So many people worry about moving up and moving on. What happens when, midway through your career, you suddenly find yourself at a standstill? All that upward movement has stopped. The proverbial wall has been hit, and you’re hanging out on the plateau of life.
And you don’t want to be there.
Don’t you hate it when these scenarios sound so familiar?
Take the case of Mary Lynn Billitteri. Her story is emblematic of the journey from perceived failure to reinvention.
Billitteri, 47, slammed into her career wall about two years ago. That’s when an e-learning initiative she had been working on as associate director of the American Press Institute tanked. Billitteri’s manager at the institute made the call: The program was too costly, and it wasn’t doing what it was intended to do. People had to be laid off, and Billitteri was told the program had failed partly because of her.
“I always had real good luck in my career, where you move to the next level, and then the next level. I always received good performance reviews,” she said. Then, all of a sudden, not only was her pet program cut, but she was told it was her fault. “This was the first time I hit a failure in my career.”
Billitteri was kept on staff, but she was grieving. She didn’t see herself moving ahead and thought it might be time to look for work elsewhere. She denied the program’s failure was her fault and looked for excuses elsewhere.
“I was lashing out and blaming the boss and the organization,” she admitted. “This was a good time to stop and assess if this is where I wanted to be.”
That’s why she hired an executive coach in Reston, Va. She thought the coach would help her figure out where to go from here, which new career, new job or new office would best suit her.
It helped, she said, to have a coach to talk to. Her husband provided a shoulder to cry on, but he didn’t really know what advice to give. Her friends mostly told her what she wanted to hear. She needed an unbiased observer.
With the coach’s help, Billitteri realized that the job she already had was the best one for her. The institute’s family-friendly policies were important to her and her husband and son. The organization allowed her to stretch and learn new things. In general, her managers were very supportive and encouraged her to learn new things.
She realized that it was up to her to get off this plateau and move up–at the same organization.
So she started to re-energize her career, skills and interests.
She joined the American Society for Training and Development, as well as the Society for Human Resource Management. Both organizations helped her to build her skills, and added more names to her contact list. The people she has met through these organizations are great for guidance.
She studied for, and received, a human resources certification. She has since been asked to direct her organization’s prestigious Executive Development Program and to head a new marketing initiative. She also serves on a committee to help develop annual conference sessions for the Society for Human Resource Management.
Billitteri realized that by reaching beyond her particular job, she could move past the feeling that she had fallen down in her career. She realized that “you can pretty much create the job description.”
“I think I was trying to be a little too traditional. I wasn’t opening my eyes to what the possibilities were,” she said.
In some cases, it takes a new career or job to knock down that midlife brick wall. But as Billitteri said, it is up to the employee to re-energize and make that change.
Employees often reach middle age and find that all the quick career climbing and changing they did in their 20s and 30s has come to an end. Tom Morris, a Washington career counselor, said he constantly sees clients with the “brick wall” issue. But they aren’t all in mid-career. His youngest? A 24-year-old administrative assistant who felt she had already pigeonholed herself into an administrative position and fallen behind others her age.
“I see it all the time. I think if you didn’t feel it once in a while, I don’t know that you would progress in your career,” he said.
But that progression depends on how you deal with the brick-wall feeling. There is always a way around that block, Morris said. You just have to start walking. Look for other options, other careers, new work within your organization. Think about what you have already accomplished, and what you still hope to accomplish.
As Billitteri did. “I . . . did a lot of thinking about my strengths and areas for improvement. About what I most needed for my career and in my position. And, what type of organization I was looking for,” she said.
That was two years ago, and she’s still at the American Press Institute. She said she knows now that she had already found a good fit with the organization.
“I just needed to change my attitude, restructure my goals, and continue to stretch and grow in the job,” she said.
