It's time to stop settling for good and uncover your unique set of skills and experience. You'll feel empowered and confident in your next career move if you know you'll be leveraging what you're GREAT at.

Mentoring relationships can seemingly go on forever if there isn't a discipline of checking in against some objectives. They can fizzle out or become more like chats and that's not the lasting impression either of you would want to leave. 

If you’ve volunteered for a mentorship programme and been matched with someone, your first meeting will be a 'get to know you' session. This is key because, like any relationship, you need to find some mutual ground early on. 

I want to talk about Cause & Effect. Because when you're 'at Cause', you are in control. When we're struggling with our roles, or feeling trapped, or uncertain what next step to take, we can fall into the 'Effect' stage.

I think it's quite difficult to know where the edge is. By 'edge' I mean edge of our comfort zones. We're told to dream big and set moonshot goals. But how do we know if the goals we are setting are stretching enough? 

A lot of people are feeling stuck and uncertain which direction to take. That's something I went through a couple of years ago and I expect you can relate too. So why are people feeling stuck? Typically it's because they've stopped listening to themselves.

We're often told failure is a good thing. It helps us learn, it helps us grow. It's best to fail quickly so that you can find success more quickly etc etc. Whilst I understand the logic, I still struggle with the idea of failure. Ideally I'd rather not fail at all

Why are appraisals important? Because they’re an opportunity to celebrate success, re-set and GET WHAT YOU WANT.

In my experience, a lot of people are terrible at giving feedback. They either 1) don't give feedback at all, 2) give vague feedback or generic praise or 3) overreact in the moment and give destructive feedback. 

Have you ever been asked to do something at work where you’ve felt ‘No way! I can’t do that!’. 
This feeling of doubt is called imposter syndrome. Personally I prefer the term imposter experience - it’s unlikely that you have a ‘syndrome’ if you’ve experienced any of these feelings. In my experience we’re all prone to doubt ourselves every now and again.

I expect you've heard before that most of our communication is via body language and tone of voice, with words only accounting for c7% of our impact. I have seen this from a new perspective this week. I've been on an NLP course (neuro linguistic programming)and qualified as a practitioner to add to my coaching tool kit to support my clients. 

We often take other people's opinions about us to heart. It's hard not to. What isn't good, is linking your sense of self-worth to what other people think of you. It's dangerous.

I saw a great Bruce Lee quote this week that I want to share with you. "Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add specifically what is your own," love it.

“The person who’s says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it” - Chinese proverb. Innovation is happening around you. So you can lead it, contribute to it, or move out the way. You have unique experience that can help your employer or business to develop new ideas. 

I think it's best to be a bit impatient. Have you ever been told any of these..."Just keep doing what you're doing," "you'll get that promotion eventually," "I'm sure a role will be available soon," "that next opportunity will have your name on it," "good things come to those who wait."
I disagree. There's been one point in my career to date where waiting was the right call. Once.
It's generally not best to wait. Waiting doesn't create the role you want.