Sometimes, people come to coaching because they need to make a decision.
Do I stay in this organisation or take the other opportunity? Do I continue building the career I have spent twenty years creating, or explore something completely different? How do I step into this bigger leadership role without losing myself in the process?
These are real questions, and sometimes the work is exactly what it appears to be: understanding the options, getting clearer on what matters and deciding what to do next.
But sometimes the question we start with turns out to be a doorway into something deeper.
Who am I if I am no longer this person?
What would actually make me happy?
What do I want the next part of my life to be about?
How do I make a decision when I cannot possibly know how it will turn out?
These underlying questions are questions about being human. And this is where I have found an existential lens particularly interesting when thinking about transitions.
What does existentialism have to do with it?
Existentialism is a broad school of philosophical and psychological thought concerned with some of the fundamental realities of human existence: freedom, responsibility, choice, uncertainty, identity, meaning, belonging and ultimately the finite nature of life.
Psychologist Paul Wong describes six recurring questions of human existence, exploring broadly: Who am I? How can I be happy? What should I do with my life? How do I make the right choices? Where do I belong? What is the point of all this striving?
And so often, after a degree of exploration with clients, I notice that what they have brought to coaching is actually a doorway into something much more about human existence.
A recent client, for example, came to a session facing two possible professional moves and needing to decide which role to accept following a restructure.
We were going in circles, and I felt there was something else going on. I asked her if she woke up tomorrow and something was different, what would that one thing be.
I want to feel happy again.
This was what was going on. It wasn’t really about the role options, but a deeper sense of unhappiness that had developed through behaviours and decisions over time. As we explored further, we became clearer on the actual work: understanding who she was and what was important to her, rather than being driven primarily by what other people wanted.
When identity gets disrupted
Transitions that happen through circumstance rather than choice can bring identity into sharp focus.
If you have spent twenty years building expertise, reputation, status and relationships around a particular career, losing the role is rarely only about losing the job. Some of the structure through which you understood yourself has disappeared too.
The same can happen through retirement, parenthood, relocation, illness, organisational change or simply reaching a point where an old ambition no longer feels particularly compelling.
The external change can happen very quickly. The internal transition often takes longer.
A famous existential idea comes from Jean-Paul Sartre: existence precedes essence. We exist first. The identities, labels, stories and meanings we give our lives come afterwards.
So when our identities are shaken, if we understand that some of the meaning we attached to our old life was created rather than fixed, perhaps we also have some freedom to create meaning again.
That doesn’t mean pretending an unwanted event was secretly wonderful or that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes difficult things are simply difficult.
But what happens to us and the meaning we ultimately make from it are not quite the same thing. And that distinction creates some exploration space when we are no longer completely the person we were, but cannot yet describe the person we are becoming.
Not every transition needs to become an existential enquiry
Of course, sometimes a career decision is just a career decision. Not every promotion requires an examination of the meaning of life.
Sometimes someone needs space to think, a useful challenge to an assumption, or a practical conversation about what they are going to do on Monday morning.
But after many years of working with people during periods of change, I have become increasingly aware of the moments when the presenting problem shows as a doorway to a much bigger, human question.
How do I change career? becomes Who am I without this career?
Which job should I take? becomes What would make my life feel good again?
How do I succeed in this bigger role? becomes What kind of leader do I actually want to be?
What should I do next? becomes What matters to me now?
Perhaps this is one of the opportunities that transition gives us.
For a short while, some of the structures we usually rely on become less stable. That can feel vulnerable and deeply uncomfortable. But it can also give us the opportunity to notice that some of those structures were never fixed in the first place.
And perhaps, from there, to choose a little more deliberately what we build next.
If you are in a period of transition and finding that the question you started with might not be the whole question, a conversation can be a useful place to explore what is really going on.
Photo by Karissa Mason on Unsplash
