John Lees
Born 18 November 1958
Education
MTh, Liverpool, 2005; MA, University of London, 1986; BA, English, Cambridge, 1980
Career summary
1999 – present: director, John Lees Associates, Knutsford, Cheshire.
1993 – 1999: MD, Trevor Gilbert & Associates, employment research firm and legal reports provider
1987 – 1993: chief executive, Institute of Employment Consultants.
1982-87: assistant development officer, Associated Examining Board
Other information
Lees is an ordained Anglican priest. He enjoys photography, going to the cinema, amateur acting and singing in the local choral society. He has two grown-up sons
About 10 years ago, careers coach and author John Lees met a former US fighter pilot who told him: “If you only ever live half your life, the other half will haunt you forever.” These words struck a chord in Lees. But it was not until years later that he experienced one of the “road to Damascus” moments he now so enjoys seeing in others a moment that set him on the path towards being one of the UK’s best-known careers authors, and towards training as an Anglican priest.
Lees’ epiphany came in the summer of 1999 while describing his employment situation to a fellow participant on a two-week workshop in the US based on Richard Bolles’ book What Colour is your Parachute?
“This woman said to me, ‘That doesn’t sound like you’. It seems I had to go off halfway round the planet to get a kick up the backside. It wasn’t until I went onto this programme that I felt a strong calling, not just to be a vicar but to do something that linked into the spirituality of work, to giving work purpose and meaning.” At the time, Lees was working for an employment research and legal reports firm. “I had a strong sense that I wanted to do something different. I realised I was spending huge amounts of time on something I was good at and that earned me lots of money but which I found dispiriting. I didn’t get on well with my business partner and I was doing something I hated.”
This first-hand knowledge of how powerful such transformative moments can be has since informed much of Lees’ work. Being able to inspire epiphanies in others is what Lees enjoys most about being a careers coach and author. “I love working with people, be it an audience or one to one. And when a certain interesting silence descends upon the room, you know people have got it, that they are reframing and picturing things differently, and seeing possibilities for themselves.” Lees blames Britain’s long-hours culture for crowding out the non-work related areas of people’s lives. And if people are working such long hours, it becomes even more important to examine what they choose to do at work.
“There is consciousness that work should be tied in with values, but the trouble is most people are not sure what to do. One school of thought says that most people know what they want to do, but half of them haven’t got the words to describe it and the other half are too frightened to do it.” He says the spiritual aspect of work comes up all the time. “Often it is about getting things resolved and in balance, and trying to stop focusing just on work. I find the critical question in an early meeting is: ‘What happens if nothing changes?’”
Lees’ first step in changing his own life was to leave his job. He acted quickly despite having lots of money tied up in the business. He headed off for a two-week stint in the township of Thokosa, north of Johannesburg in South Africa, running a careers workshop for young adults. They all got jobs.
When he returned home, he went to the publisher McGraw-Hill and successfully pitched an idea for a careers book. But even then, being a careers coach was the last thing on his mind, he says. “The oddest thing was that at the time I was pretty convinced that I didn’t want to be a careers coach. My book came more out of an interest in creative thinking and how businesses use this in a structured way to create new services and products. My idea was: why can’t we use that process to develop ourselves?”
But in the course of writing the book, Lees changed his mind. And out of that was born his careers consultancy, John Lees Associates. Based in Cheshire, he delivers careers workshops in the US, South Africa and Ireland, as well as the UK. He’s also been an Anglican priest since July 2005. Lees enjoys coaching people to make career transitions and considers his forte to be helping people make difficult career decisions, either because they do not know what to do next or because there are barriers in their way.
Most of the people who come to Lees looking for career transitions are 30–50 years old. They have often made the wrong choices early in life perhaps a wrong degree or wrong occupation after university. Or he might help people whose external circumstances have changed, such as through marital break-up or illness. Lees also works as an outplacement counsellor and is retained by the outplacement specialist Career Management Consultants as senior associate for learning and career development, typically helping executives in their 40s who have been made redundant. “I tend to deal with people who wake up one Monday morning and wonder what it’s all about. It’s loosely about spirituality, about people trying to make sense of their lives. “I begin by looking at people’s talents and gifts, and getting to the heart of what they are most gifted to do. I help people to look at themselves, which they generally find illuminating, exciting and pleasurable.”
He says the next step is for the coachees to make a wish list of what they are really looking for, and subsequently to get them to go and see what’s out there. His aim is to help his coachees predict, anticipate and understand how they will be read by employers and other critical people in the marketplace. It’s not always easy. “Some people leap into this joyfully and others get completely stuck, finding it really hard to get out of their comfort zone. “At this point, people often get one piece of negative information and use it to trash all of their goals. A small proportion, about 10 per cent, revert back to the map and to thinking they’re too old, too uninteresting and so on, and start applying for low-key jobs.”
As with any coaching, Lees, says, one of the factors that makes this more likely is if the coachee is sent to him by someone else. But more often things click in a moment. Sometimes people just need a few words of encouragement to name what they want. “This happened with a friend of mine in his early 40s. He said he had always wanted to be an airline pilot and I asked him what was stopping him. He is now working as a pilot.” Such dramatic changes are inspiring but quite rare. Lees points out that it is much more common for people to make big changes gradually, such as retraining or setting up a business in their free time, or using flexitime to work as a counsellor.
One of Lees’ clients, a bright Cambridge natural sciences graduate working as a project manager for a large manufacturer, used this slowly-but-surely approach to achieve his aim of working in a charity in a low-status role. “It took him a while to make a start, but he doggedly used the process of exploration rather than job-hunting. It’s always going to be difficult for someone to change their role and field of work at the same time. “It might sound like a compromise, doing something cautiously, but as it is so accessible, I find it surprising that more people don’t do it.”
One of the things Lees finds he writes about frequently is people taking that first step to find something out.“They know what they want to do but they won’t take that first step. They are usually stopped by baggage such as a parental voice telling them what to do, concerns about personal rejection, or a fear of taking risks. This is where coaching comes in.” Lees says the obstacle is rarely laziness: “I have never come across laziness in that sense. If I suggest to someone to ring up a journalist who has written an article and obtain information, this might well be way out of their comfort zone. Yet, if I ask them to think of three people they know and make suggestions as to how they can move forward, they’ll do it. It’s not laziness, it’s avoidance.”
Lees’ ability to cut to the chase when helping coachees make successful career transitions has meant that his careers books have become widely popular. How to Get a Job You’ll Love continues to be one of the best-selling books on careers by a British author and is in its third incarnation. Its second edition was WH Smith’s business book of the month in January 2003. He’s also written Take Control of Your Career and Job Interviews: Top Answers to Tough Questions, both published by McGraw-Hill Professional.
These days, Lees is mindful not to take too much work on. He tries never to say yes to anything until he has had time to think about it. His work as a volunteer clergyman within the diocese of Chester takes up much of his time. Sometimes the overlap between being a priest and overseeing funerals, weddings and baptisms, and working as a careers coach and speaker, makes for an interesting working week. “I sometimes feel lost and rather like Tommy Cooper changing hats. I suddenly ask myself: ‘which hat am I wearing now?’”
He recalls dashing from being a priest at a school assembly to addressing a bunch of HR directors at the Ritz hotel in London: “I felt as if I were two people. But even if there isn’t a link between the roles, the clash is instructive, interesting and creative. And it’s about people addressing the meaning of life.”