At the end of March I celebrated my last day as a Senior UX Architect in the BBC. I have now officially started my transition into becoming an independent Executive Coach.
I say officially, because this is the continuation of a gentle career swerve that began veering sideways three years ago, when I was accepted onto the BBC’s internal Executive Coach training course. My decision to train as a coach was inspired by a “Coaching for Leaders” course which I completed back in 2017. My leadership role led me to coaching, and discovering coaching felt like coming home.
Even though I knew I’d found my purpose in coaching, it wasn’t easy to give up a much cherished role as a UX Architect in the burgeoning digital product design industry. But my sense of professional satisfaction and career progression had been faltering, and finally the time felt right. To make space for this new opportunity, I had to let something go.
Career changes are common to many in the User Experience profession. Lots of us have worked hard to make the change from something else into UX, from visual designers and front-end developers, to market researchers, there are numerous paths into a UX career. But we need to stay alive to our sense of growth and look for fresh challenges as we progress. To remain open to pursuing new roles and disciplines you might not have known existed.
It is thanks to the broad range of learning and development opportunities that the BBC provides to their employees, that I discovered this new path. I am extremely grateful to my line manager Dan Ramsden, and the BBC UX&D department, for supporting me in progressing my career outside of UX, and beyond conventional management or specialist pathways.
My time at the Beeb is not quite over. I’ve entered a grace period of six months, when I continue to work part-time in UX&D as a leadership trainer, and as an Executive Coach to leaders across the whole of the business.
If you’re mid-career and questioning your purpose – feel free to drop me a message.
This post was originally published on LinkedIn