Whether you’re stepping into a leadership role, exploring a new industry, or redefining your path after a pause, transitions are a natural—and exciting—part of professional growth. 

But let’s be honest: while making these changes can be exciting, they can also feel overwhelming and be accompanied by uncertainty and self-doubt.

Here’s the thing: navigating transitions successfully is all about blending emotional resilience, strategic planning, and a bit of bold reinvention. 

A useful and practical tool for tackling change is William Bridges’ framework from Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes which offers invaluable insights into navigating transitions with confidence and clarity. He breaks transitions into three key stages:
1. Letting go of the old
2. Embracing the messy “in-between”
3. Stepping into your new beginning

By understanding the emotional stages of a transition, building a strong support network, and rebranding yourself for success, you can embrace change as an opportunity for reinvention.

To thrive during these transitions and embrace change as an opportunity for reinvention, it is essential to take charge of your professional brand and reimagine how you show up in the world. 

Here are two things you can do to start the journey:
1. Identify Your Core Strengths: 

What skills make you stand out? Think about leadership, problem-solving, or communication—things that transfer across industries.
2. Craft Your Personal Pitch: 

Practice telling your story. Who are you? What have you accomplished? And most importantly, where are you headed?

Pro Tip: Write a short career story about your journey so far. Share it with a mentor or trusted colleague to get feedback and refine your narrative.

And if you want support, let’s work together! I can help you gain clarity and confidence to make the transition you desire with grace and ease.

“Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change. So, lesson one, I guess is, ditch the dream and be a doer…” – Shonda Rhimes

Regret can be an unwanted companion in life, whispering to you about what went wrong or what you missed out on and keeping you stuck in the “what could have been” loop. 

Constant regret is tiring, and if not used well can be detrimental to your emotional well-being by dragging you down and fuelling feelings of guilt, sadness, and sometimes even self-loathing. 

So, what could you do instead. 

I suggest that a more useful approach to dealing with regret is to acknowledge the feeling, extract the lessons it offers, and then consciously let it go and move forward. 

And why is this important? Because of two things:

1. Being preoccupied with regret can prevent you from seeing opportunities in the present moment and make you hesitant to take new risks or try new possibilities. You end up missing out on the opportunities right in front of you. 

2. Regret diminishes learning and growth because if you’re drowning in regret, you miss the chance to understand what went wrong, why it went wrong and how you can grow from it. You miss out on the wisdom mistakes can provide.

So, when regret pays you a visit, don’t dwell there. Instead, acknowledge the feeling as an opportunity to learn, extract the lessons and move forward with your new found knowledge. 

The new year is well underway and like you, I’m hoping that this will be a good year. 

I’m hoping that all the pain, frustration, and disappointment of last year will not repeat itself this year.

I’m also hoping that all the joy, success, happiness, laughter, and fulfillment from last year will spread into this year and continue throughout the year.

But I’m not going to rely on hope alone, I want to be able to shape my life this year, I want to captain the ship called My Life. 

And the way I do this is by taking the lessons from last year and building on them to shape my actions this year.

So, for those of you who have not done your review of last year and have not spent time deciding what you want from this year, I’m going to share the key questions I use to guide my thinking.

To do this well, find a quiet spot, arm yourself with paper and pen (or the digital equivalent) spend some time looking back and then planning forward. 

It’s a great exercise to get clear on what you want and what you don’t want in your life. 

Look back and ask…

1. What went well?
2. What could I have done differently?

Plan forward and ask…

• What can I do more of?
• What can I do less of?

Keep asking ‘what else?’ until you have at least 20 responses for each question.

Finally, ask yourself…

• What have I learnt? 
• And what do I want?

Enjoy the insights!

Hey there Thriver, Happy New Year!

So, are you ready to make 2022 a great, or even an exceptional year?

If your answer is yes, then here’s how…

Step 1: GET CLEAR on what you want to achieve this year

Step 2: CREATE A PLAN to guide your actions

Step 3: FOLLOW THE PLAN to create your results

Very simple really

But not easy

The problem is that most people get stuck, generally on either Step 1 or Step 3

At Step 1 – Lack of clarity will stop you before you even start

At Step 2 – It’s easy to create a plan, but it might be too ambitious or not courageous enough

At Step 3 – With no accountability, you may not follow your plan. This will derail your goals, projects, dreams, wants, habits, experiments or experiences (i.e., your results)

Sometimes you just need to be supported through the process…

• Supported to get crystal clear on what results you want to produce or achieve
• Supported to create a plan that will fit into, and weather the ups and downs of your real life
• Supported to develop a method to measure progress and stay on track

If being supported is what you desire, I invite you to come into my world

Why?

Because I will introduce you to a coaching framework that produces results

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Come, let me coach you to succeed

Email me at nancy@thriveatwork.com.au so we can get started. Speak soon.

Three ‘must-have’ soft skills

I work with many smart and successful professionals. They are ambitious and keen to move to the next level. They’ve said to me…

• “I am ready for a bigger challenge, but I don’t know what else I need to do to secure my next role”
• “My manager has told me that I need to be more Strategic – how do I do that? What does it even mean?”
• “I’m told that my ideas are great but that I need to get better at Influencing so that I can be heard”
• “I’m stuck! I’ve tried everything and can’t get promoted”

This is where SOFT SKILLS can make a huge difference. Not just the foundational soft skills like Communication, Collaboration, Teamwork, etc but the ones that will give you an EDGE.

Leading workplace economists believe that we need to increase our focus on Soft Skills competencies into the future because ‘soft skill-intensive jobs’ will grow 2.5x faster than other jobs, with demand exceeding supply by 45%.

So what?

Well, there are three vital soft skills to master if you want to upgrade your career in 2021 and beyond.

You don’t need them in any particular order, but you need them to elevate your career to the next level.

Here is a simple and insightful 2-pager guide on the Three ‘must-have’ Soft Skills.

Get it now and start implementing the insights at work. You will be glad you took the time.

We’re all super busy.

The typical work calendar is blocked out with back-to-back meetings, huddles, workshops, town halls…so many things to attend.

And, because of this, the only time left in the day to do the work is after hours. This is the only time when you can slow down and find the space to do the thinking required to DO the work.

It’s a reality that can lead to burnout.

A recent Harvard Business Review article concluded that “burnout is a global issue”. The article is based on research carried out in 2020 with over 1500 respondents in 46 countries, across various industry sectors, roles and, seniority levels.

Two key findings that stand out are:

1. 89% of respondents said their work-life was getting worse
2. 62% of the people who were struggling to manage their workloads had experienced burnout “often” or “extremely often” in the previous three months

When burnout sets in, time for thinking declines and, the quality of thinking deteriorates.

If you’re a leader with a team, department or, an organisation looking up to you for vision, strategy, or leadership you must make time to THINK!

Creating this mental space has many benefits:

• Raising your productivity
• Increasing your creativity
• Enhancing innovation
• Increasing your problem-solving ability
• Learning and growing through reflection
• Evaluating the effectiveness of actions, results and, decisions

So how do you find time to think? Here are a few suggestions…

1. Do something physical like walking, swimming or running
2. Engage in free form writing or journaling
3. Practise thinking out loud by talking with someone
4. Take time away from your work or your desk
5. Using your commute time to think rather than catching up on work.

What will you choose?