257: How To Think Strategically About Your Career

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:00]:

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the award winning happier at work podcast. I’m your host, Aoife O’Brien, career and culture strategist, speaker, and soon to be author. And in today’s episode, I’m sharing something that I’m so excited to talk about. It’s something I wish I had when I was still working in corporate and actually probably something I didn’t even realize that I needed. It’s all about thinking about your career strategically. So putting a framework around your career to think about what those next steps might be, to think to think about what might be holding you back currently. It’s called the no show and grow framework, and I’ll come on to that in a minute. Because before I talk about that, I wanted to share about AI career companion.

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:48]:

And it’s something I have mentioned previously on the podcast. It’s something that, again, I’m so excited to talk about. It’s in the testing phases at the moment. There’s a handful of people who are working with it and providing feedback on how it’s going. So at the end of this episode, I will let you know more about how to access the AI career companion. But really, it’s for you if you’re trying to think about your career more strategically, if you’re feeling a little bit stuck at the moment, if you’re out of whack when it comes to work life balance, if you’re feeling imposter syndrome, if you want to step into a more senior leadership role, I’ve got your bases covered with all of this. And the AI has learned from the frameworks that I have shared with it. So one of those frameworks being the no show grow, which we will come on to in a second, but also my other frameworks in relation to imposter syndrome, in relation to happiness at work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:41]:

I am also planning to feed it with podcast information as well and some articles and books that I found really useful when it comes to happiness at work, career management, confidence, and leadership. So without further ado, let’s come on to the no show grow framework. And for me, I’ve let’s say in the last year or so, this has really, really taken off. When I first started my business, one area I was particularly interested in was helping people with their careers but also within organizations supporting people to manage their careers more strategically because, let’s face it, it’s not something we’re ever taught how to do. And what I’m finding is a lot of the organizations I work with, they have some amazing internal tools. They have some fantastic technology that they’re using. They have mentoring programmes. They have sponsors.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:44]:

They have all of this amazing stuff. But at the individual level, people don’t know how to actually manage their careers, how to use the technology that they have for them. And so I’ve been invited to speak into lots of different organisations and share this framework in relation to how to think about your career and how to use those tools and actually put them into practice. So no is all about knowing yourself. How well do you currently know yourself? And if you think about it from lots and lots of different perspectives, you can get feedback from people, you can get three sixty feedback, you can get one on one feedback, but also about understanding yourself beyond the feedback. So thinking about your core values and how they relate to the organisation that you’re working in, thinking about your needs or your drivers at work, like what really, really motivates you, thinking about your strengths, which is something we definitely don’t talk enough about in corporate environments. What are your natural strengths and abilities and how do you use those in your day to day work? But there’s also then other things like personality profiling. There is your communication styles.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:57]:

There’s so many things that influence how we show up at work and the kind of work that we wanna do and the kind of people that we want to work with. So knowing yourself is all is the very first step and a lot of people skip this step because they think it’s not important or they just want to jump to the next stage and I know I was very much like that. So ambitious. I wanted to race to the top. And so it’s not all about that. It’s about slowing down and understanding, well, what’s going to bring you much more fulfillment, a greater impact, the kind of impact that you want to have at work. And so some questions that you can ask yourself, you know, beyond just thinking about what the AI can do or what the framework can do, but some questions that you can ask yourself today to try and understand yourself a little bit better. And I suppose the first question I ask is, have you done any of this kind of work before? Have you done work on your values? Have you done maybe some assessments in relation to your strengths? So understanding your values, I think a really key thing for me, I think really helps is when you see behaviour that really upsets you or really frustrates you, then you could say that your value is the opposite of that behaviour.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:11]:

So for example, and this is kind of more a personal example, but it shows up at work as well. If someone leaves a mess somewhere, it actually is really frustrating for me. I like things to be very organised, to be very structured and everything has its own place. The same can be said for files. I’m not always great at doing it. I’m great at setting up those kinds of systems. Not not always great at maintaining them. Hello ADHD.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:36]:

But it’s really understanding, you know, what is it that that I find frustrating or what is it that I I feel really energised by as well. So the other side of that then, it doesn’t always have to be negative, but thinking about the kind of things that are really, really important to you. How do you spend your time? How do you spend your energy? How do you spend your money? So for me personally, I love travelling. I love exploring. I love reading. I will spend money on courses. So I love learning and curiosity. And the other thing with values is it doesn’t always have to be the same word and sometimes you can group words together and sometimes these words mean different things to different people, but it’s really about the sentiment behind it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:21]:

So for me, it’s the learning, it’s the curiosity, it’s the getting better all the time, the continuous improvement. So that’s something that I really, really value. And so that’s a way to think about your values. When it comes to your needs then this can be something and you know I’ve talked about about my framework before around autonomy, relatedness, competence, and the unique needs that we all have at work in addition to those three universal needs. But if you’re thinking particularly now about what are my needs at at work, it’s really easy to to kind of brush off when things are going really well that you you don’t even think about what your needs are. But you know what your needs are for when you feel frustrated at work. So do you feel like you’re being micromanaged? Well, then you have a greater need for autonomy. Do you feel like you don’t really get along that well with your colleagues? Okay.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:14]:

Well, then you have a a need, a missing need for relatedness or a better great greater sense of connection with those people that you work with. Do you feel that the work that you’re doing day in day out is kind of pointless and you’re not you’re not really sure what the end result is? Well, then again, that’s related to relatedness, and you need to be really clear whether that comes from your manager or you sitting down yourself to think how does this relate to the impact that I’m having? What is the impact of this on the team, on the department, on the overall goals of the organisation, on the end user, the end client, whatever that might look like for you. And then coming on to strengths. So I think for me strengths is probably a little bit of an easier one to get your head around because thinking about, you know, what what was I really good at at school or what did I really enjoy doing? What gives me energy when I do that at work? Maybe you can take an online tool. There’s so many online tools. There’s some free, there’s some paid, But they’re really great at uncovering what your natural strengths and abilities are. But also some of the unused strengths that you might have. So one of the the things that comes up for me again and again, I loved maths and science at school.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:31]:

I’m quite a logical and methodical person. And my entire career has been around data and analytics. So it’s like ticking a lot of boxes in terms of my strengths and I really enjoyed it and gives me a lot of energy. I’m a big problem solver. I’m a communicator. So these are all of the kinds of strengths that are coming up for me. But one of my unrealised strengths is empathy. So maybe I’m not showing enough empathy.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:56]:

I thought that was quite interesting. So I need to dial that up a little bit. So I have it as a natural strength but I’m not using it as much. So that’s the strengths piece. I’m not going to dive into all of the other tools that you can potentially use to understand yourself a little bit better but things like disc profiling tool. There is another one that I’ve mentioned a couple of times on the podcast before which is, and the name escapes me right now. It’s called the sparkety type. And if you just go do a Google search on that you should be able to find it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:31]:

But for me, again, really eye opening in terms of the kinds of things that I like to do from a purpose perspective. So moving on then to show. And show is all about how you’re showing up at work. You know, the kind of visibility that you have and being able to talk about your wins without feeling sleazy, without feeling like you’re blowing your own trumpet. All of those really important things that it is from a career that that all of those really important things from a career perspective that sometimes we neglect and we forget about because we often get caught in the trap of just doing the work and hoping that if we keep our heads down, the work will speak for itself. But that’s not the case. You have to be able to tell people about the impact that you’re having. You have to be able to speak up in meetings and talk about what it is that you’re doing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:22]:

And I don’t want to hear any excuses like, oh, but it’s okay for you. I’m an introvert and, you know, I I can’t do these kinds of things. You know, this is a challenge that I had when I was speaking one time and someone raised their hand and said, oh, it’s okay for you standing on stage. You’re an extrovert. And I said, I’m not an extrovert. I’m an introvert. I learned how to do these things. So it’s something that anyone can learn.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:45]:

I don’t want to hear any excuses. You need to learn how to do this if you want to if you want to manage your career strategically, if you want to get to that next stage. So share your wins. It it’s also useful for managers to be able to really advocate for their team. So if you’re a leader of people, which I know a lot of listeners are, how are you advocating for the people in your team? And are you speaking up on their behalf and sharing their wins? And as an individual contributor or even as a leader yourself, how easy are you making it for your boss to be able to advocate for you and to share your wins really easily? Think of it that way. So it’s making your boss’s job a lot easier by talking about all of the things that you’re working on. And then the third element is all about grow. And think about grow from the perspective of how do you want to grow your career? What kind of goals are you setting? And a really important part of this also is growing your network.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:46]:

And you’ll hear loads of cliches around this. You know, your network is your net worth. One of the best things that I ever heard in relation to this is it’s not about who you know, it’s about who knows you. And so are you known in the business? Are you known in the industry and how do you get more known? Can you have more speaking opportunities at industry events? Can you connect with people who are not just within your organization? How do you grow that network? Can you reach out to people for, you know, for an online coffee or for an in person coffee even? How do you go about growing your network? How do you go about growing your career? What are those goals that you want? And I think oftentimes we have goals that are maybe fuzzy, maybe they’re not really clear, or we don’t really know what we want, or they’re not based on knowing ourselves. So that’s why it’s always best to start with no. So really, really get to know yourself and what it is that drives you, what motivates you, and what you’re really, really good at at, and what you’re uniquely good at as well. So that is the framework. It’s the no show grow framework.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:55]:

And as I mentioned, so many organizations want me to speak about this stuff and to train their on how to use that framework to strategically manage their careers with the tools that they already have existing. Now coming on to the AI career companion, which I built as you know, I’m so interested in the arrival of this new technology. I saw something from a friend of mine, Fanola Howard, talking about, you know, when the Internet first came about, she’s been in marketing for years. So when the Internet first came about, oh, will this Internet thing really take off? Then with the advent of social media, well, will social media catch on? And here we are today. You know, we’ve got AI. I don’t think it’s even realized half the potential that it can have, whether that is in your day to day work or strategically managing your career. And so it’s so important to learn how to use this technology, first of all. So how do we get to to actually use it in our day to day work? And again, I was fascinated by this idea of how can I use it to help more people to take the, the, to take the how can I use it to help more people without me having to be the person who’s necessarily interacting or providing all of these frameworks? They’re readily accessible.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:31]:

As I mentioned, I’ll be adding more and more stuff to it. It’s in the testing phase at the moment, so there are a couple of people who are using it and providing me feedback on how it’s going, what’s missing, what would really benefit them. I suppose the next step for me is how do I bring this to organizations? What might that look like? How will it interact with the information they already have? You know, there’s obviously gonna be issues around data privacy and being able to plug into the existing data that they have without any risks to that whatsoever. But if that is something that you’re interested in, if you’re interested in talking to me about how to use this with your team or if you want to test it, if you wanna see what it’s like, feel free to reach out to me directly. We can connect on LinkedIn. I think a lot of my listeners are already connected or following on LinkedIn or feel free to reach out to me through my website happieratwork.ie or reach out to me directly via email Aoife, a o I f e at happieratwork. Ie. And I’d love to know what’s one thing that you’re going to do differently after listening to today’s episode.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:43]:

So are you going to take your career more fully into your own hands? If I think back to my days in corporate I most definitely did not have my career in my hands. I was very insular in my view, what’s the next level in the organisation that I’m in, were I taking that broader view and looking at my options from a much broader view and also focusing very much on my strengths where I neglected my strengths. I didn’t realize for so long how lucky I had it working in a position where I was working to my strengths and then taking into the position where it wasn’t quite meeting you know, it wasn’t allowing me to really excel, and I’m the kind of person who really, really wants to excel at work. So do get in touch if you want to get involved in the AI and the AI movement overall. I would love to hear from you and do let me know what’s one thing that you’re gonna do differently as a result of listening to today. If there’s someone in your network you think would benefit from listening to today’s episode, don’t forget to share it with them as well.