try on their own if they want to.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. Now, the third and final step in the process that you use for deciding whether or not to leave your job is to make a decision. What stops people from making a decision, especially those who’ve been doing the kind of reflection you recommend?

Becky Farone:

Typically, money and effort. So, maybe someone is making a great salary at this job that is causing so much stress. So, it could be a really scary thought to think about: if I leave, will I be left with no money? Or the effort part could be, oh, I have to go put in all that same effort for finding the right role, the new resume, the interview preparation, the decision making. It’s exhausting, particularly if you’re in that stressful moment.

What I help people do is make some small decisions before they make a big decision. And some of those small decisions could be, we talk about maybe three to five potential other outcomes, and I have people do some writing exercises about what would these other potential selves or potential jobs look or feel like. How closely would they match their values? Or financial needs? Or lifestyle needs? So, it’s a way of trying on some decisions before making a final one.

Mac Prichard:

When you go through that process, in the end, you make a decision. How can you be sure it’s the right one?

Becky Farone:

Part of me wants to say you can’t, but that’s not totally true either. I think we know when we blend the intellectual work that we’ve worked on and our gut instinct if something feels right or not. I know from my clients, I had someone who just felt like it was the absolute right thing for her to leave without having another job, and that decision, when I talked to her six weeks later, I said, “Does it still feel like the right decision?” and she said, absolutely.

It’s a combination of you know when you know, and you’ve already done the intellectual analysis, and now your gut is chiming in in agreement.

Mac Prichard:

So, there are two ways you could go. You could stay, or you could leave. If you stay, what’s gonna be different? And how can you get clear about what you want to be different? And make sure it happens?

Becky Farone:

The first part is reducing your stress and figuring out what actually is in your control. So, the typical stress thing could be, what could you do to improve your sleep? Maybe you try meditating. What are things that will really calm your mind?

Other ideas are: what is actually in your control in your job that you might have overlooked? Right? Maybe there’s something that you really love doing that no one’s asked you to do yet that’s gonna give you more day-to-day job satisfaction.

Maybe you facilitate the team meeting every other week, for example, and really kind of step up and actually connect yourself more to what’s going on versus retreating. That’s something that can really help. You don’t have to love it. It doesn’t have to be forever. But if you’re more in the arena, as Brené Brown says, it’s gonna give you more information about what could possibly work.

Mac Prichard:

And typically, if you decide to leave, what happens next? Do you give notice and then start a job search? Do you stay and do a stealth job search? What advice do you have for people who are trying to sort that out?

Becky Farone:

Probably a big picture piece of advice is everyone should always be keeping sharp on career searching things.

So, maybe the first thing you do when you get a new job, maybe even before anything stressful has happened, you update your resume. How can you keep yourself ready for the next thing while still in the current thing?

Some people, it’s gonna depend on the person, Mac, if they feel comfortable looking for something or if they have the financial reserves to leave in that moment. It’ll probably be something that a person might discuss with their family.

But definitely keeping in touch with your network, regardless of whether you’re looking for a new job or not. “Hey, I found this article, Mary. I thought you’d be interested in it.” That really sets up better for when you are really in a more urgent state of need.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. It’s been a wonderful conversation, Becky. Now, tell us, what’s next for you?

Becky Farone:

What’s next for me is working with more professional women over forty who are finding themselves in this distressing work situation. I’m starting to create a group program on the same topic so that more people have access to fulfilling these needs at a lower price point, and I’m also attending some conferences and doing more networking in the area, and I hope to meet some of you in person.

Mac Prichard:

Well, I know listeners can learn more about you and your work, Becky, by visiting your website, fireworkscoaching.com. We’ll be sure to include that link in the show notes and the website article and that you also invite listeners to connect with you on LinkedIn, and as always, I hope they’ll mention they heard you on Find Your Dream Job if they do reach out to you there.

Now, Becky, given all of the great advice you’ve shared today, what’s the one thing you want a listener to remember about how to decide whether or not to leave your job?

Becky Farone:

Own your own story. You’re the only one that gets to decide if your career is a success or a failure, and whatever’s happening right now, it’s not fully who you are, and it doesn’t mean that’s who you’re gonna be in the future. It is a moment in time.

Mac Prichard:

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