Under the radar

I got a cacophony of feedback this week.  Cacophony is the collective noun when feedback comes unsolicited from different sources.  The gist was this:

“I really love your content on LinkedIn/Substack/Instagram but I can’t like it.”

I suspected something was going on because I’ve been getting hardly any likes on my posts and yet I get a great open rate, lots of wonderful emails and direct messages and people are always telling me “every time I open LinkedIn/Substack/Instagram you’re there” (which makes me want the ground to swallow me up).

But the feedback told me why.

There seems to be a few reasons, starting with the obvious one: we don’t want our boss to see that we might be thinking about leaving our job.

I’m not convinced that that many bosses have the time, or frankly the curiosity, to snoop on their staff’s social media engagement.  And even if they do, does a ‘like’ on LinkedIn warrant escalation to HR of a “flight risk” (sometimes I miss the dramatic corporate language).

Other people said it was less about a boss and more about colleagues seeing that they were engaging with my content.

This feels more like it to me.

Colleagues do have more time than bosses and probably more interest in what you’re doing.  But why?  One word: Gossip.

From my early days at John Lewis I was whipped into a frenzy of gossip about internal moves.  If Mike from China and Glass was moving to Furniture, who would get his job?  And surely Jo was ready for a move, she’d been on Lighting for more than three years – but Kitchenware was a big department.

It was electric.

As I wrote in my book (you know, the one available for pre-order on Amazon – July 2^nd), life wasn’t much different at BP really. The same covert operations around job moves: a posting would appear on the intranet and, like Vatican smoke, immediately everyone knew. The gossip began: “Who’s gone for it?”, “There’s a preferred candidate”, “It’s a managed move, don’t bother applying” etc.

Internal jungle drums.

So, gossip may be one factor.

I’ve also picked up a rather sad sense of shame in some of the clients I’ve worked with – it may feel a bit like failure leaving your job. Like you’ve given up.

It’s rubbish of course.  But because everyone else is still there – and seems to be so successful – leaving can feel like something’s gone wrong for you.

One of my clients (Anon.) summed it up well: “I am desperate to leave, but it’s a bit like walking away from a marriage or a relationship I’m really invested in”.

Of course, I empathised with her completely – it felt like that for me too.  My identity and my sense of pride in working for a big, global company were suddenly yanked away like the proverbial rug.  In many ways, working for 16 years with the same employer was like a marriage.

And, even now, I look back and wonder why didn’t I rise higher in the ranks, become the Big Leader, tower over the empire, stick it out?.

Leaving can feel like failing.

But success and failure are relative.

Today, I regard both my corporate career and my corporate exit as big successes.  I have no shame in either.

But that’s now, three years later.  When I’ve proven to myself I’m better off out – in almost all ways.

So, of course, I want you to like all my posts, so the algorithms go wild. 

But what I really want, is for you to ignore everyone else (apart from your nearest and dearest) and think hard about what you want.

What you want from this one chance you get at life.  Because almost the second, after I left my job at BP I saw that the world is SO much bigger and SO much more exciting, inspiring and confidence-building outside of that quite small world of the corporate job.

Of your own China and Glass or Kitchenware.

And it will be for you too.

That’s an opportunity to get yourself from under the radar and out, living your best life.

[P.S. Please like my posts, I won’t tell anyone]

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Today, the latest Corporate Escapology podcast drops with Lilli Graf from

IMMA Collective

- we talk about freelancing as a more resilient career choice than employment, as well as confidence, community and climate. I hope it’ll both inspire you - and build you confidence, if Lilli can, why can’t you?

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