Juggy Sihota-Chahil has spent much of her career at Telus. She’s recently started working in the company’s growing health-care technology division. It’s a topic she was always secretly passionate about.
“I’m right now in an area where my passion is my job, and I thought that was almost an impossibility at times because my passion is making health care better,” Sihota-Chahil said.
“I never thought I’d be able to do that in my job because we’re a telecommunications company.”
It’s gotten her thinking about how many employees keep quiet about their career ambitions out of fear of appearing disloyal to their current team or boss. But keeping your passion to yourself can lead to job dissatisfaction, which doesn’t help you or the company.
“It does take some work and some planning and some effort, and you have to be thoughtful about how you would approach that,” Sihota-Chahil said.
The wrong way to go about it is to silently stew at a job you dislike, or rant about your job with your colleagues.
It’s also the boss’ responsibility to create an open atmosphere where employees can feel able to talk openly about their next career move. Sihota-Chahil said her experience has been that if you’re open about your ambitions, people will often go out of their way to help you achieve them.
“I go on this crusade to tell people, if you’re in marketing and you really want to be in operations … don’t be afraid of telling people that,” Sihota-Chahil said.
“I can give you so many examples of where I’ve told people that, they’ve told me what they want to do, and I’ve been able to make that happen.”
“Usually when people are applying to a different role or are unhappy about where they are, they don’t tell people. … The wrong way is to not be up front about it. The wrong way is to gossip and blindside the person you’re supposed to be working for. Having your current manager help you get toward that goal you have, help you shape that goal, I think is the right way to do it.” •
