Story of Greg (Middle Manager)
Greg is a manager working in a mid-sized accounting firm in Toronto. He obtained his Chartered Professional Accountant designation within the first four years of his career. He is currently on his seventh year working in his second accounting firm having spent the first three years of his career with one of the Big 4 accounting firm. Unfortunately for Greg, audit and accounting had never been a career passion for him. In fact, he always wanted to break away from audit and accounting and venture into investment banking or something more to his likely. All in all, Greg had spent nine years in a field he doesn't really like and subconsciously always wanted to leave. Ultimately, it leads to unhappiness, a feeling of being trapped which transpired into medioare work performance, hence, Greg hasn't received much promotion compared to his other colleague.
Greg decided to seek help and engaged a Career Coach to help guide him into a career path he would truly be passionate about. The first think that Greg had to address is to find out exactly what is it that he truly wants. He thought he knew he wanted to go into investment banking thinking it is the holy grail of money making career and something that he wanted. However, after discussing with his Career Coach, he soon realized, a career in investment banking may not be the answer. It is revealed why he dislike audit and accounting so much is that the work nature of this role does not fit his personality and inherent skillset.
Greg had always been a people's person and loves to meet new people and to solve ad hoc problems. Though he had developed a solid technical accounting background over the years, the true potential for Greg had always been dealing with people.
It was advise to Greg to see if he could seek a different position within his firm but unfortunately, none were available. He had to leave his company but got a role in the Business Development area for another mid size accounting firm. In a short period of only two years, Greg was able to advance quite rapidly within the firm. He was also regarded as one of the 'top guns' in his firm in landing new engagements for his firm. His unique combination of possessing a strong technical accounting background combined with his inherent people skills makes him the perfect candidate for this role.
Now Greg is truly passionate about his new career path and this was only made possible because Greg decided he needed career guidance to facilitate critical changes to put him back on the right career path.
