My top advice is to grab opportunities.

Look around you and enjoy life to the full. Think big and don’t let landmines get in your way. We have all hit brick walls from time to time, but what defines people is how they cope during stressful and challenging situations.

Below are some some practical suggestions I’ve developed to help you achieve your career goals:

Make a career plan | Make your achievements known |  Understand influence | My top tips |  Join a board | About Fiona

Make a career plan, but don’t just follow it blindly.

Managing our own careers is fundamental to success, whatever success means to each of us. It’s critical to stop and think from time to time about where we are headed, what information, people, learning, tools and other resources we might need to get there, and what our timeframes are.

Career management is a lifelong thing – it is not ‘once and done’. You need to regularly take stock and revise or refresh plans. You will also need to manage through unexpected events because they will occur.

And make sure your boss, sponsor or other influential people in your organisation know your aspirations – and if they change. They can easily make the wrong assumptions if you don’t tell them.

Make your achievements known

Research by Catalyst identified several proactive strategies(*) that successful professionals employ to advance their careers, with an analysis of what is important for minorities – which includes women at senior levels in many organisations. One strategy that stood out as both under-used by minorities and absolutely essential to their success was making your achievements known.

Why? Because it can overcome biases. If you are seen to be leaving the office at 5pm, there might be an assumption that you are doing less work. By not attending work networking and social events, you can be less visible. To overcome this, you need to ensure your boss and other influential people are kept abreast of your achievements.

Understand influence

Further research by UGM Consulting, a global leadership consultancy, supports the importance of ‘achievement messaging’, as described above. They also found that understanding influence is critical to success. Again, this was important for everyone, but particularly for minorities (including women at senior level).

Understanding influence is two-fold: partly, it is about understanding how decisions are really made in your organisation, in and out of meetings. For example, how does your boss choose which member of the team will lead on a high-profile project? Or who will deliver a key presentation?

Understanding influence is also knowing how to be influential. There are many ways to influence people, but however you become influential, it gives you the power to manage difficult situations and people – and ultimately your career.

UGM Consulting defined the factors that made women influential during meetings via extensive video-based observation.  They found that influential women:

• Speak less in meetings
• Lean back in their chairs, looking confident
• Talk to the chair/boss before they arrive at the meeting
• Speak in pithy, sharp sentences
• Put out fully formed arguments and go for the win, having analysed the facts and considered others’ arguments before the meeting.

My top tips for influence

Based on this research, combined with my first-hand understanding from my successful career in asset management, I would advise any ambitious professional to consider the following to achieve their career potential:

• Learn and watch other influencers: they are NOT always in the most powerful positions
• Know what currencies are valued in organisations. Is it creative ideas, sales, cost savings, team management, error minimization….or what?
• Make influential presentations: seek the opportunities and make them count
• Know how you are seen and how you need to be seen within your organisation or team to progress: work to minimise the difference
• Understand the power of meetings: make authoritative statements in meetings and don’t apologise for your opinion
• Join a community board to help differentiate yourself.

Join a board

Finally, joining a small community board represents an opportunity to truly enhance your leadership and strategic skills. It can also emphasise the expertise you already have and deepen it by applying it within a different context. You are never too young to join a board – assuming you are committed and know your duties, responsibilities and liabilities.

Having a board role on your CV is a key differentiator when applying for promotions. If you are not making formal promotion applications, make sure your boss knows about your NED role and the issues you are managing. Non-executive work can bring higher-level achievements to make known, and it can help close any perception gaps about your strategic potential (between how you are seen and how you need to be seen to advance).

(*) Catalyst research identified eight proactive strategies of the “ideal worker” to advance their career to fulfil their potential. These were:

• Get trained through experience
• Gain access to power
• Making your achievements known
• Blur work-life boundaries
• Get formal training
• Plan career
• Seek advice when needed
• Scan for opportunity outside and inside the company