Summer Reset: 4 Ways to Use Summer to Level Up

It's summer, time to embrace the pleasures of il dolce far niente, rest, enjoy life, and check out for a couple of months.

'Tis the season to take your foot off the gas and put all things career on the back burner, or is it?

Summer's slower pace, longer days, and sense of time and spaciousness are ideal conditions for taking stock of your annual progress and strategically preparing to achieve your ambitions come September.

Summer is the pause I and most of the women I work with need in an otherwise frantic calendar year to responsively rather than reactively cement gains and set ourselves up for success in the second half of the year.

The women of Noteworthy are likewise encouraged to use this relatively slower season to double down on their dreams and ambitions.

Several are actively refining their value statements and building personal brand strategies to position themselves for new roles and exciting opportunities this fall.

Many of our leaders are leveraging our Authority System to show up more powerfully and effectively in their new roles.

And more than that, they're recovering from burnout and setting better expectations, boundaries, and systems to both operate at a top level without giving up fulfillment and joy in their lives.

Come this autumn every single one of these exceptional women will be better positioned to walk into fall-madness with more poise, confidence, authority, and visibility and ultimately build greater success on their terms.

Ready to strategically and comfortably grow your influence, career, and professional fulfillment, over the summer without giving up on all the pleasures of the season?

Review and practice these four strategies:

1. Go Off-Grid!

Showing up and saying yes to every request, project, or assignment life throws your way is NOT the key to advancement and professional success.

Women who engage in this style of reactive hand-raising may be upheld as wonder women in the office, but praise often comes at the cost of their energy, focus, and personal ambitions.

They are more likely to make poor choices and work too hard to achieve results that ultimately are misaligned with what they need. The end result is too much work for too little satisfaction.

Make time to slow down. Spend a few hours a week doing absolutely nothing; enjoy life and disconnect (from social media, podcasts, the news, and your phone). Give yourself time to reconnect with what you're feeling and what you need. Use those insights to set better strategic goals. Take back control of your time and energy so you be more effective and grow your success without burning out or sacrificing your needs.

My client, Sherry*, a senior woman in finance, is looking to level-up her career as she enters the last third of her professional life. She's dedicated this summer to defining what is right for her using our Power System so that by September, she has a clear and strategically sound roadmap she can execute on.

2. Make August, 1st Your New January, 1st

So many of my clients operate in an all-or-nothing paradigm before they start coaching with me. They're either all in, doing the work of 3.1 people on their own. Or they're off, trying to recuperate from the exhaustion of the never-ending to-dos and demands of their careers.

Q1: They're all-in. Inspired by the new year, they set incredibly inspiring goals, built impressive strategic plans, and hit the ground running. Twelve months and 1658 projects later, a year in review reveals insufficient progress towards their ambitions; disappointment, recrimination, and guilt set in.

January 1 might be most people's favorite time to take stock of their goals and growth, but the summer months are a perfect time to review and adjust your new-year intentions.

Block off a couple of mornings this month to sit quietly and review your progress to date. You can start by answering some of these questions:

• How do you feel about work, your job, and your achievements so far?
• What successes would you like to celebrate come December 31?
• What is one skill you've been meaning to hone? Where can you find the resources, support, and tools to practice (if not master) it in the next couple of months?
• What keeps you up at night? What worries do you have about your career?
• What are you actively doing to address those fears?
• What is one goal or ambition you want to focus on this Summer?

3. Hang Out With Cool People

By mid-career, success is no longer a meritocracy.

The people you're competing with are as experienced, educated, ambitious, and good as you. What determines whether you or they get that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? In part, it's who you know and what they know about you. This is why building strong, active, strategic, and meaningful professional networks is so important.

When your schedule is packed with meetings, project deadlines, and after-hour networking events, it can be tough to find time to connect with them. During the summer, business tends to slow down while many networking organizations take a hiatus from regular get-togethers. This means that you and the people you want to connect with are now free to meet with far less stress.

Identify five people who are already part of your network and five more whom you would like to add to your professional network. Commit to reaching out to each of them several times over the summer and invite them to a live or virtual conversation.

One client recently reached out to our community of 50+ Noteworthy Women to get advice on better ways to network effectively as a shy introvert. Using our Executive Rising Power system she's already gained clarity around the types of relationships she'll need to support to grow her career.

Her focus this summer will be on growing her authority and confidence so she can make strong connections, nurture new and existing relationships and build her social capital for success.

4. Sign Up For That All-Inclusive Retreat

Dreaming of deep relaxation combined with new experiences this summer vacation? You might choose to find a resort where your meals are prepped, the surf instructor is in-house, and the best massage therapist can be found at the poolside SPA.

The same goes for your professional ambitions. You deserve the right support to reach your goals. Just because you are incredibly competent, effective, smart, and capable doesn't mean you can or should do it all on your own.

As I mentioned earlier, for me summer is a great time to do deeper personal/professional work. I rely on the expert support and guidance of my own coach to do more, better in, less time. Her support is not just wanted but truly needed if I'm to reach my own very ambitious goals.

I also lean on my Program Manager, April, to help me manage Noteworthy's demands with greater efficiency and responsiveness. Summers are a great time to move forward on big projects with the right help - like the year I hired a videographer to revamp our video library of resources, a copywriter to update the wording on our website, and a fitness coach to keep me moving and motivated to work out in these quieter months.

Just because you are incredibly competent, effective, smart, and capable doesn't mean you can or should do it all on your own.

I could do a lot of this on my own - I have tried to in the past when we were a smaller and leaner business.

But what I learned through that experience was that doing it all left me exhausted, had my family frustrated by my inability to be there for them, and ultimately resulted in guilt, arguments, and burnout.

The right support is invaluable.

Who do you need help from? Where can you find them? What would it look like to accelerate the pace of your progress because you've gathered the right team to support you?

Success On Your Terms

Professional success requires consistent, responsive, and thoughtful investments of time and energy, especially as a senior leader. I love the summer lull, but slowing down doesn't mean you have to abandon what you've been building the rest of the year.

I'm curious what have you been up to this summer?

Let me know in the comments and private message me if you're ready to join our Noteworthy women.

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About Dr. Alessandra Wall & Noteworthy

Worldwide, smart, ambitious executive women work three times as hard for a fraction of the influence they deserve.

Excellence-driven, they show up fully for everyone - all the time - and discover that high-level success can come at too high a cost if you don't have the right systems or support.

I've made it my mission to help women in senior leadership show up with authority, own their value, leverage their influence, and make a meaningful impact without sacrificing everything on the altar of success.

I lead this work through Noteworthy, an exclusive executive coaching and consulting firm that advances senior executive women in STEM and finance and supports companies that seek to retain, elevate, and attract them.

This work has transformed the lives of hundreds of executive women in the US and Europe and changed workplaces for the better at scores of companies ranging in size from agile start-up to Fortune 100.

• Connect with me on LinkedIn here.
• Jump on a 20-minute connect call here.
• Need a great speaker for your event, newscast, show, or podcast? Email me drwall@noteworthyinc.co.