How to Thrive and Survive as a Working Woman

The Coach-Yourself Toolkit

Fiona Elsa Dent, Viki Holton

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Information
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472930644
• eBook ISBN: 9781472922687
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Management

Have you read all the books out there on getting to the top but find yourself wanting not necessarily tips for achieving a high-flying career, but the tools for creating a fulfilling working life?
Based on new data from surveys and interviews, How to Thrive and Survive as a Working Woman will encompass stories, examples, strategies and practical exercises. The content will be both instructive and interactive offering insights from the authors' own experience of working with many women managers who attend Ashridge Business School programmes and events.
The book will focus on key issues for development and career success and apply these to the specific challenges facing women at work, including: getting started in your career; dealing with motherhood and a career; dual career couples; changing career direction; moving up to senior levels; lack of confidence; and developing a clear career plan.
Offering tips, techniques and approaches, this book will be an essential tool for working women of all ages and at various stages in their career.

Chapter 1

Career audit

If women are to reach their full potential and become an even more powerful force in the world, we believe that one area that will actively contribute to this is for women to adopt a more structured and strategic approach to career management. This involves being more planful, analytical, organized and systematic in managing their career progress and path.

Our research has indicated that for many women, the process of planning and actively managing a career path proves to be a challenge. Many cite issues such as:

• no time to do this
• I will do it but not yet
• no point in doing this
• lucky to have a job
• lucky to be able to work part-time
• limited possibilities due to partner’s career situation
• happy where I am
• I simply don’t believe in making plans

In this chapter we will introduce you to processes for self-analysis and career audit. We will encourage you to examine and review your career so far by posing a range of questions. These questions will all be supported with practical exercises to assist your analysis and to help you explore your skills, capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and dreams. The questions that will contribute to your analysis and audit are illustrated in the model on the next page.

In order for any person to thrive and survive in today’s complex and uncertain business environment, having good knowledge of yourself and an understanding of what you want from a career are prerequisites. This will help you navigate a path towards achieving ambitions and being prepared and confident enough to make and take opportunities as they arise. Lack of confidence and self-belief are huge challenges for women. Even Helen Mirren admitted to lack of confidence in a recent feature in the magazine Woman and Home: ‘I wish I’d told my younger self to be more confident.’ And in the same feature classical violinist Nicola Benedetti said: ‘I’d tell my younger self to read more, study more – and be more serious.’ We know that one of the causes of this lack of confidence is a lack of awareness of current skills, strengths and capabilities as well as not appreciating what they have achieved so far in their lives and work. By conducting a structured review of these, women are often surprised by what they find out about themselves. Of course, the earlier you do this the better, but doing it at any age will undoubtedly be beneficial for your future.

Self-analysis and career audit questions.

In one workshop we ran at Ashridge, we encouraged the participants, who ranged in age from late 20s to mid-50s, to adopt an analytical approach to review their career. Many were pleasantly surprised by the knowledge they gained when they thought and talked about themselves and their career so far. In this chapter, we will take you through a similar process of analysis by posing the five self-analysis and career audit questions mentioned earlier. We will also suggest a range of practical reviews and exercises that will help you to learn more about yourself and will encourage you to think about your career future in a more confident and strategic way.

Before we begin the career audit, we suggest you complete a ‘skills and qualities audit’. The purpose of this is to enabl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Career audit
• 2 Women’s experiences: What they say
• 3 Where are you in your career?
• 4 Essential skills and qualities for career success
• 5 Essential personal skills and qualities
• 6 Essential relationship skills and qualities
• 7 Essential strategic skills and qualities
• 8 Essential career skills and qualities
• 9 Making it happen!
• 10 The current landscape for working women
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright