Be open, own your brilliance & exit auto-pilot: Get the career you want

Be open, own your brilliance & exit auto-pilot: How to get the career you really want

After seeing Amy Cuddy a few weeks back I remembered the power of a great speaker.

Her presentation reminded me how words delivered by another person really can change your life.

A compelling speech can make the world bigger: it opens your mind to new possibilities and can trigger change.

This was fresh in my mind last week when I had the opportunity to MC a leadership summit, hosted by The Growth Faculty, in Sydney for 250 executive assistants.

As I made my way to the venue early that morning, I considered how this might impact the women (and one man) set to attend.

For some, it might simply be a welcome change in scenery, a day away from the usual routine.

For others, it would be food for thought and a for a few it could be the catalyst for real change. A day to focus on what they really want from their careers and to consider how they might make that happen.

It was exciting to contemplate and my excitement was fuelled, in part, because the night before I had met several of the speakers who would be educating, entertaining and inspiring them.

Three of them were out from America, one was from New Zealand and one was an Australian and I knew their power.

They didn’t disappoint and these are a few of the takeaways I am still pondering a week on.

Be open

Libby Moore was Oprah’s chef of staff for almost 12 years and I will never forget the story she told about how she landed that job. Even though I had read about it, hearing her explain it was incredibly inspiring.

She had been applying week after week for a job with Rosie O’Donnell for about a year. It was a job she wanted desperately: she was sure it was the job for her. Despite her persistent pitches and applications, she never heard back. After almost a year of it, she gave herself one final chance. She sent off a letter and vowed to give up if she didn’t hear back by the end of the week.

She didn’t hear back, but in her head she gave them another weekend. The weekend passed and she’d still heard nothing so it was time to finally give up on that dream.

It was in that moment she opened herself up.

On the subway she had a serious “talk” with the higher powers that be: she vowed to give up on a job with Rosie O’Donnell on the condition that there had to be something else for her. She said she would be totally open to opportunities and just needed a sign.

It was a few weeks later that an email popped into her inbox from a recruiter looking for a chief of staff to a high profile person in Chicago. It hit Libby “like a lightning bolt” that this was Oprah and this was the sign.

It was Oprah and she landed the job.

Own your achievements

“Because I’m awesome” is the answer that Zoe Robinson regularly gives her boss, an executive in New Zealand, when he enquires about how certain impossible feats have been achieved.

She describes madly flapping under the desk to make all manner of things happen while maintaining swan-like composure on top.

She is awesome at her job and isn’t afraid to let people know it. Owning this, and vocalising it from time to time, ensures it isn’t forgotten.

There might be a place for downplaying your achievements but the workplace certainly isn’t it.

Face up to fear

At age 33 D’Andra Galarza moved from the West Coast of America to New York where she didn’t know a single soul and she didn’t have a job. It was something she really wanted to do and could no longer ignore.

It meant ignoring fear: her own and that of some people around her.

“Ultimately when it comes to fear you can forget and run, or you can face it and rise,” she says. The executive assistant, who has worked for NBC and Sony, chose to face it and it’s remained a constant throughout her life and career.

Don’t be boxed in by a job title

Martin Fahy, a former KPMG partner and CEO of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, spoke about focusing on capability rather than job descriptions, or outdated notions of what an EA does.

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Fahy says the skills that many executive assistants have, aren’t limited to administrative work. In many cases they are the carriers of culture, they are intimately familiar with the company’s strategic imperatives and know more about what is and isn’t happening in the business at any point in time.

It is the reason Fahy quickly identified longtime executive assistant, Tania Rizoski, for a new operational role. The title is different but her skills and ability were ripe for the promotion.

The cost of complacency

Al-Husein Madhany, the award-winning Chief of Staff to the PayPal Chief Human Resource Officer, presented to the room about the science of pay and negotiation.

He talked about research that shows a person who stays in the same company for a 12 year period will earn 25% less than a person who changes their employer every four years.

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Madhany, who worked as the Chief Chaos Tamer for the Facebook Chief Information Officer prior to PayPal, says this a cost some people are happy to wear in exchange for continuity of employment.

But it’s important to keep in mind when reviewing your financial position. (And it’s not a bad point to make when negotiating a payrise: you are saving your employer money by staying put.)

Exit auto-pilot

Deborah Keep is a peak performance coach and spoke about the importance of being intentional and mindful. Most of us operate on auto-pilot for a good chunk of our lives.

We do what we’ve always done and we think as we always have, without giving it much though. In doing this Keep explains that we limit ourselves.

“Our lives are our thoughts so we may as well make the story good!”

It was a day filled with thought-provoking ideas and advice. I’m not an EA but I walked away inspired. I’ll leave you with two simple yet probing questions posed by D’Andra Galarza:

Are you doing what you want to be doing? Are you living the life you want to be living? 

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