The Leadership Confidential

Welcome to The Leadership Confidential; my monthly newsletter where I’ll be sharing my knowledge and experience with you, to help get your leadership career on the track you deserve.

For this first edition I'll be talking about the top three things you can do if you feel stuck in your career or role and aren't sure what the best next steps are for you.

So, if you are contemplating a promotion, hate your role, boss, team, or organisation you’re in now, want to take on more leadership responsibility, or just want to discover what the hell you want to do in your career to feel fulfilled and successful, then this newsletter will help you along the way.

And if you have any burning topics or questions you’d like to see included, then let me know. I’d be more than happy to dedicate an entire newsletter to help with anything specific. ?

Let’s kick things off

For my first newsletter, I decided to jump right in and answer the question I’m most often asked by clients:

“How can I work out what I really want to do with my career?”

If you’ve been in a job or an organisation for longer than you’d like and you want to make a change, or you keep changing roles because you’re just not happy, it can be hard to know where to start.

What if you make the wrong choice and end up back at square one again?

If you’ve got to a point in your career where you feel comfortable but unchallenged, it’s not easy to know what to do.

I’ve been there and can more than empathise with that frustrated feeling you get (both at yourself and your current situation). In the past, I’ve been in roles where my workplace values weren’t aligned with the team or company; where I was bored because the role wasn’t stretching or teaching me; where my boss was a micro-manager; where I was exasperated at being denied the creativity and flexibility I needed, and overwhelmingly, where I just wasn’t feeling successful or fulfilled.

Looking back I was discouraged, unsatisfied and miserable, and even if I didn’t show it, there was a persistent niggle saying “I can do better than this, there has to be more than this for me”.

So what’s the answer?

Throughout my career and by working with my clients, I’ve come up with three simple steps I’d really encourage you to try if you’re feeling like this:

1.??????Work out what you want

Grab a blank piece of paper ?(or a lovely notebook you’ve been saving) and across the top write:

What do I want in my career?

Then either journal, mind-map or simply list everything you really want.

Consider:

·????????Where do you want to work? At home? In the office? Or both?

·????????Do you want to travel as part of your role?

·????????What sort of projects do you want to be working on?

·????????What role and salary would you like?

·????????What kind of organisation would you like to be working for? Charity? Public sector? Not-for profit?

·????????How big is the team and what are the people like?

·????????Where are the offices based?

Be as granular as you want because this is your list and your future and no one is going to care about it or want it as much as you.

2.??????Work our your reason why

It’s easy to make a list of potential career achievements but unless there’s a purpose and a reason that has meaning for you, you’ll never be motivated enough to achieve it. So for everything you added to your career list, think about why you want it.

It might be that you want to earn more money, you want to have more responsibility in your role, you want to work on more high-impact, life-changing projects, or you want to work remotely for example.

Work out what means the most to you, because you need to want something that inspires and motivates you enough to take action, not only to get started and make the first change, but to keep you going when it gets difficult.

3.??????Work out what you’re good at

Make a list of your strongest skills; the ones that come easily, the ones you like doing, the one you can do all day without flagging.

Don’t forget to add in the all-important transferable skills.

What abilities and knowledge do you take with you from place to place no matter the role? Skills such as time-management, organisation, delegation for example.

Take some time with this list as it can be challenging to look at a blank piece of paper and think of skills. However, I guarantee that you can compile a list of at least 30+ skills if you consider everything you’ve done in your career and life so far to date.

For example, you are using your organisation, planning, and possibly delegation skills when you’re redecorating at home and using your logical, collaborative, creativity, and budget planning skills when you’re sorting the weekly supermarket shop.

Having a skills list is vital when it comes to looking at future roles because you’ll be unhappy and disheartened if you’re in a role that doesn’t fully use your core skills.

List done – now what?

By the end of this exercise, you should have a better idea of what you want, why you want it, and what you’re good at.

If your current job is meeting everything you have listed, then all well and good.

But if that’s not the case, then you have a good benchmark to use when considering new roles and organisations, especially when your new role needs to be able to take you where you want to go, meet all your workplace values, and utilise your strongest skills.

Want some help?

If you want support to help you with this, I’d recommend working with a coach. This could be me or someone at work or a close friend. Whoever you find, all that matters is that you get started on your journey to what you really want.

This year will pass whether you’re working towards your goals or not; imagine how you’ll feel if you are on the path to realising your career dreams and are in the leadership role you’ve always wanted by 2023.

If you want to have a chat with me about how I can help you, then book a free 30-minute clarity call with me. We can chat through your career goals and come up with a strategy you can take forward today.

Remember to also subscribe to this newsletter so you can keep in touch with me that way and learn some more simple yet effective career tips and guidance.

Jackie x

P.S. Want to know exactly what a coach does and how they can help you? Check out my blog “What does a coach actually do?”