Stand up, be heard and take a risk: Lessons we’ve heard before? - Women's Agenda

Stand up, be heard and take a risk: Lessons we’ve heard before?

It’s hardly new. We’ve heard time and time again that women need to be courageous, stand up and take a few risks in order to achieve their career goals. Not all of us would have previously coined doing so “leaning in” but we’ve certainly heard such advice – in different forms – previously.

What is new is that Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg has written a book called Lean In, and launched a major publicity blitz that aims to spark a global revolution among working women. Now, rather than just our mentors, sponsors and role models telling us to do some form of “leaning in”, we’re hearing all about it through the mainstream media.

But it shouldn’t take a major PR campaign to understand this message.

Many of us know already that these are the things we need to do in order to get ahead. The issue is whether we’re really heeding the call and taking the necessary action. Or perhaps it’s a lack of confidence that is holding us back – or that we just don’t know how to actually “lean in” to our careers.

Recently, two young, successful women shared with Women’s Agenda what’s helped their careers as well as their aspirations for the future – which included board positions.

It was refreshing to hear advice similar to Sandberg’s coming from women in the earlier stages of their careers. They were sharing it because it had worked for them straight up, not because it’d taken them decades of experiences to learn such lessons, or gain the confidence in order to execute them.

Malini Raj, an executive manager at the Commonwealth Bank, started her career in investment banking and knows what it’s like to work in a boys’ club. One of just three women to graduate from her course at the University of Technology in Sydney, she started her career working in mergers and acquisitions, capital raisings and high-profile deals, eventually ending up at Westpac, where she had the opportunity to work on a merger between Westpac and St George. She’s now an executive manager at the Commonwealth Bank, having worked her way up through various roles in the banking and finance sector.

Raj knows exactly what’s helped – being prepared to take new opportunities as they emerge, no matter how risky they may have initially seemed. “Take advantage of any opportunities that allow you to step out of your comfort zone that are cross-functional, that can get you exposure to other stakeholders,” she advises in a video interview with Women’s Agenda.

She adds that it’s important to take every opportunity to make yourself visible within an organisation, to put yourself in front of senior leaders, ensure managers understand your skills and to look to the positions you aspire to occupy in the future – and take measures to prepare yourself accordingly. “Basically, it’s being prepared to take risks and to take advantage of any opportunities that come your way. Don’t be narrow-minded in thinking that this is the direction you have to go,” she said.

Raji Ambikairajah is an electrical engineer who’s just finished her PhD. She leads the Sydney chapter of global not-for-profit group Room to Read. On the academic board of the University of NSW until recently, she regularly speaks out on topics including women in engineering and Gen Y in the workplace.

Having worked in engineering, academia and at not-for-profits, she too knows the benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone. “My advice to people would be to put yourself in different situations where you are immersed around people who aren’t part of your day to day, because if you learn how to negotiate with people and negotiate the idiosyncrasies, that’s only going to benefit yourself and benefit them as well,” she told  Women’s Agenda.

Ambikairajah says her own experience with a not-for-profit, which has little to do with her engineering career, gave her a whole new set of skills. “In this non-profit world I met people who I never would have met in my engineering life at all. I learnt different ways of communicating, the different ways that people work.”

Both these women are “leaning in” to their careers in different ways – and not necessarily in the ways that Sandberg describes in her book. They’re young, confident and know what they want from their careers – as well as the uncomfortable risks they need to take to get there.

We know this advice. We’ve heard it before. So why aren’t more of us actively demonstrating it?

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