Making Transitions Work for You
Here’s something I’ve noticed in working with senior executives through career and life transitions:
The very qualities that made them successful in their careers are often the ones that make transitions harder.
High-performing leaders are decisive. They’re action-oriented. They’re accustomed to having a clear goal, building a plan, and executing. That approach has served them exceptionally well — until they find themselves in a transition where the goal isn’t yet clear, the plan can’t be built yet, and executing feels like running in place.
The Push-Through Instinct
When a major transition arrives — a role ending, a restructuring, a deliberate career pivot, or simply the growing sense that something needs to change — most executives’ first instinct is to treat it like a project.
Identify the next opportunity. Update the resume. Activate the network. Move.
And sometimes that works. Sometimes the next step is obvious and the transition is brief.
But often, it isn’t. And when that push-through approach meets genuine uncertainty — when the next chapter isn’t clear, when what worked before no longer applies, when the identity that was tied to a title or a role suddenly feels unmoored — the push-through instinct can actually work against you.
You end up moving fast toward a destination you haven’t yet thought clearly about. Landing in the next thing before you’ve understood what the last thing was trying to teach you.
What a Transition Actually Requires
In my transition advising work, I’ve come to believe that most major transitions have two phases — and most people only work on the second one.
The second phase is about what comes next: the new role, the new direction, the plan. That work matters and it gets done.
The first phase is about where you actually are: what you want, what you’re carrying, what you’re ready to leave behind, and who you want to be in the next chapter. Not just professionally. As a person.
That first phase is the one people skip. It’s slower. It’s less tangible. It doesn’t feel like progress in the way that updating a LinkedIn profile does. But it’s the work that determines whether what comes next is genuinely what you want — or just the fastest available exit from the uncertainty.
The Difference Intention Makes
I’ve worked with executives who navigated major transitions and came out the other side with a genuine sense of purpose and direction. And I’ve worked with executives who moved quickly to the next thing and found, six months in, that they’d replicated the same patterns in a different building.
The difference almost always came down to intention.
The ones who came out stronger had slowed down enough — even briefly — to ask the right questions. What do I actually want the next chapter to look like? What am I moving toward, not just away from? What would it mean to do this with intention rather than just urgency?
Those aren’t questions that get answered in a single conversation. But they’re the questions that make the transition worth navigating.
You Don’t Have to Navigate It Alone
The most important thing I can say about transition is this: the leaders who come through it most effectively are not the ones who figured it out alone.
They’re the ones who had a trusted partner — someone who would listen without agenda, challenge without judgment, and help them see their situation more clearly than they could see it from the inside.
That’s what transition advising is for. Not to hand you the answer. But to help you find clarity — the kind that makes the next step genuinely yours.
If you’re in a transition right now, or you’re sensing one approaching, I’d welcome a conversation.
Are you ready to end the “lifequakes” and create the on-purpose life you always intended?
Take the first step. Let’s talk.