Confidence in your Pocket Series – Career Confidence
JAG:Welcome to this podcast series, Confidence in Your Pocket. I am Jane Adshead-Grant and I am delighted to be here today with my colleague Eilidh Milnes. For those that don’t know me, I am an executive coach and I work with leaders who want to achieve more for themselves and their business. I specialise in helping my clients think with courage, with rigour, with imagination and grace so that they can achieve more and their aspirations.
EM:What a lovely introduction. I’m Eilidh and that’s a very unusual Scottish name, and I’m all about confidence. If you take me down to one word, it’s confidence and empowering people and helping people to be more confident in their personal lives and in their professional lives and it’s a Scottish name, it’s very unusual. If you can’t just get a handle on it just Google ‘speaker for confidence’ and I’ll come up number one.
JAG:Lovely, thank you. So today our focus, our theme, is about career confidence, how to feel confident in managing your career. So Eilidh, I’d love to start by perhaps asking you to share some of your background in how you became interested in helping other people in confidence in their career.
EM:Perhaps to give people encouragement that if I can do it anyone can do it, anyone can do it. Essentially that is what a story-teller is doing at the end of the day is to realise that my background is education so I have gone from the public sector into running my own successful company and I have done that since 1992 so I have been around the sun a few times in my business and it’s been a very interesting and dynamic journey and I think the whole thing is that, for me it’s down to happiness.
Although I loved education I didn’t feel that I was able to deliver my best, it became quite political and it wasn't making me happy anymore so I decided to step back, I got to a landmark birthday and I thought, “If I am 40, why am I still doing things I don’t like?” The first person I coached was me and then I went on to take qualifications from there and I have been coaching people in their careers and their personal life ever since.
JAG: Fantastic. Well, what a lovely story. So, how do you describe, if you like, or how do you help people can confidence in managing their career?
EM:Well, as with everything there is going to be a process and a strategy. You start taking them through all sorts of assessments and finding out what it is that they really want. It’s interesting because sometimes companies pay me to help a member of staff promote internally but I always say to the company, “If you haven’t got an internal position for these people, be warned, they will go somewhere else, because by the time I am finished with them, by the time they have stepped up to the plate they will be so much more confident about their own abilities and see their own qualities in such a different, more encompassed way, that they will either look for internal promotion quickly or they will step out of the company.”
It’s always a warning that I give whoever is paying the bill.
JAG:I really relate to that too. I have clients where we finish coaching and sometimes they will discover for themselves that actually this isn’t the right environment and actually can feel somewhat devalued or demotivated if there isn’t an opportunity to grow. I think when we think about people feeling confident in managing their career, essentially as a human being we want to, we’re wired to grow and develop personally and that’s a natural thing for us to do.
Sometimes in my experience I find that the challenge that some people are faced with is either through not being really clear on what they want and they perhaps have fallen into a career and they followed the steps up until a certain level and suddenly it dawns on them, as you were saying, “Well, actually I’m not that happy here, so what can I do?” so spending some time helping people get clear on their skills, their strengths, their qualities, their values, what’s important to them, is really key.
EM:It’s a case of, coming back to that happiness, is quite often people will actually, at the end of it, realise they are happy, they just have to make a few minor changes and you’re stepping in and out of their professional and their private life because the two are totally intertwined, so making sure it’s not something at home that’s distressing them at work, or vice versa, there isn’t any bullying going on, there isn’t an issue with their manager.
You help them to address all sorts of, sometimes I find these days people are really struggling with overwhelm, they are trying to do far too much, so it’s again, giving them that clarity and the confidence to step back and say, “Hang on a minute boss, I can do so much really well, after that you’re pushing me beyond my limits.” It’s having the confidence, quite often to stay in the job but to redefine the job so you can actually be more productive and effective and it’s also helping them to move from someone who is just a practitioner to a leader.
A lot of people come to me because they want to take on a leadership role and it’s a very, very different position than someone who is just good at the job. You then have to up-skill them in different areas.
JAG:Absolutely. I spend a lot of time with individuals moving into transition, transitioning rather, into a leadership role, and how they begin to shift and their mindset, it’s not only what they need to do but it’s also how they think about their role and how they show up as a leader.
So how could we, or what would you recommend to someone in terms of getting started on managing their career. For example, what I mean by getting started is they’re at this stage, they’re at a juncture in their life, in their career, in thinking,”I don’t know where to go. I’m not quite feeling it, I’m not feeling motivated enough.” What would you recommend, how to get started?
EM:Well, I would obviously consider working with some kind of coach or mentor to get an external helicopter view of your life so you can see where it’s going, to do some kind of profiling, some personality and career profiling as to where you would be most happy. I do come back to happy. If you’re going to be working, I’m still working now and love the job I do so I can’t see retirement any time soon, in fact I really don't know what retirement looks like, that could be an issue for me, but I love my job and I love what I do.
If you’re gong to be doing a job for another 20 or 30 years and you’re not happy in it then you really have to have an external expert advise you to give you clarity on where you want to go and then some tips I would say is that, raise your visibility. If you really want to be doing something then you have to let people know that you are in the game and you want to play the game. “I want to be in the leadership pot.” Raise your visibility so that people know that you are around and you are available and that you are eager and willing and very hard working to be involved in the leadership team.
JAG:And I’d love to add a couple of things for me, one is about the environment, is to really think about what kind of environment do you like to work in. Are you somebody who is quite structured and enjoys process and likes to know where they fit in the organisation and very clearly about their objectives and what’s expected of them, or are you somebody who is very flexible and fluid and has a capacity move around and very agile and managed the ambiguity that so much of our environment provides today.
I also encourage people to think about how they want to be spending their time in terms of this flexibility, now we are seeing people really enjoying a portfolio career where they enjoy one or two, even three different roles that they have outside of an organisation and that can give people great flexibility and an opportunity to demonstrate their talents and add value across a variety of different roles.
EM:I totally agree and something that comes to mind straight away from me is actually the words that they use to. I was over speaking for Lasalle in Chicago a couple of months ago and after I had delivered the keynote then I did a couple of networking sessions and then ultimately I addressed the Board and when I was talking to the Board, the North Americas Board for Lasalle, it’s amazing, I talked about two different words and one was part-time working versus flexible working and all of a sudden a light-bulb went on and things that you and I just take for granted because we have the words, we have the communication skills, was that part-time working didn’t go down well because people thought, “I am only part-time therefore I am only giving part of my enthusiasm, part of my commitment,” whereas if you went with the word flexible, that was all of a sudden acceptable, so it’s knowing the right words in the right environments so that you are speaking the language that people want to hear.
JAG:Great point, ad what are your thoughts on, again, supporting people, our listeners, thinking about how they manage their career in thinking about what they want for their personal growth and what’s spraining to my mind as an example is the opportunity to be creative, to express oneself in a creative way and have some fun. After all, we spend a lot of time at work and then perhaps on the other hand it’s having an opportunity to grow with a challenge, being able to be in a role that continually helps us think broader, deeper, an opportunity to be stimulated as well. What are your thoughts?
EM:Thinking of a client I’m working with right now, her life is compartmentalised, but she’s much more efficient when there’s a blend. She’s a surgeon within the NHS but she’s finding it very difficult. The NHS is not a happy place to work at the moment. There is a lot of stress, a lot of angst and she’s got a very good career, there’s no way she’s going to step out early because her pension’s important to her so she’s not going to leave behind her career, that essentially she loves, but it’s not feeding her anymore.
So it’s trying to find things in her life, outside of, so almost like a distraction, so in the past she’s taken up, because people who are talented, and there are so many talented people listening to this podcast, that just because you chose to go down the accountancy route, or you chose to go down the real estate route, or you chose to go down the whatever route, doesn’t mean you haven’t go other talents.
So this client of mine is a very talented artist so her first distraction a couple of years ago, because she’s been on my books a long time, was that she became a very, very competent artist, and that satisfied her, it made her happier, therefore when she went into work she felt able to cope because there was a part of her life that was more at peace and she was able to bring that peace into work.
That lasted for a little while, the NHS becomes more stressful so she comes back to be again and says, “Help!” and this time we are looking at cakes, and she’s the most talented cake maker. She’s refurbished her house, she’s got herself an AGA, everything is looking wonderful in her life and she’s making the most amazing cakes and earning money out of it and I think perhaps this could be a long-term solution for her when she leaves the NHS and she does eventually retire, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this lady buys a couple of cake shops and does some baking.
There’s all sorts of things ahead. It’s realising that you are not cut in half and this is your professional life and that’s your personal life. They cross over. If one is going badly, try and get the other one to compensate and you will be able to cope. It’s just a coping mechanism, is what I’m saying. What would you suggest as a coping mechanism?
JAG: Well, I love the idea of having variety in your life and I think when we’re in a position where we really love our job and actually we feel very blessed to do the work that we do and I’m conscious of some other clients where it’s difficult, the environment is really challenging so I think it is this idea of taking control of what you can actually and branching out and absolutely finding other activities that you can do that provide that stimulation, that opportunity to be creative, so there’s extra-curricular things and we did a podcast earlier in relation to networking and how actually by keeping our network dynamic and broadening our interests is a really powerful way, I believe, to not only manage our career but it’s also to bring that sense of fulfilment and satisfaction together.
EM:Absolutely, and balance. I know that both you and I, I don’t know whether you go to a gym but I know that you do running and I’ve also seen your daughter baking so you have both over there, but I walk. I have a target, I have a target in everything I do, but these are self imposed. My target is to walk two miles a day, five times a week and I slot that in somewhere and here’s my Fitbit, it’s actually charging at the moment, and this will be going on my wrist, so I monitor my behaviour and the other thing is, I cycle.
You find ways. If you don’t find these ways of distraction, balancing off your life then you’re overwhelmed by it all and at the same time, going back to the creativity I have ideas, I have solutions to problems, I’ve got a postcard here sitting, “You’re either part of the problem or you’re part of the solution.” I find my solutions when I’m out exercising and I’m away from my desk. Do something that takes you out of that challenge space and you’ll find solutions.
JAG:Fabulous. I love that concept. So as we begin to wrap up today I wondered, just to summarise for our listeners today perhaps three key things that they can take away in terms of managing their career. What three things come to your mind Eilidh, that we’ve talked about today, that people can reflect on?
EM:Have you got a sponsor or mentor? Have you got good visibility? Can you increase it? What are you doing to make your life balanced and blended so that you can cope when the feelings of overwhelm and angst and not being appreciated begin to strike you.\\
JAG:What a fantastic reflection, and I’d love to appreciate Eilidh that you are such an encourager and hearing some of your stories and recommendations and what I witness in you is the energy that you give. Every time I’m with you there is this positive energy and I encourage our listeners to really think about that as they show up and engage with conversations and managing their careers, think about the impact they have, or you have as a listener, on others in terms of the energy that you give off to others.
EM:That’s very sweet of you to say that and can I just, it may sound conceited but if I don’t tell it I’m going to be sorry I didn’t tell the story, but I was doing some work at a local college recently and one of the 16 or 17 year old girls came up to me and said, “I don’t know how old you are but do you know you’ve got more energy than me.”
I just think that regardless of where you’re standing and what your date of birth is, it’s a choice to have the energy and people will see it in you and they’ll want to know what your magic story is, what is your magic fix, and we’ve already explained it’s keeping your life in balance, so thank you for saying I’ve got energy, I know I have, but I just boost it every day by doing things that feed me.
JAG: What a wonderful way to complete our podcast today. I hope you, as listeners, have enjoyed that and we look forward to being with you again for our next podcast in this series. Until then it’s goodbye from me, that’s Jane.
EM:And bye-bye from me, that’s Eilidh.