Why do so many people begin to question their job and/or their career at some point?

People have always done this, but we’re definitely more comfortable expressing it now than in the past, and I think there are a couple of explanations. First, the well-being boom that we experienced a couple of years ago during the pandemic has really opened up people’s ideas that happiness at work is an actual possibility — and that they can think more deeply about the ‘relationship’ they have with their careers in ways that we used to only think about other types of relationships. Like all relationships, the career relationship involves some complicated emotions. Our feelings can go up and down. We can love it one week and then hate it the next.

Another contributor to this paradigm shift is that there is a lot more comparison data out there now. We didn’t used to know, for example, how many people shifted from one career to another, but now there are entire Facebook groups and LinkedIn teams dedicated to nothing but that. There’s lots of social support out there for people who are interested in doing this.

Lastly, there are definite generational differences in terms of how happy people believe they ought to feel at work. If they’re miserable, Gen Z workers will not stick around long. Millennials who are rising leaders, are seeing a revolving door of talent — not because there’s any one thing wrong with the job, but because people are feeling a low-level sense of malaise in the workplace. They don’t identify with the places where they work.

Therapy helps people manage all types of relationships in life. What does it mean to apply it to a job?

Think of it this way: we are all in a relationship with our career, and as in any relationship, we can drift apart and start to question our commitment. These feelings are the result of psychological issues that we don’t always understand. Just as it’s hard to leave a marriage because you share children, a dog and a mortgage, it can be hard to leave your career. Maybe you have moved to a new town for it and your kids love their school, so leaving would be really messy.

Unpacking the psychological issues you are experiencing is the first and arguably most important step in discovering happiness at work. Therapy for any issue can help us process our feelings and look for triggers of stress and so forth, and that can be applied in much the same way to your job or career.

In your research you found that there are five key drivers that make people think of leaving their jobs. What are they?

The first is feeling like their job or career is no longer an important part of who they are, even though it once was. I call this psychological profile Crisis of Identity. The second driver is working in a job that has changed so much that it is now beyond recognition. I call this profile Drifted Apart. Third is when people take on too much at work and feel so overwhelmed that helplessness sets in. These people are the Stretched-Too-Thins. Fourth is those who are struggling to gain status, but promotions and raises just don’t happen. These are the Runner-Ups. And the last driver is having power and status at work, but not getting recognized or compensated for it. These people are the Underappreciated Stars.

You have an entire chapter in the book about each psychological profile. Let’s focus on the first one: what does a crisis of identity look like?

I think most people would think an identity crisis takes the form of disengagement in the workplace, but it really doesn’t. Instead, if someone is experiencing an identity crisis, you will notice that they are “all-in” one day but then they’re backing off the next. These people have lots of psychological ups and downs.

The fact is, plenty of people keep doing things that make them miserable because those things are still a huge piece of their identity. We see this a lot in healthcare. Many physicians burn out, but the work identity is so integrated with their sense of self that they can’t break up with it. In these people you might see a lot of angsty behaviour — complaining about the job, talking about how miserable it makes them. But it seems that’s all they talk about, so it’s obviously still a core piece of who they are. They still have identity centrality with the job, but the identity satisfaction has disappeared. Expect a roller coaster of emotions from people going through this.

For those who might see themselves in what you just said, what are the first steps for dealing with it?

I want to start off by saying, if this is you and exploring a new identity feels super intimidating, that is normal. You don’t actually need to de-identify with your old career before you begin to explore a new one. In the book I talk about developing something called “identity clarity.” You don’t have to have it all worked out, but you do need to make time to ‘date’ different careers or develop mini-relationships with them.

First, come up with a list of what I call “keeper skills.” These are things that you are really good at and that you currently do at work. I suggest you really anchor your search on these keeper skills. A lot of people who are having this crisis think they have to start completely fresh — they don’t think about how their skills are fungible and can translate to an entirely different career.

Next, you will need to cast a wide net and talk to people in different careers, asking them questions about how your keeper skills translate to their jobs. For instance, say one of your keeper skills is being masterful at Microsoft Excel. You might ask people, “What tasks do you do in your job that are related to this skill and what is the context in which you do them?” That way you can get a sense of how likely it is that the things you want to keep doing actually translate to that particular new job. As you repeat this process, you’ll get clarity around what that new identity looks like.

You advise people to lean in to their emotions because they are invaluable to processing a career change. Tell us about that.

When people start feeling the types of emotions at work that they have only felt with other types of relationships, they might think those feelings are inappropriate or that they should have healthier boundaries with their career. We need to embrace the emotions that we might be feeling and all the rollercoaster sensations.

Some of the emotions people experience when they go through this might feel shameful. One example is among people having an identity crisis, who are afraid of being a newbie at a new job when they’re used to being in charge.

They don’t like that feeling of knowing less than everyone else and having less status, or being younger or older than everyone else. We often keep these sort of cringey feelings bottled up instead of processing them. Guilt is another common emotion. People in your life might say to you, “But you worked so hard to get this far!” Or your family might say, “We moved to a new town for you!” Processing the guilt that comes with that is really important to making healthy decisions.

How can a leader recognize if there might be some malaise on their team and a possible need to intervene?

As indicated, you might notice certain people being all-in one day and then pulling back, over and over again. Your employee seems super excited one minute, but it doesn’t take much to make them feel annoyed or irritated the next. Also, look for patterns of reinforcement in the workplace. What are the things that are turning people on to or off of their job? One of the main categories I found across the five types that lead people to psychologically distance from their jobs is the nature of the relationships they have at work. When we think about drifting apart, we often focus on big-picture things — “I used to work from home and now I’m hybrid,” for example. These things matter, but mostly because they change who we interact with day-to-day, like who works next to us in the office, even if they aren’t on the same team as us. Our everyday social interactions matter a lot, and when they change, we feel it more than say, when a new CEO has been named.

You also want to keep track of the patterns of change happening structurally in your organization. What changes are happening and how many of them affect people’s relationships? How often are new team members cycled in? Who are they talking to day in and day out? This can influence everything from identity to patterns of behaviour that interfere with the ability to get work done.

Describe the role of frank conversations in all of this.

I’m a big fan of “no BS feedback.” I gave a TEDx talk called “The Problem With Being ‘Too Nice’ at Work.” I think one of the reasons why we suffer in our careers is because we often aren’t getting good feedback that is specific and isn’t just about what we’re doing poorly, but also about what we’re doing well. They tell you what you’re doing right or wrong in a particular context, and they help you build information around your status at work.

One of the main reasons why people fail to get promoted at work is because they’re not having these frank conversations. Bosses aren’t telling people what they’re doing wrong. I think maybe only seven per cent of the people in my Runner-Up study ever received feedback about why they didn’t get promoted. Even the people who were promoted weren’t told why it happened in any specific sense.

I think we need to have more frank conversations early and often, and they need to include bite-size feedback and not just the top-level, formal type. Also, during interviews, it should be okay for both sides to ask tough questions and to talk about what failure would look like. Embracing this mindset can help to close the communication gap between organizations and job seekers.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of the Rotman Management magazine. Subscribe now for the latest thinking on leadership and innovation.