Flourish in Every Season: How to Navigate Cycles of Change in Your Career

Your career has seasons. Times of planting, growth, harvest, and rest. Yet most professionals treat every phase the same, pushing for constant output instead of working with the natural cycles of growth and renewal. In this episode you'll hear how to: 

• Identify which season your career is in and how to use the season to strategically to grow, reflect, or reset
• Recognize the signs that signal a new season is coming
• Avoid forcing an early “career Winter”
• Turn slow or uncertain periods into opportunities for reflection, clarity, and growth

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Jill Griffin, host of The Career Refresh, delivers expert guidance on workplace challenges and career transitions. Jill leverages her experience working for the world's top brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Hilton Hotels, and Martha Stewart to address leadership, burnout, team dynamics, and the 4Ps (perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, and personalities).

Visit JillGriffinCoaching.com for more details on:

• Book a 1:1 Career Strategy and Executive Coaching HERE
• Build a Leadership Identity That Earns Trust and Delivers Results.
• Gallup CliftonStrengths Corporate Workshops to build a strengths-based culture
• Team Dynamics training to increase retention, communication, goal setting, and effective decision-making
• Keynote Speaking
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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hey friends, this is the Career Refresh, and I am
your host, Jill Griffin.
Okay, I've been thinking a lotabout patterns and seasons,
especially as we are approachingthe final months of the calendar
year.
And it's not just about goals,right?
It's understanding are thererhythms and shapes and flows to
the kinds of work that we'redoing.

(00:21):
And it started getting methinking again about something
I've talked about before in theseasons of your career.
This is about recognizing thatyour work moves in cycles.
So your strategy needs to movein cycles, just the way nature
does.
This could be periods ofplanting, growing, harvesting,
and at times even thinkingthrough and lying dormant, not

(00:42):
necessarily taking action.
And what I want to talk aboutalso is that the seasons of your
career have absolutely nothingto do with age, how long you've
been working, or what appears onyour business card.
It's understanding that thesecycles are happening regularly,
and when we notice them, we cannavigate our own career path
with a little bit more grace andease.

(01:03):
So let's dig in.
It's about fresh starts and newbeginnings.
Ideas might be popping andstarting to percolate.
You feel the energy growing.
Perhaps you're starting a newrole, you're leading a new huge

(01:23):
initiative, there's a globaltransformation, your company
just went through a leadershipchange, or maybe you're finally
reaching out to some of thoseindustry connections that you've
been meeting to contact orreconnect with.
In this season, you are plantingseeds, you are making
introductions, you are mappingout your strategy, building
relationships.

(01:44):
You have to pace yourselfbecause spring cannot just be
about frenetic energy.
It's about intentionallyplanting.
And when you take time to alignyour career strategy with your
actual values, strengths, yourapproach, this is how you start
to create the path forward withintention.
Next season, you all know, issummer.

(02:06):
This is about growth, right?
Things start really clicking.
You're past those first awkwardmonths in a new role on the
project that you're working on.
You're starting to gainmomentum.
People are responding to youremails, they're saying yes,
there's collaboration.
Summer feels lush and abundant,right?
Growth is happening.

(02:27):
And this is where I at times seehive achievers start to make
mistakes because they stopinvesting in themselves because
everything's already happeningand they don't feel like they
need to focus there.
They don't need to nurture theirgarden in this area.
So they skip on mindset work.
They skip on showing up atindustry events because they're
too busy and they're in thelushness of things.

(02:49):
They they may skip or put offtheir coaching appointments, or
if you're in therapy, yourtherapy appointments, right?
This is not the time to put offyour professional development.
But when you're in the flow, yousometimes think you don't need
the development becauseeverything's going.
You always need developmentfriends.
Don't do this to yourself,right?
Summer is precisely the time inwhich you want to tend to your

(03:11):
growth and do it deliberatelywith strategic attention.
When you don't have thatstrategic attention, you might
miss opportunities that areright in front of you or push
yourself too hard when you getinto other seasons, which we're
going to talk about because thatcan lead to burnout.
Next season, fall, autumn.
This is about harvest.
This is when you're starting toreap the rewards of everything

(03:33):
you've sown.
This is celebrating your wins.
This matters more than you thinkbecause if we skip the
celebration, at times we canreinforce the belief that we
haven't achieved, or like I'm aI'm behind, or I'm not where I
need to be.
We need it, it's kind of thatdopamine reward cycle.
We need to complete the cycle.
We wanted the thing, we got thething.

(03:54):
We have to remind ourselves thatwe got the thing.
Because if we skip thiscelebration, we're going to
continue to search for externalvalidation, right?
Because we're not giving it toourselves.
So if we don't give it toourselves, we're going to need
like, wait, I didn't, no onegave me feedback.
No one said I did a good job onthat thing.
That's what we're talking about.
You have to celebrate your ownwins, water your own garden,

(04:15):
plant your own seeds.
This is what we're talkingabout.
And understanding that this isthis work is a lifetime of
reflection.
It's not a one and done.
I do it every week, honestly.
I look at my week and decidewhat worked this week, what
didn't work, what would I dodifferently, where can I
celebrate?
What were my wins?

(04:36):
Where was I on my A game?
I look at that on the regbecause it helps me continue to
know the path that I'm chartingforward.
So I want you to take time andacknowledge what you've created
and then really feel it.
Really feel the appreciation foryourself, like that gratitude,
maybe it's inspiration, maybeit's focus, maybe it's

(04:57):
championship energy.
Really take that in and feelthat.
Then we're getting intopreparing because fall requires
focus, efficient action.
You're harvesting the bounty,but you're also getting ready
for what's next.
And that means you're seekingfeedback, you're pivoting,
you're up-leveling your skills,you're continuing to do
professional development.

(05:19):
And I have permission to talkabout this.
There's a client that I wasworking with who was exhausted
from trying to maintain constantgrowth.
And while they received reallygreat feedback from their
C-suite, they also felt thepressure to continue to
accelerate, right?
That foot on my gas, I had tostay in fifth gear.
And that's just not how itworks.

(05:39):
There's an ebb and flow.
Not every year is up and to theleft.
Not every year is a significantraise or a significant stock
bonus.
We hope there is, but thereality is it doesn't always
happen that way.
And we've been in anextraordinary time of growth
where I'm starting to see someof that come and slow down,

(05:59):
where there still might begrowth, but it might be
non-monetary growth.
And this is the time you want toreally think that through.
That ebb and flow, we're humans,we're not machines.
So that perpetual accelerationis going to continue to drive
yourself in a place that mightjust be too harsh after a while.
It might be a place where you,again, you find yourself

(06:20):
crawling into or crawling out ofburnout and just feeling a level
of exhaustion.
The next season is winter.
And this is about reflection.
Winter time gets a bad wrap, butit's essential.
You need time to strategicallyrest.
This is again looking at somehonest evaluation.
Maybe you're between roles oryou're waiting for a major

(06:41):
organizational re-org.
Um, perhaps you're looking at uhworking through some
disappointing feedback, or maybea client resigned their account
with you and you're reallypausing for a moment and you're
reflecting.
It's not about being idle, evenif you feel the pause.
It's just about doing differentwork.
Looking at where you succeededand where you didn't.

(07:04):
Um, this is where I also saythis is a great time for
meditation, journaling.
Uh, how do you want tophysically move your body during
this time, getting clear on whatthose non-negotiables are around
health and boundaries so thatyou can show up ready and
prepared for the next season.
Ready is a mindset.

(07:24):
It's making sure your mindset isin the right place.
Preparedness is the subjectmatter expertise.
You know how to chop wood, carrywater, get it done.
But in order for you to set upset yourself up for the next
season, you need that pause.
Making sure that you're doingthis.
And also what I find thathappens a lot of times in this
area is that people stopnetworking because they feel

(07:48):
like, we're fine.
I'm in my role and doing great.
And then all of a sudden there'sa re-org, or suddenly there's a
new opportunity for a project.
And if you're not stayingnetworked in, you suddenly feel
unprepared for what I'm going tocall this winter.
So investigating kind of whatyou're thinking around winter
and this pause and this reset.

(08:09):
What do you actually need toreset?
Do you need to reset?
Maybe you think you're inwinter, but you're actually in
spring.
Really finding a way to makesure that you're building and
getting ready for what's next.
This is where I always askpeople.
So, what season are you in?
Taking a moment, askingyourself, where am I right now?
Again, this is not about yourage or your tenure.

(08:30):
This is about the actual energy,the circumstances, and what this
moment in front of you requires.
When you understand your season,you can figure out how to work
within it instead of against it.
And you can plan, prepare, andreally use this phase to your
advantage.
And this is what I do withclients all the time, right?

(08:50):
We get really clear on what youwant to create.
We look at your mindset or anybelief blocks that might be
there.
We're removing obstacles, we'rehaving real clarity.
And then if I take this action,how is this impacting my
professional growth?
And how am I going to createimpact as a leader?
This is all what we're doing,and we're doing it together.
And it's to not do it alone,right?
I built this based on, you know,I was a bit of an anxious

(09:14):
achiever.
I was navigating, I was movingforward, I was getting promoted,
I was having huge wins andhaving huge amounts of
responsibility.
But I always felt a little bitunsure.
I always felt like this level oflike, am I doing the right thing
or should I be focusing inanother area?
Doing this work and gettingclear, not only what season are
you in, but as I said,understanding what I want to

(09:34):
create, how do I need to look atthe gap between where I am and
where I want to go?
And how do I then want to tapinto either upskilling,
professional development,coaching, a skill I need to
learn so that I can achieve thenext thing.
This is also about the timewhere you get to look at some of
your blind spots, right?
How can you manage your mindset,seize these opportunities, and

(09:56):
move forward with less uh wastedenergy?
If this resonates with you,let's talk.
Schedule a free consultation.
Um, put in the information forthat in the show notes.
And as always, I love to hearfrom you at hello at
JillGriffinCoach.com.
All right, my friends, Iappreciate you all for
listening.
Be intentional this week, okay?
And always, always, always bekind.
I'll talk to you soon.