Dealing with the Inevitable in Career (and Life)!

You meet with your destiny on the road you took to avoid it!

I do not know if some famous person concocted this above quote, but if they did not, I now have. Why do I think that this is an important concept that professionalsand everyone elsemust acknowledge as a fact of life? After having worked with over 6,000 clients globally and having myself dealt with my careers ups and downs in the past, I have come to realize that those who understand the importance of accepting how a set of given circumstances can create an inevitable outcome, avoiding that inevitability becomes almost impossible by taking another road.

By making this statement I am not suggesting that one must quickly surrender to the inevitability of an outcome that a person is facing, but I am suggesting that early acknowledgement of the problem and analyzing the worst-case scenario can help you better decide if continued expenditure of efforts, emotional energy, and stress associated with the struggle are worth the trouble. I am also not suggesting that waiving a white flag of surrender at the first sign of trouble is the way to go. On the other hand, I am suggesting that going through the process of remedying a situation is a good learning experience; this is, indeed, one of the lifes learnings or rewards! Such encounters is what makes you wiser as you go through life. However, if one prepares to deal with the unavoidable even after giving their best efforts to deal with it then the learning from that experience is a good investment of time and energy.

As a career and life coach I have encountered many examples of situations that resulted in clients learning that dealing with an out-of-control, deteriorating situation that has reached a tipping point requires knowing when to accept the inevitable and make room for Plan B.

Let me give you two examples that I encounter often in my career coaching:

Case-I: Dealing with the PIP

At any given time I have about one percent of my client pool headed for or dealing with a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). A PIP is a last resort a company adopts to remove an errant employee because of their job performance. The early signals for being put on a PIP are inescapable for most professionals. They first start with verbal feedback from your boss. Soon the frequency of these feedback sessions increases. Then comes the Annual Performance Review (APR), where you are surprised to find yourself rated below your performance from the last years APR. On a scale of 1-5, where 5 is a top performer, you have slipped from a 3.5 to a 2.5. Normally, a rating of 2 requires performance improvement.

Those who are in denial of the course of events in such a case convince themselves that going from 2.5 to a 3 is not that big a deal and by putting in extra work they can engineer their recovery. What they do not realize is that after their feedback sessions that they are already putting in all the extra hours they can in their work.

As they march out of their bosss office determined to turn this around for themselves, they do not realize that they are already headed for the PIP as the next step in the process.

Soon they are meting with their boss and their HR representative discussing their PIP. All the while, they are working harder than ever, often making even more mistakes in their deliverables, working under stressful conditions, trying to salvage their job. In my coaching I must have dealt with dozens of PIPs, and, in all cases, it resulted in clients terminations shortly after each PIP was formalized. Only in one case we were able to avoid the impending PIP, after which her boss was transferred to another department, and she was able to do well with her new boss.

Case-II: A Bad Hire

Despite all the job interviews and candidate screening, bad hires slip through. Some people have the ability to BS well during interviews. If the reference checks are not done diligently by asking the right questions to the right references a bad hire becomes inevitable.

Many of my boss clients have made bad hires over the years. The problem comes when they do not act after seeing early signs of marginal or poor performance. Often, they rationalize their hires poor performance by reminding themselves of the new environment their hire is dealing with, etc. In most cases they end up spending more time looking after and correcting the work of their hires under the guise of employee orientation. In my view a bad hire manifests quickly. When they do you, as their manager, must quickly come out of denial and admit to yourself that you made a mistake hiring the bum. This is where most clients, who have made this hiring mistake struggle. Their pride of hiring star employees gets in the way of acknowledging the reality that they now face. A bad hire can quickly bring down the performance and morale of an otherwise A team.

New hires are much easier to terminate than those who linger on interminably. So, if you discover that you have made a hiring error you must use the probationary period for their exit without delay or hesitation. If you keep helping them by doing their work at the expense of yours, then you must realize that you are now working for your new hire and not the other way around. The sooner you deal with the reality and hire a replacement the sooner you will get back to normal in how you do your own work.

The above are just two examples of taking a road to avoid the inescapable. So, learning how to recognize early in the process where it is headed and acting decisively can help you recover from the setback with much greater resilience than otherwise.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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