8 Critical Factors for Career Success. (Part One)

On any given day in your work life, there’s a lot to focus on. Clients, meetings, deadlines, endless zoom meetings, stress and anxiety, not to mention your boss, your team and just when do you get that coffee break?! It can be pretty overwhelming.

Not to mention that right now, things in the world are more than a little out of control, and you’re probably feeling the brunt of that in some small or large way. You may be still working from home or transitioning back to the office, perhaps you want to change jobs, are dealing with health challenges or feeling isolated and alone. You may even be feeling completely stuck with your career plans and thinking what’s the point anyway?! Stay with me here, because I’m going to craft a roadmap of the key things that you need to be focusing on – especially in these challenging times.

Even in ‘normal times’ our research shows that 70% of women don’t have a career plan, and more than 48% of women are completely winging it when it comes to what’s next. Not only that, more than 70% of women are really struggling with their health and wellbeing, and just plain forget about any semblance of work life balance. They are pretty daunting statistics.

So let’s take a step back and get a broader perspective. When we run on autopilot, focusing on the urgent, we can lose sight of the important things we would be well served to think about. Here are four of eight core ideas to ponder that fall into that important category, and that are critical for building a career that matters. Stay tuned for part two where we explore this further.

1. Getting clear on your vision and purpose

Ok so this is a big one to start with, we grant you that. But if we know that the career plan scantly gets a look in, it’s even worse for the life vision. Spend some time really thinking about what you want your life to look like. Reflect on your passions, relationships, spiritual life, creativity, community, leisure time, study and yes, your career – how does it all fit together in a way that works? We often leave the parts of our life behind that we really want, just because we are too busy to consciously fit them in and make them matter.

And speaking of what matters, to have a career that matters, you have to be working on purpose. Purposeful work is meaningful work. Research reported in the Harvard Business Review shows that nine out of ten people are willing to earn less money to do more meaningful work. Think about that in the context of your career.

When you’re working on purpose, you are doing work that you feel called to do. It’s work that even if nobody paid you to do it, you would still get up every morning and get to it. Purposeful work becomes involuntary, and you are engaged and fulfilled when you are doing it. Is this what your work looks like for you? Where is the meaning in what you do every day? Have a think about where the meaning and purpose sits in your life.

Try this:

Start creating your life vision. Grab your notebook and make a list of all the things you would love to have in your life. Think about your wellbeing, purposeful work, creativity, family, social time, community, hobbies, spiritual life and more. Write a stream of consciousness list without editing yourself. Try and create your ideal list of things you want to include in your life, and write out an ideal day and week in your life. Play with this over time, tune into how you feel and craft and re-craft the vision until it feels ideal. Then pick one small area and go about bringing it to life.

2. Building radical confidence

We hear all the time how women need to build their confidence at work. It is undeniable that for many women, self-doubt, self-criticism, an overly tuned antennae set to ‘what will they think of me’ or being hard wired to the people pleaser channel, can be career limiting and stop us from playing as big as we would like to.

You need to know that confidence isn’t a personality trait, it’s a skill that you build. And there’s nothing wrong with you, you just don’t have the tools yet. Unpack the stories you are telling yourself about what you can and can’t do and what beliefs may be stopping you from taking big leaps forward (or even more every day actions like raising your ideas in meeting). Using the simple question ‘Is that true?’ when you hear those stories surfacing can be enough to interrupt your cognitive distortions, start to tame your inner critic , and reframe your less than helpful stories into ones that help you take action.

Radical confidence, the type of confidence you have no matter what is going on around you, is also about learning to use and play to your strengths. We recommend you take the free character strengths survey at the VIA Institute and watch how your levels of engagement, productivity, health and happiness skyrocket when you start to use your strengths at work and play each day. You won’t believe it until you try it, but trust us, we’ve seen it with thousands of people over the past decade. Go try it for yourself.

Try this:

Download our free Taming Your Inner Critic guide and get the tools to understand what is really going on for you when your confidence is lacking. In this guide we teach you what confidence really is, how to understand and manage your inner critic, what to do with your imposter syndrome thoughts (we all have them, don’t worry), and the simple 3 part process to manage your stories and get into action.

3. Evolving your career

The days of having a rigid five-year career plan are over. In the incredibly fast paced world we’re living in with so much change, a five-year plan is too great a period for concrete planning. But having a directional vision for where you want to head and knowing where you are currently will set you up for success. It’s also important to think about where you’re at on your career mastery curve, and how this factors in to your plan for what’s next (we have a whole module on this in the Women Rising program) .

You’ll also want to think about your personal brand, which is about who you are, what you do and how you do it. Think about what you want to be known for. If you could be known for something that really tapped into your passion and purpose, used your strengths and your core areas of expertise, what would that be?

Once you know where you want to go, where you’re currently at and what you want to be known for, consider the relationships you can cultivate with mentors and sponsors to help you on your path.

Mentors are people you go to for advice, skills sharing, knowledge transfer and trouble-shooting. It could be that you need support with office politics, work life balance, moving from sales to marketing, or a transition into an executive role. Seeking advice from someone you respect and who has gone before you can help fast track your success. Sponsors are quite different. They are your advocates. They speak about you when you’re not in the room, help you get those hot projects or big jobs, and help you fulfil your career plans. But it’s a two-way street. A sponsor puts their reputation on the line by vouching for you, so you have to deliver. Sponsors are looking, in most cases, to increase their brand, power and position through the leverage that sponsoring you into a role or project will bring (not always, but often).

Identify who may be a mentor and who may be a sponsor worth approaching. And be really clear on what you want to ask for, and what you can provide in return.

Try this:

If you are ready to evolve your career and committed to creating a purposeful future, we highly recommend that you join the Women Rising program , a holistic personal and professional development journey that thousands of women call life changing. It will give you the tools to thrive in your career and life.

4. Being an authentic leader

Imagine if we could redefine leadership to truly be more inclusive. Imagine if people - especially women - were enabled and encouraged to embrace the philosophy that who you are is how you lead and all leadership styles are welcomed and celebrated.

When we think about power we often think of the masculine version of power, which is what society, organisational structures and governments, certainly in the West, are largely based on. Models of success based on masculine traits as defined by research like driven, ambitious, dominant, aggressive, competitive, assertive. Feminine traits on the other hand have been identified globally as traits such as trustworthy, kind, giving, passionate, honest, generous, collaborative, authentic and intuitive.

Now these are not gendered. This is really important. Both men and women (all genders) have access to feminine and masculine traits, of course. In the workplace however, and perhaps in your career if you look at it closely, we see a large dominance of the masculine. And it impacts how we show up as women, and what we believe will happen when show our authentic selves.

So what can you do? First be honest about where you are. Are you balanced in how you are showing up? Do you feel authentic going through your day? Are you more in your drive and strive energy than your collaborative and nurturing energy? How do you get things done? By being dominant and aggressive? Or through creativity and kindness? Power comes in all forms. It’s time we recognise that not everyone fits the current model, and that indeed it’s time to crack it wide open and create a new one.

Try this:

Think about how authentic you feel at work each day. Be really honest. Are you putting on a cloak and mask to get through the day that reflects how you think you are supposed to behave? Or are you being yourself? When you look at your own leadership style and the way you show up each day, which traits are you leading with? What is the balance of your masculine and feminine traits? Is this mix working well for you, or do you need to dial up/dial down certain traits and values? Some thoughts to consider.

We hope these ideas from part one of this series are helpful – we know from the thousands of women we work with in the Women Rising program, that these are some of the most important fundamentals of building an authentic and aligned career and life. They are not necessarily new ideas. You may have heard or read about them before - perhaps not framed the same way, but at least in concept. But when was the last time you did more than read them and say to yourself ‘yes I know that!’ without actually sitting down and reflecting on where you are really at in each area? We encourage you to do that this week. Really sit with them. Get honest with yourself. And then make some plans that will take you forward in the direction you want to head – on your own terms.

To explore this and other critical aspects of your career, leadership and life journey, join us for the next intake of the Women Rising program in September. It's fully virtual so you can join from anywhere. Thousands of women from dozens of countries and more than 320 organisations consistently call it life changing. You can read the?details here, ?as well as download the program guide.