Every job brings its own level of difficulty. Sometimes those difficulties create professional chaos for leaders.

Often times it looks or feels like this:

• Insecurity in yourself (talents & abilities)
• Lack of trust in others (especially leaders)
• Resentfulness in not being a part of conversations
• Feeling that your voice doesn’t matter
• Concern for job security moving forward

So, what do you do? In the midst of professional chaos, leaders have many options to gather themselves, and in this post we’ll look at 3 specific ways you can begin to regain control.

In Professional Chaos: Identify what’s causing the spinning.

In the midst of chaos we often focus our efforts on the pain (see the items above), when in fact identifying what’s causing the spinning is crucial. Maybe your chaos is due to poor leadership, an organization’s culture, your specific role, or a multitude of other items. Whatever the reason, it’s important to understand the reason behind the spinning, not just the effects of the spinning.

In Professional Chaos: Are you being mindful?

In the midst of chaos it’s crucial that we become mindful of our situation(s), meaning that we look at things with and from a different perspective. After identifying what’s causing our professional chaos, or at least seeing it from a mindful perspective, we can appropriately define it. Mindfulness is the key to finding a professional setting that positively affects and impacts your career trajectory – and life. When you’re being mindful, you’re able to dissect the ethos of where this “chaos” is coming from, and how to resolve it.

In Professional Chaos: When is it enough?

Perspective doesn’t always provide a finite solution. With this in mind, it’s important to understand your limitations in the context of your own professional chaos. One way to help with this is to create a list of items you can control and items you can’t. The purpose of listing these items out is to be able to understand how/if you can mitigate the chaos of the things outside your control; more importantly, understanding if you can’t mitigate things because they’re fully outside of your control. This helps professionals regain a mindset and perspective while also providing a list of what you can control within your unique chaos; understanding if it’s solvable or if it’s time to move on. As you create these lists be sure to include items about your leadership, the team around you, the work ecosystem itself, personal goals, and anything you deem as relevant. Remember, this is your career; it’s your choice when enough is enough.

It’s important to understand that living in professional chaos doesn’t have to be your norm. Also, professional chaos looks different for every individual, so don’t just assume that what others are experiencing – positively or negatively – is exactly what you’ll experience. Because of this, only you get to choose what breaking free of it actually looks like.

Be sure to be mindful of your choice.

-C4G Team