[발췌] mid-career employees, mid-career executives

※ 발췌 (excerpts):

출처 1: Cosmopolitan Managers: Executive Development that Works (Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño 지음. Springer, 2016)
자료: 구글도서


3.3 Mid-Career: Crisis Time?

As the name suggests, the mid-career crisis is a fairly common event among executives between the ages of 40 and 55, affecting the married, divorced, those with children, and regardless of whether they have enjoyed professional successes, how much money they have made, or their nationality.

Studies show that between these ages, many people's happiness experiences a U-shaped curve: they enter a crisis that seems to show no sign of bottoming out; but eventually it does, and they start to feel better, typically emerging from the crisis in their mid-fifties.[주]7

It is no secret that mid-career is often associated with crisis, rupture, and change. Mid-carrer employees ae more likely to question the meaning of the work, the value of their company's mission, their job autonomy, their contributions, and their relationships. Companies need to be aware of the warning signs. "Leaders miskakenly tend to leave mid-career personnel alone to work as they normally do," writes Australian educationalists Athena Vongalis-Macrow.[주]8

Contrary to what most people making their way through a mid-career crisis think, the reasons for their predicament are not necessarily to do with their job, but are istead often the result of unavoidable biological factors. In fact, studies show that even our cousins the primates go through a similar phase. That said, we shouldn't rule out the impact of the stress generated by factors such as family responsibilities, the dealth of parents, the feeling that professional expectations haven't been met, the suspicion that their peers are doing better than them, or simply the big existential question as to whether "this" was what they really wanted.

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From an employer's perspective, mid-career executives are one of the most important talent sources. They have had their learning curves and in general are more productive than their younger colleagues, while also having built up a solid core of knowledge and a large network that can make a major contribution to the business. At the same time, their salaries are higher than new signings, and promoting them can be held back by bottlenecks. Little wonder that the majority of downsizing measures in companies hit mid-carrer exec hardest.

To retain mid-career executives, as well as to further develop their talent, many experts recommend that hurman resources departments act on three fronts: ( ... ... )



출처 2: Escape the Mid-Career Doldrums: What to do Next When You're Bored, Burned Out, Retired or Fired (Marcia L. Worthing, Charles A. Buck 지음. John Wiley & Sons, 2011)
자료: 구글도서

While many career books exist, few focus on the challenges and opportunities facing mid-career professionals toda. Given the number of mid-careerists in the workforce and their growing need for advice, we decided to embark on this project. We are excited about the possibilities for people who have been working for 20 or more years, and we want to share what we've learned about how to capitalize on these possibilies--how to exit from jobs, careers, retirement, or workstyles that have gone stale and find fresh and fulfilling options.

This book evolved, as many things do, over lunch. ( ... ) Many of the professionals we were seeing in our coaching practices were unhappy with or unmotivated by their work; however, some of them had seized opportunities, revivied their careers, or reinvented their professional lives. Why had this latter group thrived while the former group was struggling? ( ... )

Both of us worked with a lot of people who had been fired from jobs (often as part of a corporate downsizing) or who were unhappily retired. We also had numerous clients who were bored or burned out by their jobs and careers. And, we noted the existence of many permutations of a condition we started calling Bored, Burned out, Retired, or Fired (BBRF). Some of our clients were bored by a job they had been doing too long, and their lack of interest caused them to be fired. Others burned out from high stress level in their workplace, and they chose to retire prematurely. Still others continued to work at jobs that bored them or caused them to be stressed out, yet they didn't look at other options because they were gripped by inertia.

What excited us, though, were the ways some mid-career professionals rebounded from BBRF doldrums. They managed to use their experiences as a catalyst for change, learning, and growth. Even people who were fired from jobs they like eventually said that being fired was the best thing that ever happend to them. After the initial shock wore off and they moved past their disappointment and anger, they discovered that they could capitalize on their experience and expertise in new ways. For instance, some found that losing a job caused them to assess their careers honestly, and helped them understand that their work passions resided elsewhere.

When we talked about these subjects during lunch, we realized we had something to offer mid-career professionals. Actually, we found we had a number of things to offer: inspiring and instructive stories about a wide range of people who had experienced BBRF; advice based on years of working with mid-career crises and opportunities. We feel these insights will be particularly useful for readers, since a great deal of misinformation and misconceptions exist about what takes place at mid-career. We want to communicate that being downsized at age 55 doesn't have to be the end of a career; that some professionals make more money and find greater satisfaction in their second or third careers; that retirement doesn't have to be a time of sitting around the house, but could combine fulfillig part-time work with meaningful volunteer activities.

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Though the following pages will make relatively few mentins of our own work experiences, we decided it was only fair to communicate our backgrounds as well as the changes that took place in our lives at mid-career. We hope this provides us with some credibility in your eyes and also conveys that this topic we understand personally as well as professinally. With this intent in mind, here are our stories.

I spent the first 27 years of my career at Avon Products in New York, retiring in 1998 as Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Affairs. ( ... ... ) As of this writing, I am making a third major change: returning to the Columbia School of Social Work as a full-time student. Having spent my entire career in business, becoming a social worker may seem like a stretch, but it's the type of stretch that many mid-career professinals are making. ( ... ... )

My first significant job was at advertising agency DDB starting out in what was then called the Personal Department, and staying there for more than 10 years in Human Resources, becoming a vice president at age 30 and eventually assuming responsibility for all account services administration. It was good, rewarding job at a major advertising agency, but eventually I became bored. ( ... ... ) a small marketing consulting firm. ( ... ... ) an attractive offer to become the director of administrative services for BBDO agency. ( ... ) I was there for 6 years, and again bored as I managed myself out of having much to do. ( ... ) What I did was start a recruiting and coaching business, and though I enjoyed 15 mostly successfuly years, I reached the point at mid-career where I wanted more. ( ... ... ) This time, I was passionate about coaching other people like myself who were struggling with transition challenges, especially mid-career executives who were asking themselves, "What's next?"

The major theme of my story is that we receive numerous second chances in our careers, and to capitalize on them requires more than blind luck. I care deeply about helping others make the most of their second chances at mid-career, and this book gives me a way to communicate what I've learned both as a coach and as a repeat second-chancer.

( ... ) Many mid-career professionals become stuck. Fired or retired, bored or burned out, they believe that their careers are essentially over (even if they're still working). They become defeatist and fatalistic or cynical and angry, but the end result is inertia. In other words, they lack the initiative and energy to leave a job they dislike or look for a new career. They feel like they're in limbo and don't know how to get out or lack the drive to do so.

If this describes your state, this book should energize you in a number of different ways. It offers you information and advice that should help you:

 - Become aware if something isn't right. Inertia ( ... ) is common at mid-career. Inertia is frequently rationalized away by people suffering from boredom and burnout. They tell themselves that "it's only a day job," "it's the price you pay to make it in corporate America," and "everyone hates his job." ( ... ... )

( ... ... ) At age 49, she started feeling burned out, and the feeling didn't go away over the next 6 months. In fact, work that she used to be excited about seemed mundane, and she lacked her usual energy and commitment. She could have stayed at the firm forever, but she recognized that staying would mean being stuck in a place that no longer suited her. ( ... ) [Her boss and she] had a good discussion, at the end of which they agreed on a mutual termination, which was a way for her to resign but also receive a small severance package.


출처 3: Quit Your Job: A midlife career shift can be good for cognition, well-being, and even longevity (The Atlantic, Apr 2016)

Perhaps you are one of the lucky ones. Perhaps you have reached your 40s, 50s,or 60s blissfully happy in your job. You are engaged, fulfilled, and challenged. Your work draws on your natural talents and passions. If so, feel free to skip this article.

The rest of us, however, may be experienceing, if not a mid-career crisis, at least mid-career ennui. According to Gallup pollseters, only one-third of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are engaged by their work. ( ... ) about half of Boomer and Gen X employees fall in a second category that Gallup characterizes as "not engaged." As Harter puts it, "They show up; they get their paycheck and do the minimum required." And one out of five belongs in the category Gallup calls "actively disengaged," which Harter describes as "a pretty desperate state." This situation exacts a toll on more than just productivity: Gallup has found that, compared with engaged employees, actively disengaged workers of all ages far likelier to report stress and physical pain. They have higher cortisol levels and blood pressure, and they are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or to call in sick.

( ... ... ) the U-shaped happiness curve, a phenomenon characterized by the economists Andrew J. Oswald and David G. Blanchflower. As they noted, even after controlling for differences in wealth, education, and location, people’s general contentment hits a low point in their 40s before rebounding in their 50s. Oswald and other scholars have found that our job satisfaction suffers a parallel dip in mid-career, only to swoop upward in our 50s and 60s.

Some researchers believe that the midlife slump is driven by a sense of dashed expectations. According to Hannes Schwandt, an economist at the University of Zurich, as young people, we overestimate our future happiness, and so we feel disappointed as life goes on. But as we approach 60, we start underestimating our future happiness, and then are pleasantly surprised by reality. We also seem to don rose-colored glasses later in life: Brain studies suggest that as we age, we disregard negative images and focus on the positive.

( ... ... ) Meik Wiking, the institute’s CEO, notes that Aristotle recognized the close connection between happiness and a sense of purpose. The good life—what the philosopher called eudaimonia—is not an easy life, but rather one filled with meaning and striving toward a goal. “We need a sense of purpose,” Wiking says.

This need, moreover, appears to grow at midlife. As the developmental psychologist Erik H. Erikson observed, at some point in middle age a person begins to shift from investing inward—building a career, raising a family, buying a house, accumulating wealth and prestige—to investing outward and creating a legacy.

A growing “encore movement” is predicated on these ideas, and on the belief that purpose can propel a person through mid-career doldrums. Groups like Encore.org, for example, connect middle-aged and older people with work that promotes the social good; Harvard and Stanford have launched programs that help experienced professionals plot the course to their next calling.

“When people get to their mid-career phase, they want to give back and do something meaningful,” says Philip A. Pizzo, the director of Stanford’s program, the Distinguished Careers Institute. This is sometimes easier said than done, however. “People become anxious and just start doing things that are not connected or not meaningful,” he says—joining a committee here, volunteering there—“just to feel like they are contributing.”