Since starting Classy Career Girl, one of my main focuses is helping women get unstuck. I love coming back to this topic because I believe there are so many women who have a dream but don’t know how to make it happen and end up staying stuck a lot longer than they should. I know I did. I stayed stuck in a job I hated for years before I actually did something about it. Today’s podcast episode will help you move forward and I can’t wait to share it with you!
Where Women Get Stuck in Their Careers and When To Go For Your Dream
Our Special Guest: Mia Scharphie is a creative agent of change who founded Build Yourself to help ambitious and creative women reach their potential on their own terms, and make the working world a better place for womens’ talent. Mia is a professional speaker, trained facilitator and has worked on women’s advocacy for over fifteen years. She’s run a research effort on women in social impact design for the Harvard Business School, and was named a 40 Under 40 by Impact Design hub.
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Tips From the Interview:
1. Stop waiting for permission and start proposing instead. Step up and say you are ready instead of waiting for someone to say you are magically ready.
2. In order to take risks in your career, you need to get more comfortable getting rejected. Practice pitching yourself.
3. Don’t be scared that you aren’t going to be able to have everything you want. What if you didn’t have to worry about your constraints? What are the tradeoffs you can make to get everything you want? What’s the challenge you face and how can you get around those challenges?
The 5 places that women get stuck in their careers are:
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Self-doubt. Self-doubt follows our careers when we are playing bigger and working at a new level. You are probably playing so much bigger than you even thought possible at the start of your career. Self-doubt will grow with you but you can manage it.
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Perfectionism: We spend time over-perfecting things. Rewriting emails before we send them. We spend too much time on the wrong things. It keeps us from reaching our goals and it keeps us micromanaging. This leads to burnout. Focus on quantity instead of quality if you are getting stuck in that perfectionist cycle.
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Waiting for permission: Make it a season of pitching and stop waiting for permission. For job searchers, find 5 jobs next week and at least two on that list make sure you only qualify for 2 of the qualifications. You are going to apply for them. Sometimes we put ourselves in situations that aren’t challenging enough to us. This will give you permission to challenge yourself. You want to be in a role that you are challenged so stop aiming low! You are ready to play bigger. Stop perfecting your website and go find your clients! You always want to be doing work that pushes you forward.
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Waiting for a perfect path: You may not know where you want to be in 10 years. Don’t lose the time you have NOW to move you closer to that next step. Sometimes taking that step helps you figure out where you want to go. Pick a North Star. Something that is generally in the area of where they might want to be in the future. Don’t wait until you have the perfect path before you start taking action. Pick an area and move forward because you will learn so much about it. If you are nervous about it, pull out your calendar and look 3-6 months out and pick a date when you will re-look at where you want to be. But for now, pick one direction and go for it.
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Not negotiating for your value. Negotiating happens all day, everyday. The first step is to just ask. Over time, you will get better.
ONE ACTION YOU CAN TAKE TODAY: Wherever you are listening, think about tomorrow. What’s on the agenda for tomorrow? Think about one way you can ask for something and instead of waiting for permission, go and get what you want. Pitch a project. Take what you would have asked for and then double it. Ask for twice as much. Ask to lead a project. Make an ask. This is not the last ask you will ever make. Even if you get a no you are building your resiliency to ask and over time that will add up and it will get you to the places that you want to be in the future. There is so much opportunity out there for you.
Some questions I asked:
Where do you see women “wait for permission” instead of going for it?
Has this showed up in your own life? How did you get interested in this topic?
What are the costs of ‘waiting for permission?’ What are you missing out on?
What are the top five places you see women get stuck in their careers and what can we do about it?
How can women stop waiting for permission and what things can women do to stop that habit?
How can women know when to go for it and when to say no?
