How can you find purpose beyond work?

In the latest episode of the Happier at Work podcast, I was joined by the inspiring Deirdre McGinn, the founder of Step Up Step In, an organisation dedicated to supporting women in building confidence and thriving at work. Deirdre's insights and experiences in the corporate world, coupled with her journey of self-discovery and career reinvention, offer invaluable wisdom for individuals seeking happiness and fulfillment in their professional lives.

Deirdre highlighted the distinction between mentors and sponsors, emphasising the pivotal role of sponsors in advocating for an individual's career advancement within the organisation.

We delved into the concept of personal branding and the significance of visibility for career progression. Deirdre shared insights on creating a personal brand and communicating one's achievements effectively. Her personal journey and transition from the corporate world to empowering women underscored the importance of self-awareness and aligning personal values with career choices.

I encourage you to take a moment to consider your own career journey. What steps can you take to foster happiness and fulfillment in your professional life? Whether it's embracing a new challenge, seeking out a supportive network, or redefining your personal brand, every small step can contribute to a more fulfilling work experience.

Deirdre truly believes that with the right support and mindset, you can truly find joy and purpose in your work.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

• Understanding the Difference Between Mentors and Sponsors
• The Power of Personal Branding
• Finding Purpose and Happiness Beyond Work
• The importance of self-awareness and aligning personal values with career choices.

Connect with Deirdre

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deirdre_stepupstepin/

Twitter: @McginnDeirdre

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deirdremcginn/

Website: www.stepupstepin.ie

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website: https://happieratwork.ie 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HappierAtWorkHQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ 

Previous Episodes:

https://happieratwork.ie/196-international-womens-day-special-with-aoife-obrien/

https://happieratwork.ie/195-workplace-culture-dynamics-creating-a-positive-work-environment-with-caroline-collins/

https://happieratwork.ie/191-the-pursuit-of-purpose-shifting-perspectives-with-will-polston/

https://happieratwork.ie/163-breaking-barriers-strategies-for-womens-empowerment-in-self-promotion-with-nicola-mcguinness/

Deirdre, you're so welcome to the Happy at Work podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have you as my guest today. Do you want to introduce yourself? Let people know a little bit about your background and how you got to doing what you're doing today.

Great. You can thanks a million for having me. I really appreciate it. So my name is Deirdre McGinn. I'm the founder of an organization called Step Up Step In. So that, I've been in this business now for the last 3 or 4 years. It was founded from a very dark place, if I'm honest. So Step Up Step In is an organization a leadership organization coaching and leadership organization to help support women to build confidence and thrive at work.

And that dark place was me probably being burnt out. And on top of being burnt out in my in my corporate career, I was also at a place where I just couldn't get excited about work anymore. And I think there was, a sense of me going into self destructive mode at work, which led then, I believe, to an opportunity to take redundancy from that place of work, and then suddenly I was nobody anymore in my in my mind. I had lost my sense of identity. I'd lost my sense of who I was. And I was at sea and didn't really understand what was next for me. I did have a real sense that I couldn't go back into corporate life in the way that I've been in it, and I needed to do something different. So I took some time out and reflected on life, on where I got to.

I I was, you know, I was at this stage now, I was in my early just hitting 50. So it's one of those milestones in life where you're where you start to question what's going on. And as part of that questioning, questioning, as part of a course that I was doing around executive coaching, and as part of the travel and opening my mind to new ways of being in the world, it's it led me to a place where I knew I wanted to support women. I knew I wanted to look to the experience that I gained in my corporate life and see how I could use that to mentor and coach women to find that find a a level of confidence that allowed them to be themselves at work and create a level of visibility for themselves in the workplace. So, that's where it started from. So in terms of my corporate career, it spans 25 years in the technology industry. I kinda landed in into that into that industry. And I think when you go in there, it's very hard to get back out of it again because it's it's quite a it's it's a it's a great place to build a build a career, but also it's it pays you quite a lot of money.

So you get very comfortable in in that world. So I worked in

or in

organizations like Oracle, IBM, and my last rodeo before leaving was at LinkedIn where I was, a director a sales director managing their Southern European business. So that's sort of a quick synopsis of of how I got to where I am today, and the dark place that led me to the most joyful place, which is where I'm at today and running step up stepping.

Yeah. Brilliant. I I love it. I love it, Deirdre, and it's so relatable. I think there's so much that I want to to kinda reflect on and and go back in relation to what you've just uncovered there. But it's I think for me, it's so relatable where you're in work and you're like, is this all there is? Or you're just not feeling it anymore. And that happened to me. And, you know, there I suppose there's a couple of instances that always stick in my mind, but the most recent one was I just wasn't feeling fulfilled.

I wasn't working to my strengths. I I wasn't being recognized in the way that I thought I should be recognized. I just felt very stifled in the role that I was in. And so I think a lot of people can end up feeling that way. But the the big thing well, there's a couple of things. But the but the big thing that stood out for me, Deirdre, is this idea that our identity is wrapped up in the work that we do. And I think that's so true for a lot of people. And do you want to talk to me a little bit more about that and the impact that that has? So so your entire identity is wrapped up in your job, and then you find yourself redundant.

Although on the one hand, you might be sort of you're happy because you're like, well, I was wasn't that happy at work. But at the same time, it's like, well, if I don't have work, what do I have? Who am I?

I think it for me, it stems back to very early in my career or even before my career began, actually. I was a single mother at 18, and I I suppose that's that was the first kind of big moment in life when you have this little baby and you have to find you have to find you know, you have to find a way of keeping it alive and making sure that you're providing for it. As a single mother, there was nobody else there to support me, so I had to do it for myself. So building my career became such a big part of supporting Jason and providing a lifestyle for him. So as he grew up, there wasn't an awful lot left behind him to fill my life apart from work because I put so much time and effort into it. So when Daisy Madoff and flew the group at 20 years of age, it was work. Work was everything. So I I didn't have a partner.

I've never got married. I hadn't really got a big life, to be honest. But and my whole station, identity, everything was so caught up in in the organization that I worked for and the job that I did for them. So the more that status became important to me, the more I worked. So when it comes to when it comes to a time when it's taken away from you, there's nothing behind this to support you. So I fell apart. I literally fell apart. I was so lost, Aoife.

It affected all parts of me, my my health. So I wasn't sleeping. I had put on a lot of weight. I was going into my fifties, and I think perimenopause was kinda kicking in for me. So that was bringing its own challenges all happening in the same year. So I went to my doctor. I was subscribed to answering questions because I just couldn't I couldn't get out of the bed some mornings. I'm looking at myself going, this is so not me.

I couldn't relate to this person that I had become in a very, very short space of time. And although you mentioned it was I was happy to be out of work. Was I happy to be out of work? Although I I was paged to leave you. I wasn't happy. It was like, how could I be happy when I didn't know I didn't even know who I was.

Yeah. It took

me a good few months to really pull myself together and to really think about what what what was really important to me. Because I'd lost sight of what was important. I'd lost sight of hobbies, ways of entertaining myself, spending time with my friends, spending time with my family, travel, which is something that I loved. All of those things were secondary. And I had to rediscover all of that for myself. And then retrain myself to to to do to do something that I really loved. And it took me a while to figure out you know, we we talk about I talk about purpose all the time, and I talk about how we build purpose and how, you know, we we we need to go and find purpose for ourselves. I'm sure when I was in corporate world, I wasn't able to I knew that for myself.

So Yeah. But I don't it was only when I was able when I had to when I left that I that I start to think about purpose. What was my purpose? Why was Deirdre McGinn on this earth? And what was my is I meant to be doing? Mhmm. And when I reflected on my corporate life, I spent a lot of time in there working with individual women, mentoring them, help helping lift them up, giving them opportunity, encouraging them to say yes to opportunity, helping to build their visibility. So it was just taking all of those parts of the 25 years of corporate life that I just love doing and packaging that into something that I knew I was really good at because that was part of my brand in corporate world. And and packaging up into something that I could go and support women and earn a living doing. So, it took me 12 nearly 12 months to figure all that out. But when I did, it has just brought so much joy into my life.

Like, I I believe I have the best job in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get to work with groups of women and individual women on a daily basis. And if I have the slightest impact like, I know this morning I was working with a group of 12 women in an organization. And I know actual leaving that through our session, that there was light bulb moments going off. The the theme of that session this morning was around confidence.

And there was light bulb moments going off, and they left with a tool kit of things that they can do to support themselves. And, like, the joy from them leaving that would just make my day, and that's what makes my job easy. I'm sure you feel the exact same because you do the same thing.

Exactly. Exactly. Oh, we

do it.

My whole philosophy is happier at work. And for me, I suppose it's it's a day it's a day at a time, isn't it? It's figuring out, well, what can I do today to make myself happier? But I suppose what I wanted to understand a little bit more, Deirdre, and and maybe can expand on this point, is you don't have to leave your job or you don't have to be made redundant or you don't have to go to the depths that you went to to change things around for yourself. It's it's about maybe rediscovering who you are when when you're not at work. So, you know, who you are when you're not at work helps you to enjoy the work that you do as well. So it's not just solely about, well, I'm working 12 hour days and that's who I am and I really want to get to director level. And I was chatting with someone the other day and she was kind of talking me through this whole process that she had gone through internally where she always wanted to make it to director level in the organization that she worked in until she realized, having been passed over for a promotion, she started questioning herself and saying, well, do I really want this anyway? Is this what I really want or have I just been on this track and I am I feeding the ego then by progressing and progressing? And actually, deep down, it's not really what I want. I'm on this, you know, some sort of hamster wheel. I'm on some sort of achievement road track that is not you know, it's kind of it's coming from a place that is is not for me, essentially.

Yeah. And I think you have to be able to get off the hamster wheel to realize that it's not for you or that maybe there's something else out there, especially in the corporate world. Because it's so fast, It's so busy. There's so many demands on you. There's so much stress in the system that and off that hamster wheel can be really difficult to really give yourself the time and opportunity

Yeah.

To think about these things. And what I'm finding is a lot of women are starting to invest in themselves to get help to put off their hamster wheel to create the space Yeah. To think about this stuff through coaching. So I think now it's it's about, you know, helping women just to take a little bit of time for themselves because we don't tend to do that. We don't tend to invest in ourselves. Yeah. And we don't tend to take the time to look at ourselves and look within to see what it is what is it that I really, really want.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

And that's that's where I start with

the people

that I work with. Like, find me what you want, what you really, really want. It's our Spice Girl.

I can break into song now, Deirdre, with that.

It's my Spice Girl's moment. I'd say it every time. It's about really figuring building that level of self awareness Yeah. Around who and what you are and putting the pieces of the jigsaw together. So you can start to see well, okay. When I look at my values, when I look at what I'm really passionate about, and I look at my strengths, and I look at the impact that I want to have and all seven elements of self awareness. Mhmm. But when I start to put that together, it doesn't mean it doesn't look like I want to be a director of Yeah.

But maybe I want to within an organization, I want to pivot and do something different. But at least now I've got the level of awareness as to what that might look like. And I think that's the first step. It's creating awareness

Yeah.

Around what it is. How can you start to think differently about your career Yeah. When you're in the middle of it?

Yeah. And I I suppose I want to share something that I've heard you talk about before, Deirdre, this idea of capacity and just giving ourselves that capacity. And to me, like, it's permission to actually take the time for yourself. So get off that busyness. Stop using busyness as an excuse. I love that term capacity. Like, just give ourselves that time that we need. It's really interesting what you're saying about awareness as well, because that's something, like, I think for me, awareness is a first step towards any sort of change.

You have to be aware of it, first of all, you know, and and recognize it and accept it as this is the current reality. What you're talking about in relation to the careers as well and, you know, just, I suppose, the permission to do what it is that that we want to do within our career. I was speaking at, an organization last week, actually, and we were talking about this topic of careers and, you know, various different things came up, you know, personal branding and confidence and and all of these types of things. But one of the things that I shared in that session was that most people don't actually know what it is that they want. So I think that's maybe where the disconnect is, that we haven't given ourselves permission or time or whatever it is that we need to really uncover what it is that we want. We're on some sort of a track. Maybe it's a fast track, and we're heading towards this direction. And we think that's what we want because we're surrounded by people who want those same things or who also think that they want those same things.

And, you know, I'm thinking specifically from my own perspective. And and, you know, I had my sights set on CEO of this huge company that I was working for, 40,000 people. And and and I never second guessed myself, but I also never had a strategy in place to say, how can I get from where I am now and what are the steps I need to take? It was just like this aspiration that I had for no apparent reason, probably completely and utterly ego based. But I'd love to kind of unpack that a little bit about, like, how do we start to think about what it is that we really want?

I think you've covered a lot of it there. It's first, be aware be aware that you know that there's something else out there for you. That maybe there's a there's an inkling of unhappiness. There's an inkling that maybe it's not right.

Yeah.

Maybe that there's something different. But I think once you're aware of that, it's about how what what what's the support network I need around me

Yeah.

That would allow me to change. Yeah. So what what are the positive relationships around me that will that will help me unpick some of this stuff? It's very hard to do on your own.

Yes. Yeah.

You don't like, where do you

even start? You're doing all of the thinking, and you've thought yourself into this situation.

And you need a different perspective. You need you need just, you know, and especially for women. Women love community, and we look to share. So if there's something going on or if there's there's like we will go out and share it to 10 other women. Mhmm. And we'll we'll gather we'll gather information and opinion from all of those other women. And we need that. We need to bring that back home so that we can see how our thinking is reflected in other people.

So I think having that a positive community around you to allow you to share your ideas, your thoughts Yeah. What, you know, what, you know, what might be bubbling up inside. Look. You mentioned aspiration and ego. Think aspiration is probably the one thing as we get older we lose. And I think it's probably so powerful. And and aspiration is not something that we'll ever get to.

Yeah.

But it's a direction. Gives us a some a a a form of direction. And we need direction because, like, a lot of this is hamster wheel, rudderless, just getting on, doing what we need to do to survive. You know, if you look at if you look at the, you know, a woman's life line, and now it's not the same for all women, but, you know, we we spend a lot of time educating and starting to build our careers in our twenties. In our Hershey's, life's starting to change. It might be that we want to have children. It might be that we get married. So we go into a different side of our lives.

And then it's really only when we hit our forties, but the children are getting a little bit older, and we can go and try and figure out what a career might eat like. And then we're building up into this big crescendo. We hit our fifties and then menopause hits, and it's like, holy mother. What's that about?

Yeah.

Like, when we're in our prime, it just gets kinda tucked from under us, and then we have to start slapping friggings all over us and kinda figure out how do we get back to a place of normality or feeling normal. And and so And then and

then we're into retirement, Deirdre.

And then it's it's time to get the hell out of dodge. Right? So if it's and it's about timing all of this. Or, you know and and and in some cases, we we don't get to time it.

Mhmm.

So we just need to see how we can figure out, how we step away from it. Small space of time so we can do that reflection reflecting. And I think what organizations can help us do that. Yeah. I think having good mentor, having somebody who's a good sponsor within an organization are good resources, to help us step away from the the the day to day norm and to think a little bit differently. I've been very I, in my career, I've been very blessed to have some great sponsors.

Mhmm.

And sponsors are those individuals that are advocating you advocating about you behind closed doors. Yeah. So so they see your potential. Like, you have to feed them, you know, like, it doesn't you know, you you earn the respect and the trust of a sponsor. But once they see it in you, they'll see more in you than you see in yourself. So they're advocating. So I you know, when I was in when I was in IBM, I had a great sponsor who took me from Ireland to London. And I had this most amazing job for 12 months where I got to follow, a senior executive around as his EA.

We it was an executive assistant role. That's what they called it. So you go sit in every single meeting that he sat in. You've seen the language that was used. You've seen the deals that were done. It was the most amazing job. And and this guy, Dave Kay was his name. He was just the most amazing man.

He he was just such a clever guy, and he would we'd sit in a meeting and would be quite a complex subject that was going on. And he would be able to take that subject and bring it to the next meeting. And within 5 minutes, he was talking about this like he knew everything about it. Just fascinating, but I learned a huge amount from this guy. And then from there, having that opportunity, it it created a level of visibility for me within the executive team in the UK. But then I was able to take on a, a sales director role in the UK, which I would never have got if I hadn't have moved from Dublin to to London with this sponsor recognizing my potential. And the same at LinkedIn. But LinkedIn was it was quite specific.

They have a sponsorship program.

Okay.

Yeah. So they had a they had a female led, leadership program and for high performing women within the organization. And when you were put on this, you were given a a very senior sponsor within the organization, and that person's role was to look across all of the brands, all of the business to see where was the best move for Deirdre Mhmm. In her next role so that you know, to to take her on a journey to to fulfill her full potential, if you know what

I mean.

So I think that that role, more so than mentor, is a is a great way for organizations to invest in supporting women to think differently about their career.

Yeah. I know certainly, Deirdre, like, this idea of sponsorship and having a sponsor was not something I was aware of when I was in corporate. It's only something I've learned about in the last few years. And so now I'm telling everyone about it. I'm like, you need to get a sponsor. You need to find who that person is. That's absolutely incredible that LinkedIn has a specific program for that. So they're connecting women with senior people in the organization.

Those senior leaders have visibility across the different brands that LinkedIn operates in and, you know, are aware and can advise where you will be best placed. Like, that's incredible opportunity. But I think more organizations need to you you don't have to do a full on program, but I think if you are an individual and women, especially, I think, need this, they need this level of support. But seeking out that sponsor, what that what might that look like? Think about what's in it for them. So they're very detached maybe from the day to day running of the business, the day to day dealing with the clients because they don't have that level of visibility. So that's what's in it for them. Share what's share what you can about your role. What are people saying on the ground? What are your team saying? What are the challenges that are being faced? Because that's firsthand information rather than, you know, going by the the, quarterly engagement survey or something where people are like, oh, can I really say what's on my mind? Whereas you be able to give them that type of access.

Like, that's always my perception. But I certainly didn't know. Obviously, we had mentors and we had very specific mentorship for women and connecting women with with, you know, across the board in EMEA, connecting with other women, in senior positions and being a mentor as well for women who are early career. So we had that, but I wasn't aware while I worked in Yeah.

And I think there's a distinctive difference between both. Right? So a mentor is I've walked I've walked that fast.

Yes.

I can help advise you. I can give you feedback on how you're doing. I can help, you know, solve any problems that you're facing because I've been there. Mhmm. For me, a sponsor is an advocate. It's they might not know you, but as you said, it works both ways. So you're feeding up to them. This is this is who and what I am.

This is my contribution. This is how I'm forming within the organization. This is what's going on in your organization. Mhmm. And then what I want back from you is I want you to talk about me. Because you know and I know having worked in senior positions in corporate world, those conversations, promotions happen behind closed doors.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Pay rises happen behind closed doors. All of and I and I've been in those meetings.

Same.

What used to frighten the life out of me, Aoife, was when people weren't talking about people. Yeah. Like, why weren't you why why why aren't you talking about Mary? Yeah. You're you're her manager. You're white. Like, and that that you when I used to sit in those meetings, like, I think the ones that people weren't talking about used to worry me more than the ones people were talking about. Yeah. And we have a responsibility as an employee to make sure that people, our manager, and people in that room have something to say about us.

We need to feed them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And and I think when you're strategically managing your career, you know about these things. But when I when I was working in corporate, I just didn't know how to do this. I didn't know that other people were doing it. The scary thing for me, Deirdre, was and I always think there was this and, by the way, for anyone who's listening, at the time of this recording, I will be doing a kind of a behind the curtain on performance management where I'm gonna expose the secrets that I that I know about when it comes to performance management that hopefully will give you some food for thought when it comes to this type of stuff.

But some of the conversations were around someone who I thought was just unpleasant is probably the nicest way I can describe her. Really unpleasant to deal with internally, but she was amazing with clients. And there were 3 people in that room saying she is awful to deal with. I don't like dealing with her. And her boss was there advocating for her saying, but she's brilliant and she's this and she's that. And with 3 of us in the room at the same time saying, absolutely not. And when you compare this person with this person, I would absolutely give that person a 5 versus that the the other one who was just unpleasant to deal with. And like I said, that's the nicest thing that I could say about her.

Like, she truly was not not a good person to deal with at all. And there was a few people in the room that said that. But that ties in, Deirdre, with something that I wanted to pick up on that you had mentioned earlier in passing and this idea of brand and our personal brand. And, again, I probably had a vague awareness of this idea of a personal brand when I when I was working in corporate. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about what that means and how to influence what people say about you when you're not in the room, how to influence what people are thinking about you, and and what they're saying in those rooms where it's actually really important.

So for me, brand is about visibility. Yeah. And and I think visibility is probably the one thing that women shy away from. Yeah. They're not comfortable with. They don't want to lift their head above the parapet because somebody might see them. So in all of the work that I do with women, brand is at the core of that work. Because if you don't have a level of visibility within your organization, then nobody's going to talk about you.

Yeah. Nobody's going to see you for promotion. Nobody's going to see you for the juicy projects that are coming out. And, you know, be careful about the brand you build for yourself. So if you're busy off, you know, working really hard, saying yes to everything that's coming at you, and not being strategic about the projects that you pick, then you're going to become the dumping ground. You're going to be the, oh, she will give that over to Deirdre. She'll she'll get it done. Yeah.

You know, I I had a reputation in IBM as the fixer. So I was really going in and go good at going in and fixing teams because nobody else wants to put the time and effort into for managing performance, ensuring that people were at the right level within the within the organization.

Yeah.

And I was good at that because I I really have interest in people. So I was put in to do that, but then it became part of my brand and it wasn't necessarily the brand that I wanted to have.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you get you get kind of known for this thing by default. And like, oh, let's bring Deirdre in. She's really good at that. And that's like, no. I don't.

That's not what I want because then I get stuck at this level, and I actually want to progress.

Yeah. And where I learned about this stuff was from a lady called Carla Harris. I don't know if you've ever come across Carla Harris. She is. So she talks about her personal wisdom. She is a black American woman who is very senior. I think I think it's Morgan Stanley. And she there's there's a huge amount of stuff on on YouTube around her, but one of her pearls of wisdom is around around creating a brand for yourself.

So what are the three words that you want to be known for? And how do those three words align with the values and the strategy of the organization? The ones you've got an alignment between those, you know, the sweet spot of all of that, then you need to go out and start talking about yourself in those terms. So I wanted to be known as being strategic. I wanted to be known as somebody who was, was strong on growing businesses, and I wanted to be known as, you know, as good people leader. So in every conversation I had, I had to engineer those those three terms into every conversation. Mhmm. So it became natural for me in my narrative, but also that's what people heard. So this is when I was at LinkedIn. And at the time, I had created a strategy.

I was running a UK and Ireland business for mid market, and I had created a strategy with my team for this business. Mhmm. And I was going out selling my strategy. But anybody who would listen to me going, you know, created a strategy and because that's that's what I wanted my brand to be. That's how I wanted people people to think about me because I wanted to move into a more into a senior director role. As a senior director on LinkedIn, being strategic was a very important part of, being successful in that role. Yeah. So it got to the stage where I was having a coffee one day in the canteen in in Limjin, and this guy came up to me.

He was running another parts business, and he said to me, good. I hear you're very strategic. Can you help me build a strategy for my business? And I I just remember going, yes.

It's worked.

It worked. It worked. And Carla Harris tells a great story about how she wants to be known as really tough. And she used that word really tough. And then you heard those words coming back to her. So that's one strategy to help build your brand, but build it on your own terms. But it's also about having a narrative.

Yeah.

And one thing I learned from a a a boss that I had at LinkedIn was at the end of every quarter and at the end of every, year, he would build a narrative around his quarter and his years so that he was able to talk about it in the elevator as he went up in the elevator at LinkedIn with the CEO of LinkedIn. He was able he had it at the tip of his tongue.

Yeah.

So, having your narrative and what's helped you be successful and the impact that you've had in your business

Yeah.

I think is a really important, it's really important that you've got access to that in the moment so that you can share it with whoever you need to share it with.

Like you say that it's on the tip of your tongue. But, like, if I think back, or if I think about this, like, what practically could people do, It's thinking, what is it that I want in this quarter? What are my objectives? How do they relate to the business? And then this is likely at the time of recording, it's likely to come out towards the end of March. So if you're listening in real time, you're coming up to the end of q one. What is it that you've achieved in q one, and how can you turn that into a story that is reflective of the brands that you want to put out there in the business? So you executed on this particular strategy or you've started it or you've designed it or whatever it might be. So think about those words. And then what I was going to say as well is thinking back to my corporate days and the monthly reminder that popped up every month to say, put down in your notebook in in a document somewhere because this would have been all, I'm sure, pre Google Docs from from what I remember. So it wouldn't have been in the cloud. It would have been on our laptop somewhere or in a notebook or something like that.

Where what have you achieved? So thinking about, well, what have you achieved this month so that when it comes to filling out the form at the end of the year that we all have to fill out to say, this is what I've achieved, that really comes easily for you. Now I will be the first to admit that I wasn't great at doing that every month. And sometimes at the end of the year, there would be gaping holes or there'd be gaps or whatever. But anyone who's listening now, take this as a reminder to do that so that you don't get to the end of the year wondering, well, what did I actually achieve this year? Really think about that. And, also, there's an opportunity, I think, to course correct if you are writing stuff down. You're like, that's not really what I want to be known for. Like, that is not really in line with the brands that I want to put out there. Deirdre, you brought up this other idea around visibility and the fact that oftentimes women are afraid to be visible.

Do you wanna kinda talk us through a little bit? I mean, I see that all the time, but any any thoughts that you have about why? Like, why do we not want to be visible?

We're talking about ourselves because we see it as bragging.

Yeah.

We see it as being arrogant. We see it's too much.

Yeah.

So we have to find our way of talking about ourselves in an authentic way for us.

Yes.

So going back to what you were saying around, you know, capturing all of this, all of the good stuff that we do. So I call it a confidence journal.

Yeah.

And I encourage every woman that I work with to have their confidence journal. And at the end of every week, I want you to put in there what you've achieved, any feedback that you've received from your team, from your manager, and on the accolades that you've won, any performance management, your annual performance reviews that, you know, whatever's whatever's happened. Because the way our women's brains work is that we will focus on the negative and not on the positive. So I'm sitting here in front of you, Nan, and saying, you know, I love your podcast. It's absolutely amazing. You've had the most fantastic guests over the last couple of couple of years. Every time I listen in, I learn something new. It's wonderful.

But I think if you did this one thing differently, you might you might get a better quality of listeners. So what you heard what do you hear in all of that?

All I heard was the negative. The both. That I could do something differently. And, also, you're saying something about my

So so so that's how our brains are wired.

Yeah. We focus on those. Yeah.

We'll focus on that one one bad bush

Yeah.

And we'll miss the 3 great things. So unless we capture those 3 great things in in our notebook, in our Yeah. Confidence journal or wherever you wanna put them, they'll be gone and last forever. Yeah. And we'll stop and we'll ruminate over that one negative thing that was said to us.

Yeah.

And we can go into a spiral. Yeah. We can't get out of.

Yeah. So Been there. I've absolutely been there. Yeah.

Yeah. So our our confidence journal is it's that evidence based facts. It's all facts. There's nothing in there that's occupied. We're not telling ourselves lies.

Yeah.

We're just this is all the reality of our situation. So to help boost our confidence when we need it most. Mhmm. Because when we need to talk about ourselves, everything's in here. All the things that we need to talk about are in here. Yeah. So we can build our story from this.

Yeah.

But we have to so one of the strategies I really encourage the the women I work with to do is to you have to script. You have to practice your story. Look. It can't be written down in an old book. Yeah. You have to say it out loud. Yeah. Now whether it's your husband or your partner or the cat or the dog or your best friend, Practice.

Yeah. Practice coping about yourself. And I always use the example. In in IBM, it was a very male dominated world, and I used to be in the coffee queue. And there'd be rows of men chatting in front of me, and we haven't and you'd listen to them, and they would be they'd be killed telling each other how great they are and how how one was better than the other and how they did this and the other. Whereas if it was 2 women in front of me in the coffee queue, it would be more of a social conversation because we put women create conversation around social, and then we build up to this is what I do. It doesn't come naturally for us to talk about our achievements in a coffee queue unless we're practiced and unless we have to. Yeah.

Or you'd nearly have to put a gun into a woman's head to do it.

Yeah. I think building up slowly as well and doing it over time. So if it's up to now, you haven't really been articulating what you've been doing well to your boss, Take this as an opportunity to to use that narrative, to use that story, to use those words, to talk about your achievements directly to your boss. Your boss, I have no doubt, is gonna be talking to their boss and the other leaders in the business about what it is that you're up to. And if you can articulate with numbers the impact that you're having on the organization and also how that relates to the overall organization's goals, I think that will put you kind of head and shoulders above the other people

Yeah.

That that, you know and sounds like a really competitive environment, but I think oftentimes Yeah. Companies are competitive.

But if you think about it, if I'm, like, at, you know, at times in my career, I would have had 10 direct reports. It's very hard to keep track of all how all 10 are doing. So I relied on them to tell me, you know, how they were doing. And if if you weren't telling me that I didn't know, so I wasn't able to talk about you Yeah. Yeah. That's like, a lot of that's my bad, and I get it. But there's, you know, 20 other million things going on.

Yeah.

So I need you I'm You need to make it easy. Our bosses.

Yeah.

We need to make it easy.

Yeah. Yeah. That's like, I mean, you've gone through the the process for being a guest on the podcast, Deirdre. You know, I like to make it as easy for people as possible to do what it is I need them to do. So I've set up systems to collect pictures, to collect your bio, to collect your social media channels. I send automated reminders so that you're gonna show up here. You're gonna show up on time for our recording. So, like, I I I like to make things easy for people to do what it is that I want them to do.

But I think sometimes we forget. And if I think even think back to my corporate days, thinking about the people I work with in my business now, when you offload something off your plate that was previously on your plate, you kind of forget that someone else is doing it and how much time it takes and all of the little intricacies. So if you're listening to this now and you're getting work from your boss, remind them that that's on your plate because they may not remember. Once it's off their plate, like you say, Deirdre, we've got a million things spinning around in your head that you need to deal with, and there's a reason that it's off your plate. And if you can just remind someone, this is something that I'm working on, this is the impact, and these are the changes I've identified or these are changes that I've I've made. I think it it's just it makes your life easier, basically.

Makes your life easier. It makes the manager's life easier. It helps you build that narrative that you need to create the brand and visibility

Yeah.

That that you want within with, you know, to to get to the next step. And I think as you build that, you build your confidence, which will which gives you the confidence to say yes to bigger opportunities or say yes to speaking engagement, maybe to build your brand. So it's all like, they're all small steps. And I'm I did believe we're in tiny, tiny steps always take you on a journey. And it's about how can you be a little bit more courageous with yourself every day.

Yeah.

10% braver every day is what I what I asked of my clients. 10% doesn't take you too far outside your comfort zone. Mhmm. It doesn't rattle the pages too much. It doesn't make you feel uncomfortable, but it it gives you the courage to move that that one step further.

Mhmm. I love that. Such a such a nice idea. And, again, if I'm thinking back to the company that I was working with last week, they had people on to MC. They asked people to volunteer for these stretch opportunities who would never have done that. They've never have spoken in public before. And the ones who stepped up to do that saw it as a stretch opportunity. You know? This is a a great opportunity for me to start speaking in public, start speaking in front of people.

So I think seeking out those opportunities is really, really important. And, Deirdre, if I could summarize everything that we're talking about, it's sort we sort of started talking about, like, is this the right place for me, or what is, you know, how do I uncover my purpose or what I really, really want? And then we kind of broadened the conversation into more, well, how do I go after what it is that I really, really want by being more visible, by growing in confidence, by uncovering what my purpose is, all of these things that are so, so important, I think, if we want to feel a sense of success in our careers. And success being whatever that means for you. It could be a bit more freedom. It could be more money. It could be a title, whatever that is. But, again, kind of going back to this why. Like, what is your purpose or going back to what it is that you really, really want.

And so thank you so much for sharing all those insights, and I I have no doubt that people who are listening today can put into action straight away at least one of the things that we talked about. Because, again, when I'm talking to people, I don't like to overwhelm them and say, well, you know, here's 10 strategies that you can. It's like, just pick 1, work on that, listen back to the podcast again. You might hear something different the next time you listen. So really, really appreciate that. The question that I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

I'm the happiest chappy in the world at work. But, you know, I I ask this to my to my my clients a lot, and it's it's about having some level of meaning for me. Like, why why remembering why why do I work? How do I connect my why to my day to day task so that you can see how it impacts you as person on a on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And I think if you can if you can go if you can find that meaning in the tasks that you do, if you can go back to connecting with why you work in the first place. And and for for some people, it's to provide for their families. For other people, it's to build a career that or to be of service to a client. It doesn't really matter what it is. With you, matters that you understand what this view.

And then surrounding yourself with positive relationships that's that's supporting you to be who you want to be at work. And so yeah. So I would say figure out meaning and task. I would say build positive relationships around you. Go back to your why you do what you do, and then, oh, find works. Yeah. For you in in the job that you do.

Oh, absolutely love that. Thank you so much. And, Deirdre, if people want to connect with you, if they want to reach out, and if they want to find out more about what it is you do, what's the best place they can do that, or what's the best way they can do that?

I'd say LinkedIn is probably the best place to connect with me and to if you want to take time with me, that's a great place to to do it. So I'm Bearden again on LinkedIn, and then my website is www.stepupstepin dotie. So step up into a bigger job and step in with confidence.

Love it. I love it. So we will put all of the links to those in the show notes anyway, Deirdre. And thank you so, so much for your time today. Loads of pearls of wisdom from yourself, not just from Carla Harris, but from yourself