Agility – The Key to Building a Successful Career
FountainBlue's March 20 When She Speaks, Women in Leadership Series event, on the topic of Agility – The Key to Building a Successful Career. Below are notes from the conversation.
Our panel represented leaders from many different backgrounds across education, companies, industries and cultural backgrounds. But they have all consciously and proactively managed their careers, choosing and creating different roles and opportunities along the way. They generously shared their advice and kernels of wisdom.
Know yourself – who you are, what you’re good at, what you’d like to do, where you’d like to go, consciously stretching yourself as you go. Consciously build a skillset and a mindset so that you can move quickly and agilely and land on your feet.
Learn from your mistakes, and use those learnings to be wiser and stronger. Learn from mentors, advocates and supporters and also from people who don’t-think-like-you.
Support the growth of others around you, for their success benefits all.
Build relationships at all levels at all times. Lean toward working for someone who understands your core competencies and strengths, and believes in you and supports you in doing something new.
Be open to the opportunities that appear in front of you, and also to opportunities which you could create yourself.
Change will happen – you will change, the management will change, the technology will change. Be nimble and agile enough to manage and even anticipate changes in everything from technology to management.
Be good at what you do, using effective, transparent communication, hard work and persistence to generate measurable results.
Embrace the opportunity to learn from people across regions, across cultures, across roles, across industries . . . As a good listener, we can address the motivations and desires of the wide range of people we serve, no matter what our role or title is.
Integrate the needs of the family, with that of their own professional goals, career opportunities will come and go but family is here to stay. In fact, having a child helps you raise the bar at work – it’s got to be a fulfilling, worthwhile job to be worth the time away from your kids.
Position yourself for doing what’s new, based on what you’ve successfully done before, and purposefully stretch in new areas so that you can continue to grow.
The tech industries is evolving more quickly now, so agility will become much more critical going forward. Knowing what technologies are hot, what industries are worth pursuing, where you fit with the market and customer needs will help you proactively navigate your career.
Please join us in thanking our panelists for our Agility – The Key to Building a Successful Career, and our hosts at Cypress.
Facilitator Nancy McKereghan, Founder and CEO, Tangerine+
Panelist Sara Hepner, IIG Worldwide Sales Operations, Planning, and Development, EMC
Panelist Bien Irace, Senior Vice-President, Strategic Alliances and Partnership, Cypress Semiconductor
Panelist Judy Priest, Distinguished Engineer, Data Center CTO Office, Cisco Systems
Panelist Shilpa Vir, Lead Product Manager, eBay Inc
Panelist Josie Zimmermann, Director, Brand Amplification, Juniper Networks