How to Overcome Career Disappointments with Lauren Sergy
Episode 152
Are you feeling trapped in a career that no longer sparks joy, wrestling with the haunting question of “What’s next?” Perhaps you've nailed interview after interview, only to be overlooked for someone the hiring manager had in mind all along. Or maybe you're simply tired of defining your worth by a job title that’s out of sync with your true passions. You’re not alone.
This potent episode of the Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo features a conversation with communication expert Lauren Sergy. Dive deep into the discomfort of career stagnation and self-doubt that so many professionals like you endure.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Rethink your professional identity and shape it around your passions.
Discover unexpected career opportunities using your innate talents
Leverage rejection as a redirection
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About the Guest
Public speaking and communication expert Lauren Sergy has helped thousands of people become more effective leaders by developing critical communication skills such as persuasion, public speaking, and executive presence. She has worked with clients and audiences in Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe including 3M, Cargill, KPMG, T-Mobile, Grant Thornton, and many more. Lauren has taught business communication courses at the University of Alberta and Concordia University of Edmonton, and frequently provides guest lectures at many other post-secondary institutions. Her first book, The Handy Communication Answer Book, was featured on Library Journal’s Best Reference Books of 2017 list. Her latest book, UNMUTE! How to Master Virtual Meetings and Reclaim Your Sanity is now available via all major online booksellers.
Connect with Lauren Sergy:
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Website
About the Host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
Her experience includes serving as a Training Pillar on the Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zone Committee and Career Transition Advisor for Dallas Professional Women.
Through Danielle's captivating storytelling, content-rich and motivational style, she empowers individuals and organizations to cultivate unwavering resilience, igniting a transformative path towards increased sales, productivity, employee retention, and collaboration.
About the Show:
The Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo explores the journeys of people who have overcome adversity and harnessed the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives, Guests share how they overcame difficult times - the strategies, mindset shifts, lessons they learned along the way, and actions that propelled them forward. From navigating career setbacks to overcoming personal obstacles, each episode is a testament to grit and resilience.
You'll learn how to develop the grit and resilience to lead yourself and others through change.
Join host Danielle Cobo, keynote speaker and author of "Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Your Goals." A new episode is released every Wednesday at 4:00 AM EST.
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Welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo. Today, we're going to be talking about a situation and challenge that we all face. It's this pursuit of climbing the corporate ladder or the pursuit of having success by a certain time frame and this feeling of discouragement and frustration, or maybe dissatisfaction or unfulfillment when we get to the top.
And today's guest, Lauren Sergi can relate to this a lot. She spent years continuing to get these educational degrees and was set on this one path for her career, but then found herself not feeling fulfilled and dissatisfied, and like so many of us feel that way.
Start Looking Beyond The Confines Of Walls
The experience was that of being what I fondly call now the world's worst librarian. And I was not the world's worst librarian because I wasn't good at it. I was very good at it.
And when you think of librarianship, don't just think of the children's librarian behind the checkout desk that you knew as a kid. It's an enormous field. It would be like calling everyone who works in a hospital a hospital. There are lots of different types of librarians, and I was always really interested in the administrative work in the back end and the business side of it.
And, the reason why I wasn't good at it was not because of the librarianship aspect and it certainly wasn't because of a lack of passion for the industry. It was because I discovered that I couldn't tolerate the politics and the bureaucracy involved and that's funny because I've always kind of found myself doing what I do now, especially at home.
In very political and bureaucratic environments, but that was as an outsider coming in, providing advice and insights and everything else. I can navigate that very well, but being in it myself and being kind of a subject of the bureaucracy and the political culture and everything else inside libraries, it was a terrible personality fit.
And I found myself. I was chafing against the process of getting to where I wanted to go and just feeling this really deep personality mismatch. I didn't want to play the game to the degree that they wanted me to play and I felt like I didn't fit in. But I could never really pinpoint how I didn't fit in.
So I worked in a system for a year and just about wanted to poke my eyeballs out. And then I went and did something else for another year. And then I came back to it and I worked in academic systems for a while. And then I decided to work in library associations for quite a while. Meanwhile, I kept saying, “Okay, what am I missing?”
I'm applying for all of these management track jobs, but I'm not even landing interviews. What's going on? So, okay, what education do they want? I will get the education. I will get the additional management certificates and diplomas and just accumulate everything that I can to get to this place where I want to be.
And then I did start to get interviewed for these positions. But the interviews were very odd. In one particular case, they always would ask, how do you deal with difficult situations with employees? They want to know how you would work with people.
There's a lot of ideology and strong morals and ideals in librarianship, and I'm like, do I just do not have that kind of ideology and that kind of fire and that kind of passion and this kind of morals like I took it as a personal failing that I couldn't seem to crack this and then after that interview and then after a following one where I discovered that they hired the interviewer for the job.
And maybe it's not a problem with the industry either. You don't have to be mad at them. Maybe it's just not a fit. So what do you like to do? Like, where else can you take this? Start looking beyond the confines of these walls.
Consider Mutual Fit
Instead of asking an organization or a hiring manager or a particular position that you're pursuing, instead of asking, what more do you want from me? What if we flip that script and say, what more do I want in you? Because in an interview you're interviewing them as much as the organization is interviewing you.
It's got to be a mutual fit. It is not, I'm coming in here, I got to prove myself. I'm the best fit because the organization has also got to prove to me that they're a good fit for you.
In any organization that has these large hierarchies, corporations, post-secondary libraries, and government, where you get these strong structural systems. Humans are a social networking species and we go with who we know very often.
And that can be a tough pill to swallow.
Your Professional Identity is Not Your Job Title
It's interesting that when we're in a career for a long period, it becomes a part of our identity and it becomes a part of who we are.
And in fact, when people often ask us, what's your name? What do you do? The first way we describe who we are, it's what we do in our careers.
When you say I am a librarian, people instantly have a picture in their head. And that gives you a handle, that gives you a bit of a handle. And usually, for me, it would get a rise out of people because they're like, you're not what I expect a librarian to be like.
I'm like, that's because you have no idea what librarians are actually like. We're a strange, subversive lot, really quite wonderful but now doing, when I was creating my business saying, well, I'm a communication consultant and presentation skills trainer, people would kind of cock their heads to their side and say, what?
That's a thing? What do you mean? And they would look at me with a great deal of skepticism. And then I'd have to like, try to articulate it. I help people talk better. Then they would usually start to understand that. But it never felt like there was a convenient handle for me to give to people to kind of encapsulate what this new identity was.
And that was something that I struggled with for some time. And if you ever say someone says, well, what do you do? I run my own business. And then they immediately look at you sideways because you know that they're thinking.
So it took a while of wrestling with what I call myself? How do I give myself a professional handle that other people can understand? I took a while wrestling with that before I finally came up with being a communication specialist.
And then people said, Oh, okay. I can kind of picture that. Well, what kind of communication? What kind of stuff? The questions were less cautious and more curious, but there were a few years there where it just felt like I didn't know what to call myself. And again, you get that identity crisis, and it can take a while to get over that.
Embrace the Discomfort of Transition
At first, you don't necessarily know it's hard to see what our strengths are from inside our head because we're used to having them and we're used to seeing them as a given.
So when you open yourself up to hearing it from other people, then it starts. I think your past can become more clear.
I thought that everyone when they experience a challenge or they experience a setback that they just kind of said, okay, that sucks. I'm going to find a way to move forward. That's something that's always been ingrained in me. I always say I was raised resilient. I became gritty and thrived through courage, and I didn't know what my strength was until people continued to say, like, you're a very resilient person.
And people continue to ask me, how do you do it? And that's one of those moments where it's such an innate characteristic within ourselves that sometimes we don't see the beauty and what that strength is and how people want more of it or how you can help them develop it.
I am not looking for false praise. I'm not even really looking for praise. I'm trying to get a handle on what it is I am objectively good at through someone else's eyes because it's hard for us to recognize it ourselves.
Why do you like hanging out with me? What problems do you find I'm really helpful with? You tell me, instead of me guessing. And all of them wrote back, every single last one, and the responses were wonderful because they were objective. They understood what I was trying to do. And they gave me just excellent answers in really straightforward language that didn't feel fluffy or fake.
It felt actionable. It was one of the first times that I was able to look at compliments and objectively receive them as truths. Because before if someone said something nice, I was getting intentional about what are your strengths, and what are you good at. Everything just felt like flattery.
I think it was because I asked them in plain language and I received plain-language responses that were incredibly helpful.
And that helped with the resolve to say, you can let go of your previous career dreams and your previous career identity and go all in on this one. You can do that because you are not defined by how well you did in this other industry. That's not what defines you as a professional. Maybe it did in the past, but it doesn't anymore.
And it won't in the future.
And sometimes it's a radical change from going from a librarian to a communication specialist. Sometimes it's from going to working in medical sales to doing professional speaking and podcasting, but it could take a pivot along the way.
Value Diverse Experiences
I think many professionals struggle to do is to look at their skill set and cross-apply it to other disciplines.
I am a big fan of cross-training, it's just kind of something that my brain does. If I see something in one area, I usually try to think, okay, how can that be changed and applied and moved and adapted? To fit in this other area, and when we get stuck in a professional identity again, when we're looking at ourselves as in your case, the Fortune 500 sales manager, the superstar in this big corporate environment, all of that, we often don't pull apart what makes us an expert in that field and say, okay, how is that applicable to a broader context? So the stuff that made me good. As a librarian it is the same stuff that made me good. As a public speaker, and as a communication specialist, the context in which the skills are applied are different.
So when we're looking at our strengths, very often, people will get stuck on their technical skills.
And you have to keep digging down the layers until you find that bit. You can port to any other career that you might be looking at or any other future path that you might be interested in because when you're changing over your professional identity, you're not leaving everything that you learned there behind.
You are not starting over or starting from scratch. I hate those terms because it's never true. No one starts over.
It's what's inside your head. So, let's focus on those skills and don't worry about the public speaking stuff. And you can say that when you're going into a new industry, what's all of this stuff that I can bring over from my old industry?
I'm not going to worry about what I don't know in the new industry yet, because that'll come. But I can be really useful now with what I've got. And I think that helps to make that identity leap from one thing to another without feeling like you're adrift.
But that philosophy of I can't pursue that position because I don't have the industry experience. It's an opportunity to ask yourself, what skill sets have you developed within your current role that are going to transfer into the role that you're pursuing? It's always about transferable skill sets.
Pursue Fulfillment Over Titles
No matter where we're at within our career, where we're at within owning our business we get to ask ourselves: Where do we feel the most fulfilled in our career, and our life, and what are those unique skill sets that we have?
And how do we go about finding what they are? And it's not always what our perception is. It's taking the time to ask other people's perceptions so that we can get a good grasp on what makes us unique so that we can align our passion and our purpose towards our long-term goals, that can align with what we enjoy doing.
