Professional fresh start: resignation can take us a few steps forward in our work – why we should have the courage to leave at the right time
Earlier this year, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation. “I don’t have much left in the tank,” she explained to the amazed worldwide audience. The 42-year-old has guided New Zealand through crises such as a global pandemic and the terror attack on Christchurch mosques for nearly six years, casually reminding reporters that the 1993 human rights law forbids women from asking women about their desire to have children in relation to their work to ask. He profiled New Zealand, he was a star in political circles. Anyone who has followed the media reception following her resignation has felt the respect that has been shown globally for her resignation: this woman is not giving up, she is resigning in a self-determined way. This is a big difference.
About growth (outside) professionally and how our instinct announces change
The only remote representation job I ever held was that of Head Boy. As a group, we fought conscientiously for a photovoltaic system on the roof and a cocaine dispenser in the cafeteria. In short: we offered little attack surface. So I never resigned from an assignment. However, last year I put my signature on a formal cover letter with the subject line “Resignation”. As a journalist, it’s not exactly the most radical change to move from permanent employment to freelance work. However, for me it was a step that required courage, because I trusted my instincts that called for a change. What I’m proud of today: I allowed myself the luxury of quitting my dream job when it threatened to be just a job.
The young management consultant Ann-Kathrin Zotz has a declared professional goal: one day to obtain the so-called blue passport, the pass of the United Nations. You worked for the International Trade Center (ITC), the joint organization of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. For her, Zotz had a dream come true: a permanent job with a good salary, which took her to Nairobi and Lima, among other places. “But after more than four years at the ITC, I realized: the sustainable economy is overtaking old approaches to development policy, and social enterprises can generate more impact than the projects I have managed and implemented.” she quit. But how do you actually decide when it’s time to leave?
Parallel to her permanent position, Zotz founded the digital concept store White Label Project together with her friend Caroline Foerster, which serves as a commercial platform for sustainable design, craftsmanship and fashion by entrepreneurs from all over the world. It was nearly three years before she left the United Nations. Today, the 35-year-old lives with her husband and their three children in Frankfurt am Main. While she doesn’t enjoy the same financial security with her young company as she does, she is comfortable. “When I became pregnant with my third child, I was surprised that I didn’t have existential fears even without maternity leave and parental leave from an employer, because we’ve created a work environment that gives us freedom.”
A new professional start: the freedom to reorient yourself is a privilege
I also liked the freedom of freelancing. When I was considering leaving my permanent position, two questions were essential to me. First, what am I out of work? I was asked this question by a counselor and consultant. For someone like me, who has been blessed and cursed in equal measure by a large dose of ego and the occasional over-identification with my profession, I’ve been gnawing at this question for a long time. Second, what would people whose careers I admire do? I wrote many names on a list for this. Then: the family friend, who studies biology and writes screenplays. She is in her 60s and in demand as always. My friend who left a management position and is training to be a dog trainer. My former neighbor, who was head of diversity at a large company, burned out and was squashed on the couch for four months, then quit. He currently he is writing poetry. He can’t live off that, but that’s okay, at least for now. And of course: not everyone can afford such a step. It is a privilege and a luxury. Achieving something like unemployment benefits is the credit of many past protesters. A net that catches us when the old ropes break.
Noémie Frischknecht has been working for the Swiss airline Swiss for almost five and a half years. As a lawyer, you oversaw the introduction of the GDPR. She was excellent at what she did, but she also felt like she achieved it all and somehow learned the ropes. So she retrained in her company: she today she works as a flight attendant. She earns less and she enjoys her new life outside of her comfort zone so much that she can’t go back to working as a lawyer. She prepared her decision with a kind of three-month thought experiment: “Every morning before I went to work, I imagined that I was going to fly somewhere. At first it seemed very strange to me, but over time that was not the case. This it helped me a lot.” She realized she made the right decision the day she communicated her decision to her. It was the end of “a given career”. “I felt very free.”
Finding the right job takes time and experience
The photographer Joanna Catherine Schröder has also noticed this after the pandemic: things are no longer going as planned. Seven years ago she started her own business as a photographer, now she is looking for a permanent position. “After staring at my ceiling for a month, I thought, ‘Something’s wrong.’ It was September 2022. Schröder she felt ashamed, frustration, disappointment because after the first successful years she seemed like she couldn’t make it. She has been applying for the job since April of this year. “I’ve learned that I don’t need to be afraid and that living with uncertainty is part of life.” She’s already canceled job offers because she knew, “That’s not all yet. I want to commit. It’s healthy for me to take my time, even if my financial means say otherwise, of course.” The photographer compares it to dating: “The better you know what you want, the less choice you have. I’ve still developed a lot more confidence that the things that are right for me will come at the right time.”
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said something similar in her resignation speech: “We will give everything we can while we can and then it’s time – for me that time has come now.”
This article first appeared in our July/August 2023 issue. Discover the magazine on newsstands or have it conveniently delivered to your home, for example via Amazonia.
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