Bonus: Are you actually taking charge of your career?

Are you taking charge of your career, or leaving things to chance?

In this bonus episode, Aoife shares her key takeaways from her conversation with Wanda Wallace, and offers some extra insights that didn't make it into the full interview. If you haven't listened to the full episode yet, make sure to go back and give it a listen.

Here are some of the key insights from Aoife’s chat with Wanda:

Careers are more like trees than ladders:

You can go sideways, hit a dead end and climb back down, and take longer branches. Breadth of experience matters if you want to reach the top, and a sideways move isn't a step backwards.

Nobody teaches us to manage our careers:

Leaders aren't taught how to help people with theirs, and most of us aren't taught to own ours. Bosses are often too busy with their own.

Define what success means to you:

Wanda's reflection exercise: think about the people you admire, what you're proud of, and where you've made a difference. Patterns will emerge.

Be able to articulate what you want, if you can't, others will guess wrong or never know.

Stop being so useful:

Being indispensable where you are can keep you there. Bring others in to help with the urgent fires, and show your manager everything on your plate along with your view of what to deprioritize. Ask yourself: am I doing this because I'm good at it, or because I should be doing it?