Margaret – The Engineer on the Edge

Rediscovered purpose without leaving the company

The Pain

Margaret was one of three engineers left from what had been a team of twenty. The workload was crushing. Support was nonexistent. She negotiated a three-month sabbatical to recover—but came back to the same chaos. Her first day back, the burnout also came back, stronger than ever.

She couldn’t make decisions. She couldn’t feel joy. She was emotionally distant: from her team, her peers, and herself. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Except that she couldn’t keep going like this.

The Approach

I asked Margaret a simple question: “What would your perfect job look like?” She didn’t know. So we used Change Maps and Chains of Meaning to explore that. We defined her Perpetual Puzzle, Primary Process, and Base Beliefs as we defined her dreams. We talked through her job search, her fears, and her doubts.

The Transformation

Margaret realized that a new job was no guarantee that anything would be different. That freed her up to recognize what she was truly searching for—and how to find it. She found a new role with a different team in the same company. Now, she feels revitalized, engaged, and excited.

Engagement Retention Role Fit

• $650k saved by avoiding the job search and ramp-up time for a new principal engineer
• An estimated 35 customer defects and 5 “hot account” incidents avoided by retaining Margaret’s expertise and knowledge

The Time Frame

6 one-on-one meetings over 4 weeks.

The Sustainability

When I checked in six months later, Margaret was still over the moon with her new team. They were pretty happy with her, too. “I was ready to burn all my bridges. You helped me understand what I was searching for—and that’s the only reason I found a perfect match,” she told me.