Five Reasons To Stay Corporate and Ignore Your Higher Calling

By Phil Preston

Ask around and I reckon you’ll be hard pressed to find a corporate professional who doesn’t see his or her job as a stepping-stone to a higher purpose or cause. Is it possible to stay in a corporate role and achieve more?

Here’s the standard playbook:
• Climb the corporate ladder to build up your earning power
• Develop your contacts and skills while paying down some of your debt; and then
• Move into a job that is more aligned with your personal values

Or there is the knuckle-down strategy, where you commit to working like a dog for the next ten to twenty years in the hope of building your wealth, retiring early and then giving back.

Do you really want to wait that long?

It also begs the question: If you were debt free with fully funded health and retirement benefits, where would you be working today?

Family and financial obligations can make us feel trapped in the corporate machine. As a result, we put off making a difference for another day.

Throwing it all in for a radical life or career change is one option, but it’s not the only option. Here’s five ways to make a bigger difference as a corporate employee:

1. Leverage your personal strengths
   Whether you volunteer in your spare time or via your company’s community program, assess whether you are fully leveraging your personal strengths to help others. It doesn’t mean you have to do accounting if you are an accountant; you may be a great team manager and communicator and get a kick out of applying those skills in a volunteering context.


2. Increase corporate program effectiveness
   Is your corporate volunteering program delivering sufficient value to you, your company and the community? Many program managers lament the yawning gap between their programs and business relevance. I’ve had to personally counsel a community manager who couldn’t face another meaningless morning tea fundraiser! Work with your program manager to explore options that will deliver better results all round.


3. Acknowledge your contribution if you are a care Are you helping to care for a family member or friend in a way that would ordinarily be considered charitable? In Australia, statistics reveal that one in 15 working age people provide unpaid care and I'm sure many professionals are playing supporting roles. It’s worth acknowledging that your support role is valuable and you should factor that in to your making-a-difference scorecard.


4. Smarten up to beat burnout You may be sacrificing home life and personal wellbeing for your corporate pay check. In the short term you may win; in the long term, you lose when you burn out and relationship problems set in. Some personal coaching to help you balance your home time, work obligations a community participation.


5. Add purpose directly through your work Can you help your company link social needs with profit growth? New approaches such as shared value create links between social issues and business returns. It’s worth examining what you can do in your day job to make it a reality. By mobilizing assets in your business for social good, you will be bringing enormous resources to pressing needs.

Millennials tend to look for base level of purpose in their work from the outset, whereas my generation, Gen X, takes a more staged approach. By ramping up your personal and corporate effectiveness, you’ll be making a difference on a much larger scale than might otherwise be the case.

For employers, it’s about going further than standard CSR or volunteering programs, they have a better chance of retaining you as an engaged and productive employee by investing in you at the personal level.

In a recent interview, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, Jim Clifton, remarked, “The ultimate act in workplace leadership is human development, not a focus on happiness or entertainment.” The trend is going in the right direction for corporate professionals, so it’s a good time to be opening up these conversations.

If you are in corporate, the grass may look greener on the other side and quitting your job for radical life change is an option, but it’s not an avenue that everyone is prepared or willing to take.

It’s worth taking time out to reflect on these five mini-strategies before you roll the dice because chances are that you can make a bigger difference in your current role.

What’s first on your list?

Image Credit: Paxson Woelber, Flickr

Phil Preston helps employees and businesses devise community engagement strategies. He can be contacted via phil@philpreston.co or followed on Twitter (@PhilPrestonTwit)