The Mid-Career GPS Podcast

297: Making a Career Change with More Clarity and Confidence

• John Neral • Season 5

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Feeling stuck, undervalued, or underutilized in your career? 


You’re not alone and you’re not lost. 


In this episode, I unpack how to navigate a meaningful career pivot with clarity, strategy, and confidence. 


Whether you're reassessing your priorities, reevaluating your strengths, or questioning your current path, this episode will help you move from confusion to clarity without taking a blind leap.


Discover how to build Your Mid-Career GPS, my proven framework designed to guide professionals through the four essential steps of career transition: Preparation, Positioning, Promotion, and SHOW UP. 


You’ll learn how to leverage tools like Gallup’s CliftonStrengths to articulate your unique value, identify what truly motivates you, and build a purposeful plan for what's next.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why career clarity is the foundation of any successful career pivot
  • The 4-step Mid-Career GPS framework to guide your next professional move
  • How to identify and communicate your true strengths—not just what you’re good at
  • The importance of aligning your values with your next role
  • What hiring managers really want to hear about your transferable skills
  • Why strategic clarity outperforms blind leaps every time
  • The realistic timeline for career change: what to expect and how to plan


Key Takeaway:
Making a successful career transition doesn’t require guessing—it requires intentional action. Learn how to define your value, align it with market needs, and take control of your professional journey.


Resources and Links: 

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John Neral:

As mid-career professionals, you may be feeling stuck, burned out or just sensing that you're meant for something different, something that's more aligned with who you are today and not who you were a decade ago. After all, we change, but here's the truth. If you're considering making a career pivot, it doesn't need to be some kind of big leap of faith. In fact, it should be a strategic and intentional career move. In this episode, I'll discuss with you how you can gain more career clarity, identify your true strengths and create a purpose-driven path forward, a path that reflects not just what you do, but who you are becoming and the value you can and will provide to any organization. It is time to start building your mid-career GPS. My friends, this is the Mid-Career GPS Podcast, and I'm your host, John Neral. I help mid-career professionals like you find a job they love, or love the job they have, using my proven four-step formula. The purpose of this episode is to help you navigate a career change with more clarity, confidence and a deeper understanding of the values and strengths you have and bring, so you can ensure that your next career move aligns with your long-term career and leadership goals. Now, if you're looking for some help with that, I want to invite you to go check out my website, johnnerrellcom forward slash resources, and, aside from some of the free and paid resources that are there, I'd love for you to go and check out my Career Clarity course. It is called From Career Crossroads to Career Clarity. It is a step-by-step guide very similar to what I do with my private coaching clients, except it's all in a digital course and when you purchase a course you get lifetime access for that course to help you navigate your mid-career GPS to whatever is next. So if what I talk about in this episode resonates with you and you want to learn a little bit more, go to my website, https://johnneral. com/resources and check out that Career Clarity digital course.

John Neral:

Career Clarity was something that I thought I was supposed to have for my entire career and when I started questioning what was gonna be next or why I was no longer happy in my job, admittedly it was something that shook me a little bit. After all, I'm a planner. I was supposed to have everything figured out and I was supposed to move into my job and get promoted and be happy and grateful, and everything was just gonna be fine until I retired, and then I was going to have a great retirement. But as someone who had a 25-year career in education, it was shortly around the nine 10-year mark of me in my teaching career that I realized I didn't want to do that anymore. I didn't want to be one of those teachers who essentially has the proverbial golden handcuffs and couldn't leave because of a pension and tenure, and I thought I just didn't think it was fair for me to be in front of a classroom with kids not truly passionate about what I was doing every day. But here was the other piece I wanted to make a bigger impact. I wanted my impact to be something far beyond what I was doing in the classroom, and that's why I got into teacher professional development and administration, and that took time. That took time for me to figure out exactly where I was going to make the move. And so at the end of this episode, I'm going to share with you two questions that were absolutely pivotal in helping me make my career change, and they are the same questions I ask my clients today.

John Neral:

So when you think about career clarity, it is far more than you just being confident or assured in what you do and why you do it. Having career clarity is an opportunity to self-reflect about the values you bring to a job, the interests you have in the work you get to do, the motivators or influencers that drive you to keep doing the work and doing it better every single day, the fears that you have about doing that job or working in that industry or wondering where your path is going, and having a clear destination in mind. Path is going and having a clear destination in mind, and it is also about having the necessary clarity around the value you bring. And when I say values and value, here's the difference. The values are the things that drive and motivate you. It's how you show up, it's the things that people get to know about you, because that's what you demonstrate, in a sense of how you lead, how you communicate, how you treat people. But the value you bring is all about the technical knowledge, the leadership expertise, the things that you do that drive results day in and day out, because they are tangible in a completely different way and companies and organizations want that, value that and respect that, because that's helping them move their overall goals forward. Career clarity is everything for your next move, because that's helping them move their overall goals forward.

John Neral:

Career clarity is everything for your next move. It's why I coach my clients through building what I call their mid-career GPS. There are four steps to building a mid-career GPS, and they are. It is about the preparation, the career clarity you need to figure out whatever's going to be next. It is the positioning how you strategically position yourself in the market to go after the company's positions and roles that you believe are the best fit for you. It is about promoting who you are and what you do to communicate that value from a place of service and doing so in a way that, whether you're networking or you're interviewing or you're simply talking to your friends and family. It is about promoting why you do what you do and why that's a value to a particular organization. And the last part is how you show up. It is all about your brand and reputation and how you show up day in and day out to be the amazing professional you are Having. Career clarity drives your decisions and it also drives your indecisions. The clearer you are, the easier your decisions are made.

John Neral:

So one of the things that I initially do with my clients is we start talking about their strengths and their transferable skills. Okay, when I coach them on their strengths, it is a difference between knowing what they are good at and what you are known for and what you want to do. You might be an excellent project or program manager, but you may find yourself wanting to do something different. Sure, you have those skills and you're great at doing those things, but if you want to do something different, where does that take you? The power of transferable skills needs to be, and must be, recognized that in this job market, this conversation is far different. Years ago, you could go into a job interview or a networking conversation and talk about how you were a quick learner and how you'd be able to skill up or transfer your skills once you got the necessary training and support. And that doesn't work in this job market right now. Companies and organizations want to know you are ready to hit the ground running on day one, and here's how you are going to leverage this transferable skill into this new role.

John Neral:

If you have never taken Gallup's Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, I invite you to do that. You yourself can go onto their website and for two different price points, you can either unlock your top five or unlock your top 34 skills and strengths, rather and it will give you a ton of information and resources around where your strengths are. One of the reasons why I love Gallup's CliftonStrengths assessment is that, especially for mid-career professionals, they will say that leaning into your top five albeit your top 10 strengths out of the 34 they rank you on that leaning into those top strengths tend to help people be happier in their jobs, add more value to their organizations, are more motivated to continue to learn and grow in their positions, and they are able to leverage those strengths into their current and future positions. See, I believe that at mid-career, do what you are great at yes, we all have things we can be learning. There are things I'm learning right now that are exciting and motivating to me. They're helping strengthen that skill set I already have.

John Neral:

But doing what you are great at listen very carefully here. Doing what you are great at is not doing what you're good at. It is doing what you are great at and not wanting to settle for simply doing your job. When you're great at doing something, the question I want you to be asking yourself is how are those strengths of value to any organization? So if you're listening to me today and you're feeling stuck, undervalued, underutilized and uncertain about where your career is going, this episode is exactly what you need to be listening to, because making a career pivot with purpose is exactly what you need to be doing.

John Neral:

First question what's your intention? Why is making this career pivot important to you? What is happening in your career right now that is making you unhappy, unsatisfied, unfulfilled that you believe making a career pivot is going to change them for the better. What is your timeline? Right now, in this market, you should expect somewhere between three to six months to successfully navigate a career change and how your particular industry is quickly filling those positions. But have a realistic timeline. What's your vision for your career? In other words, making this career pivot is one thing, but what does it get you in the long term? What are your short and long-term goals? And if you're listening to me today and you're like John, I don't know that can be true, but I want to also offer you that's a defense mechanism. That is, you not wanting to do the really hard work of digging deeply into what is going to make you a satisfied, fulfilled and happy mid-career professional? And it's where I get to come in as your coach and truly help you navigate those things.

John Neral:

Making a career pivot with purpose is about identifying those potential opportunities where you have a viable and realistic shot or chance at getting that job, you will gain experience that you're looking for. It is about building your network and building your network to have a core group of people who support you, challenge you and champion your efforts just as much as you do for them. When you think about navigating this career pivot, I want you to understand that this is an opportunity to go from confusion to clarity. It is about standing at that career crossroad and wondering which direction are you gonna go in and when you decide to do it with the most action, intention, confidence and confidence you have ever done in your career. It's about changing the narrative when you're networking or you're interviewing, to show up from that place of value and service to look at that person in the interview to simply say I hear where your problems are, here's how I'm going to help you.

John Neral:

It is one of the biggest transformations my clients get and if you have a moment, please go take a look. Look at my website, look at the recommendations that are on my LinkedIn. You will see story after story from clients who have gotten that transformation and navigated toward whatever's gonna be next, and I also wanna tell you that I have some clients who they're very, very private about what they do and that doesn't mean that they didn't get results because they didn't post a recommendation or anything like that. Transformations are personal, transformations are special and for me and for my clients, what I know is that when you successfully navigate that transition, there is such a difference in your career. And if you've successfully navigated a transition and perhaps your organization has gone through a reorganization, a restructuring, a layoff, a riff if you didn't have a chance to listen to last week's episode, by all means or two weeks ago, rather by all means go back and do that. Those things sometimes happen.

John Neral:

But when you are clear about the value you bring, those kind of circumstances that happen along our career path or detours if you will you quickly get off the highway and get right back on because you are so certain about what you bring and can do and how you can help any organization you bring and can do and how you can help any organization. And this is one of the reasons why I built my career clarity course. Not everybody can afford to hire a coach privately. Not everyone can have the time, effort and energy to work with a coach one-on-one. But the career clarity course is there for you to go through at your own pace, to go through those steps, to build your mid-career GPS, and it's a great way to start at a low threshold, if you will. The course right now is selling for $97. And $97 to help you get the career clarity you need that will help move your career forward. Imagine the transformation you get from that, from knowing that where you are in your career is exactly where you're supposed to be and where you are headed is going to elevate and make your career that much better.

John Neral:

There was an article in Forbes a couple of weeks ago that described this job market as a state of unease and I read that and I paused and I thought that is so accurate More than ever. Between having to return to the work site five days a week, having this fear, anxiety and dread and worry about whether or not you are going to have a job all of the things that are happening in the world and in our economy we have to understand those trickle down into our working relationships. So it's not just the federal employees that are going through the tumult right now. It is the contractors and the companies that work with federal government and it's those corporations that might be impacted by tariffs or economic situations where people have to take a step back and look at where their bottom line is, how AI is changing the way we work daily, and if your job can be automated by an AI tool, my question to you, my friend, is this what is the value you are bringing outside of that that makes you indispensable to your company or organization?

John Neral:

Because you have the career clarity to know. This is the value I get to bring and, please, being a great person, being a people leader, being a wonderful communicator and a team player those are all great things. They are expected. They are not quote-unquote outstanding or exceptional in this job market. That is hard for me to say because, as a heart-centered leader and professional, that is so important to me in my core. It is how I led when I had my teams. That's all important. That is expected. You must be driving results. Having the career clarity is knowing exactly where you can drive those results and how that impacts your company or organization.

John Neral:

So if you're struggling with your career clarity right now, I want to offer you these two questions I promised at the top of the episode. Here are the two coaching questions I want to leave you with in this episode. Question one what are your most important strengths that you can leverage in your job search? As you're looking at positions and you're looking at job boards and networking with your community, what are the most important strengths you can leverage in your job search right now? Who needs someone like you? Needs someone like you. Question two those strengths why are they of value to a future employer? Why does your future employer need your strengths right now?

John Neral:

If you can answer those two questions, what are your most important strengths that you can leverage in your job search?

John Neral:

And to those strengths, why are they of value to a future employer right now? If you can answer both of those questions with evidence and confidence, you have the career clarity you need to move forward. If you don't, there is an opportunity for you to do some work and if I can help you in any way, by all means, please reach out. You can go to my website, johnnarrellcom, for more information about me and the services I provide. Connect with me on LinkedIn and would love to hear that you listened to this episode and what you took away from it. But this is all about building your mid-career GPS to whatever is next and that next stop in your career. You get there with the career clarity you need to move forward and make that career pivot with more intentionality and purpose than you've ever done in your career. So until next time, my friends, remember this you will build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Make it a great rest of your day.

John Neral:

Thank you for listening to the Mid-Career GPS Podcast. Make sure to follow on your favorite listening platform and, if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your comments on Apple Podcasts. Visit johnnerrellcom for more information about how I can help you build your mid-career GPS or how I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. I can help you and your organization with your next workshop or public speaking event. Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on social at John Darrell Coaching. I look forward to being back with you next week. Until then, take care and remember how we show up matters. Thank you.