Are you sacrificing more and more of yourself and your time for your career?
It’s one of the most common occurrences I find with super-talented, female executives.
Sacrificing.
What does sacrificing lead to?
The Career Spiral.
What in the heck is that you ask?
It’s when you give up more and more of your personal time, your personal life, and your overall self to feel secure in your career.
You see, we all have this false belief that if we work more, give more, and do more to “run the business” we must be seen as model employees because of all the work we do.
But here’s the reality, the more you sacrifice, the more of a risk we become.
That’s right.
The more we sacrifice, the worse our risk is in our careers.
The Career Spiral Is a Result of Suffering
Why?
Because sacrificing is due to an act of personal suffering.
What does that mean?
It means we sacrifice because we are suffering.
We are saying things like, “I must fix this.”
“I must solve the problem.”
“I must give up my personal life to feel safer.”
“I must close this deal, create this project, run this business to get the feedback I need to make me feel safe.”
Do you see the pattern? I. I. I.
Suffering is the result of focusing on ourselves. When we focus on ourselves, what we need, what we must do in order to get what we want, we are in a suffering state.
Sacrificing ourselves is the direct result of being in a suffering state.
It’s like I have said before, when you focus on yourself, you’re not focused on the company.
When you’re not focused on the company, you’re not perceived as an asset.
So your risk increases.
As a result, your fear gets stronger.
Your personal sacrifice goes to the next level.
Your focus narrows even further as you focus on yourself.
And the spiral continues.
Until one day, you are no longer the person you used to be.
The people around you have been promoted or moved on to bigger and better positions.
Yet you are stuck in the spiral, trying to salvage your career, trying to feel secure, telling yourself, “Once I feel safe again I can make some changes.”
Which has become your mantra.
Yet this exact statement is the problem.
So how do you stop the Career Spiral?
You stop focusing on your fear.
You stop worrying about yourself.
You take intentional action within all 3 of the leadership pillars and you become an asset.
Assets don’t get fired.
Assets aren’t at risk.
Stop the Career Spiral.
Stop the Career Spiral by Taking Proper Action
Focus on mastering the 3 Pillars of Leadership and get your career and your life back.
If you asked me personally what key elements within the 3 Pillars of Leadership you should focus on, I would tell you this:
- Personal Leadership
- You understand the feedback, the performance review, the passover for a promotion, whatever action occurred that made you feel less than and feel at risk, identify it.
- Then go ask more questions of the person who gave you that feedback or made you feel at risk. Ask them: Am I a risk to the organization? What do your recommend I do to better support you and the team?
- Business Leadership
- Become an irreplaceable asset through actions like innovation, culture change, and visionary leadership.
- People Leadership
- Lead your team, have them help with the workload so you get your time back, mentor them so they have the knowledge and opportunity to be successful.
This is where you start.
It’s not the end.
It doesn’t automatically result in leadership mastery.
But this is your foundation.
This is what you do to get out of the Career Spiral.
Want to learn more?
Or maybe you now know what you must do, but you want to learn how to do it successfully.
Join our 90-Day Legendary Accelerator Program starting soon!