S1,Ep 10: Cultivating Your Career Success

This week's pod, episode 10 we are exploring what it means to cultivate your career. 
In terms of success on our own terms model, it's about having a long-term view of where you want to be, set some goals and work towards our future selves.

Doing some mindful and active reflection on the year that's been and how that can help you think about career for 2022 and beyond.

Then using those reflections with some of the work we did in earlier podcasts, forming your why and what your long-term goals are.  We'll give you a few thought starter hacks for setting yourself some career goals and doing a bit of career planning, because unbelievably we are in the very back end of 2021. 

Quotes: 

• Steve Jobs, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” 
• Simon Sinek, “Loving your work is a right, not a privilege. 
• Michelle Gibbings, “Regardless of how you feel about your job right now at some stage in the future, you'll need to shift, reshape or reinvent your career.”

Show Notes: 

HBR Women at Work

Michelle Gibbings, Career Leaps

The Squiggly Career, Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis

Impact Leaders, Liz Wiseman

What colour is your parachute 2021, Richard N Bolles with Katharine Brooks

Check out our website for 10 Cultivating Career Tips - the first 5 were shared in this podcast

http://www.elevatewithgrace.com.au

Several articles to help with your 2022 Career Planning: 

https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-you-should-make-time-for-self-reflection-even-if-you-hate-doing-it

Career-Leap-Exercises-2021-FINAL.pdf (michellegibbings.com)

https://www.extraordinaryyou.com.au/career-planning/

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Transcript

Miranda: 0:15

Welcome to the Elevate with grace podcast, for women who are short on time and long to take steps, to create success on their own terms. We embrace school university and our early careers with gumption ambition and passion. We are all in and ready to create a life of success. And then something happens. We start to hold ourselves back as we move through our lives. Research suggests that women become less inclined to take risks, career leaps and maintain financial independence as they move into their lives. This is what we want to explore with you on our elevate with grace podcast, our aim is to curate and share the best tips, insights, and knowledge from all of the content out there and take the brain strain out of it, like giving you the, so what, and some immediate actionable steps for you to squeeze into your life each week through regular action, we will propel you forward and offer support as we all create our own paths to achieving success on our own terms.

Claire: 1:04

Hello to add gracious listeners. I'm Claire cornfield. And with me is my delightful co-host Miranda Mikrou in person of all things. Two pods in a row. We've been able to enjoy each other's 3d company with easing lockdown restrictions. It's very cool. How are you? My friend how's things been for you this week?

Miranda: 1:22

Absolutely. Wonderful. It has been so fun that getting back into the real world, back to the beach, back to the museums, swimming. Reconnecting with friends even being back in the office has been pretty cool. I have found though, completely wiped. Sitting down, trying to write some kind of meaningful reflections and it's like slump crash. I think there's just going to be a toll for the next couple of weeks Let's be fair until we get back into that mojo of being out of balance at all and still have a bit of energy left for them to,

Claire: 1:46

yeah I've been fantastic too. I have to say I've actually been. I've had days where I've just been slumped and exhausted from the stimulation. And then other days where I'm awake until midnight, because I can't get my brain to turn off from the stimulation. So I'm having both impacts. I'm not so sure it's good for my sleeping patterns or I must admit I've been naughty and watching, Morning wars, which has not helped but geez, it's good. If you haven't watched it highly recommend, is it

Miranda: 2:13

a good one for our home career thing of this week?

Claire: 2:18

Actually probably a better recommendation than my squid game recommendation from a couple of weeks ago for a smart risk taking, which I know you were just wrapped with me about. Yes, I think actually it's very complex from a career and personality perspective. A lot of complexity around career politics and diversity and inclusion and all that sort of stuff now, and power and balances. So yes, actually it is a good recommendation for

Miranda: 2:42

our topic today. I haven't seen it, but I have heard really great things.

Claire: 2:46

Let's get into our podcast topic for today. It's been a couple of weeks since our last podcast, which was our book review of winging it by Emma Isaacs. Also some notable mentions from her new book, the new hustle. We chose Emma's book because it was a lovely addendum to a series of podcast episodes we were doing on smart risk taking. And decision-making, one of our core pillars to our elevate, with great success on our own terms model. The other two of our pillars are cultivating our careers and fueling our financial power. In today's episode, we're going to have a bit of a yarn about what it means to cultivate your career. Why it's super important for creating a life lived on your terms to be spending some time on that career cultivation. We will also be having a quick chat about doing some mindful and active reflection on the year that's been and how that can help you think about career for 2022 and beyond. Using those reflections will be combining it with some of the work we did in earlier podcasts, around forming your why and what your long-term goals are. And we'll give you a few thought starter hacks for setting yourself some career goals and doing a bit of career planning, because unbelievably we are in the very back end of 2021. I don't know how that's

Miranda: 4:00

happened. Very exciting though. Let's get into 2022 and. Just has to be better. Yeah. I have actually loved really working on this episode because as a year races to a close while we're not able to squeeze in the same type of series we did for risks, that'll definitely be in next year's podcast. And I think it's crazy that we're already talking about 20, 22, but let's do it. So next year, we're going to deep dive into the pillars of cultivating career success and the financial financial freedoms. But for now I really think it's great to be able to talk about these much needed career headlines for you to help you. To take her back these much needed career headlines that are gonna help to boy you up, or, help you dig deep, whichever state you're in to get to the end of the year. Cause I think it's been a really tough road. We're trying to get back to normal life as quickly as possible. And that does come with a bit of a cost.

Claire: 4:52

Okay.

Miranda: 4:54

This was actually the first pillar that we identified. I think this is the one that came out of that research and that we keep coming back to going. There's such a need to solve this. There is so many benefits, both employer and employee family, just general life. If you love the role you're in, or you get fulfillment out of your work, you don't have to love it, but fulfillment you you find it meaningful. Why you're there. And there was just so much now research where we found that it was just massive burnout. People heading towards burnout, lots of ADL awakes, and I don't think that's improved in the current situation. I think people have really lost that delineation between work and life. Really infused at the moment. So it's important to, to push them away and thought leaders are really consistent in this message of how important it is to cultivate your career and to put this as a focus. So it was the first pillar we started with, I stand by how important this is, and I think that we are going to have a lot of fun digging into this next year.

Claire: 5:50

I think you make a good point there, because I think when, when we first started talking about our elevate with grace model, that was really before the extended lockdown and continuation of the COVID impact has happened. And I think. Really it's exasperated now. Right? It's even more important to think about how we're cultivating our career and our whole of life fits around that because it's all become just such a big blurry mess. And then when they were powering through, towards the end of the year

Miranda: 6:19

it doesn't have to remain all that. Blurry mess for 20, 20, 30 weeks to set things up. Exactly. So very exciting and look thought leaders are all pretty consistent in their messaging on this from Steve jobs, Simon Sinek, tiny Robbins and rains of other books and articles. So a couple of quotes to really cement this piece, Steve shops, the only way to do great work is to love what you do. And Simon Sinek loving your work. Is I right? Not a privilege. I think we should all try to seek that right. And it doesn't mean you have to quit your job. It means you can find ways to make the role work for you or find a role that you need to work into or change the language, change the way that people are interacting with you. We're not going to solve this in one episode. No, and it's

Claire: 7:00

very unique to everybody. That's what I think, the challenge here is to provide some actionable steps and tools for you to work through. Personally, because each one of us is very unique about what we need. And I think the last 18 months has given us opportunity to really reflect on what we want our lives to look like. And I think when you mentioned Simon Sinek, before I think I spoke about it a few podcasts ago, one of the things that he captured was your why, and he talks about, so your why for why you're working, where you're working and what's your purpose for working? It's not. The colleagues that you work with, it's not the profit that gets made, or the check that you take home to your family. It's more than it's. What is driving you towards the company's purpose. It's making a difference in the world. Is that better customer experience, great service? Is it helping the environment and sustainability? That's the why it's not, I get to record right. People. And I get a good paycheck and I think. That really had a lot bulb moment for me in COVID and probably for a lot of people. And it's tricky to unravel that I think, but it's, and it's very individual. So the challenge that we had is how do we give you our listeners to NSL some tools? That are useful and get cracking. But the work really is very unique and individual, it may be quitting your job, but it may be stepping up as a leader because you love your company and you want to see it thrive, or it may be changing into a bit of a portfolio career or doing a startup, or it could be a bit it's so unique and individual, and I think. That's the work that none of us can shy away from. We have to do it ourselves. There's no magic potion, but we can't give you a magic potion, but we can give you some easy tools and tips to

Miranda: 8:44

help a hundred percent.

Claire: 8:45

I like in hindsight, I was thinking about, we called it cultivating or career, like what does K. And then I was thinking, how do we describe cultivating your career? What does cultivating your career mean? And I think for me in terms of our success, on our own terms model, it's about having a long-term view of where you want to be. So you can. Set some goals and work towards that as shitty first drafts about where we want to be in our future selves from, a few podcasts to go. I see it as being, it is about being conscious about being visible with your professional brand. I really believe that's extremely important. And that you find your own authentic ways to create and sustain your visibility. Basic example is the introvert extrovert example we spoke about at MRIs X networking. There's so many ways that you can get visible with your professional brand, but you have to find ways that work for you. There's no point in forcing yourself to do stuff that you don't want to do, and it's even more important in a virtual hybrid working space. You're interacting with people and you're often not in the room. So what are they saying about you when you're not in the room and how are you doing little things every day to be visible about that. Confronting your career to me is also about giving yourself choices and giving yourself some internal locus of control in a really uncertain world that we live in. I'm thinking of things like portfolio, careers, passion projects, pro bono projects, freelance consulting, and just having a few lanes of things that you're working on. So you're not just focused on your one job with your one company, because that could be a little bit of a risk that we'll talk about later. It's about developing skills and confidence to have really fierce and brave conversations at work really important to be able to have productive, respectful, brave conversations. And I think that's even more important given the, here that's been and the concept of the great resignation and things like that. It's about continuous professional development and doing it for yourself. For me, it's also about it being intricately tied to our pillar of fueling your financial power. So a report from the 2009, which is a little bit old, but I think the concept will still apply a Clinton global initiative. Found that women invest 90% of everything they make back into their family and community where for men, it's only 35%. So women invest 90% back into the community and themselves and their family. And for men, they only do 35%. How amazing is that? So the more career progression we have, the more money we might have. The bit of the world is because as women, we put it back into the community. So I dunno, Miranda. What comes to mind when you're describing and thinking about our cultivating career success?

Miranda: 11:25

Absolutely all of the above. They're sounding really strong and we have really fleshed this out quite a lot over the last sort of year. But I also think as showing up as your best self. It's something that does fully nuns then spanner, potentially going to tell your personal brand, but really going into that. How do you show up. What it takes to be a great leader and really exploring that idea of impact leaders. Identifying your strengths and your weaknesses and managing out by also understanding their strengths and weaknesses, the strengths and weaknesses of your team. And there's a really great sort of piece around the fact that what you deem as your weaknesses potentially are the counter of that easiest, strongest strengths. So helping you to understand where your superpowers. He's a really great one, owning your power, avoiding those female patents that we've spoke to a little bit in holding your self back in episode two, and providing you with some great tools around how it is to own your power and not fall into those patterns of really soft language apologizing on lot reluctance to negotiate waiting to be seen, waiting to be towered, et cetera. creating that confidence and presence and learning confidence. Confidence does not have to be something that is only for those born with confidence. You can learn it, you can bring it into your world and it is going to help you to succeed. How do you contribute? What are you bringing to the table? How does that contribution help the bottom line of the company help the customer of the company help the work that you're doing. I've definitely seen this. Even in retail, working with small business owners that they're so involved in the busy work, they forget to think about where the important work is. So this is definitely a skill that we all need to cultivate and improve is. Really understanding that importance and that changes as well or your market changes, customer needs change. So constantly being aware of how your contribution, how your big picture matters in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, just a couple more to add to the list. There's obviously a lot that we can unpack in cultivating career success. And I think many years of podcasts to come but

Claire: 13:18

a year 20, 22, you, we still have to focus on financial freedom and risk taking, but they're all interlinked. They're

Miranda: 13:25

all in. Absolutely. Particularly, as you said, the choice and having that internal agency is so important. I think people feel like we've lost that a bit. And so being able to get your agency back and thrive. As mentioned we will dive into a lot of this in future episodes, but this episode feels like a great time to. Think of it generally about some key tips or reminders to help you to dig in and just, get through the next sort of month or two. And also there is a route like some decision-making that you're potentially of doing, or some planning that we just naturally do. Being ready with some thoughts around that. So one that was actually handed to me my very first piece of work training when I started a role at 14. Was this idea of leading your baggage at the door? I think this goes both ways, leaving your work baggage to the work door, leave your home baggage at the home door. And, I feel there's like signs of definitely blurred. And so it's super important to bring back that delineation. So is it driving in the car and having that sort of check with your friend to download or having that chat with yourself to download and then getting out of that car? I'm present I'm at home. Is it?

Claire: 14:29

The concept of are really like called the third space. And that is about that transition space between home and work at home. How important and critical it is between moving that space. And I found that I've been a very segmented person, like in a sense of workers for work. And I go to the city and I love the office. And then I get home and my home is my home. And so with all of that blurred in COVID that third space of being on the train, listening to a podcast, moving between it's, it really is very important.

Miranda: 14:59

Let's put that in our show notes. That sounds great.

Claire: 15:00

How do you get that? Like exactly what you said, how that works, but it is really important for you. Yeah.

Miranda: 15:06

And if you are going to work from home, maybe it is having that pause and that 10 minute walk just to get yourself out of the house, out of work mode and into home mode. And to make sure that when we are returning back to work, that we do start. Some of that space. I love it.

Claire: 15:20

I actually started to dress up again for work like for for home. And as they're trying to, and I think it would always change your third space. So at the moment, it's I actually dress up. I stopped doing that by ages. I've been into the habit of wearing hoodies and all this fun stuff, but now it's like I get up in the morning, get dressed for work, go to my workspace at home. And at the end of the day, I go back into the bedroom, put my track suit pants on and they come out to the. And yeah, so I think changing it up as what all the 10 minute walk is there you go to the gym, or now we can go back to gym, whatever it is, but really creating that space, as you said. So you're leaving your work stuff at work and your home stuff at home, because I reckon that's becoming quite a problem for a lot

Miranda: 16:02

of us. Interesting. I've always found that I needed to dress up to be able to get to work. We've cognitively processing it in other ways, actually to write it down and just then put it away and make sure you're moving on another tip. Is there a no particular order obviously, but showing up as your best self. What do you need to do to show up as your best self? Is it, the exercise is meditation. Self-care feeling up your cup regulate. And so many of us, particularly women. Sacrifice those things because we have to be there for our family. We have to be there for our work. You may actually find that 15 or 20 minutes of you may actually find that 15 or 20 minutes of exercise and meditation means that you're going to be more productive, but then you're also going to bring your best self and not a worn, tired, exhausted. To the challenges of the day. So I think we do put this on as a, it's not really that important, but showing up at your best self is critical and so much about that personal brand comes through in how you show. Creating flow during your work day. So chunking your work through a timer or an hourglass, we spoke about this a little bit in the one thing from episode five. And so if we're looking to cultivate career success and ensure that we have super efficient, that we're providing great workflow during the day, starting that time give yourself 30 minutes with solidly for that time. Knowing that you're going to take a break at that 30 minute mark. So if you think of something, write it down, focus on your work. Be very disciplined in that. What I find is that after that 30 minute time, it goes off. It's like, oh, I'm on flow. I should keep working force yourself to stop, go and get a glass of water. Grab a coffee. Have a chat or follow up on an email and then come back because what you're conditioning your brain to do is go, I've got to maximize this time in the 30 minutes, because that's all the time I've got. If you constantly stretch that out and out, you always give yourself more time to get a task done. What

Claire: 17:54

I've started doing, which is similar. And I did. So I've had to, I've found that I've been like, and I think there's been quite a few podcasts. I've done. Have any, if I can think of one, I will about getting that focus back, that we've become very, and I know I've found that I found it really difficult to do deep and focused work, but I had to get a report done a week or two ago. And when I did was started playing a game with myself. So I had so many sections, like I'd sit at all of the sections so I'd be doing a PowerPoint present, whatever needs to go to deliver something. And I had so many sections on the head so many days to do it. And then I worked out, I needed to spend 15 minutes on each section max. I timed it that way as well. So it was like, right. I'll write 15 minutes on the first page of the PowerPoint deck or in my case, the first page, the first section of the report, 15 minutes and then the next one, 15 minutes. Then I went back and did it editing. I think you mentioned it to me, and it's works as well. That making a game of it for myself really helps, like getting away from that perfection. Like the perfection is creativity. Yeah. So I think that one is like the timing it's really important

Miranda: 19:01

playing a game with it helps as well. Okay. Yeah. No, it's a simple idea and I'm sure it's nothing new to our listeners, but it is something a good reminder because it does help to ensure that your workflow and your work is getting done. I think essential to this is identifying when your best work meeting worked, walk schedule is and scheduling this into your day. We definitely heard this with the one thing, protecting that flow time, we've also seen this benefits of this through multiple thought leaders. You've probably found ways to hack your body into the work style, maybe in the last. Two years you've actually flowed back into something that's more natural for you. What is your work style? When are you pumping out the most efficient work? A comfortable outcome for all John Medina of brain rules offers further insights here into people's natural styles and it is conditioning your brain. So there is some brain science around this that you can offer your manager to say, look, I know that I'm going to be super productive between this time and I'm going to come in a bit later because I'm going to go into the gym in the morning because that's not productive time for me, so I'm going to use that efficiently so that I set myself up for the rest of the day. Another one to remember about negotiating practices and using those to prepare for any big conversation. There is so many times when people they get emotional, fierce about a situation that's just happened. Are we in guns, ablazing to management? And when they're like, rah, I'm upset, I'm whatever, and that's fine. And hopefully that person can help you to work through those steps, but a better way is to sleep on it, to write down some points and to really think about. Collecting evidence to help support your case that this is not okay. Something's not right. Or I deserve a promotion. I just have a pay rise. But come with evidence, come with a suite of negotiation tools and we'll definitely go into more negotiation tips next year. Preparation, preparation, preparation, and anything you can do writing it down, talking out with other people, trying to build up your case is going to help you to be taken seriously and to achieve a result that you're looking for.

Claire: 20:57

Think back to a professional brand to not just in-person conversations, but holding fire on that email, Drafted walk away, reread it the next morning. Same with another school, that instant communication to like teams and slack. Being very careful. And I noticed my kids having to get more involved in that sort of way of communicating, communicating. And I've noticed that they'll hear the iPad go because someone's my dad or something, or send them a message. Kids messenger and the girls will go, oh, just tell him that we're eating dinner. And I'm like, no, no, you don't need to actually respond. He doesn't need to know where eating dinner. You can respond to his message in a couple of hours. And you realize that we do that SL

Miranda: 21:43

They're coming through on your watch, coming through on your computer. And I think we are so conditioned to respond and it makes us busy, but it doesn't necessarily make us productive or increase our contribution. Claire, did you have another couple of tips that you wanted to add? I know you've definitely got some important thoughts on why cultivating career is so important. Probably

Claire: 22:03

those are really. Tips. I really love those all and there. So you can do like a few of them every single day, and then you just change it up and all the rest of it, the important thing is doing the bits and pieces for yourself. I want to bring it out wider. Why it's so important to you do this work like cultivating your career and finding the time and not just head down, powering through automatically at a freight train speed. There's a book. It's actually written by a friend of mine. And she was my executive coach for a little while Michelle Gibbings and in her book, she's got a couple of books and in her book, career leap, how to reinvent and liberate your career. Michelle says, regardless of in the introduction, Michelle says, regardless of how you feel about your job right now at some stage in the future, you'll need to shift reshape or reinvent your career. And I wholeheartedly agree with this, and I think what we have a tendency to wait until things that are seriously breaking point exactly. Before we do something about it. It's all about continuing to sit and reset yourself and reminding yourself that this is a constant thing that you can be doing and you should be doing. If we've learned anything from COVID, we have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. And there may be some of us in some listeners who can say that they feel very secure, that they have a job with their current employer. For life for the longterm, but more and more as Michelle points out in her book, like that is not the case and the reality of the working world that we have now. And there could be, this could be for a variety of reasons, whether that's because we feel trapped in the job we don't like, or perhaps our role might become redundant down the track, or maybe. The boss that you've worked with in love for ages they've gone and got an amazing job somewhere else. And your new boss, you just don't gel with and it's not going to work. So there's a lot of stuff that is out of our control. That can be happening. But. Spending time and mindfully thinking about some of these ways that you can be cultivating your career for your future self and for your own terms. That means if one of those events happens to you, you're not blind. Like you, you don't have to be reactive to it. You've got some plans around there and that's, I mentioned about. Whether that's a bit of pro bono work, whether that's having a little side hustle doing podcast on the side, just to keep it a bit fresh and learning for yourself and any, not one reliant on that, that

Miranda: 24:32

one thing I do think that potentially two years ago, we all felt a lot safer maybe than we do today. And even if you. Actively acknowledging it subconsciously there's probably some doubt or some feelings of resentment, maybe you were stood down for a short period of time that are just sitting there. And so even though you don't feel it a hundred percent, that there's potentially that sort of underlying, or there was some hurt there and maybe you haven't dealt with that. So it's a really good point clutter, just to have that. Working on that muscle of, okay, I'm going to take an active control here. And again, we speak about giving back agency owning your control.

Claire: 25:14

I think it's a lot, there's a lot of mental, power in, in doing that. I think the other one I wanted to talk on in terms of, the, the, all the things that we brought under the umbrella of cultivating your career at the beginning is this concept about. Being very thoughtful and strategic around the visibility of you and your professional brand and how important that is to your progression and growth. It is critically important. I've learned that the hard way in a number of situations in the past, which, we'll all go out for a while at some point, and I can tell you all about that. But you know, And again, I feel very passionate about this in a new COVID world. How much more important it is to be thinking about what is your professional brand and how do you want that to be communicated via instant messaging via how you're responding via what work you're seeing to be doing and contributing. And like you said, Miranda about doing that. The work that matters, not the busy work that the work that matters. And I came across, so the HBR Harvard business review HBR women at work forecast is a really good podcast generally, for some of these career cultivating topic. I find. Yeah, I find that to be a really good one. There's lots of, there's lots of career ones out there, which I'm sure we'll cover in the future, but the HBR that at work one is good. And in season three, episode two, they have an episode are called stepping into the spotlight. And it's really good. It's like a it's held live. I think it is held live and I think it's held live. There's an audience there. A few speakers that are talking and it's really covers a lot of the questions that, there's yes. But things we always push as women we pushed back on. Yes. But I don't want to be visible for this reason or, the, some reason why we don't want to put ourselves out there and they cover a lot of those questions and that your recommend having it listened to it. I think it's too long. For example, one of the questions from the audience is, what are you doing? If you screw up, like you're in the spotlight and you screw up and. you just have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and tap into your resilience muscle. But what I love is that one of the speakers says. In nine times out of 10, your perception of your screw up and how others perceive it, like in your mind, it's way bigger than anybody else ever cares. And that's so true. Like you think, I think you've mentioned it before, so what's a bit of egg on your face, but we hold onto that pretty deeply as women we're really worried about disease to plays what people think of us, but I thought it was Very poignant that everyone's got their own problems and they've got their own issues to deal with and they're dealing with their own lives. And so what you feel deeply nine times out of 10, probably nine and a half times out of 10. No one else is going to give a stuff because. They've got their own stuff to worry about. Everyone moves on and that's really important. Another one, another good question. So there was lots of great questions in the podcast. It was about having a young family and during that time, the need to avoid visibility because in case the outcome of that visibility means. You need to put in more investment of time into the activities that the career activities or whatever it is you become visible for from a career perspective. And you don't have that time because you're a parent of young children. And the answer from one of the speakers was great. She said that she's got a 12 year old daughter, but she chose to choose. She chose to change her mind. Around that, in that creating career visibility for herself was for her daughter's benefit because she was being a role model to her daughter and having the conversations with your family and your daughter about how it, and being a role model for stepping out and stepping up visibly in the workplace and in the work that you love that yes, it may be require an investment of your time in the moment, but actually has long-term consequences for. I guess role modeling that you're doing, whether that's for kids, whether that's for the younger women in the workforce. And I think that's really important. So probably those are the four things that I worked to.

Miranda: 29:18

I think it sounds like such a great yes, but kind of contrast, because these are the reasons that people don't step up. These are the reasons, that definitely. This quite a few books where the phenomenon of women's sneaking out to go and pick up kids, not saying goodbye to anybody, because they don't want to be seen to be leaving before everyone, but actually having that presence to say, see you later. Thanks so much for the day is going to give them a lot more power. They're going to feel like they don't have to hide and that they don't have to big for the promotion. They're not all well, I leave at four maybe I'm not as worthy as the person that's still here at seven. That's not a reason not to step up. That is your flexibility and what you've negotiated and your contribution is what matters when you're looking for a promotion. Not. I was you putting in and if we can get the whole of society to move in that direction, we'll all be better. But we have

Claire: 30:10

to, we have to take the charge

Miranda: 30:12

To set an example for my team. I'm leaving

Claire: 30:14

now 4:00 PM to go to my kid's soccer game. And I think it's encouraging as well. It's not about people with children. Everyone has different, you can go to the gym, I'm going to the gym. I am going to go on a bike ride with some friends. Arriving and leaving loud and proud because we do have lives outside of WIC.

Miranda: 30:34

The flexibility is so important and that is something that we should hopefully see coming through a lot more. The other point you just made about that perception of a screw up is just. That is actually an opportunity for you to demonstrate your amazing problem, solving abilities, demonstrate your ability to turn a situation and step up as an impact leader. So I think it's really important that take a pause, get over whatever disappointment you have in yourself. And then think, how am I presenting this to my management? How am I showing up today to take on this challenge? And it can be. And there's so much great studies out there about all the people that have failed and are now huge successes because they owned their failure. They learned from it, but they actually used it to leverage their position and go, all right, this happened, I've learned from this bam. I won't make that mistake again, but actually here's the three opportunities that we have to improve in our organization. You have now become an impact player that is helping your organization to improve.

Claire: 31:36

That leads us on to another key point that we wanted to talk about today, which is active reflection and the importance of active reflection on your career in 2021. I'm a big advocate of, we don't need a new year to start a new habit, but there is a, you can get a lot of drive and energy from starting some, somewhere new when you can locate a timeframe, that's something new. So whether that's coming out of lockdown, I'm going to get back to the gym or I'm going to do some stuff for my career or it's it. But an obvious one is the click over from one year to another. So. It is really important to do some active reflection and to look at ways that you've done where you've gone well, where you failed. What you're going to do for next year really helps to ground you in terms of what you want to do. Harvard business review, has a great article on why you should make time for self-reflection. Even if you hate doing it. Reflection gives the brain an opportunity to pause and miss the chaos. Anyone need to pause them, admist the chaos right now. I think most of us do. And it helps you untangle and sort through those observations and experiences, consider multiple interpretations and to create meaning. And then this meaning becomes learning. Like you said, Miranda, you learn from the stuff that's happened, which can inform your future mindsets and actions. Like it's a really important activity to do. Why don't we do that?'cause it's hard, it's uncomfortable. And we don't want to do it, but the benefits of doing it so big. So there's a couple of other articles that we can stick in the show notes around how to do some of those reflection ideas, but there's heaps of that stuff. I guess the point that I really wanted to make is it is hard. It is uncomfortable. It does take time, but there is. At absolute benefit long-term to how efficient and effective and happy and healthy you're going to Bain your career and life going forward. If you do force yourself to make this time to do this active self-reflection and really ask a lot of deep questions about how to use all and what you want to do next and all that sort of stuff,

Miranda: 33:40

Having that regular reflection to make sure that you're tracking in the right direction. And if you need to add some skills, doing that, lifelong learning, getting those skills on your plate so that you're ready for that next. And there's actually an incredible read around that preparation. Skipping ahead there was a book Squiggly careers, which is all about being curious about imagining your future career. So talking to people within your network, reading different roles, exploring your transferable skills, understanding what your super strengths are, and then writing those down. Thinking about what the obvious or logical next step might be for you, what the pivot role could be for you. So actually how do I pivot into a slightly different industry or a different role with your transferable skills and ambitious career for you and then a dream career. I've only thought about the logical obvious, and then maybe the ambitious, but it was quite an interesting way to spell that out. And you're going to have a lot more to talk about from this book, the squiggly career, we'll put the link in the show notes, that's a really nice way of reflecting on where you're at understanding your transferable skills and then. Doing the research and the book really talks about being very curious about what jobs are out there, curious about what your friends are doing, curious about people in your network and Claire, you did this with LinkedIn. You went and spoke to just different people in different walks of life, To understand your next steps.

Claire: 34:54

And still trying to.. And you're not going to be able to do that every week because you're going to be focusing on different bits and pieces of the career and all the blocks. But I will continue to go back to that actually, but I love that concept about having your dream career and you're ambitious and pivot and logical because it allows you to get a bit crazy. Cause we get so worried about being too ambitious or having too big a goal in case we fail, but you can have one of those and then you can have just a regular more comfortable within your risk profile goal as well. In terms of some, I guess that a Hacksaw. Kicking off your career planning for the year ahead. And then continuously doing career planning, recommending a couple of books I'm going to check out squiggly Career, Michelle, the career late book that I mentioned from Michelle giving this. I highly recommend that's a really practical workbook as well, in terms of doing a bit of a stock, take an audit of where you are. I'll also tell you that on her website Michelle givings.com, she's got the career leap exercises. So the exercises from her career leap book are available on her website. The first exercise is a Career health check quiz, and then it moves on to figuring out your why. But it's very practical. So I can recommend that as a good go-to book in terms of getting started with that.

Miranda: 36:12

You mentioned a couple of weeks back that there was this January date of note for people that sort of set a bit of a trigger date. Is that something we need to be aware of or start to? Yes, we lost

Claire: 36:20

five. I can't remember where I saw that. Actually. I think it was January 4th or January 6. Is a date where it's basically the day that everyone comes back after the main Christmas holidays sort of thing. So a couple of days after that, we all come back from Christmas and new year. There's yeah, January 6th whenever it gets back to work is when people contact divorce lawyers. It's when people contact the gym, recruiting firms that's when people contact all of these life changing. So this is a really tentative and trying time for a lot of people there's, ending their year and starting the new year. And yeah, I think it's very worth being conscious of it. And I expect that after the year, two years its been It might be an even more trying times. So for that, I

Miranda: 37:05

think so be aware of it, make sure you book some really good fun stuff for that period so that you're not caught up in that wave. And hopefully some of these tips or planning help you to get ahead of that curve and to do a lot of that thinking. So by the time you reached January four, You're feeling quite calm that's in control.

Claire: 37:20

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Feeling a sense of control is a lot of what all that stuff is about. I think absolutely.

Miranda: 37:29

We've had such a great episode. I hope that these tips and thoughts have really helped to. Give you a bit more of a vision about what cultivating success could mean for for you Claire, what's our action challenge for this week?

Claire: 37:40

Well, I think, action challenge specifically after talking about, we don't want to get to January six and resign and speak to recruiters and speak to divorce always and all that sort of stuff. I think action challenge for this week is to kickstart your career planning for 2022. Reflect on the year that's been and what's going to be doing so whether that's to tap into a couple of the books that we've mentioned, or some of the articles that we'll post that will have content to help you start thinking about with career planning, also getting back to some of our previous podcast episodes as well. Cause there's some stuff in there about finding your why and things like that. But definitely the action challenge for this week is to just turn our minds a little bit to career planning for 2022. Look forward to hearing how you're going with that in a couple of weeks. When we come back to talk about fueling our financial power.

Miranda: 38:27

Yes. I'm very excited for that episode. I think I'm gonna learn a lot from you as well during that episode, so excited to bring it on. All right. That's what we have for you today. Thank you so much for joining us. So we have put all of the links in the episode notes and there was quite a few quotes, articles and books and character surveys. So we'd love to hear what was useful for you. Please do check out our website. We'll have a blog up about this and where it's supporting the next episode will be in two weeks time, which will be the 2nd of December financial empowerment and for our Insta posts of love that you're following those. Please comments or like on those Insta posts so we know that they're helping with your daily inspiration and email us at elevatewithgrace@gmail.com. We look forward to speaking with you in the next episode. Thank you. Thank you. What a fun conversation, Claire. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this one with you. I

Claire: 39:12

have it's. Yeah, it's got me getting very excited about 20, 22 and whole of life in career. So it's been a good conversation. Thank you, listeners. Thanks Miranda. And I'll talk to you in a couple of weeks. Bye.