Starting a new job has lots of emotions. Most often, you are excited about all of the promises of a new opportunity.  And yet, if you are lucky, you are aware and already missing the relationships you have left behind at the old employer.  This mix of those emotions can be tough, but with intention and care, we can manage through it.

I thought I would share my insights on this dynamic, as I am managing it right now.  I have decided to join Illumina, a great company on a great mission to transform human health through understanding the genetic code.  This choice leads me to leave my friends at Silicon Valley Bank, who are doing great work in helping innovators bring their solutions to market.  The amazing leadership at SVB created an incredible opportunity for me, and getting to the right choice and reconciling the feelings around it was certainly tough.  Whether your change in role is within the same company or not, the emotion can be significant.  My counsel to myself and to you is to find a place to express the emotion, and then park it.

Emotion is good and should be honored in our lives and should be factored after you have had a chance to evaluate the data when making important decisions.  Organizations are getting better at making data driven decisions, and we should use the same methodology when it applies to our personal lives.  Our emotions will change as our circumstances change.  The data that we evaluate is based on facts  about your career, what you need to learn and how you need to grow.  This data will tend to be more stable than your emotions.

After 20 years in Financial Services, I determined that a new industry is just what is needed to take the breadth and depth of my understanding and, thus, my  contribution to the next level.  That is important to me.  What I know for sure and appreciate is that the relationships at SVB are not lost.  They will just change context in how they are managed.  Since I can no longer count on seeing them in meetings at work,  I will have to make the effort to connect.  When I think about the folks at SVB, that’s easy because of the immense joy they bring to my life and, for that, I will be forever grateful.

Sorting through the emotion and the data allowed me to make a decision to take a leap for a different kind of growth.  Wish me luck! 

Dr. Lisa

Our theme song is “I am Changing” by Jennifer Holliday from the Broadway Musical, Dreamgirls