Growing with gumption

Gumption was not a word that was used in the Festival of Growth but I think it captures much of the spirit of the day. This interweaves with final theme I took from the festival, which was the importance of focus and building relationships as tools to drive your career forward – and having a bit of gumption to rocket-power both of them. One of my favourite speakers, Rupal Patel , used the word ‘stubbornness’ to explain much of what drove her success as she has moved her career from the CIA to being a CEO, but I think gumption also encompasses both that determination and the positive drive forward.

Focus and clear goals

Rupal spoke of the importance of trying to set a maximum of three goals at a time to make sure that you complete them. There’s nothing worse than reaching the end of the year and not having achieved any of the things you set out to do, so she advocated for limiting the number of things you are trying to do and really focusing on them. The topics of purpose and vision that I shared in my previous post really speak to this too.

This links to her second point, which is that there is not enough time in life to have an amazing career AND a perfect family AND hit the gym for an hour a day AND see all your friends AND write your novel etc. She explained that she approaches life much like heptathletes approach a competition – of the seven things they have to compete in, the try to excel in three and then be ‘just good enough’ for the other events. Her advice was to choose deliberately what you want to excel at, and then “half-ass the rest”. For instance, she prioritises career and family, so does the bare minimum of exercise and often doesn’t see her friends.? The idea of being intentionally half-assed at things is so delightfully freeing that I started writing my “half-assed” list on the way home.? She also advocates focusing on your strengths – see my previous blog for more on that.

My other take-away from Rupal was the idea that work-life balance is hokum, and actually we should be aiming for “intentional imbalance” which acknowledges that different things have different levels of importance to us, and we don’t have to balance everything equally.

Don’t just work, network!

Importance of relationship building and connections to career growth came through from most of our speakers.

Rupal Patel spoke about the power of creating informal connections and seeing what happens. She advised “planting seeds” of positive interactions, or doing ‘five minute favours’ and then seeing what grows.? As a novice gardener, I loved her metaphor of planting things with hope, but never knowing what might grow, or when it might flower.

She also talked to the power of being curious in our interactions with people. I love this advice so much: you never know the stories and skills and potential people have within them.? It reminded me that in my youth I used to chat with people all the time, at bus stops, on planes (yes, I am afraid that I was one of those people).? Some of those conversations stayed common place, but through them I met a professional recorder player, an expert in the design of Milton Keynes (apparently deliberately designed so richer people lived on curved roads and more affordable housing was built in grids – it still makes me cross to think of it now), a taxi driver who really challenged my youthful cynicism of religion and the editor of Witchcraft and Wicca magazine! All these conversations have provided food for thought and I continue to learn so much from the connections I make today.

Rupal also spoke of the importance of being very deliberate about who you have in your closest circle when you are starting something new. It can be a very vulnerable time, so she advised us to ‘tune people out’ who are not helping you and to consciously curate who you spend your time with.

Maya Gudka, MSc, CFA, MA(Cantab) also spoke to the importance of relationships.? In her role as an executive coach she often sees people prioritising task based outputs over building relationships internally and externally and sees that this often leads to them not being at the top of the list for new opportunities, or not getting the information they need to excel. She introduced the concept of ‘relational capital’ and suggested that we should consider relationship mapping to systematically and deliberately identify and develop “pivotal career relationships”.

She suggests you think about

1. Who are the pivotal sponsors for your vision, career and for your team
2. Find out about them, their agendas and build a relationships wherever you can
3. Think about this both internally and externally – even if you are planning to stay with your current organisation forever, Maya advised that having information about the external world can be critical for career development
4. Thinking about how you can use social media to shift or enhance your professional identity – she believes you can do this by commenting, sharing and liking without having to create new content.

And so ends my summary of a great day of learning, insight, sharing and connection at the LBS Festival of Growth.? Thank you to everyone involved who made it happen, but especially our talented talent team: Nikki Tysoe , Alecia Birthwright , Sara Martins Fonseca , Caitlin Ashton , Jade Scott .