What causes and contributes to work dissatisfaction or career crisis

Taking a measured, planned approach to career development is something that all of us would do in an ideal world but the truth is very different from that. Most of us amble along from day to day and do not really take the time to think through our working lives in any depth. Then one day something happens, it could be an experience like redundancy, a divorce, restructuring at work, a difficult boss. Possibly an area of your life has come to a natural end - you may have an issue of an internal kind like realizing that you're just plain bored with the whole job and it does not motivate you anymore.

Many common career problems can be related to life stages - the first fertile problem period can be in late school years or university- not suprising when many people, teachers and parents are expecting you to know at such a tender young age what you should do and want for the rest of your life. This is a lot to ask of young people who generally do not have enough experience to make such difficult choices.

The next period of life can be just down the line, perhaps in your late twenties or thirties when you realize that you have made a terrible mistake and the understanding that you are as suited to this career as a wax saucepan is to cooking.

Then of course there is the mid-life crisis which could occur these days any time between thirty-five and fifty. You've been working away quite diligently for some years and then you realize that your enthusiasm for getting up in the morning is diminishing. So eventually you wake up and realize that you'd rather be doing literally anything other than this boring current job that has come to the end of its natural life.

If life stages are the most common sort of anguish the next is actual change in the workplace. You could be in a job you enjoy, have colleagues you like, a boss you get on with and then bang! there is a restructuring, a merger, a new boss, redundancy is looming. Most of the above have the ability to turn a good job into a grim one.

Finally, there is yourself, perhaps you have simply changed and you have reached that critical mass phase where you just can't ignore it anymore. We all change over time and what we once held as important values may no longer hold true. Willingness to conform to corporate life may change into a desire to do your own thing. An earlier drive to earn lots of money may evolve in to a passion for pursuing a deeply loved hobby. You may wake up one day and think "what difference have I made in the world" and decide to change based on that.

Sources of career problems and crises

Life stage - ( leaving school/college, early working life, mid-life)

Changes at work - ( mergers, new boss, new structure, redeployment)

Personal work problems - (redundancy, sacking, bullying, performance problems)

Life events - (marriage, children, moving home, divorce, death, ill health)

Changes or new realizations in yourself - (interests, values, willingness to work for or with others, or simply not knowing what you want to do)

Sometimes we just need change to stimulate us into more personal growth or we can become stagnant. Some of the above you may have identified as the problem in your career or prospective career choice.