(Pt 1) 10 years of professional experience: Failures, Managers, and Lessons Learned...

When you think of it, 10 years is a huge number, some might say not all years are spent equally and I agree with that to some extent, for a lot of people, many years of experience could be repetitive, calm, unchallenging, 'under control' or could be spent in a toxic culture and environment where the person is spending her prime years in fighting this and hoping for better relationships, cultures, or managers.

As for me, I can say that most of my years of experience so far weren’t spent like that. There were many failures, great managers who gave me the space to learn and experiment, and good cultures and environments that allowed me to flourish. 

As for how this turned out to be my reality, I would say this was because of having and cultivating the correct values, skills, ambitions, and dreams, and allowing that to be my driver in the decisions I took in my professional career. Also not to forget my parents, my teachers, the good friends, colleagues, mentors, and managers who contributed to that journey.

My story started in my university years, wherein my second year, I started volunteering and joining the Uni's clubs to the point where I was part of 3 or 4 clubs at the same time and also was the president of the students union for the whole university. For someone who looks from the outside, she might say, it is very obvious that you knew what you were doing and you were planning it out by the inch. While in reality, I was just following my Curiosity and Hunger, and then one thing led to another, I was learning along the way and it helped to have good friends and colleagues in the process, who pushed me forward and allowed me to dream and be ambitious in my thoughts and plans.

The very first job that I got was in my last year of university. I was looking for an internship as part of my graduation plan, but instead of getting an internship, I got a part-time job as a 'Community Officer' in a company that was doing Social Media strategies and digital marketing for its clients. Back in 2011, these things were like a kind of magic, not a lot of people understood it. Companies were just trying to navigate this social media thing and we were there to help them reach their customers, build their brands and sell more.

Today, I am appreciative and thankful to the team and the company's management for allowing me to learn at such a young age.

 My lessons learned from this year working at this firm can be put into two points:

1- Be Proactive. I remember today, how the founder & the CEO of the company was always pushing everyone to be proactive and to help achieve our clients' needs and wants and not be waiting for them to ask or question things. I appreciate him for giving me such a good lesson that I am still holding on to today.

2- Be Patient. I remember during the year that I worked there, I was part of a team dedicated to a big client, one of the 'Big 4' companies in the management consulting world. They were very demanding that I needed to read a lot of their papers, findings, and research, and then I had to understand them, summarize them and get a great value out of them in the form of posts and quotes, and findings so we can publish them to their audience on social media.

I remember one day, I was sitting in my office, I got angry and stormed out of my chair, and sat in the waiting area, saying to my colleague, I think I am done, this is hard and I am not good at this, I think I should quit or perhaps I need an easier client than this one. 

I think this was a defining moment in my early career and how I responded to it, affected my career a lot in the future. I am glad for my colleagues and managers back then, because they pushed me to continue, be persistent, and have some patience and things will solve themselves in time, and that is what happened. I can't remember how much time it took, but I remember that things changed for the better very soon after this incident. Looking backward, I now know how valuable this moment was and I am grateful that it happened aside from how my feelings were towards it.

There is a lot to be said, and I am happy to share this with you in this series. I think that I am writing this for me more than anyone else, so I hope you enjoy it and resonate with it.

Please leave a comment about your career and share with us some lessons that you gained or points that resonated with you. See you in part 2.