Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Not always. I came to this realization in October of 2008. That was when I started a new chapter in my career. On October 2, 2008, I left the safety and security of the corporate world for the uncertainty and anxiety of entrepreneurship. For nearly 25 years, I had been a part of an organization, a member of a team. Now I was the organization. I was the team. That was my plan. I had saved for years, and that had given me the flexibility to make this bold move. Unfortunately, my plan was developed in the fall of 2007, and it did not contemplate the economic crisis that hit rock bottom right as I was walking out the door. I had planned for some degree of economic uncertainty, but I never contemplated a crisis of that magnitude. My savings, my safety net, seemed to have developed holes overnight. My plan was on schedule and falling apart at the same time.

So what does my misfortune in career planning have to do with leadership? After all, this blog is supposed to provide “enduring wisdom for 21st-Century leaders,” not career horror stories. The operative word is “leader.” It started when a friend asked me about a recent speaking engagement. He was surprised to hear that I had spoken to a group focused on career planning and transitions. He said, “They need to find jobs, not hone their leadership skills.” I was as surprised by his comment as he was about my speech. I responded, “Career transitions can be one of the most demanding leadership challenges anyone will ever face.” I proceeded to tell him my own story and how the “Four Most Important Questions a Leader Must Ask” are the same questions that helped me through the most difficult periods of my transition. These are the four questions:

• Who Am I?
• What Do I Want?
• How Will I Get Others to Choose to Follow Me?
• How Will I Earn and Retain the Privilege to Lead?

My personal career transitions required me to ask and answer these questions. It also meant possessing and demonstrating to some degree all of the If 16 Leadership Attributes. However, there were four attributes in particular – one aligned with each question above – that helped me succeed.

The linkage between the first two questions and successful career transitions is obvious. Job hunting and career transitions bring these questions into stark clarity. At times, this can be in a negative way. With regard to knowing who we are, many of us tie our identity to our job, so losing or changing it can create real anxiety. But once I moved beyond the anxiety, my career change provided me with a unique opportunity for self-discovery. It gave me the chance to inventory and take stock of what mattered most in my life – what I valued, what made me happy, what I did well, and what changes I wanted to make in how I was showing up to others.

Career transitions demand that we know who we are – our character, our authentic selves, and how to remain true to them. But perhaps the most important attribute is our self-efficacy – our belief that we have the capabilities to execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations. Self-efficacy is more than just blind confidence or self-esteem. Highly self-efficacious people know themselves extraordinarily well. They possess a genuine confidence in their own abilities. In order to truly believe in our abilities, we must know what they are. Just as character requires that we continuously inventory and understand our values and beliefs, self-efficacy requires that we do the same thing with our skills, abilities, and preferences. While I have always believed in myself and my ability to overcome the challenges I confronted, my career transition was a real test. By recalling and building upon my past successes, I maintained my self-efficacy.

Knowing what we want is also obvious – we want a job! But not just any job! Once I got past the anxiety and fear that came with my transition, I was able to explore what I truly wanted. I was able to focus my efforts on opportunities that satisfied my ambitions – a career that was aligned well with who I am. The leadership attributes associated with understanding what we want include ambition, vision, boldness, and last but not least, resilience. Resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity, is essential to any job search. I confronted a variety of obstacles. I lacked the exact combination of skills and experience needed for most opportunities I sought. Other times things just went wrong. Resilience meant anticipating and planning for these obstacles and responding decisively to them when they occurred. Resilience gave me the ability to keep going despite the setbacks and disappointments.

Getting others to choose to follow us doesn’t mean walking into an interview and convincing people that you are the next CEO. Instead, this is leadership in the same way that sales is leadership. When we are interviewing for a position, we are selling ourselves to the hiring manager and the organization we want to join. The key attribute here is inspiration. Before I could inspire my family and friends to believe in me, I had to first be inspired. As I was finding my new path and making my transition, I had many opportunities to connect with people who were experts in the field I was entering. These connections allowed me to ask for help and to demonstrate to potential partners and clients that I was worthy of their investment. Success often comes down to who a client (or perspective employer) believes can help solve their problems. We can inspire potential employers with our creativity, tenacity, work ethic, or any number of characteristics.

Earning and retaining the privilege to lead means keeping those we lead engaged and motivated regardless of the situation. During the early part of my transition, that meant my wife, my family, my friends and myself. Leadership meant keeping the people who I wanted following me from losing confidence or trust, especially when things got tough. And they did get tough. That is why composure is such an important leadership attribute during a career transition. My ability to “keep my head when all about me were losing theirs” was critical to my success. My composure kept me from giving up and taking jobs that were just like the one I had chosen to leave. This was particularly challenging when friends and family were encouraging me to take the safer and proven path. My composure kept me from becoming frustrated by interminable marketing processes that may stood between me and the next business opportunity.

My decision to reinvent myself and to pursue my dream was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It also proved to be one of the greatest leadership challenges I have ever faced. Whether I was leading my family, a potential client, or simply leading myself, I had to exercise every leadership muscle I possessed, while discovering some that I didn’t know I had.