Navigating Your Career Path

Welcome to Navigating Your Career, the only podcast that blends personal development, professional skills and psychology to help you get happy at work and live the life you want. If you want to stop feeling stuck and start feeling better, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Melissa Lawrence. Let’s get started.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. Now, this week we are going to talk about how to navigate your career path. This is such a relevant topic for right now, not just because of the New year or that the pandemic is really causing people to look at what they want for their career and their life, but also because of the training that I’m delivering tomorrow. Five mistakes people make when creating a career plan. I hope you are already registered, but if you are not, it is not too late.

It is 12:00 p.m.. Eastern tomorrow on Zoom with me where I am going to tell you how to avoid the common mistakes. I see when people create their career plan so that you can make your 2022 goals inevitable. The training will be recorded. So if you have a conflict with the time, no worries.

If you register, you’ll get the replay. So I will drop a link in the show notes, so it is super easy for you to go ahead and add your name for this free training. You’re not going to want to miss it. I don’t do this often. All right, now let’s dig into this topic of how to navigate your career path, how to know if you’re on the right path, if you should make a change, what level you should be at or work toward all of the things.

So to know what you want, you have to know who you are. Now, if you’re hearing this and thinking, come on, then you really need to hear this. So I want to start by telling you about a recent lunch that I had with a client. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you have heard me mention my client, Angie before she was actually on my podcast last year. The podcast episode was Finding Your Path with Angela Stillisano, and it continues to be a really popular episode.

So if you haven’t listened to it, check it out. So Angie and I were colleagues before I left the Pharma biotech industry to open my coaching company. And she was someone who hired me pretty much immediately after I left AstraZeneca and we coached one on one for about a year, and our sessions were held on Zoom. Well, just recently we were able to get together for lunch in person, and it was so fun. It was great to catch up and hear about all of her success and how her family is doing, because when you work with someone one on one for an extended period of time and you’re sharing things, working through things, things that you often don’t share with other people.

You build a bond and closeness. And so it just was so nice to meet with her and catch up in person. And when we were talking, she was reminiscing about the growth that she’s had in her coaching experience and just how it’s changed so many things for her. But the thing that I want to really call out is she said that when we started working together, that she didn’t know what she wanted and what she appreciates about my coaching process is that she was able to figure out what she wanted without changing who she is.

Sometimes when you work with a career coach, their process or perspective is to help you get promoted by working on things like elevator pitches, executive presence and changing who you are to fit in and be more like your boss working on your resume, things like that.

But that isn’t the type of career coach that I am with me. You learn what you want by going through a discovery process to discover who you are, what’s important to you, what your strengths are, the impact that you want to have rediscovering interests you may have forgotten about. And when you go through this process, it becomes clear what you want for your career, how you can leverage your talent, how you can influence your leadership, how you can have the impact that you want all by being more you not less.

So with Angie, she came to me not knowing what she wanted. But what she discovered is her path to being happy at work.

She uses her strengths more. She saw where she was hiding a bit and could build her confidence. It became Crystal clear what she wanted at work. She no longer was answering. I don’t know.

When she was asked what she wanted her career plan to be the type of role, the work that lights her up, where she saw her future all became apparent, and she made it all happen. And by discovering this and using her talents and maximizing her strengths and showing up more her than ever before. She actually earned two promotions within a year, and she’s now on a new, higher level leadership team and doing exactly what she wants. So when we were having lunch, she shared that she appreciated that she was able to discover what she wanted and make it happen without changing who she is to get there.

I want you to think about that.

Like, how amazing is that? Just think about that for a moment. You may want a promotion to know what you want to get to that next level, and you may think that you have to fit into someone else’s mold to get there. But like Angie, you don’t. What I believe what I do with my clients is I help them find the career path that is ideal for who they are, even when they don’t know who that is.

Yet I help them get to know themselves on a deeper level and tap into their subconscious just to get below the surface, because there’s so much social conditioning that exists. And that is why you don’t know what you want, why you might feel lost, why you might not know how to take all of your experience and all of your interests and your kind of untapped potential and how to package it together and what that means for you or your career, what’s really possible. So you may hear that and think.

But what about executive presence? What about elevator pitches and resumes?

And what I say to that is, I don’t think they matter, at least not as much, not even close. I don’t coach my clients on how to be something they aren’t. To memorize words that are unnatural or to fluff things up. I show them how to tap into their strengths into what they want. I help them see how they are holding themselves back.

And I teach them tangible career strategies, like influencing decision making, developing others, communication skills, strategy and so on. And these tangible skills are tailored for them and how it is natural for them to leverage them so that it isn’t forced, right. And so even with some of my clients, add an element of human design into that. So my clients get huge promotions. Andrea’s Case, two promotions in a year.

They start businesses, they get big bonuses, they grow as leaders, but they do it without giving up who they are and their values. And isn’t that better that you can have both? You can get what you want without changing who you are without sacrificing your values. So if you could get the same outcome, say, know your career path and get a promotion. But you didn’t feeling more like you like your work was energizing and fun, that you are in your element and you have the confidence to make any goal happen.

Wouldn’t you choose that over getting a promotion by pretending to be something you’re not doing things you don’t like being an authentic, focusing on things like perfect elevator pitches. I’m telling you that with my process, you reach all of your goals and then some, but you do it, being more you not less, just like Angie and all of my other clients. So when you think about what you want for your career path, what that next move should be? I want you to think about how you can tap into more of what makes you you, how you can embrace and love yourself more, to focus on your strengths instead of weaknesses or trying to be like other people because you are incredible just as you are, you have what you need to get, what you want already.

You just have to do the work to get to know yourself better, to see where you’re not leveraging your strengths, to see where you have a talent or skill that you aren’t using.

That you could to discover what you really want without worrying about the should. Then you really get to have it all. You get to have the career happiness, to know your ideal career path and feel better than ever. You don’t have to sacrifice who you are for what you want. Now, I mentioned in the beginning of this episode that I’m hosting a training January 13.

So if you’re listening to this when it comes out, this training is tomorrow. The training is five mistakes people make when you create a career plan, and I’m going to help you set your 2022 career goals up for success. You are also going to hear about the new program I have, and I was going to do a drum roll, but I was like, I don’t know if that’s working. So the new program I have is called Career Path Navigator, and you’re going to get an opportunity to join.

But as my podcast listeners, I want to tell you about it right now, give you a little sneak peek.

So there are two ways to work with me, one on one coaching or this new program, which I’m so excited about. Total game changer. Career Path Navigator Career Path Navigator is available to join tomorrow and listen. If this episode resonated with you, if you are early to mid level in your career and thinking you aren’t sure what you want your career path to be. You want to leverage who you are and not be someone else to get what you want in your career, then this program is for you.

When you join, you will experience the same process I talked about today, the process that Angie and other one on one clients have gone through over eight weeks. You will go from being not sure, not being able to answer what you want to do to creating your unique career protocol with exactly what you want down to the job description you will have, like the bullets of a job description that may not even exist. Drafted in this eight weeks, you will know your career path and you will create a development or action plan to make it a reality.

I am teaching you step by step how to do this in this program, but you aren’t just getting the process, the tools, my instruction, the workbook. You’re getting a year of group coaching and a private community on LinkedIn.

In this space, you can raise your hand for coaching, and I will personally help you with implementing your action plan. The path you discovered in the eight week program to making it a reality. You will get custom strategy and guidance specific to your situation so you will not be on your own. You will go through this program and you can go through it at your own pace. It is structured to be eight weeks to take you from.

I don’t know what I want to. I know exactly what I want and how I’m going to get there. But if you get hung up at any point, you have me to help you along the way, and you have group coaching in a private LinkedIn community to make sure that you take yourself from that plan all the way to implementation of getting into that next step. So you discover your career path. You know what you want.

Great. As you start to implement things, things are going to come up like self sabotage, influencing your management and getting buy in career transitions, fear filling gaps in your skills and experience. All of these things are going to come up once you know what you want and you’re looking to implement it. This is why it isn’t just the process, and the coaching has such an important piece so that you have the support and guidance with the tangible career strategies to make your career move. That next promotion, that next level pretty much a guarantee.

This is exciting. It’s changing the way we approach our careers. It’s giving you the support and the proven strategies that you need to separate from your HR from your boss so that you can ensure that you’re on a path that you love and you’re getting where you want to be in the most efficient and effective way possible in a safe space where no one else has to know. So the doors open to the new program January 13 the investment is $2,500 for the program and the one full year of coaching, strategy and customized guidance so that you can figure out your ideal career path and make it happen.

I will help you overcome all of the obstacles along the way.

And if you want to learn more about this program and make sure your career plan is mistake proof. I am making sure the 60 Minutes is a valuable use of your time in tomorrow’s training. So join me in the class tomorrow. It’s not too late to register and if you can’t make it live, there will be a replay, but you have to register to get it. So register for this training tomorrow January 13.

I’m going to go over the five mistakes people make when they create a career plan. It is going to be extremely useful for you. And then you’ll also get an opportunity to hear more details about the Career Path Navigator and ask any questions that you have. So definitely plan on attending. Plan on registering.

And if you want to see all the details about the program in writing, head over to my website www.Melissamlawrence.Com/navigator. And you can see everything that’s included even some awesome bonuses that I didn’t talk about here today. So I will make the free training, registration and the Career Path Navigator information in the show notes. And before I go, I want you to remember what I said.

You don’t have to sacrifice who you are for what you want, whether you join me or not in the free training in the new program. Whether you ever coach with me, you don’t have to settle. All right? Have a great week.

Coaching with me is the best way to guarantee you get happy at work and achieve your career and life goals. Getting started is easy. Head over to www.Melissamlawrence.Com to learn more and apply. It is the first step to get you from feeling stuck to knowing exactly what you want and have the tools to make it a reality. I will be by your side the entire way.