Success at the Olympics is a pinnacle of sporting achievement. It requires decades of dedication, single-minded focus and sacrifice (from a very early age) to meet the standard required to represent your country. Even participating requires intense commitment, not to mention the extreme levels you need to reach to win a medal! The path is incredibly tough, fraught with risk of injury and burnout, which can derail your ambitions temporarily or permanently. 

An additional challenge faced by elite athletes, including those performing at Olympic and similar levels, is what’s next… All reach a point, perhaps in their twenties or thirties, depending on the sport, where they can’t participate at the levels they’d like to – it is no longer physically possible for them, whether injury- or age-driven. A natural quarter-life crisis of sorts...

While not comparable, we can think of qualifying as a professional from this perspective too. Years spent dedicated to studying and passing the technical requirements, step by step. Painful failures along the way that we cautiously pick ourselves up from, taking time to recover. Then one day, we finish all the exams and conditions, and are ‘qualified’. YAY! Well deserved celebrations. Once the initial euphoria passes, we start to wonder, ‘Now what?’… ‘I’ve got decades of work left. Should I study further? What other skills do I need, especially non-technical ones? What should my next goals be? How do I keep learning and remain relevant?’...

Another example of a significant transition, requiring a major mindset shift is when people leave the military, and move across into civilian life and careers. They move from a highly structured environment, perhaps with international deployments, to a foreign-to-them workforce culture. Some specific examples for athletes and servicepeople respectively are joining a physical performance troop (such as Cirque du Soleil) or becoming a financial advisor. 

I’ve written before about bouncing back, and keeping going, even after we’ve achieved success and we worry whether we can reach those heights again. These emotions are indeed relevant to big career transitions, but incomplete here: it’s also about re-imagining and remaking ourselves as we grow wiser i.e. we’re not trying to bounce back to where and who we were, but rather, pole jump to somewhere new. 

​In support of this, I came across advice on reinvention from Alexandra “Sasha” Cohen, an American figure skater who won an Olympic silver medal, and was a World Championship medallist multiple times. In her early twenties at the time, Sasha achieved her Olympic medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Read more for Sasha’s reflections.

Lee Faulkner is a non-traditional actuary, born in Britain, who has lived and worked in a wide range of other countries including Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and now Hong Kong. He describes himself as ‘Latin, Asian and British’ and knows all about being an expat! As you’ll see below, Lee has a delightful sense of humour, is strongly mission-driven, and isn’t afraid of pushing beyond his comfort zone (and encouraging all of us to do the same). He’s been an English language teacher during his career too, and has started a business ‘taking on the big boys’. Here are Lee’s reflections:

“Age - the Stuff of Excuses 
I’m approaching 60 so, according to the world I’ve grown up in, I should now be thinking about winding down my career and focusing on best-buy slippers and pipes. But that feels wrong - if a life well-lived means anything it has to be sharing what you’ve learned and using your experience to help out those around you. I can’t wind down - every year I find still more ways of ratcheting up; yes, I need the cash (and yes - all those warnings about not contributing enough to a pension scheme have come home to roost!) but more importantly I have an overwhelming feeling of “not having finished”. There’s more to do. I don’t have kids, so I won’t have a biological legacy, but I have a brain and a mouth that I’m not afraid to use so they’ll be the tools of my legacy instead. 

I don’t think I could ever rest until I see professionals doing what I’ve always thought we should do - using our skills to help those that really need us, not the companies that pay us. We’ve been hiding ourselves away for too long, and now’s the time for a professional coming out! 

We trust that the experiences and suggestions shared by each of our prestigious panelists are helpful to you in actively managing your career, allowing you to march forward with confidence as a professional, whether you are newly qualified, mid-career, or phasing into retirement. A wide range of professions was represented at #ProWeek, including accounting, asset/investment management, banking, risk management, actuarial, engineering, medicine, pharmacy, psychology and more...

For those who missed the virtual conference, or specific panel discussions you wanted to attend, become a Protagion subscriber to access the recordings of our panel discussions on-demand (in addition to a suite of other subscriber benefits like our private LinkedIn professional community, and subscriber exclusive Q&A sessions hosted by specific Protagion mentors or coaches).

Topics we explored over the course of our #ProWeek Professional Development conference were broad, and designed to address common career questions our proteges face, while showcasing the backgrounds and specialities of our professional mentors and career coaches. For each of the topics, we’ve also prepared a post-panel page sharing additional resources Protagion offers to help you, either on-your-own, in a group, or one-to-one with our mentors and coaches. Every post-panel page (each including links to some of our related free career articles) can be reached by clicking on the panel topic below: 

• Continuing Professional Development & Reflective Practice with Bradley, Tumisang (Lebo) & Julian
• Taking on a New Challenge with Xerxes, Errol & Nikki
• Financial Independence & Diversifying Income with Abdallah, Mashudu & Trevor
• Consulting or Contracting as a Career with David, Rishi & Valerie
• Further Study: MBA, CFA, postgrad? with Natasha, Tanja & Bradley
• Power/Soft Skills: Lead, Collaborate, Influence with Margaret, Nina & Greg
• Personal Brand & Reputation with Lusani, Richard & Vumi
• Non-Executive Director (NED) Roles with Marjorie, Isaac & Sheelagh
• Managing a Business with David, Niven & Marius
• Working in Insurtech / Fintech with Sean, Gerisha & Sumit
• Personal Mastery with Serge, Boniswa & Marjorie
• Purpose & Meaning with Anne, Soshan & Gretha
• Career Transitions (Session One) with Joey, Nikki & Lee
• Career Transitions (Session Two) with Divya, Lance & Stanley
• Career Breaks & Returning to Work with Grace, Andrew & Rumbi
• Work Life Balance with Hafsa, Jen & Peter

In addition to the open panel discussions, we held some subscriber exclusive sessions too, each hosted by a Protagion mentor or coach, offering our subscribers an audience with them on a group basis. These subscriber exclusive sessions were:

• Philosophy: Lessons for Professional Development, hosted by Michael
• Financial Yoga: Stilling the Waves of Money Anxiety, hosted by Trevor
• Support Squads: Building your Board of Mentors, hosted by Bradley

Please do share your feedback on #ProWeek with us – we’d love to hear your thoughts on what you enjoyed or what you didn’t, and how we can make our career management and professional development resources even more helpful in future.