Alexandra
Leverage off my experience to get the career you want faster!
Today, I have my own business but I spent 23 years in finance and at times it felt like a roller coaster! Only 18 months into my first job ever, I got a new boss I didn’t get along with and that nearly got me fired! That career accident early on really drove the point home for me that I had better start managing my career or I wouldn’t have one for very much longer.
I never forgot that experience and while that didn’t prevent me from running into obstacles afterwards, I believe that the lessons I learnt from this early incident gave me really important insights into how to steer my career in order to get what I wanted out of it.
That episode left me very confused, frustrated and scared. So I put my thinking cap on and focused on building up a network of allies who would support me. I worked on becoming politically-savvy, learning what makes people tick and I also made sure I was a top performer. I took some risks and most paid off, allowing me to differentiate myself and stand out.
And indeed, I got everything I wanted from my career: the financial rewards and the promotions, wonderful colleagues and clients who became genuine friends, interesting work, a large variety of roles which challenged me and kept me learning, and the opportunity to lead increasingly larger teams…
Of course, I also got the downsides: the challenging colleagues whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to make mine miserable, the long hours, the boring administrative tasks, and the pointless meetings… But I was able to cope with all of it, even though it was tough at times.
I am telling you all this because I want to you to know that it is absolutely possible to achieve your ambitions, whatever those may be, when it comes to your career. But I also want to caution you about thinking things like “My boss will ensure I get promoted”’ or ‘Merit is all I need to build a career.” No, building a career takes hard work. And the more you want, the more you have to put in.
My work now leverages everything I learnt since that career accident over 20 years ago — whether it was from trying things out, seeing what worked and what didn’t, being guided by others, undertaking training or reading a few inspirational books!
I therefore believe that I understand your frustration, your problem, your challenge or your aspiration because I have most likely lived it.
To see what others said about the benefits of working together, click here.
To get a sense of the kind of areas we could collaborate on, go there.
Or if you’d like to just tell a bit about yourself and what is going on for you, feel free to contact me by emailing me here.
