Career & Life Transition

  • New Directions: A Program for Integrating Career and Personal Lives During Midlife
  • Senior Executive Assessment
  • Newly-Appointed Leaders

New Directions: A Program for Integrating Career and Personal Lives During Midlife

Midlife is a period of potential new growth and development in all areas of life. Its key challenge is to identify one’s core values, talents, and unfulfilled goals, both personally and professionally; and integrate them into new action. This enables the person to undertake a lifelong path of growth and evolution, emotionally, creatively, and spiritually.

New Directions is a program of both discovery and new learning in these areas. It is for individual senior-level executives and professionals who are contemplating or currently seeking transition and/or new development within their careers and life path.

Based on Dr. LaBier’s pioneering work on the relationship between human development and career, this program for senior executives in transition builds a foundation for determining what next step will best integrate the client’s talents, experiences, values, and career/life goals and desires. The objective is to determine the most fulfilling next path, both personally and professionally. The program consists of a unique, four-part process which clients typically find both illuminating and enjoyable to experience. It derives from Dr. LaBier’s pioneering work on the relationship between human development and career transition, including the developmental needs of men and women of the current midlife generation, whose members comprise senior leadership in today’s organizations.Ladder to sky copy

The components include, first, a detailed review and exploration of the senior executive’s career and personal history, through a structured interview. This identifies both the key internal “value drivers” and external experiences that have shaped the client’s personal and career path, to date. It identifies accrued strengths, both as a worker and a leader; as well as the mutual influence of personal and career choices and decisions.

Next, a series of exercises identifies:

  • Significant career and life turning points and their long-term consequences;
  • Gaps that have accrued between personal values and actual conduct;
  • Visualizing and describing possible new directions in one’s “story;”
  • Other information relevant to building awareness of what new career path will best integrate personal and career growth.

As part of the process, Dr. LaBier provides the client with selected readings about state-of-the-art knowledge concerning positive midlife development. These are linked with a visual-aid presentation of current knowledge about the interplay between organizational cultures and different kinds of personal orientations to work; and how this interplay supports either positive, high-functioning environments, or those which create leadership dilemmas and negative career environments. The client is taught the four parts of “Relationship Competencies,” a set of skills vital for senior leadership success in today’s organizations.

A final exercise enables the client to establish a set of goals and action steps in six major facets of life. These demonstrate and underscore the relationship between career and other individual developmental needs at midlife.

The program culminates in identifying the client’s “Needs and Requirements” regarding the next career step, along a number of dimensions. They include:

  • Type of organization or work, such as corporate, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, government, university, or NGO organizations;
  • Size;
  • Management environment;
  • Overall culture;
  • Desired role;
  • Financial compensation needs;
  • Work/life requirements;
  • Geographic requirements; travel requirements;
  • Other dimensions of relevance to the particular client

The client takes away specific knowledge and increased clarity about what direction to pursue. This serves as the vehicle for the actual job search, which includes resume construction, directed networking, screening of possible positions, interviewing, and other elements of the process of selecting a new career position.

Newly-Appointed Leaders:

Dr. LaBier helps the executive address the mixture of personal and organizational forces that can either undermine or ensure success in his or her new position. Here, the components of Dr. LaBier’s coaching enable the executive to gain a clear understanding of the new organization’s culture, human resource issues, and political dynamics; how they impact the man or woman in the new leadership position; and how to apply this understanding to create personal and organizational strategies that support success in the new position.

Senior Executive Assessment:

For companies contemplating new hires at senior-level positions, Dr. LaBier conducts senior executive assessments, through which he helps both the company and the candidate determine whether both represent the best match. Dr. LaBier helps identify the personal factors, career strengths and experiences, and organizational culture and needs that determine successful outcome for the candidate. In addition, he helps identify areas in need of support and new learning, should the candidate be appointed to the position.