Melt The Glass Ceiling
Are you a career woman? Do you work in a male dominated workplace? In Melt The Glass Ceiling, your career coach, Lisa Liszcz, will share tips and strategies on developing the career of your dreams. New episodes drop each week.
Melt The Glass Ceiling
How Can You Find Your Next Best Job and Advance in Your Career?
Feeling stuck in your current job? Ready for a change but not sure where to start? This week on our podcast, I promise you'll learn how to strategically plan your next career move to ensure it's both fulfilling and motivating. I'll guide you through actionable steps to gain clarity on your career trajectory, helping you to identify what truly excites you and what to steer clear of.
Discover the power of career reflection and the art of networking—reframed as "benchmarking" and "sharing best practices." I'll walk you through gathering ideas, engaging with professionals for insights, and exploring job boards (nope, you're not going to apply, this is for another reason). Plus, learn how to create your dream job description and prioritize your career goals. By connecting with your network and sharing industry best practices, you'll position yourself as an expert and open doors to exciting new opportunities. Tune in and equip yourself with the tools and inspiration needed to ignite your career passion and achieve your aspirations.
Ready to take action? Check out all the resources you need in my Find Your Dream Job Toolkit.
This week we are talking about the next best job for you. Do you have plans to continue to grow and develop in your career and to be challenged and to continue to grow in ways that you are valued and that you add value? If so, start thinking about what is the next best job for you, because having a new challenge, a new set of responsibilities, is your opportunity to learn, grow and expand yourself as a professional. So if you are ambitious, this episode is for you. If you are feeling stagnant in your current role maybe you've been there for a little while, you pretty much got it mastered, You're pretty much in your comfort zone and you need to step out of that comfort zone a little bit and have some new challenges then this episode is for you. So stay tuned. The important thing is to remember that you want to make a strategic choice in what your next job is, what your next role is. So think about how you're going to grow, how you want to challenge yourself, how your next step in your career will help prepare you for the step beyond that and the step beyond that and the ultimate role that you aspire to in your career. So plan all that If you feel like you've stagnated a little bit. Think about your next role as a chance to expand yourself, expand your capabilities and have new challenges in your professional life. You'll want to think about what would help you be enthusiastic about your career, what would help you feel motivated, how can you feel more valued, more challenged, and how can you use your experience and your expertise to help others and to make the impact you ultimately want to make in your career. This can seem overwhelming and overly complicated. I've got three steps for you today that are simple and that you can start on today, if you want to, definitely this week. That will help you get clarity on what would be the next best career move for you.
Speaker 1:I have so many clients who come to me and they say Lisa, I know I need a change, but I don't know what it is that I want to change too. If that is you, let's get some clarity around that, because I firmly believe that if you see it in your mind, you can create it in your life. So let's get started. There is a Chinese proverb that says be not afraid of growing slowly, Be afraid only of standing still. And that's what we're going to do. We're not going to stand still. We are going to grow slowly and methodically, with strategy and purpose, to build the career of your dreams. Okay, so what's step number one? Step number one of the three steps is collect ideas. You are going to throw a wide net to collect tons of ideas on what could potentially be your next best role. You're going to talk with people, look at job boards, write your own job description and think about what you don't want. Let's break these down In step one.
Speaker 1:We have four exercises that I use with my VIP client, and the first one is talk with people. Reach out to people you know you work with maybe you haven't talked with in a while. Reconnect, Find out what are people doing, what do they like about what they're doing? What do they not like about what they're doing? What surprises have they found in their current role or past roles? And take notes on these conversations role or past roles. And take notes on these conversations. Think about what really resonates with you, what sounds interesting, what makes you cringe a little bit. That gives you some idea around, what you want to gravitate towards and what you want to gravitate away from. So talk with people.
Speaker 1:Next, look at job boards. Look at every job board you can find in your company, outside of your company. Look at Indeed, Look at LinkedIn. Look at all of them and look at jobs that are in your industry or in your profession, but also look at jobs that are outside of your industry and outside of your profession. What kinds of responsibilities do people have? What are they accountable for? What KPIs are they responsible for? How are they leading others? How are they leading a function?
Speaker 1:Read as many job postings on job boards as you can. This will just familiarize you with what's out there. So many of us just get into this day-to-day grind of getting one task done after the other, checking off those boxes on our to-do list. This is a time for you to lift your head and see what's going on in the world by looking at these job postings on job boards and just again, just like you did when you were talking with people in that first step. Now you want to think about what really is interesting to you, what resonates with you, really is interesting to you, what resonates with you, what's exciting to you and what repels you and makes you just think, oh gosh, I would never want to do that. Write all this down, Keep a log, because this is information you're going to use in the next step of collecting ideas, which is just brainstorming and writing your own job description, which is just brainstorming and writing your own job description.
Speaker 1:Be creative. Have some fun with this. Make it outrageous. If you could design any job for yourself, what would you design? You've been reading through responsibilities of different types of jobs and different kinds of industries and you've been talking with people. Now take what really resonated with you, what really got you excited, and start creating your own dream job description. It does not have to be realistic. It doesn't have to be something that exists in the world. This is a creative exercise for you and your soul. This is your opportunity to connect with your heart and your emotions and your soul energy to think about and create a vision of what would really be a great fit for you right now in your career. Okay, so we're still in phase one, collecting ideas for the next best job for you, and the fourth exercise that you're going to do is you're going to think about what you don't want.
Speaker 1:I ask my VIP clients to make a long list of everything that they've seen or heard about at this point in the process. Make a long list of everything you've heard about or read about so far that you know is not a fit for you. Sometimes it's easier to think about what we don't want to do or what we don't like than it is to think about what we want to do or what we do like. But then, once we have this list of everything that we know repels us and we don't want to have as part of our next role, sometimes, once we have that, it's easier to then think about what we do want. Sometimes we can just reverse those items and have something that's more attractive to us or it helps us think of ideas of what we do want to do. So I do encourage you to look through all of the information you've gathered at this point and list everything that is on your absolutely no list and keep that with you, because you'll be able to use that list to help you set some boundaries around what you are not going to be doing in your next best job.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you've collected your ideas. Now step number two spend time in reflection. You have this ocean of ideas now because you've talked with people, you've looked at job boards, you've brainstormed your own creative job description, you've thought about what you didn't want and reversed that into what you do want. So you just have so many ideas. Now it's time to distill these ideas into really some key factors that are most meaningful to you. One of the challenges that I see with the clients that I work with is that a lot of us are just going pedal to the metal 100 miles an hour all day, every day, working on tasks, checking off check boxes, off check boxes, getting our to-do lists done. We're just staying in action and there's little or no time for people to spend thinking and reflecting on their feelings and checking in with their inner guidance systems, their consciousness about what really has meaning for you those two is spending time in reflection. You have all these ideas written down and now we're going to think about which ones are the most important, which ones are your priorities, and you might journal about this, meditate, go for a walk in the woods and spend some quiet time reflecting.
Speaker 1:I also encourage you to ask yourself some powerful questions. Powerful questions are open-ended questions that require you to do some personal reflection and check in with your gut. Here's an example of a powerful question what would you do if you knew that you could not fail? You've heard this before. This is the time you want to take, and now's the time you want to think about it and reflect. If you knew you were guaranteed success, what job would you go after next in your career? Let yourself dream about this, Meditate on it, Journal about it. By doing this, you will gain clarity around what is the next best job for you. Here's another powerful question. Think about your future self. 20 years from now, maybe 30 years from now. What would you be looking back on at this time, the present day of your life, and be really glad that you did? What would you be grateful for? What would you be proud of? Again, take time to think about this powerful question and maybe some others that you're familiar with, and this will help you get clarity on what is the next best job for you.
Speaker 1:And finally, in this reflection stage, reflect on what would be the dream people you would like to work with, the dream team, what would be the ideal location or office space that you would like to work in, and what are your ideal tasks that you would like to be working on. Go ahead and write those down. Think about that. If your job was a 10 out of 10, absolutely great. Who would you be working with? Where would you be working and what types of projects or tasks would you be working on? Some people call this job crafting really designing through imagination the type of job that you want. Like I said before, if you can imagine it and really get it clear in your mind, you can create it. Okay, so we've gathered information and done our research. Then we did our reflection.
Speaker 1:Step three or phase three oh, this is kind of a bad word, networking. But wait, wait, wait. Before you get stressed out about the dreaded networking, let's just take a minute. Nobody likes networking. I hear very few people say oh, I'm so excited about going to a networking event or I'm so excited about cold calling people in networking. Okay, so let's just reframe this a bit. Instead of networking, let's talk about benchmarking, about best practices in our industry or our profession. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to start reaching out to people you know, or people who know people you know. Reach out to people you have something in common with or have a common connection with, or reach out to people you haven't talked to in a long time.
Speaker 1:Say you would like to do some benchmarking around best practices, and this is where you get to gather some more information, and really information that is designed to help you crystallize the image you have of your next best job. When you're reconnecting with people who maybe you've worked with before or collaborated with before, and, as you're meeting new people, ask them what's going on in their jobs, what's going on in their companies yes, go to events, reach out to people on LinkedIn, make some phone calls and reconnect with people. Tell them that you're interested in a particular project and would like to share some ideas with them and see what ideas they can share with you. This is how you collect information and learn more about what is going on in your profession, what is going on in your industry, what is going on with people you've worked with before, what kinds of interesting projects are they involved in? And this is your opportunity to share with them where you see yourself going in the next part of your career journey.
Speaker 1:I have a friend who did this recently. She is a sales expert and she was between jobs and she started doing some benchmarking and sharing of best practices with people in her network that she hadn't talked with in a while, with people in her network that she hadn't talked with in a while. She had great fun reconnecting with people and she started writing a weekly article for LinkedIn. Her articles were great and they shared best practices and innovations in her industry related to sales. She got a lot of engagement on her articles and she made new connections as she gained new followers. This helped her to be seen as an expert in her field of sales in her industry and led to a job offer, and it's the job of her dreams. She's so excited and this can happen for you too.
Speaker 1:Stick to the process, make small steps and have fun with it, and that's phase three networking or benchmarking and sharing best practices. That's what I call it. So you're going to collect information, lots of information, do your reflection to distill down all this information to your priorities and then do your networking. This is for you when you are happy in your job and you're making an impact. It benefits you and everyone around you your family, your co-workers, your team and your company. It even benefits your community. So don't hold back. It's my goal to help you accelerate your career success and to experience success with joy. You don't want to be stuck in a rut. You want to live up to your potential and be happy. This networking idea is so big. I'm going to share some more tips on networking for you next week, so be sure to tune in.
Speaker 1:What I want to know today is what is your biggest challenge at work right now? What is your biggest challenge at your current job or in your career? Send me a message, the link is in the show notes and I'll address your concern or your challenge in an upcoming podcast. If you need help right away, send me a message and tell me that it's urgent. I'll get back with you. Do you want more resources that will help you to find the perfect next job for you? Check out my Find your Dream Job Toolkit. It's filled with resources that I use with my VIP clients. I have developed these resources in this toolkit over the past 10 years as I've been coaching professional and executive women, just like you. The link is in the show notes, so check it out. Remember to send me a message about your biggest challenge right now and until next week. Go melt the glass ceiling.
