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The Confident Mother

Helping ambitious women in technology manage their career with confidence and purpose

13th February 2017

How to get started and lead in a bigger way

If you are a woman who has responsibility at work – whether that’s people, projects or profits – maybe you are at that stage in your career when you want to make a bigger impact and take your career to the next level. Whatever that next level looks like to you.

How to lead in a bigger way

This post is for ambitious women who want to lead in a bigger way, whether that’s more people, bigger projects or more responsibility.

If you have been pondering this for a while, you already know that to get there, you need to be really confident about who you are, what you do, and how you do it.

The ambitious women that I often talk to, want to do this in a way that feels authentic. Natural. That doesn’t feel forced. Without trying to be somebody or something that you’re not.

AND an ideal work-life balance?

No doubt you want this AND you want an ideal work-life balance. Sometimes what I experience is that when a woman already has a work-life balance that works, she is anxious about how to move forwards (or upwards) without upsetting that balance. (Interestingly, one of the banks I talked to recently realised that women often don’t want the ‘big’ promotion in those first two or three years after their children are born. They now offer their best female talent the ‘big’ promotion early to try to avoid their best female talent getting ‘stuck’ in the pipeline.)

Quite often, the work-life balance that works is the key that holds a woman back from applying for promotion, partnership or changing employers. Because when the balance feels precarious and vulnerable, you don’t want to rock the boat in case you can’t get that balance back.

Do you want to settle for less?

Which means that women are more likely to stay put. To settle for less. To make do. To compromise.

And that’s brilliant if that’s what you want. If that’s the choice that YOU want to make. Everything is a choice, isn’t it. Perhaps we can’t have it all, but we can have what we want.

Sometimes it feels like it’s a dirty thing to be a woman, a mother AND want to be successful in your career. It doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t want to look back in 20 years’ time and be thinking “what if …”

What are your options to make a bigger impact?

Let’s think for a few moments about your options to make a bigger impact and lead in a bigger way.

Perhaps for you, the ‘bigger impact’ is getting a promotion; maybe it’s increased responsibility (whether that’s people or budget or locations); it could be having the opportunities to work with the more interesting clients or the meatier projects.

Sometimes you can make that bigger impact staying in the role you are in although you may need to express your skills and ambitions more clearly. Thinking of the longer game, could a sideways move give you the relevant experience required to move up to the next level? What about changing environment altogether?

What will you do to get started?

When you know your options, you can decide on the actions that you need to take to move you one step closer.

It’s time to get clear on WHAT you need to do – maybe there’s a skills gap; or a confidence gap; or you need to address your mindset; is that inner critic in your head holding you back?; or it’s your LinkedIn profile; self-care (so you have more energy); more networking ….

What will you do to get started to make a bigger impact? Whatever it is, pick ONE thing and just get started.

The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll finish. And here’s a secret tip … once you DO get started, with a baby step that takes just 10 minutes, THAT gives you the energy to keep going.

And if you want some accountability, some moral support, pop in the comments below that ONE thing that you will get started with today.

p.s. if the ONE thing that will help the most is to talk it through with somebody objective, let’s talk. Book a ‘get started to lead in a bigger way‘ conversation today.

 

Article by Sherry Bevan / Ambitious women, Career confidence Leave a Comment

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