Thasunda Brown Duckett has an urgent piece of career advice for anyone who doesn’t love their job: Don’t run from the challenge. Embrace it.
“Be OK with hard,” Duckett, president and CEO of insurance giant TIAA, recently told LinkedIn’s “This Is Working” podcast. “Especially now, where there are so many opportunities for you to click and apply and stay on the market all the time.”
Duckett’s advice may seem counterintuitive: Most people don’t look around, see a toxic workplace, and actively decide to stay in a situation they don’t enjoy. And job hopping is hot right now — 83% of Gen Z workers consider themselves job hoppers, according to a 2023 ResumeLab survey, which polled over 1,000 workers born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s.
But tough workplace situations can represent opportunities to learn and grow, said Duckett, who was named to CNBC’s inaugural Changemakers list in February — after becoming the third-ever Black woman to be a full-time Fortune 500 CEO when she joined TIAA in 2021.
“Make sure along your career, especially early on, you sit in hard, meaning, ‘I may not have a manager that’s amazing. Before I just immediately say I’m going to leave, is there a lesson?'” she said. “Sit in hard. ‘I may have peers that I don’t get along with. Do I immediately try to opt out or do I sit in hard and say, you know what, I want to hone my managing through influence skills?”
“Sitting in hard doesn’t mean not protecting your mental [health],” Duckett added. “But I believe that if you sit in hard earlier in your career, and you take the paths that are uncomfortable, you learn to be comfortable.”
Career coach Joyce Guan West agrees: Challenge yourself, but don’t endure work environments that cause you emotional harm. If you’re constantly being micromanaged, or unreasonably expected to work around the clock, you may have a valid reason to explore other job opportunities, she says.
“I have seen that many employees endure risks to their emotional and mental wellbeing when they tolerate a toxic or abusive manager,” West tells CNBC Make It, advising employees that “they should try to work through challenges, but if ultimately after trying, they are in a situation that isn’t healthy for them, they need to leave or make a change.”
If you want to get ahead in your career, West says cultivating professional relationships and skill building can help fast-track you.
“Seek mentors who can provide guidance, put themselves in situations where they can learn as much as possible, and try to get promoted as soon as possible,” she says. “Getting to that first manager role is essential for accelerating career growth.”
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