Redirect: The Bend

When a company hits a negative inflection point, investors don’t ask who is to blame.

They decide what to do next.

Most professionals hit the same moment in their career and run a very different set of patterns.

They take it personally. They worry about what people will think. They compare themselves to everyone around them who seems to be fine.

These are the natural responses to an inflection point. They are also the most expensive.

I know this from two decades of watching high performers navigate career disruption. I also know it from experience.

A few weeks into my role as Director of Research, I found out my manager was being let go.

I was still finding my footing in the role. And the question that sat with me was not abstract.

The new manager had not picked me. I was inherited. Which meant I had no idea where I stood.

I spent a few days in that uncertainty. Wondering whether the role was secure. Running through scenarios I had no data to resolve. Mentally rehearsing conversations with a manager I had not yet met.

Then I made a deliberate choice about where my attention would go.

Not toward managing an outcome I could not control. Toward where I could actually influence the return.

I focused on learning the role properly — what it meant to lead a research team, not just contribute to one. I went broader across industries so I could hold my own in any stock debate. I worked with a coach, not because I was in crisis, but because I wanted to be deliberate about the kind of leader I was becoming.

I set a boundary: attention only goes where my skills can compound.

That shift changed how I led. And it started not with certainty about the future, but with a decision about where to direct my energy in the present.

Every career inflection point puts the same question on the table. Not what happened. Where does your attention go now, and who is deciding?

REDIRECT is a ten-week series on career inflection points. Free, every Tuesday from 26 May.

https://substack.com/@charmianlong

Which of those patterns are you running right now?