Career Conversations by The Careers Company – Follow Your Passion

Tell us a little about you

I’m a senior leader with a consulting background in leadership assessment and development and a specialism in DEI. As well as that I’m a Mum of 2 teenage girls. Throughout my career I have worked in different parts of the world, but I am currently based in London which is where I was born.

Walk me through your career to date

I’ve been working since graduation which was in 1994, so almost 30 years. I did a very broad-based degree in Management Science in Manchester. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I graduated. I started off my career with Fujitsu ICL. It was at a time when technology was really taking off and I thought that might be a good place to start. I joined their graduate programme straight after university, which involved placements in different parts of the company, such as sales, HR, communications and strategy. I spent 5 years going around the company working on projects which gave me a good grounding on how business works and what are the different functions.

I had become a kind of internal consultant, so after 5 years I decided what I should be doing is developing my career as a consultant. I joined a consulting firm called Hay Group and I was with them for 12 years. During that time I had stints out in Singapore and the Middle East. After 12 years with Hay Group, I wanted to take my career down a gear to be around a bit more for my 2 young children, so I set up as an independent consultant. That meant I was able to pick and choose what I did, and the types of projects I wanted to work on, which I loved, but was also a bit nerve-wracking as it was very ‘feast or famine’ work-wise.

During that time I moved back to the UK and was looking to get back into a corporate environment. My girls were a bit older and I missed working with teams and developing professionally by being stimulated by the people around me. That’s the point at which I joined Deloitte and I was with them for 4 years. I’m now shaping the next phase of my career and so I’m looking to combine the things that I love, am good at and can really make a meaningful difference on. It’s a really exciting stage to be at.

How did you decide your career choice? What else did you consider?

At that point in time employers used to come to the university and they’d interview you, and I considered lots of different things but with big companies, because one thing I wanted to do was get international experience. With a general business degree I felt I could go into HR, I could go into marketing, there’s lots of opportunities, but I wasn’t quite sure. So I was quite focused on getting onto a Graduate Programme where I could get a taster of different things before committing to a functional area. And I think that desire to keep my options open has been a bit of a theme throughout;  I went into consulting because I didn’t want to just work in one industry or with one client or with one company all the time. Having that variety was really important to me. 

"my issue was I was worried about closing any doors, and I realised that I didn’t need to"

Describe your career transition to coaching

I’ve been coaching for many, many years.Through the consulting work I’ve done there’s been a natural place for coaching. Projects often start with defining what ‘good’ looks like in a particular role or in a specific organisational context. I would then help to identify where individuals are in relation to that definition through assessment and then suggest ways to close the gap. Often that’s through a training or development programme targeted at core skills or high level behaviours. But if it’s something more deep rooted than that, that is not something you’re going to be able to address in a development programme. That requires a level of coaching. So my entry point into coaching was, how can I help somebody to understand themselves better, so that they can then make the changes that they need to be successful in the job that they do?

I really accelerated in coaching when I was out in Dubai because I was often working with leaders who were fast-tracked into their positions due to the level of growth in the Middle East. Executive coaching became a key focus area for me as part of the work I was doing on talent management, leadership assessment and development. I find as a coach I’m constantly learning and evolving my skills and I’m looking forward to coaching people at different stages of their careers, as I don’t think it’s something that should be reserved for the most senior people in an organisation.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to change careers?

I would say absolutely go for it. I would say look at some of the more transferable skills you’ve got. For example, are you really good at getting buy in to an idea, or are you really great at coming up with new ways of thinking? Is it that you’re really good at pulling a team together and motivating them? There’s so much that you can very, very easily pick up and take somewhere else. Really know what you’re taking with you because when you know all the different things that you bring to a new role, that will give you the confidence to take the leap, and it won’t feel like a leap of faith. It will feel like you’re just moving in the direction of something that you’re good at and hopefully really energises you and gives you passion. And that’s the key phrase for me: follow your passion.

We are all about conversation at The Careers Company. What are the most meaningful career conversations you've had? Who were they with?  What made them meaningful?

I can’t remember any really fantastic career conversations that I’ve had with line managers, which is a shame. Very recently Meena put me in touch with a careers coach. We did four sessions of career coaching. And that was one of the best career conversations I’ve had. The fact that we had four sessions meant we were building on it each time and I think that really helped. The big outcome for me and what made it really meaningful was, if I compared where I was in session one, I felt lost, and by session four I felt as if I had a clear direction.

I thought that clear direction would be that I had made up my mind on one thing. And what I actually found was my clarity was around the fact that I didn’t need to make up my mind, but I could curate my own personal blend of roles. So the main takeaway for me was that I felt empowered to be open to lots of different experiences. And I think that’s a really nice place to be in from a career perspective, because my issue was I was worried about closing any doors, and I realised that I didn’t need to. So that was quite powerful.

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