“Today,” I told my kid as I drove towards my office, “Is the first day in a very long time when I am going to work and I won’t be the boss.”
“What?” He asked, from the back seat. “That’s terrible.”
“It’s not terrible,” I said. “It was my choice.”
“Why would ANYONE choose that?”
My son doesn't get to be the boss of much, so his concern is understandable. He'd like to choose what to eat for breakfast, please, and he would like that choice to be fresh air.
But why, indeed, is not a bad question.
At the end of last year. I took a wilful demotion.
My son isn’t the only one who’s confused about it. The appeal of “Big Jobs” might be a little tarnished, post-pandemic, but they’re still what you’re supposed to have, as a midlife woman who's been working hard for a long time. Bossing is what you're meant to do, as a serious career person, as a feminist, as someone with ego and ambition.
But there are moments in any career – as Jacinda Ardern spelled out to the world – when it becomes clear that a strategic retreat is a saviour and a salve. The thing that can actually save your love for your work.
This is what my most recent 'wilful demotion' looked like: Handing back the status that came with a "Head Of" title; no longer sitting on the Senior Leadership Team; giving up direct reports.
No longer being "The Boss".
It's not for everyone, but I've done it before. Holding on to power when you no longer have the fire in your belly to wield it well never ends well. And true job satisfaction can come from the realisation that there are more versions of success than the one that puts you at the top of an org chart.
I've been in paid work for more than 30 years now, so I've learnt a few things about when it's time to climb and when it's time to traverse, and here are a few of them.
1. You should stop managing people way before you stop caring about them.
Management isn't about you. If you're doing it right, management is about coaching your team to glory, not rubbing it all over yourself.
A good boss concerns themselves with helping their team do good work that delivers what the business or organisation needs (e.g. what you're all paid to do). Ideally, you're helping the team enjoy it (mostly) and get better at it. You're making sure they hit goals they didn't think they could, applauding their successes, and coaching them through failures.
Yes, I sound pious as hell. No, I never nailed that every day as a boss.
But there are times in your life when you're well-placed for that level of long-term selflessness. And there are times in your career – and your life – when you just don't have it in you. When you'd rather focus on your own work, and getting better at that.
If your team's concerns are beginning to feel like a burden, when your heart sinks at another one-on-one in the diary, when you can no longer see a way to get the team over that line to the goal, it might be time to pause or to stop. Or, it might be time to ask for help. Either way, push right through and you'll start to feel bitter about what you're sacrificing and why no one's asked you if you're okay lately.
And everyone hates a whiney boss.
2. Very, very few people can step back without a Plan B. Work out what that is.
Nothing is getting cheaper. Demotions – in almost all examples – come with less money. And there are few times in your life when any of us can do with less money. Particularly now.
If we're getting personal, my salary is not what we once patronisingly called "pin money” – a bit of extra to supplement a husband’s wage. My wage is what my family lives on.
I have been strategically reckless with that fact before (taking a 'demotion' from print magazines to move to digital publishing which came with a significant pay cut) and in the short term, my entire family paid a price.
But that was a temporary crisis that paid off. In order to take this new demotion, the wage gap had to be made up elsewhere. For me, that has been another career – writing books. Becoming an author was my dream. Making any money from it was my fantasy.
It’s a fantasy shared by many Australian authors. Making a living from book sales in our relatively small market is unrealistic for all but a few. Again, if we're getting personal, I can’t make a living from books, but after the success of I Give My Marriage A Year and The Couple Upstairs, I can make a portion of a living. And that’s the portion that’s allowed me to pull back on my salaried job.
Listen to a subscriber-exclusive episode of Mamamia Out Loud from Holly Wainwright, Jessie Stephens and Sally Hepworth about the real money in being a 'career author', here.
This is all to say, there’s no point in a demotion if the financial stress it causes outweighs the benefits of fewer hours or less responsibility. But if you’re considering it, it's helpful to distinguish between the ‘nice to have’ dollars and the ‘absolutely non-negotiable’ dollars. Because if there is a gap there, and I know it's a rare thing, it’s where freedom might be hiding.
THEN AGAIN…
3. There comes a point in your life when TIME is the most important resource. And the only one that matters.
Big Jobs require Big Hours. More to the point, they require big hours on a schedule that is not your own (see, flexibility, below). And for a lot of years, that was fine for me.
Mine was a generation invested in “love your job and you’ll never work a day in your life”. Where would you rather be, anyway, than working on a shared goal with a group of people who like doing what you like doing?
Well, you know what I’m going to say. Parenthood changed that for me, although not immediately. I’ve pulled plenty of long hours as a mother, in the office and at home. In fact, motherhood fired up my ambition, rather than dulled it. But as my kids have got older, their needs are more complicated. Less visible to the naked eye, perhaps. They can dress themselves and feed themselves (not well, but they won't starve). They can entertain themselves without crisis. They would really rather that we weren’t all up in their faces all the time, to be honest.
But I am learning that vigilance is crucial as our kids start stepping out into the world without us, more and more. I want to be around when they get home from school. I want us to eat together at night in a way I actually used to hate. I want to drive them places on the weekends so I can eavesdrop and sing at an embarrassing volume. I want to know who their friends are. I want to be around in the school holidays. And crucially, although work is as important to me as ever, I want to do it when I want to do it.
For example. I am writing this on a Saturday afternoon. It’s not overtime, it’s time my kids are off doing things that they weren’t on Friday. I have been firing up the laptop after dinner for years, but now when I do it, it might be because since 3pm I've been walking the dog with my daughter and making dinner while my son does his homework at the counter.
Autonomy over my hours has been something I’ve been working towards for years, and I’m closer to it than ever.
But to get truly close to it, a demotion WAS necessary, because…
4. There's only so much "flexibility" a boss can have.
This might be controversial. I'm sure there are many, many bosses who could prove me wrong. But in my experience, leadership requires presence. If not physical presence, then a digital presence that means you are available to a team when they need you. And people don't always need you when it's convenient for your schedule. It's really not fair to assume that they do, or to be a brake, rather than an accelerator because you are unavailable.
True flexibility – working when and where you want to – is not conducive to working with others. Partial flexibility – working when and where you want to some of the time – is achievable with a team if you are not required to be immediately responsive.
A demotion might be the thing that gives you the freedom to actually be "flex".
5. Success is not about job titles.
Climbing a ladder to some resting place on the upper rungs is the way we have long understood success.
The number of people who are above you on a slide on a traditional org chart is an easy marker of your status and progress. In the old-school workplace, it was clear. You started at the bottom with no autonomy and everyone telling you what to do, and you grafted and clawed and hustled your way up the structure until – depending on the structure, obviously – you only had a couple of bosses. And they trusted you, so you had plenty of autonomy. That was what we all wanted. Status, and freedom to have more influence over what we did all day
And it's true. Being a boss, if not the boss, is pretty great.
It's power. It's control. It's respect. It's being listened to when you speak. It's your ideas getting airtime. It's being in the room.
All that is seductive, and addictive.
It also just might have a shelf life. Particularly in a 2023 workplace where structures are flatter and the best idea wins.
And the truth is, the addictive part of it can mean that you can become so wedded to that title, to that position on the org chart, to being in the room, that you can't see when it's no longer what you want or need.
And that's not success any more.
Thank you for coming to an abbreviated version of the TED talk I delivered to my son in the car that morning.
I hope you enjoyed it, and also that you did get to choose what to have for breakfast this morning.
Image: Supplied + Mamamia.
Want to get the most out of your day? Take our survey now to go in the running to win a $50 gift voucher!
