Why launching a podcast is the natural next step

Since I launched my podcast (Career Stories) I’ve had an unexpected number of people say to me something along the lines of “that was a surprise – why are you doing that?”.  The implication being that it’s completely incoherent with everything I’ve done before.  Which is strange because to me it’s completely aligned with everything I’ve always cared about.

So I thought I'd share the thinking behind it.

A year or so ago I found myself in a situation where I had been interviewing a range of people. 

Firstly, I was writing my thesis and interviewing people at lots of different levels in an organisation about their experience of change.  I was fascinated by the different perspectives everyone shared about the same situation – informed by their personal experience, their background, their seniority.

Not long after, I was helping a client with integration post-merger and interviewed some of the team impacted about their career and experience, with a view to helping the client figure out where they could fit in the organisation going forward.  Although it was a difficult situation, I found myself engrossed in the different stories and paths people had taken to getting to this point – their different passions, interests, challenges and aspirations.

For some people, the change was confronting – they couldn’t see a way forward.  The career they had planned was disappearing before their eyes, and the path you are “meant to” take – work hard, get promoted – has vanished.  Or they were concerned about the security and future of their roles.  These issues of identity and security are right there at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and essential for our wellbeing.

As an outsider (and someone who has been made redundant twice), it’s easy to see the potential for each of these people - the knowledge that they’ll come out of the other side of the change and will (if they want to) find the thing that’s right for them.  Whether that’s working at that organisation or doing the same thing somewhere else, or doing something completely different.   

But I also wanted everyone else to hear the brilliant stories about these people – their fantastic careers and challenging life journeys (an architect, an industrial relations leader, as a refugee, an indigenous single mum, a carer of someone with ALS).

You already know of my interest in stories and storytelling - the origin behind my business name and the focus of my Doctoral thesis.  And working in organisational change, I’ve always been passionate about helping people have a better time at work.  But particularly over the last 10 years, my favourite thing has been helping some of the people in my team find their path (even if it wasn’t in my team).

So Career Stories is a way of doing the same thing – but for more people.  Sharing some of these real, brilliant, life stories. And perhaps hearing from someone who has been through a challenge similar to yours can help you know there’s a path forward?  Perhaps hearing that most people’s careers are not as linear as you think they are – even for those in senior leadership – can help you think about what your next step might be?

Irrelevant whether you need help with your career, I am convinced that you will love hearing the stories of the people I’ve interviewed – I think people and their experiences are inherently interesting and I love hearing about how the world works.  I’ll do a different post on the evidence (deliberately not using the word science) behind the power of storytelling that tells you some of the reasons why.