How to discover what’s holding you back at work (meet your professional demons)

Recently I wrote about discovering my professional demons and how I try to deal with them at work. In this post, I will go through the 4 steps to find your own professional demons.

I define professional demons as your blockers to professional development and success at work.

I use the word ‘demon’ deliberately. These blockers often feel sinister, overwhelming and out of our control.

Discovering your professional demons is a journey. You are likely to find that you have multiple demons.

It may take time for you to learn how each one shows up in your work life.

Photo by Ronnie Overgoor on Unsplash

The first things to think about are your professional goals and why they are important to you.

This could be on a wide scale (longer term career ambitions) or a smaller one (your goals at work this week).

Putting some context around what you’re trying to achieve will help you better think through what’s getting in your way.

Professional demons are those things that are repetitive and keep popping up. They are holding you back on your journey to reach these goals.

Next, go through this process to start discovering your professional demons and how they are affecting you.

Write down answers to these questions:

1. What are your problems at work? where are your frustrations and challenges? (situation, context)
2. Where are the patterns? (thoughts/actions/feelings/relationships/situations/timing etc.)
3. Group the patterns and label with phrases or single words — these are your most common barriers and are likely to be your professional demons
4. Draw a visual representation of each demon (you could do this instead of no.3 if it’s easier to visualise rather than label with words initially)

I found my demons and labelled them through a series of coaching conversations.

Coaching is a perfect medium to help in this kind of process. You have someone else supporting you to ask questions, listen and reflect back what you’re saying.

A coach can help you discover what’s holding you back faster than you would on your own.

Coaches also often know structures and frameworks to talk through different scenarios. They can suggest the best ones depending on what you’re struggling with.

So I definitely recommend doing this process with a coach or other support if you can. You will get a lot more out of it in a shorter period of time.

But there are some steps you can take by yourself as well. You can use these either as a starting point, or if you cannot work with a coach right away.

• Start with the self-coaching questions above.
• Reflect back on the answers once a week over about three or four weeks. This is a good amount of time to show consistency and see where your most frequent and pressing demons show up.
• Rank them in order of importance to you and how much you think they are blocking you at work

Now you have a good sense of your professional demons and how they are holding you back at work.

Next, you can start to plan how to deal with them effectively and stop them getting in your way!