December 3, 2025 • 35 mins
Jess Annison joins Claire Pedrick to share her journey from a corporate career to becoming a coach, and her exploration about what is meaningful work. She discusses the challenges of career transitions, balancing financial responsibilities, and the role of privilege in making career changes. Jess also breaks down meaningful work into five key components: contribution, connection, strengths, growth, and autonomy.
You can buy Jess’s book Smart Careers wherever you buy your books.
Contact:
- Contact Jess through Linked In or https://www.jess-annison.com/
- Contact Claire by emailing info@3dcoaching.com or check out our Substack where you can talk with other listeners.
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Coming Up:
- Coaching and Neurodiversity
- What’s the connection with coaching and jigsaw puzzles?
Keywords:
career coaching, mid-career crisis, meaningful work, coaching conversation, career change, personal growth, professional development, coaching techniques, work-life balance, positive psychology, coaching strategies, career transition, self-employment, leadership development, coaching skills, career fulfillment, job satisfaction, coaching insights, career exploration, coaching journey.
We love having a variety of guests join us! Please remember that inviting someone to participate does not mean we necessarily endorse their views or opinions. We believe in open conversation and sharing different perspectives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello there, how lovely to see you and to be in conversation with you.
This episode is for you if you are a career changer or if you work with career changers.
I'm in conversation with Jess Annison who's just written a book called Smart Careers, Howto Turn a Mid-Career Crisis into a Rewarding Work Life.
(00:23):
She is really clear at talking about meaning and purpose.
And there are some fascinating pieces in the episode, including how uh career change canbe a privilege that not everyone is able to engage with.
Also worth checking out her book, because there's a cracking bit in it, which takes youinside the coaching room and sees what a real life coaching conversation might look like.
(00:51):
So if you are in the world of career change, uh do share this with others you know whomight be interested.
and subscribe or follow to The Coaching Inn wherever you listen to your podcasts so thatyou get this episode every week.
Be really interesting to hear what you think.
Enjoy.
(01:24):
Welcome everyone and welcome to our guest this week, Jess Annison.
Jess, what a delight to have you here.
Thank you, a real delight, a real delight, thank you.
So you've written a book, Jess, called Smart Careers, and we've been in little bit ofdialogue about it for a while, because it was a pleasure to have a look at it before it
(01:45):
came out.
So tell us a bit about your journey into coaching.
And then I want to talk about the book.
Brilliant.
No, thank you.
So yeah, my journey into coaching, I mean, it started a long, time ago.
It started 16, 17 years ago when I was a civil servant, offered coaching, professionalcoaching, said yes, because I was eager and keen to do all the things that might help me
(02:15):
in my career and found it a really useful and interesting experience.
With hindsight, I probably didn't get the absolute most from it.
You know, I was probably sort of wanting to be led a little bit and mentored perhaps a bitmore.
But I still remember the, I guess the luxury of having an hour focused on me, just talkingabout me where I could say things that I perhaps felt, you know, uncomfortable to say to
(02:44):
my manager or to colleagues.
So that was the very, very start.
And then...
much much more recently, I think it was 2020, I thought actually this is something that Iwant to do.
I was still working in a corporate job at that time, I was working for a further educationcollege, had a leadership role, running a big program, but had recognised that as I was
(03:09):
becoming more senior my management style had been needing to change, I'd had to get a lotless directive, delegate more.
had a bit of a tendency to micromanage if I was allowed to.
So actually for me, coaching initially was how can I coach my teams better and use that asa bit of a way of extricating me and my very long handled screwdriver that I was otherwise
(03:35):
inserting into people who were perfectly capable at doing what they needed to do, but Ijust couldn't sort of stop.
So that was originally how I decided to train as a coach.
Um, but as I was doing that, I just really enjoyed it.
And I realised that actually, I just really liked coaching anybody.
(03:55):
It didn't have to be my team on, on, you know, my, my work, responsibilities.
And actually I realised that I was quite good at it.
So having come into it, feeling like this was a bit of a sort of a fairly dramatic, uh,remedial measure to help me best be a better leader.
I realised that actually I could completely extricate myself and.
(04:17):
and use these skills and my wider skills around listening and empathy to help people makeprogress on whatever it was they wanted to do.
And then there was a bit of a gradual transition.
I went from full-time in my job to about 0.7 initially.
About a year after that, I decided I wanted to do a master's.
(04:39):
So I did a master's in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology.
I've always had this sort of need, I think, to
feel sure in the, um I guess the rigour with which I'm doing something.
You can be a great coach with just a couple of days training, but for me, I really wantedto understand the science of it and make sure that there was something credible underneath
(05:05):
what I was doing.
So the masters felt quite an important step for me before I was then able to commit myselfwholly to it.
But from that point on, I've not been employed, I've been self-employed and now I spend mytime coaching, facilitating and some other kind of allied things like writing, which is
(05:25):
obviously where the book sort of has originated from.
yeah, it's been a three or four year quite gradual transition, which worked for me as theway that I've wanted to do it.
And that's really good to hear, isn't it?
Because I think there's sometimes a feeling that you have to be all or nothing.
And leaving, crossing the bridge gradually without cutting it off is a really usefulthing.
(05:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
You when I went from full-time to part-time, I was pretty sure that work would say, oh,yeah, you know, that hasn't worked.
Don't worry, come back full-time.
And likewise, when I stepped away to do the masters, it was a year long course.
So again, if I didn't love it, if it didn't go well, if it wasn't for me, it was only ayear's worth of investment.
And I sort of backed myself enough at that point to get another job.
(06:18):
Whether I'd get another employed job nowadays, I don't know because I think I've gonecompletely feral.
So I'm not sure I can ever work for anyone again.
So I think I may have burned my bridges a little bit now.
I wonder whether that's to do with what you love as well as what someone else might wantto buy.
Yes.
That's so interesting.
(06:38):
I wonder, listener, if you're thinking that about yourself.
Yeah, because I think that about myself all the time, Interesting.
So the book, Smart Careers, How to Turn a Mid-Career Crisis into a Rewarding Work Life,what was the question that you were asking that made, that was the beginning of the book
(07:02):
being born?
So yeah, the question really was how can we, somebody, find sort of ongoing fulfilment inwhat they do?
Because I've worked with so many people and a large part of this is my own experience aswell.
(07:24):
know, there's sort of my initial dipping into research was what they call me-search.
You know, it was very sort of, you know, I want to understand my experiences.
and my experiences and quite a lot of the clients that I have been working with.
They're 20 years into a career.
They have really enjoyed what they've do and found it meaningful.
(07:48):
But actually at this sort of middle-ish point, they're starting to question, okay, is thiswhat I want to keep doing?
It feels less meaningful over time, whether it's...
tiredness or sort of a bit of cynicism or frustration or just wanting to do somethingdifferent.
They're questioning really for the first time, is this still meaningful for me?
(08:10):
And if it isn't, what can I do about that?
So yeah, the question is how can we keep finding meaning in what we do?
For those of us that want to, not everyone does.
For some people, a job is a job.
It's the paycheck.
It's what pays the bills.
And that's absolutely fine.
But through my master's research,
I kind of became aware of just how good it is for us to find our work meaningful.
(08:34):
But it's also quite an intangible thing.
It's quite a hard thing to put your finger on what that actually means.
It's very subjective.
So your definition of meaningful might not be the same as mine or the next person.
And yet quite often we find it hard to devote enough time to really thinking about whatthat is.
And if it's not wholly meaningful or sufficiently meaningful for us, what can we do?
(08:57):
Do you throw it all up and do a different career or actually there's a lot that you can dowithout making much change at all?
Yeah, and where do we find meaning in our lives?
Because sometimes that's not in our paid work, it?
Sometimes it's in other spaces.
So many, so many really lovely things and interesting things in there.
(09:19):
I am obviously a lot older than you.
I remember, and I used to do career coaching, and I can remember reading an article 30years ago that said most people will have five careers in their lifetime.
That's probably a different number now.
But what's interesting is, from what you're describing is, that's true and yet 20 yearson, when people get a wondering, there also feels like uh that it's dangerous to think
(09:54):
about changing career when you may only have already had one.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think that number is probably higher now.
And only getting higher again, you know, we think about kind of technological change, youknow, the way that AI is going to change kind of how we do stuff.
So yeah, there's it's never been more important to be able to kind of reinvent yourself.
(10:17):
But as absolutely as you say, particularly at that middle point of life, we can feel quitestuck.
And you've probably got 15 more years to pay on the mortgage, you might have
kids caring responsibilities, you might have elderly parents.
So you might have caring responsibilities both places.
You've got this identity of being whatever you are, an accountant, a managementconsultant, whatever it might be.
(10:43):
so pivoting that or repositioning that has impact for your identity as well as, you know,sort of lots of practical and financial things.
And yeah, you've probably gotten yourself to a place where you're relatively senior.
So does that mean stepping back?
Is that okay?
You know, we carry a lot of these shoulds around careers being always upwards.
(11:07):
And actually, it can be difficult to take a step to the side or take a little step back.
and yeah, different people will come with different barriers.
But I often see some kind of combination of these things that just end up keeping usstuck.
And
think I wanted to write the book to say, you intentionally want to be where you arebecause that's the right thing, then good, that is good, but it just needs to be
(11:33):
intentional.
You don't want to be holding questions or regrets about what if.
Because actually, the change you need to make might be smaller than you think.
You might not have to retrain, start at the very beginning.
There's a lot that we can do by...
Yeah, refocusing, even within the same job, job crafting, thinking about our workdifferently, leaning into bits that bring us more joy, more energy.
(11:58):
So there's an awful lot we can do without making a massive change.
Or if a more significant change is sort of what you want, then that could be possible too.
So yeah.
So look it in the eye.
Yeah.
Yeah.
rather than pretending it's not there or, yeah.
Yeah.
(12:20):
So what I love about your book is that there's a coaching conversation through the wholebook.
So what was the inspiration behind writing a book with content and with a coachingconversation in it,
Yeah, it's probably one of the things I'm most proud of, actually, when I look at thebook, I like, yes, I'm so glad.
(12:41):
And I don't, I think as I was starting to plan the book, I just thought, well, there hasto be a coaching conversation.
don't, I don't, it wasn't sort of a, you know, an amazing inspirational idea that came tome that, you know, I just remember thinking, I just feel like there needs to be coaching
all the way through, I guess, because it brings together the two parts of my world,coaching and positive psychology, meaningful work research.
(13:05):
but also because I think we make, lots of us make meaning through our conversations.
So I'm sure you'll have had this umpteen times, you know, probably this week alone, whensomebody's in a coaching conversation with you and the thinker says, oh, now I'm talking
about it, I realise or, you know, now I'm seeing that.
(13:28):
And actually because of the conversation, they're making meaning from something that hasbeen there all along.
just...
hadn't been able to access it.
And exactly the same when I was doing my master's research, I was talking to people aboutwhat made work meaningful and actually the dark sides of that because there are some
important dark sides that we shouldn't ignore.
(13:49):
But again, through these research conversations, my research participants were saying,wow, now we've been talking for an hour about meaning.
I can see different sources of meaning from my work that I hadn't appreciated before.
So I wanted to bring this, in the research world, we call it the social constructivismapproach, making meaning through interactions with others into the book.
(14:13):
Now the book is very accessible and practical, so I don't use words like socialconstructivism.
It would put everybody off, would be terribly tedious.
But what we do have is this really nice conversation.
We meet Jenny at eight different points in her journey and through the book.
and we see her making meaning for herself in conversation with her coach.
(14:36):
And yeah, it was really fun to write.
It was the bit that I never had any kind of writer's block writing.
I'd be like, oh, fantastic.
I've got a couple of paragraphs of Jenny to come.
Brilliant.
I can write those really easily.
But I also hope that it brings a window into how it...
could be, how somebody's journey might look.
(14:59):
She's obviously one person.
She's a composite case study.
So there's different research participants and different clients within her story.
She's not a single real person.
But yeah, hopefully it brings that window into how it could be and how it's helpful totalk about this kind of stuff with people.
(15:20):
In an ideal world, everyone would have their coach, they'd have that place to do it.
Obviously, that's not
possible for everybody, but uh a friend, a trusted colleague, somebody that you can talkto about, yeah, this is, this is what's feeling meaningful for me at work at the moment.
This is what's feeling not so great.
This is the change that I want to make.
A uh client of mine, coaching client of mine who's read the book gave feedback along thelines of nobody tells you how to be in a coaching conversation.
(15:48):
Yeah, you kind of invited for coaching and the coach does their best to make you feelcomfortable and welcome and explain a little bit of it.
But ultimately it's a bit of a dark art.
And so he found it quite helpful to read this story and see how it could be.
It's obviously not a, this is how it must be.
Everybody's different.
All coaches are different.
All thinkers are different.
(16:10):
But yeah, he found it a really great window into how it might be to be coached on some ofthese topics.
That's such an interesting insight, isn't it?
I've got a book idea here just floating around, which I'll just put down for a moment.
Because you're absolutely right.
It doesn't have to be like this, but here's an example of what it could be like.
(16:34):
It's a great thing because I think coaching is more than people think it is generally,isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Can we just go back to, go on.
No, and I was careful and you were instrumental in helping me with this.
was careful that I wanted to depict.
(16:57):
I'm trying not to say the word right in inverted commas, but you know, I wanted to depictan appropriate form of coaching.
I wanted to make sure that the coach was, you know, the thinking was being led by thethinker.
The coach wasn't being directive, but that also the coach might make some offerings.
along the way because I think career coaching, some of my coaching is career coaching, butnot all, but that does tend to be the bit where people are looking for a little bit more
(17:28):
direction and it could be very easy and lots of career coaches do this, know, fill outthis form, do this exercise, here's a template for X and you could just be swept away with
a process which actually is quite unhelpful and not really getting to the nub of...
what the thinker actually wants and what they actually think.
(17:48):
So yeah, I wanted to give a depiction of career related coaching that actually was asperson-centred and open and organic as I think coaching should be.
Yeah, because in career coaching, I used to laugh because the reason people come to acareer coach is that they don't know how to think about it.
(18:10):
So when you say, how would you like to think about this?
They go, I don't know, because that's why they're here.
And that's where a menu is useful, isn't it?
We could do this, we could do this, we could do this.
Yeah, and Jenny is great.
It's just, it lifts the book.
It jumps between the theory, not theory, but the practical stuff and the reality in theroom in a beautiful way.
(18:43):
I've got a quote in my head that I can't remember about being heard.
When people speak something out loud.
And the coach is bearing witness to that.
That's where something remarkable happens, isn't it?
And that's the difference between AI, where the person might say something out loudbecause the AI has asked them a question and it actually being heard and seen by another.
(19:14):
Can we go back to meaning?
What do you mean by meaning, Jess?
it's an awful word, honestly.
And even now when I like, I don't know, maybe I'm looking for something in a document andI do control F in word.
It's just such an awful word because it comes up with so many meanings, which, you know,it can be quite confusing.
(19:34):
What do I mean by meaning?
So meaning, having a sense of meaning and purpose, what are we here for?
What matters to me?
what contribution am I making is a key part of psychological wellbeing.
So if we think about sort of hedonia, a life of fun, pleasure, joy, and then on the otherhand, the more Aristotelian, I can't say that word very well, concept of eudaimonia, a
(20:04):
kind of a worthy life, meaning and purpose is a really cool part of that eudaimonic ehhappiness, if you like.
Having a sense of
what we're here for, what we contribute, why we matter and what matters to us is a reallykey part of wellbeing.
Lots of associating having a sense of purpose with improved physical health behaviours,even longevity, improved mental health and happiness, lower incidences of depression and
(20:37):
anxiety.
So an important part of wellbeing, but it's quite a...
an intangible concept.
It's quite an existential concept.
Why are we here?
What's the purpose of life?
um it's quite a difficult thing to put your finger on.
(20:58):
There's lots of different conceptualisations as well in the scientific literature, whichobviously doesn't help.
And what I wanted to do within the book is boil it down, particularly meaning
meaningfulness at work into five things that I think actually people can kind of, youknow, eyeball and understand and be able to kind of grasp a little bit more, more simply.
(21:21):
So using the scientific literature and the various different conceptualizations, I kind ofcame up with the five things that seemed to be present in most, if not all of them.
The first is about making a contribution.
So doing something that has some value to something that you care about.
There's lots of different ways of defining that, but am I making a contribution thatmatters is a summary.
(21:46):
There's a very big emphasis on connectedness as well.
Am I belonging to something?
Am I part of something?
Am I having interactions and relationships with people that matter to me?
So that's another part of where we get our meaning from.
At work in particular, there's something about
(22:08):
Are you playing to your strengths?
Are you being able to use your natural talents?
Not just the things that you've learned to be good at in the workplace, but those thingsthat really light you up and energise you, that are naturally your gifts.
There's also something about growth.
Are you pushing yourself out of your comfort zone?
(22:30):
Are you continuing to develop and challenge?
And then the final one is about autonomy.
Have you got autonomy to determine, to a certain extent at least, what you want to do, howyou might want to do it.
So contribution, connection, strengths, growth and autonomy, and different people's viewof meaningful work will be a slightly different balance of those things.
(22:53):
For some people, they might say, actually, that's not important for me, but the other fourare.
That's fine.
usually there's a combination of those five to some degree and they're the ones that it'smost easy to make some, to identify some practical changes that you could then put in
place.
So I've tried to take this very abstract kind of existential topic and bring it into somethings that I hope will be closer and easier for people to kind of grasp and make some
(23:27):
changes around.
That's such a gift.
Because I wonder whether we can sense when there's not enough meaning, but we may not beable to articulate or describe what meaning might look like, feel like, be like.
(23:48):
Yeah, really great point.
Absolutely.
We're much more conscious of meaninglessness than we are of meaningfulness.
We're aware of its absence much more than we're aware of its presence.
Yeah, because we're in our sweet spot when it's present, aren't we?
And our vocational stuff and all of those all of those good things.
(24:11):
So what did you learn along the way?
Oh, what did I learn?
I learned that I really enjoyed writing.
I sort of had a sense that I would because I would enjoy writing the occasional blog postand the occasional, you know, shorter form article and stuff like that.
(24:33):
So I had a sense that I would enjoy something sort of more significant.
But I actually enjoyed it much more than I suspected.
I've always been quite
goal oriented.
I've always been quite, you know, this is what I've got to do.
I've got to break it down.
I'm going to write this much a week and you know, and actually, so I responded kind ofquite well to that.
(24:54):
But the bit that surprised me, I guess, about my enjoyment of it.
I've learned about, so I did more research.
didn't research for as part of my masters, which is
sort of informed this, but I also did more research for the book.
So I ended up having lots of more conversations with people who sort of appealed to myfairly vague requests on LinkedIn, you know, feeling in a bit of a rut at work, I'd love
(25:21):
to have a chat.
And so ended up having lots more conversations with people.
So learn a lot about how this presents and I guess some of the similarities in the waysthat these, I call them mid-career crisis, which is slightly sort of
polemical language to catch the eye of a book publisher and a reader.
(25:46):
yeah, kind of trying to better understand, I guess, some of the similarities in the waythat that presents, but also some of the differences.
And so that research gave me the opportunity to talk to people that are quite far out ofmy normal conversations, because they're not necessarily people that are having coaching,
they're not necessarily people who are offered coaching at work or whatever.
(26:06):
hearing different types of stories that corroborated and in some instances challenged therest of my evidence was really helpful.
um And then guess probably something about the marketing side of it.
You write this book and you feel very proud of yourself and then you think, goodness, thereal work has only just begun, hasn't it?
(26:28):
Because actually this is the easy bit and the hard bit, the bit that I'm not massivelyloving.
um is to work out how you get it out into the world.
That was relatively straightforward, but it's been the marketing and the of the promotingbit that is only just really beginning now.
And I think I'm going to have to dig deep and use my goal focus to keep going basicallyover the next year, two years, three years, indefinitely to keep it out there and keep it
(27:01):
useful and being used.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
It's only just begun.
It's funny, isn't it?
Because I think for me, when I write a book, think, that's out in the world.
And it's like a child leaving home.
But actually, needs it needs lifts.
(27:23):
Yeah, yeah and financial support.
m
and all those other good things.
most of our listeners are coaches.
What is it that you want to say to coaches when they're working with people around meaningand purpose?
(27:45):
Mmm lovely question.
So I think that
I think I would say probably an encouragement to...
just as you'd said earlier in the conversation, help your client, help your thinkereyeball it.
(28:08):
It can feel a little bit scary or vague.
It can feel a bit existential, but actually it's a perfect, perfect topic for coaching,but it can take a lot of time.
And so quite often I'll have conversations where, you know.
If we were talking about something else, the progress might feel a little bit slow, butactually it's necessarily slow.
(28:33):
This is important stuff.
It goes to the very heart of who you are, of your values, of your identity, of whatmatters.
You've probably got to strip off quite a lot of the shoulds and the coulds and theinjunctions that we've had from being kids and teenagers to...
that life should be one thing, know, your career should be like this.
(28:54):
So it can feel like quite slow work.
So be patient and let the let the thinker sort of take the time that they need for that.
um
And I think probably if we go back to that idea of people making meaning as they speak,some of the very simple techniques within coaching of, you know, of simply listening of
(29:22):
the short summary, the repetition of a word or two, those things can just be reallyhelpful.
don't need to do very much more than that because actually the thinker is making meaningas they speak.
So,
I guess, keeping your interactions as little and as limited as possible, I think is reallyhelpful.
(29:43):
uh The book has a number of exercises which coaches could use with clients further downthe track once that is starting to become a little bit clearer.
And I know that coaches are already doing so.
I had a lovely WhatsApp message from a coach friend saying, I did this exercise.
It worked really well.
It was exactly what I needed.
(30:04):
I wouldn't have thought of it.
And that's...
I just like music to my ears because it's great.
It's lovely when a reader says, this has been really helpful.
But I know that when a coach says that, I think, fantastic, that's probably 10 people thathave been positively impacted, you know, because the coach might do that again some point.
So there are some practical things there that coaches can use.
But I think my main message would be trust yourself, trust the thinker and keep yourinteractions quite light and limited.
(30:31):
Yeah and as you're talking it makes me think about pace.
Because this is an area that needs to be sat with and it needs to be lived with and itneeds to be wandered and pondered and held.
And therefore the frequency of sessions might be different than if you were working onsomething else.
(30:56):
Yeah, a really great point.
I forget whether I actually put any time scales on it in the end, but I knew that Jenny'sstory was 12 to 18 months and she still hadn't finished.
You know, we leave her where she's done some good stuff and she's learned a lot and sheknows what she wants to do next, but it's very much an ongoing thing.
(31:17):
So yeah, absolutely that.
is a slower.
uh
And that's in contrast, isn't it, to the emergency career, emergency career changecoaching post-redundancy or I've got to get a job or I've got to pay the mortgage, I've
got to do something, which is a different depth of exploration from the how do I findmeaning and purpose.
(31:42):
And raises a question about how do you work with people around meaning and purpose whenactually they need the money.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
One of the things I didn't want this book to be was a career change book.
So there is a little bit of thinking behind there about what can you do in parallel?
(32:04):
You might need to get another job ASAP.
You might need to go back into something that you ideally wouldn't, but you need to do itbecause it pays the bills and your skills are already packaged up, ready for that.
that's what we need to do.
In parallel, what can you be doing to start scoping out, exploring, dipping a toe in whatmight be a better longer term move?
(32:32):
It doesn't have to be one or the other and actually much better to do those things inparallel if you've got the capacity and the sort of the headspace to do it, because
otherwise you'll, you know, you might find yourself back in that hamster wheel of notbeing able to get out of where you are.
But absolutely.
I also didn't want to, there's a lot of, sometimes you read these career change storiesand there's an awful lot of privilege that's in there.
(32:59):
Sometimes it's voiced, but often it's not.
And actually, oh, I quit my job and I did X and Y and it turns out, you know, the husbandor wife is the primary breadwinner earning 200,000 pounds.
And so, yeah, of course.
brilliant, well done, you know, but actually that's not real.
Most people are not in that situation.
So again, I wanted to acknowledge, I guess, the very real constraints that many people areoperating under um when we make these changes.
(33:29):
I've been the primary breadwinner in our house for 10, 12 years.
And so, you know, that's another thing that could keep you stuck.
It's another reason why I did my own career change very gradually because
because it would have been much too risky to have done anything else.
So yeah, I wanted to acknowledge that, yeah, the context that we're all in and what thatmeans.
(33:50):
Yeah, I think that's a really important thing that you've said there about privilege.
uh Yeah, because some people, you know, there are people who actually need the moneytomorrow because they haven't got enough money to get to the end of the week or the month.
And that brings different choices.
Absolutely.
So your book Jess.
(34:16):
Got mine too.
uh Smart Careers, How to Turn a Mid-Career Crisis into a Rewarding Work Life by JessAnnison published by Bloomsbury, available wherever you get your books.
And how do people contact you if they want to talk to you, Jess?
So I'm in a couple of places.
I'm um on LinkedIn relatively often, more often than I probably would ordinarily choose.
(34:40):
So LinkedIn is a great place, Jess Annison on there.
I also have a website which is www.jess-aniston.com and you can contact me through there.
I've also got some blogs and other bits, resources and stuff on there if any of this hasstruck a chord.
Nice, thank you Jess for coming to The Coaching Inn.
Lovely listeners, do reach out her if you want to talk more, check out her book whereveryou buy your books.
(35:06):
Thank you Jess.
Thank you so much Claire and absolutely lovely conversation as I knew it would be.
So yeah, thank you for creating this space.
It's pleasure and thank you for listening everyone and do subscribe or follow so that youcan get next week's episode as it drops.
See you soon.
Bye bye.
Hello there, how lovely to see you and to be in conversation with you.
This episode is for you if you are a career changer or if you work with career changers.
I'm in conversation with Jess Annison who's just written a book called Smart Careers, Howto Turn a Mid-Career Crisis into a Rewarding Work Life.
(00:23):
She is really clear at talking about meaning and purpose.
And there are some fascinating pieces in the episode, including how uh career change canbe a privilege that not everyone is able to engage with.
Also worth checking out her book, because there's a cracking bit in it, which takes youinside the coaching room and sees what a real life coaching conversation might look like.
(00:51):
So if you are in the world of career change, uh do share this with others you know whomight be interested.
and subscribe or follow to The Coaching Inn wherever you listen to your podcasts so thatyou get this episode every week.
Be really interesting to hear what you think.
Enjoy.
(01:24):
Welcome everyone and welcome to our guest this week, Jess Annison.
Jess, what a delight to have you here.
Thank you, a real delight, a real delight, thank you.
So you've written a book, Jess, called Smart Careers, and we've been in little bit ofdialogue about it for a while, because it was a pleasure to have a look at it before it
(01:45):
came out.
So tell us a bit about your journey into coaching.
And then I want to talk about the book.
Brilliant.
No, thank you.
So yeah, my journey into coaching, I mean, it started a long, time ago.
It started 16, 17 years ago when I was a civil servant, offered coaching, professionalcoaching, said yes, because I was eager and keen to do all the things that might help me
(02:15):
in my career and found it a really useful and interesting experience.
With hindsight, I probably didn't get the absolute most from it.
You know, I was probably sort of wanting to be led a little bit and mentored perhaps a bitmore.
But I still remember the, I guess the luxury of having an hour focused on me, just talkingabout me where I could say things that I perhaps felt, you know, uncomfortable to say to
(02:44):
my manager or to colleagues.
So that was the very, very start.
And then...
much much more recently, I think it was 2020, I thought actually this is something that Iwant to do.
I was still working in a corporate job at that time, I was working for a further educationcollege, had a leadership role, running a big program, but had recognised that as I was
(03:09):
becoming more senior my management style had been needing to change, I'd had to get a lotless directive, delegate more.
had a bit of a tendency to micromanage if I was allowed to.
So actually for me, coaching initially was how can I coach my teams better and use that asa bit of a way of extricating me and my very long handled screwdriver that I was otherwise
(03:35):
inserting into people who were perfectly capable at doing what they needed to do, but Ijust couldn't sort of stop.
So that was originally how I decided to train as a coach.
Um, but as I was doing that, I just really enjoyed it.
And I realised that actually, I just really liked coaching anybody.
(03:55):
It didn't have to be my team on, on, you know, my, my work, responsibilities.
And actually I realised that I was quite good at it.
So having come into it, feeling like this was a bit of a sort of a fairly dramatic, uh,remedial measure to help me best be a better leader.
I realised that actually I could completely extricate myself and.
(04:17):
and use these skills and my wider skills around listening and empathy to help people makeprogress on whatever it was they wanted to do.
And then there was a bit of a gradual transition.
I went from full-time in my job to about 0.7 initially.
About a year after that, I decided I wanted to do a master's.
(04:39):
So I did a master's in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology.
I've always had this sort of need, I think, to
feel sure in the, um I guess the rigour with which I'm doing something.
You can be a great coach with just a couple of days training, but for me, I really wantedto understand the science of it and make sure that there was something credible underneath
(05:05):
what I was doing.
So the masters felt quite an important step for me before I was then able to commit myselfwholly to it.
But from that point on, I've not been employed, I've been self-employed and now I spend mytime coaching, facilitating and some other kind of allied things like writing, which is
(05:25):
obviously where the book sort of has originated from.
yeah, it's been a three or four year quite gradual transition, which worked for me as theway that I've wanted to do it.
And that's really good to hear, isn't it?
Because I think there's sometimes a feeling that you have to be all or nothing.
And leaving, crossing the bridge gradually without cutting it off is a really usefulthing.
(05:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
You when I went from full-time to part-time, I was pretty sure that work would say, oh,yeah, you know, that hasn't worked.
Don't worry, come back full-time.
And likewise, when I stepped away to do the masters, it was a year long course.
So again, if I didn't love it, if it didn't go well, if it wasn't for me, it was only ayear's worth of investment.
And I sort of backed myself enough at that point to get another job.
(06:18):
Whether I'd get another employed job nowadays, I don't know because I think I've gonecompletely feral.
So I'm not sure I can ever work for anyone again.
So I think I may have burned my bridges a little bit now.
I wonder whether that's to do with what you love as well as what someone else might wantto buy.
Yes.
That's so interesting.
(06:38):
I wonder, listener, if you're thinking that about yourself.
Yeah, because I think that about myself all the time, Interesting.
So the book, Smart Careers, How to Turn a Mid-Career Crisis into a Rewarding Work Life,what was the question that you were asking that made, that was the beginning of the book
(07:02):
being born?
So yeah, the question really was how can we, somebody, find sort of ongoing fulfilment inwhat they do?
Because I've worked with so many people and a large part of this is my own experience aswell.
(07:24):
know, there's sort of my initial dipping into research was what they call me-search.
You know, it was very sort of, you know, I want to understand my experiences.
and my experiences and quite a lot of the clients that I have been working with.
They're 20 years into a career.
They have really enjoyed what they've do and found it meaningful.
(07:48):
But actually at this sort of middle-ish point, they're starting to question, okay, is thiswhat I want to keep doing?
It feels less meaningful over time, whether it's...
tiredness or sort of a bit of cynicism or frustration or just wanting to do somethingdifferent.
They're questioning really for the first time, is this still meaningful for me?
(08:10):
And if it isn't, what can I do about that?
So yeah, the question is how can we keep finding meaning in what we do?
For those of us that want to, not everyone does.
For some people, a job is a job.
It's the paycheck.
It's what pays the bills.
And that's absolutely fine.
But through my master's research,
I kind of became aware of just how good it is for us to find our work meaningful.
(08:34):
But it's also quite an intangible thing.
It's quite a hard thing to put your finger on what that actually means.
It's very subjective.
So your definition of meaningful might not be the same as mine or the next person.
And yet quite often we find it hard to devote enough time to really thinking about whatthat is.
And if it's not wholly meaningful or sufficiently meaningful for us, what can we do?
(08:57):
Do you throw it all up and do a different career or actually there's a lot that you can dowithout making much change at all?
Yeah, and where do we find meaning in our lives?
Because sometimes that's not in our paid work, it?
Sometimes it's in other spaces.
So many, so many really lovely things and interesting things in there.
(09:19):
I am obviously a lot older than you.
I remember, and I used to do career coaching, and I can remember reading an article 30years ago that said most people will have five careers in their lifetime.
That's probably a different number now.
But what's interesting is, from what you're describing is, that's true and yet 20 yearson, when people get a wondering, there also feels like uh that it's dangerous to think
(09:54):
about changing career when you may only have already had one.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think that number is probably higher now.
And only getting higher again, you know, we think about kind of technological change, youknow, the way that AI is going to change kind of how we do stuff.
So yeah, there's it's never been more important to be able to kind of reinvent yourself.
(10:17):
But as absolutely as you say, particularly at that middle point of life, we can feel quitestuck.
And you've probably got 15 more years to pay on the mortgage, you might have
kids caring responsibilities, you might have elderly parents.
So you might have caring responsibilities both places.
You've got this identity of being whatever you are, an accountant, a managementconsultant, whatever it might be.
(10:43):
so pivoting that or repositioning that has impact for your identity as well as, you know,sort of lots of practical and financial things.
And yeah, you've probably gotten yourself to a place where you're relatively senior.
So does that mean stepping back?
Is that okay?
You know, we carry a lot of these shoulds around careers being always upwards.
(11:07):
And actually, it can be difficult to take a step to the side or take a little step back.
and yeah, different people will come with different barriers.
But I often see some kind of combination of these things that just end up keeping usstuck.
And
think I wanted to write the book to say, you intentionally want to be where you arebecause that's the right thing, then good, that is good, but it just needs to be
(11:33):
intentional.
You don't want to be holding questions or regrets about what if.
Because actually, the change you need to make might be smaller than you think.
You might not have to retrain, start at the very beginning.
There's a lot that we can do by...
Yeah, refocusing, even within the same job, job crafting, thinking about our workdifferently, leaning into bits that bring us more joy, more energy.
(11:58):
So there's an awful lot we can do without making a massive change.
Or if a more significant change is sort of what you want, then that could be possible too.
So yeah.
So look it in the eye.
Yeah.
Yeah.
rather than pretending it's not there or, yeah.
Yeah.
(12:20):
So what I love about your book is that there's a coaching conversation through the wholebook.
So what was the inspiration behind writing a book with content and with a coachingconversation in it,
Yeah, it's probably one of the things I'm most proud of, actually, when I look at thebook, I like, yes, I'm so glad.
(12:41):
And I don't, I think as I was starting to plan the book, I just thought, well, there hasto be a coaching conversation.
don't, I don't, it wasn't sort of a, you know, an amazing inspirational idea that came tome that, you know, I just remember thinking, I just feel like there needs to be coaching
all the way through, I guess, because it brings together the two parts of my world,coaching and positive psychology, meaningful work research.
(13:05):
but also because I think we make, lots of us make meaning through our conversations.
So I'm sure you'll have had this umpteen times, you know, probably this week alone, whensomebody's in a coaching conversation with you and the thinker says, oh, now I'm talking
about it, I realise or, you know, now I'm seeing that.
(13:28):
And actually because of the conversation, they're making meaning from something that hasbeen there all along.
just...
hadn't been able to access it.
And exactly the same when I was doing my master's research, I was talking to people aboutwhat made work meaningful and actually the dark sides of that because there are some
important dark sides that we shouldn't ignore.
(13:49):
But again, through these research conversations, my research participants were saying,wow, now we've been talking for an hour about meaning.
I can see different sources of meaning from my work that I hadn't appreciated before.
So I wanted to bring this, in the research world, we call it the social constructivismapproach, making meaning through interactions with others into the book.
(14:13):
Now the book is very accessible and practical, so I don't use words like socialconstructivism.
It would put everybody off, would be terribly tedious.
But what we do have is this really nice conversation.
We meet Jenny at eight different points in her journey and through the book.
and we see her making meaning for herself in conversation with her coach.
(14:36):
And yeah, it was really fun to write.
It was the bit that I never had any kind of writer's block writing.
I'd be like, oh, fantastic.
I've got a couple of paragraphs of Jenny to come.
Brilliant.
I can write those really easily.
But I also hope that it brings a window into how it...
could be, how somebody's journey might look.
(14:59):
She's obviously one person.
She's a composite case study.
So there's different research participants and different clients within her story.
She's not a single real person.
But yeah, hopefully it brings that window into how it could be and how it's helpful totalk about this kind of stuff with people.
(15:20):
In an ideal world, everyone would have their coach, they'd have that place to do it.
Obviously, that's not
possible for everybody, but uh a friend, a trusted colleague, somebody that you can talkto about, yeah, this is, this is what's feeling meaningful for me at work at the moment.
This is what's feeling not so great.
This is the change that I want to make.
A uh client of mine, coaching client of mine who's read the book gave feedback along thelines of nobody tells you how to be in a coaching conversation.
(15:48):
Yeah, you kind of invited for coaching and the coach does their best to make you feelcomfortable and welcome and explain a little bit of it.
But ultimately it's a bit of a dark art.
And so he found it quite helpful to read this story and see how it could be.
It's obviously not a, this is how it must be.
Everybody's different.
All coaches are different.
All thinkers are different.
(16:10):
But yeah, he found it a really great window into how it might be to be coached on some ofthese topics.
That's such an interesting insight, isn't it?
I've got a book idea here just floating around, which I'll just put down for a moment.
Because you're absolutely right.
It doesn't have to be like this, but here's an example of what it could be like.
(16:34):
It's a great thing because I think coaching is more than people think it is generally,isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
Can we just go back to, go on.
No, and I was careful and you were instrumental in helping me with this.
was careful that I wanted to depict.
(16:57):
I'm trying not to say the word right in inverted commas, but you know, I wanted to depictan appropriate form of coaching.
I wanted to make sure that the coach was, you know, the thinking was being led by thethinker.
The coach wasn't being directive, but that also the coach might make some offerings.
along the way because I think career coaching, some of my coaching is career coaching, butnot all, but that does tend to be the bit where people are looking for a little bit more
(17:28):
direction and it could be very easy and lots of career coaches do this, know, fill outthis form, do this exercise, here's a template for X and you could just be swept away with
a process which actually is quite unhelpful and not really getting to the nub of...
what the thinker actually wants and what they actually think.
(17:48):
So yeah, I wanted to give a depiction of career related coaching that actually was asperson-centred and open and organic as I think coaching should be.
Yeah, because in career coaching, I used to laugh because the reason people come to acareer coach is that they don't know how to think about it.
(18:10):
So when you say, how would you like to think about this?
They go, I don't know, because that's why they're here.
And that's where a menu is useful, isn't it?
We could do this, we could do this, we could do this.
Yeah, and Jenny is great.
It's just, it lifts the book.
It jumps between the theory, not theory, but the practical stuff and the reality in theroom in a beautiful way.
(18:43):
I've got a quote in my head that I can't remember about being heard.
When people speak something out loud.
And the coach is bearing witness to that.
That's where something remarkable happens, isn't it?
And that's the difference between AI, where the person might say something out loudbecause the AI has asked them a question and it actually being heard and seen by another.
(19:14):
Can we go back to meaning?
What do you mean by meaning, Jess?
it's an awful word, honestly.
And even now when I like, I don't know, maybe I'm looking for something in a document andI do control F in word.
It's just such an awful word because it comes up with so many meanings, which, you know,it can be quite confusing.
(19:34):
What do I mean by meaning?
So meaning, having a sense of meaning and purpose, what are we here for?
What matters to me?
what contribution am I making is a key part of psychological wellbeing.
So if we think about sort of hedonia, a life of fun, pleasure, joy, and then on the otherhand, the more Aristotelian, I can't say that word very well, concept of eudaimonia, a
(20:04):
kind of a worthy life, meaning and purpose is a really cool part of that eudaimonic ehhappiness, if you like.
Having a sense of
what we're here for, what we contribute, why we matter and what matters to us is a reallykey part of wellbeing.
Lots of associating having a sense of purpose with improved physical health behaviours,even longevity, improved mental health and happiness, lower incidences of depression and
(20:37):
anxiety.
So an important part of wellbeing, but it's quite a...
an intangible concept.
It's quite an existential concept.
Why are we here?
What's the purpose of life?
um it's quite a difficult thing to put your finger on.
(20:58):
There's lots of different conceptualisations as well in the scientific literature, whichobviously doesn't help.
And what I wanted to do within the book is boil it down, particularly meaning
meaningfulness at work into five things that I think actually people can kind of, youknow, eyeball and understand and be able to kind of grasp a little bit more, more simply.
(21:21):
So using the scientific literature and the various different conceptualizations, I kind ofcame up with the five things that seemed to be present in most, if not all of them.
The first is about making a contribution.
So doing something that has some value to something that you care about.
There's lots of different ways of defining that, but am I making a contribution thatmatters is a summary.
(21:46):
There's a very big emphasis on connectedness as well.
Am I belonging to something?
Am I part of something?
Am I having interactions and relationships with people that matter to me?
So that's another part of where we get our meaning from.
At work in particular, there's something about
(22:08):
Are you playing to your strengths?
Are you being able to use your natural talents?
Not just the things that you've learned to be good at in the workplace, but those thingsthat really light you up and energise you, that are naturally your gifts.
There's also something about growth.
Are you pushing yourself out of your comfort zone?
(22:30):
Are you continuing to develop and challenge?
And then the final one is about autonomy.
Have you got autonomy to determine, to a certain extent at least, what you want to do, howyou might want to do it.
So contribution, connection, strengths, growth and autonomy, and different people's viewof meaningful work will be a slightly different balance of those things.
(22:53):
For some people, they might say, actually, that's not important for me, but the other fourare.
That's fine.
usually there's a combination of those five to some degree and they're the ones that it'smost easy to make some, to identify some practical changes that you could then put in
place.
So I've tried to take this very abstract kind of existential topic and bring it into somethings that I hope will be closer and easier for people to kind of grasp and make some
(23:27):
changes around.
That's such a gift.
Because I wonder whether we can sense when there's not enough meaning, but we may not beable to articulate or describe what meaning might look like, feel like, be like.
(23:48):
Yeah, really great point.
Absolutely.
We're much more conscious of meaninglessness than we are of meaningfulness.
We're aware of its absence much more than we're aware of its presence.
Yeah, because we're in our sweet spot when it's present, aren't we?
And our vocational stuff and all of those all of those good things.
(24:11):
So what did you learn along the way?
Oh, what did I learn?
I learned that I really enjoyed writing.
I sort of had a sense that I would because I would enjoy writing the occasional blog postand the occasional, you know, shorter form article and stuff like that.
(24:33):
So I had a sense that I would enjoy something sort of more significant.
But I actually enjoyed it much more than I suspected.
I've always been quite
goal oriented.
I've always been quite, you know, this is what I've got to do.
I've got to break it down.
I'm going to write this much a week and you know, and actually, so I responded kind ofquite well to that.
(24:54):
But the bit that surprised me, I guess, about my enjoyment of it.
I've learned about, so I did more research.
didn't research for as part of my masters, which is
sort of informed this, but I also did more research for the book.
So I ended up having lots of more conversations with people who sort of appealed to myfairly vague requests on LinkedIn, you know, feeling in a bit of a rut at work, I'd love
(25:21):
to have a chat.
And so ended up having lots more conversations with people.
So learn a lot about how this presents and I guess some of the similarities in the waysthat these, I call them mid-career crisis, which is slightly sort of
polemical language to catch the eye of a book publisher and a reader.
(25:46):
yeah, kind of trying to better understand, I guess, some of the similarities in the waythat that presents, but also some of the differences.
And so that research gave me the opportunity to talk to people that are quite far out ofmy normal conversations, because they're not necessarily people that are having coaching,
they're not necessarily people who are offered coaching at work or whatever.
(26:06):
hearing different types of stories that corroborated and in some instances challenged therest of my evidence was really helpful.
um And then guess probably something about the marketing side of it.
You write this book and you feel very proud of yourself and then you think, goodness, thereal work has only just begun, hasn't it?
(26:28):
Because actually this is the easy bit and the hard bit, the bit that I'm not massivelyloving.
um is to work out how you get it out into the world.
That was relatively straightforward, but it's been the marketing and the of the promotingbit that is only just really beginning now.
And I think I'm going to have to dig deep and use my goal focus to keep going basicallyover the next year, two years, three years, indefinitely to keep it out there and keep it
(27:01):
useful and being used.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
It's only just begun.
It's funny, isn't it?
Because I think for me, when I write a book, think, that's out in the world.
And it's like a child leaving home.
But actually, needs it needs lifts.
(27:23):
Yeah, yeah and financial support.
m
and all those other good things.
most of our listeners are coaches.
What is it that you want to say to coaches when they're working with people around meaningand purpose?
(27:45):
Mmm lovely question.
So I think that
I think I would say probably an encouragement to...
just as you'd said earlier in the conversation, help your client, help your thinkereyeball it.
(28:08):
It can feel a little bit scary or vague.
It can feel a bit existential, but actually it's a perfect, perfect topic for coaching,but it can take a lot of time.
And so quite often I'll have conversations where, you know.
If we were talking about something else, the progress might feel a little bit slow, butactually it's necessarily slow.
(28:33):
This is important stuff.
It goes to the very heart of who you are, of your values, of your identity, of whatmatters.
You've probably got to strip off quite a lot of the shoulds and the coulds and theinjunctions that we've had from being kids and teenagers to...
that life should be one thing, know, your career should be like this.
(28:54):
So it can feel like quite slow work.
So be patient and let the let the thinker sort of take the time that they need for that.
um
And I think probably if we go back to that idea of people making meaning as they speak,some of the very simple techniques within coaching of, you know, of simply listening of
(29:22):
the short summary, the repetition of a word or two, those things can just be reallyhelpful.
don't need to do very much more than that because actually the thinker is making meaningas they speak.
So,
I guess, keeping your interactions as little and as limited as possible, I think is reallyhelpful.
(29:43):
uh The book has a number of exercises which coaches could use with clients further downthe track once that is starting to become a little bit clearer.
And I know that coaches are already doing so.
I had a lovely WhatsApp message from a coach friend saying, I did this exercise.
It worked really well.
It was exactly what I needed.
(30:04):
I wouldn't have thought of it.
And that's...
I just like music to my ears because it's great.
It's lovely when a reader says, this has been really helpful.
But I know that when a coach says that, I think, fantastic, that's probably 10 people thathave been positively impacted, you know, because the coach might do that again some point.
So there are some practical things there that coaches can use.
But I think my main message would be trust yourself, trust the thinker and keep yourinteractions quite light and limited.
(30:31):
Yeah and as you're talking it makes me think about pace.
Because this is an area that needs to be sat with and it needs to be lived with and itneeds to be wandered and pondered and held.
And therefore the frequency of sessions might be different than if you were working onsomething else.
(30:56):
Yeah, a really great point.
I forget whether I actually put any time scales on it in the end, but I knew that Jenny'sstory was 12 to 18 months and she still hadn't finished.
You know, we leave her where she's done some good stuff and she's learned a lot and sheknows what she wants to do next, but it's very much an ongoing thing.
(31:17):
So yeah, absolutely that.
is a slower.
uh
And that's in contrast, isn't it, to the emergency career, emergency career changecoaching post-redundancy or I've got to get a job or I've got to pay the mortgage, I've
got to do something, which is a different depth of exploration from the how do I findmeaning and purpose.
(31:42):
And raises a question about how do you work with people around meaning and purpose whenactually they need the money.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
One of the things I didn't want this book to be was a career change book.
So there is a little bit of thinking behind there about what can you do in parallel?
(32:04):
You might need to get another job ASAP.
You might need to go back into something that you ideally wouldn't, but you need to do itbecause it pays the bills and your skills are already packaged up, ready for that.
that's what we need to do.
In parallel, what can you be doing to start scoping out, exploring, dipping a toe in whatmight be a better longer term move?
(32:32):
It doesn't have to be one or the other and actually much better to do those things inparallel if you've got the capacity and the sort of the headspace to do it, because
otherwise you'll, you know, you might find yourself back in that hamster wheel of notbeing able to get out of where you are.
But absolutely.
I also didn't want to, there's a lot of, sometimes you read these career change storiesand there's an awful lot of privilege that's in there.
(32:59):
Sometimes it's voiced, but often it's not.
And actually, oh, I quit my job and I did X and Y and it turns out, you know, the husbandor wife is the primary breadwinner earning 200,000 pounds.
And so, yeah, of course.
brilliant, well done, you know, but actually that's not real.
Most people are not in that situation.
So again, I wanted to acknowledge, I guess, the very real constraints that many people areoperating under um when we make these changes.
(33:29):
I've been the primary breadwinner in our house for 10, 12 years.
And so, you know, that's another thing that could keep you stuck.
It's another reason why I did my own career change very gradually because
because it would have been much too risky to have done anything else.
So yeah, I wanted to acknowledge that, yeah, the context that we're all in and what thatmeans.
(33:50):
Yeah, I think that's a really important thing that you've said there about privilege.
uh Yeah, because some people, you know, there are people who actually need the moneytomorrow because they haven't got enough money to get to the end of the week or the month.
And that brings different choices.
Absolutely.
So your book Jess.
(34:16):
Got mine too.
uh Smart Careers, How to Turn a Mid-Career Crisis into a Rewarding Work Life by JessAnnison published by Bloomsbury, available wherever you get your books.
And how do people contact you if they want to talk to you, Jess?
So I'm in a couple of places.
I'm um on LinkedIn relatively often, more often than I probably would ordinarily choose.
(34:40):
So LinkedIn is a great place, Jess Annison on there.
I also have a website which is www.jess-aniston.com and you can contact me through there.
I've also got some blogs and other bits, resources and stuff on there if any of this hasstruck a chord.
Nice, thank you Jess for coming to The Coaching Inn.
Lovely listeners, do reach out her if you want to talk more, check out her book whereveryou buy your books.
(35:06):
Thank you Jess.
Thank you so much Claire and absolutely lovely conversation as I knew it would be.
So yeah, thank you for creating this space.
It's pleasure and thank you for listening everyone and do subscribe or follow so that youcan get next week's episode as it drops.
See you soon.
Bye bye.
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