Stay energized and focused during a job transition
Whether you’ve earned a promotion, moved to a new organization, or taken on new responsibility in your current job, new roles start with celebration, excitement, and a sense of accomplishment. Rightfully so - you've earned it. Few things satiate the human brain like being recognized for your talent and experience and being given an opportunity to grow into a role with higher visibility, reach, and impact. Often, this same excitement and gratitude is the very thing that sabotages performance during the transition period, leading to a tidal wave of self-doubt, fear, and uncertainty.
How could that be?
The “dual-role” period
In most cases, a transition involves an onboarding period of learning new systems, building relationships with new stakeholders, finding clarity around expectations, and building your strategy. At the same time, you’re typically asked to continue to ensure that all of your old responsibilities are taken care of and the person taking over is set up for success. You effectively now have two roles.
If you’re moving to an entirely new company, you won’t have a dual role, but you will have a lot more heavy lifting to do with onboarding. Similarly, you will likely have to make significant changes to the structure of your day, move to a new location, leave old colleagues behind, and establish a new tempo. Failing to account for this doubled cognitive and emotional load and setting an unsustainable pace to learn and prove yourself to others are the leading causes of over-fatigue during these periods.
Commonly, this fatigue can lead to brain fog, feeling out of control, self-doubt, and reflexive, often destructive behaviors. This can be avoided by building a recovery plan for your transition and continuously building your self-belief.
Build a plan to keep your cognitive capacity high
When starting a new job, there will always be many things out of your control. In order to show up at your best, reduce fatigue, and regain the feeling of control, a great approach is to control the start and the end of your day. Within these two windows, you can define the non-negotiable strategies you will use to sharpen your focus, build your energy stores, proactively prepare for your day, and build in your recovery moments.
So what is your start-of-the-day plan? How can you prime your mindset, feed your brain, move to activate your nervous system, and focus yourself to multiply others' energy?
Similarly, what is your end-of-day plan? How can you shut down from a busy day, create a natural melatonin (sleep hormone) release, capture your key learnings from the day, and calm your nervous system for sleep?
Make self-belief building an ongoing practice
With any new role comes self-doubt. While we could write books about building authentic self-belief, here are a few quick suggestions to help you.
First, reflect on other moments in your life where you've had similar transitions, experienced but overcame self-doubt, and moved forward to succeed.
Second, at the end of each day, write down a few things you did well, a couple of things you want to do better, and one thing you learned.
Finally, prepare - prepare - prepare. Nothing builds true self-belief like preparing for a big meeting, building recovery into your preparation, and setting clear intentions.
Transitioning to a new role is a challenging but exciting time if you can avoid putting your head down and going into wing-it mode with your Sustainable Human Performance. By creating your transition recovery plan and continually practicing self-belief building, you can regain control and multiply your readiness to take on the challenges that lie ahead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jake Marx // Head of Performance Coaching
Jake is the Head of Performance Coaching for TIGNUM. He is responsible for finding, developing, preparing, and growing all TIGNUM Performance Specialists. He is an experienced Sustainable Human Performance coach to many top senior executives.
ABOUT TIGNUM
TIGNUM is the major performance building block for business professionals, designed around a skill- and data-based approach that respects the individuality, focuses on the brain, evolves constantly, and creates lasting impact. Its international team comes from a wide range of fields, including human behavior, elite athletics, special forces, performance medicine, executive coaching, change consultants, and more.