When the Role Ends
Preparing for Life After Public Service
You may have spent decades preparing for increasing levels of responsibility in public service. Along the way, you've probably also given considerable thought to the financial side of retirement: When can I retire? Will I have enough? What will my pension, investments and other sources of retirement income provide?
Earlier in my career, I had the opportunity to accompany financial professionals as they met with public-service employees in police departments, fire stations and other workplaces to discuss those very questions. Those experiences gave me an appreciation for the people who devote their careers to serving their communities.
Today, as a retirement coach, my work focuses on a different retirement question:
How do you prepare for the life you're retiring into?
Being financially prepared to retire doesn't necessarily mean being prepared for retirement.
A career in public service provides much more than a paycheck. It can provide identity, structure, relationships, responsibility, a sense of belonging and the satisfaction of contributing to something larger than yourself. When the role ends, many of those things can change at the same time.
So, whether you're beginning to contemplate retirement, have a date in mind, or have recently left public service, there is another question worth considering:
What am I retiring to?
Here are five questions that can help you begin exploring the answer.
1. When should I start thinking about what comes next?
There isn't a magic number of months or years before retirement when you need to have your future figured out. But giving yourself time to explore before you need to decide can be valuable.
Exploration can also include experimentation.
Richard Leider, internationally recognized author and expert on purpose, has long encouraged people navigating life transitions to explore rather than assume they know what will work. In Repacking Your Bags, coauthored with David Shapiro, he invites readers to reconsider important areas of life including place, relationships, work and purpose as circumstances change.
Suppose you've always imagined moving to another state when you retire. Before selling your home and moving away from family, friends and a familiar community, what could you learn by spending an extended period there? Not simply taking a vacation, but experiencing what ordinary life might actually be like.
The same thinking can apply to other possibilities. If you're considering volunteering, could you try it now? If consulting or part-time work sounds appealing, could you explore what that might actually involve?
Something you've imagined for years may be exactly what you hoped it would be—or you may discover that the reality feels quite different. Experimenting gives you information.
And if you've already retired, you haven't missed the opportunity. The first version of retirement doesn't have to be the final version. You can continue exploring and adjusting as you learn more about what works for you.
You don't have to know what comes next to start exploring what comes next.
2. Who am I without my title?
For someone who has spent decades in public service, a title can become much more than a description of a job.
Chief. City Manager. Director. Superintendent. Mayor.
The role may influence how you introduce yourself, how others know you, where people turn for decisions and expertise, and your experience of being needed. When you retire, that professional role changes, along with the responsibilities that came with it.
The Retirement Coaches Association's Great Retirement Disconnect research found that 53% of retirees surveyed identified loss of identity as a reason people struggle in retirement.
That finding raises a question worth considering before—or even after—you leave your role:
As you think about no longer being the Chief, City Manager, Director, Superintendent, Mayor—or whatever title has defined your professional role—if you could not talk about what you did for a living, how would you describe yourself?
You may not have an immediate answer. The purpose of the question isn't to quickly replace one identity with another.
Instead, consider which parts of you belonged to the position and which parts belong to you.
Perhaps you were drawn to public service because you enjoy solving difficult problems. Developing people. Bringing people together. Creating order from complexity. Helping a community work better.
Those qualities didn't come from the title, and they don't disappear when the role ends. They remain part of who you are—and may provide clues to what comes next.
3. What might I not have considered?
Retirement doesn't happen in isolation. Your decision to leave work can affect the people around you—and some of the expectations you have about retirement may involve other people who have expectations of their own.
What does retirement mean for your relationship?
If you have a spouse or partner, your retirement changes more than your own schedule. And if one of you retires while the other continues working, the transition can bring an entirely different set of expectations and adjustments.
What have the two of you discussed about what retirement will look like for each of you?
If you're both retired, how much time do you envision spending together? How much independent time does each of you want? What activities do you want to share, and which would you rather pursue separately?
If one of you is still working, what expectations do you each have about the person who is now retired? Does being retired mean taking on more responsibilities at home? Does the retired partner imagine travel or activities that don't fit the working partner's schedule?
You don't necessarily need the same vision. But you do need to have the conversation.
Family expectations deserve a conversation, too. Perhaps you've imagined moving closer to adult children or grandchildren and spending considerably more time with them. Does your spouse or partner share that vision? And have you considered what your adult children and grandchildren envision?
What assumptions are you making about how much time your family will want to spend together?
Have you asked them?
Where will your relationships come from?
Work creates relationships almost automatically. For decades, you may have interacted with colleagues, employees, community members and professional contacts throughout your working day.
The Retirement Coaches Association's Great Retirement Disconnect research found that 40% of retirees surveyed reported that their daily social interactions decreased by more than half after retirement.
That makes a few seemingly simple questions worth considering:
How many of the friends you work with will be retiring when you retire?
How broad is your network of friends outside of the people you work with?
How will you make new friends?
That last question may be one you haven't needed to ask yourself for a very long time.
4. What do I want my ordinary days to look like?
You may be thinking, “I can't wait until I finally have control over my own time.”
What does having control over your time actually look like for you?
For years, your calendar may have told you where to be and when to be there. Meetings, deadlines and responsibilities created structure whether you wanted it or not. Retirement gives you considerably more freedom to decide how you spend your time.
But freedom from a demanding schedule and knowing how you want to use that freedom are two different things.
The first few weeks may feel wonderful. No alarm. No early meeting. No overflowing inbox. No one waiting for a decision.
But most of retirement will be lived on ordinary days.
How important will having some structure to your day be?
You may not know yet. Rather than assuming you'll want a completely open calendar—or that you'll need to keep yourself busy—why not experiment?
Try leaving several days with nothing scheduled. What do you notice? Do you enjoy deciding what to do as each day unfolds? Do you find yourself naturally creating some structure? Are you ready for something to do by day three?
You can experiment with interests as well. What hobbies do you already have? What have you always wanted to learn, try or explore but couldn't find time for while you were working? Are there things you once enjoyed that gradually disappeared as the demands of your career increased?
The Retirement Coaches Association's Great Retirement Disconnect research found that 91% of retirees surveyed said having specific plans and goals for everyday life would have been helpful in adjusting to retirement.
That doesn't mean your retirement needs to be planned or packed with activities. It's simply another reason to be curious about what works for you.
Instead of asking only, “What am I going to do when I retire?” consider:
What would make an ordinary week feel satisfying to me?
5. I've spent my career serving. Where does contribution fit now?
A career in public service often means spending years being responsible for other people, an organization or a community. When that responsibility ends, you may still want to contribute—but perhaps not in the same way or at the same intensity.
You might want to mentor someone without managing them. Share your expertise without being responsible for the outcome. Volunteer for something you care about. Teach, consult or serve on a board. You might choose paid work that looks very different from the career you're leaving—or find a different way to use the experience you've gained.
Or you may not know yet.
That's where curiosity can be useful.
Try this: Create a Curiosity List
Take five minutes and create a Curiosity List.
Write down anything you're curious about exploring. Don't evaluate it. Don't decide whether it's practical. Don't ask whether you're good at it. And don't rule anything out.
Your list doesn't have to be about service or contribution. You might write down learning Italian, woodworking, mentoring young leaders, taking a cooking class, traveling by train, studying history, volunteering at an animal shelter, teaching, or starting a small business.
When the five minutes are up, look at what you wrote.
What catches your attention? What would you like to know more about? Is there something on the list you could explore or experiment with before making any commitment?
The purpose isn't to turn your Curiosity List into a retirement plan. It's to notice what emerges when you give yourself permission to be curious.
Making a difference doesn't have to mean carrying the same level of responsibility you carried throughout your career. What it looks like now is yours to explore.
Preparing for more than the financial side of retirement
For much of your career, retirement planning may have focused on one important question:
Can I afford to retire?
But as the date gets closer—or even after you've already retired—another question becomes just as important:
What am I retiring to?
The five questions we've explored aren't intended to give you a formula for a successful retirement. Your answers may look very different from someone else's, and they may change over time.
Leaving public service means leaving a role that may have shaped your identity, relationships, daily structure and sense of contribution for decades. It doesn't mean you need to immediately replace those things or have the rest of your life figured out.
It does give you an opportunity to become curious about what comes next.
You don't need all the answers. But there are some questions worth asking.
Curious about your own retirement readiness?
If you're approaching retirement—or have retired within the past couple of years and still feel somewhat unsettled or unfulfilled—you may be curious about your readiness for the non-financial side of retirement.
For the first five readers who respond, I'm offering a complimentary Retirement Intelligence (RQ) Assessment, followed by a 30-minute individual conversation with me to explore your results.
The assessment can help you identify areas you may want to explore as you prepare for—or continue adjusting to—retirement.
If you'd like to be one of the five participants, contact me at rhonda@careerpointeconsulting.com.
