The Neutral Zone of Career Transitions
Optimizing Times of Change for Career Growth
In July 2021, I joined Sora Schools, an innovative, virtual approach to middle and high school. I knew Sora’s co-founders through a national program I previously led for the nation’s top young entrepreneurs, and I had seen Sora grow from just an idea into an accredited school with graduating students. I was intrigued by the opportunity — and the challenge — to help build the community and culture of this progressive online school. So I joined the company only weeks before the new school year kicked off in 2021 and quickly experienced rapid growth from about 40 families to over 150 families. This started my crash course into youth education. I rolled up my sleeves and quickly began building onboarding and orientation processes for these new families.
My work revolved around establishing the school community, taking the best parts of a school experience and putting an innovative and refreshed twist on engagement. I was able to explore and create unique ways for students in remote environments to tap into their passions, make friends, and build core memories. From spirit weeks and virtual trick-or-treating, to celebrating milestones like graduation and school dances (yes, we created a virtual prom!), I tapped into a new world of possibilities to collaborate on reimagining how students and parents across the globe could connect and experience school. My work evolved into operationalizing other supports for students and parents, and throughout it all, I was fortunate to work alongside an inspiring and imaginative team to champion fun across an inclusion community, helping to bring new ideas to life in “Sorafied” ways.
After two years of leading the student and family experience team at Sora and seeing a new school year of unprecedented growth kick off, I made the decision to take a leap and make a change. Soon I’ll be embarking on a new chapter working with the Small Giants Community. I’m headed back to my roots of working with entrepreneurs and leaders and look forward to helping build and grow communities and programs to inspire and support purpose-driven companies, cultures, and business practices!
My Personal Relationship with Change
I’ve never been comfortable with change. As a kid, anytime a change posed a disruption to the harmony I was used to, I put all of my effort and energy into maintaining the status quo. I remember being very young when my parents decided to get a new kitchen table and chairs. I panicked hearing this news and emotionally tried to drag the heavy, rolling 1980’s style chairs with their torn plastic seats up a flight of stairs and into my room for safekeeping. I was afraid of what getting rid of these beloved chairs I had grown up with would mean. What if the new set wasn’t as good? Or worse, would the change of chairs affect all the important family time we shared together?
Thankfully I’m no longer hoarding broken chairs, and professionally I’ve even become comfortable tapping into risk; in fact, I love working in the fast-paced, changing environments of startups. In a way, this has become a version of change that I feel a confident ownership over — I can almost control how to mange that type of change. However, change becomes daunting again when it’s unsuspecting and I lose this sense of control. That little voice in my head has had decades of practice questioning what is unknown, casting doubts about what could go wrong, and second guessing that I shouldn’t just hold tight to the way things are. It can be easy to let self-doubt creep in to try and preserve what feels comfortable.
The Positive Side of Change
Change can be scary and intimidating, whether it’s planned change you opt into or unexpected change that is thrust upon you. How you react to and deal with changes is a skillset that needs developing.
I had a conversation with a mentor who said that the ways we’ve learned to protect ourselves and handle change in the past might no longer be useful tools for the versions of ourselves today.
Like any habit you hope to develop, it takes consistent practice, intention, and dedicated time to adopt new behaviors and mindsets. Viewing change in a positive light is a lifelong journey. It will take time and patience to practice proactively seeking out change as wanted opportunities for growth.
Navigating Transitions
In William Bridges’ thought-provoking book The Way of Transition, he differentiates “change” from “transition” in that change is a situational shift. Transition, however, helps you deal with change; it is “the process of letting go of the way things use to be and then taking hold of the way they subsequently become.” Changes are symptoms that trigger transition.
To be able to successfully move through the stages of transition, we go through phases of reorientation to adjust our understanding of the world as it shifts. In its wake, people change in some way. Bridges describes periods of transition as the “traveling parts” in life’s journey that end the old and begin the new. This “in between” or neutral zone of a transition is where you let go of the reality you used to know and open yourself up to the unknown of the beginning that is to come.
The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. . . The world doesn’t fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can’t pigeon-hole a real new experience.
- D.H. Lawrence
I feel very much in this neutral zone of transition. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t slightly anxious about not fully knowing what lies ahead. I’m leaving talented colleagues at Sora and the comfort of familiarity and knowing how to make an impact every day. Being patient and waiting to see what will unfold with Small Giants, while releasing what I knew to be true at Sora, is intimating and requires intentionally pausing.
However, I’m listening to my own advice and viewing change as a positive step towards growth. I’m owning up to my promise for myself and my own challenge from last month — to seek out change as an opportunity for growth. And I’m ready to openly embrace what comes next!
