Agility: The Key to a Successful Career!

FountainBlue’s March 11 When She Speaks, Women in Leadership Series event was on the topic of Agility: The Key to a Successful Career!

We were fortunate to have panelists representing different backgrounds, upbringings and perspectives who so graciously shared their wisdom and experience on the topic of career agility. They had many things in common:

• Their self-awareness helped them to contemplate what they are doing professionally and their proactiveness helped them to forge a new path when it was time to do so.
• Their courage, curiosity and burning desire to grow and evolve drove them to become increasingly better at what they do, and to diversify into new areas of need to companies and their customers.
• They made false steps on occasion, and always learned from their experiences, without regrets.
• They brought their learnings and perspectives into a new and richer role which was more right for them.
• They ever focused on developing relationships with the broad spectrum of stakeholders around each role.
• They worked and grew their brand as competent tech leaders who knew how to solve important problems in collaboration with others.

Below is their advice on how to make career-agile choices.

• Know what you’re good at and what you want to do, as well as what you want to be known for.
• Navigate the discrepancy between who you want to be and how you are perceived.
• Develop relationships with all stakeholders and be in constant communication with those around you.
• Incremental projects for the right team and leader may need to a larger, longer-term commitment.
• Choose COOL work, COOL people, COOL company – as you see it. (It may not be just right for others for example.)
• Choose to be with positive and supportive people who bring out the best in you.
• With that said, also surround yourself with people who are not like you, but could complement you.
• When starting something new, be curious, build relationships and understand expectations and stakeholders.
• Accept your circumstances, change them, or leave. Don’t take the grouse path.
• Choose to be learning-agile, hungry for knowledge and proactively plan your personal and professional development path.
• Consider the opportunities which present themselves to you even if you don’t feel quite prepared for them, for you will learn as you go.

The bottom line is GO FOR IT, Don’t Settle. Contemplate what may be blocking you for being more than you are now, more even than you thought you could be. Embrace the learning opportunities which may appear as a result.

Resources:

• The First 90 Days, Michael Watkins
• Thoughts on the Future of Work, Linda Holroyd
• Developing Learning Agility, Korn Ferry

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Please join us in thanking our gracious hosts at eBay and our panelists:

• Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue – Executive Coach, Tech Adviser and Leadership Consultant 
• Panelist Serpil Bayraktar, Principal Engineer, Cisco Systems 

• Panelist Sondra Bollar, Senior Director of Software Development and Release Management in the Oracle Public Cloud, Oracle

• Panelist Sarah Brubacher McDonald, Senior Director B2C Engagement, eBay 
• Panelist Laura DeBacker, Senior Director, Leadership and Talent Development, Synaptics
• Panelist SK Lau, Product Line Engineering Operations, Texas Instruments