Shownotes
Many ambitious women are not stuck because they lack skills or motivation. They are stuck because they lack direction.
When you are good at everything, you become useful everywhere but aligned nowhere.
In this episode of Career Clarity Unlocked, I coach Joey through a real career clarity session where she moves from feeling stuck and unsure of her next step to gaining a clear direction based on her strengths, energy, and natural way of working.
If you have ever felt successful on paper but unfulfilled in your work, this episode will help you understand why and what to do next.
🔑 What You Will Learn
- Why being good at everything can keep you stuck in your career
- Why ambitious women struggle more with direction than motivation
- How to identify the work that energizes you versus drains you
- How to stop building a career around strengths that burn you out
- How to find a clear and aligned career direction
📄 Free Career Clarity Worksheet
If this episode resonated with you, I created a free PDF workbook to help you start identifying your natural strengths, energy patterns, and ideal career direction.
This worksheet will help you recognize the patterns in how you naturally create value so you can start building a career around what actually fits you.
💛 Ready for Your Next Step?
If you are ready to stop feeling stuck and finally get clear on your career direction, you do not have to figure this out alone.
Book your free Career Clarity Call here:
👉 https://www.careerbloomcoaching.com/consultation
⏱ Timestamps
00:00 Why your work feels off
00:52 Direction vs motivation
01:34 Introduction to Sparketype
02:28 How to listen for clarity
04:51 Coaching session begins
06:54 Automating repetitive work
08:33 Teaching in a way that clicks
11:49 Balancing people and process work
14:59 Frustration with meeting-heavy culture
16:14 Defining the ideal role
20:00 Desire for modern tools and growth
21:23 Key insights so far
22:15 Vision for the future role
22:54 Exploring managerial impact
24:33 Identifying energy drainers
25:51 Authority and credibility challenges
27:13 The reality of leadership roles
30:54 Breakthrough moment and clarity shift
32:56 Why energy matters most
34:13 Recognizing patterns in your work
35:06 Identifying core strengths
36:44 Career clarity worksheet
38:12 Final takeaways and next steps
39:31 Outro
📲 Connect with Career Coach Theresa White:
- LinkedIn: @Theresa A. White
- Facebook: Career Bloom Coaching
- Instagram: @theresa_careerbloom
- YouTube: careerbloom
- TikTok: @career.bloom
- Website: www.CareerBloomCoaching.com
#CareerChange #FeelingStuck #CareerClarity #FindYourPurpose #CareerDirection #JobSearchTips #CareerGrowth #CareerAdvice #ProfessionalDevelopment #CareerTransition #WomenInBusiness #AmbitiousWomen #BurnoutRecovery #CareerCoach #CareerCoaching #FindWorkYouLove #PurposeDrivenCareer #CareerFulfillment #NextCareerMove #WorkThatMatters
Transcripts
Welcome back to Career Clarity Unlocked. If you are someone who is capable, driven, doing well on paper, but yet something about your work just feels off, then this episode is for you. Maybe you're in a role where you are so good at what you do. But at the same time, it drains you. Maybe you keep getting placed in the same type of responsibilities because you're the reliable one, the go to person, the fixer, but you don't actually feel excited about what you do and where your career is going.
And the real frustrating part, it's not that you're stuck because you're unmotivated. Don't have the right skills, don't have the right education, don't , have the right certificate. None of that is what's really keeping you stuck. You are stuck because you don't know what your next step actually, and so many ambitious women don't struggle this motivation.
They struggle with direction. Because when you don't have direction,, you are so much more likely to say yes to the wrong opportunities, to be known for skills that you actually don't want to be using. You keep getting recognized for strength that actually drain you and you slowly build a career that looks right on the outside, but feels wrong on the inside.
📍 as your listen, listening to today's coaching session. You will hear us using the term SP type. The Sparko type is an assessment that can can take for free on sparko type.com and the very special thing about the Sparko type assessment is that one, it is free available to anyone, and two, it is extremely precise and accurate in what it measures.
It measures what energizes you, what motivates you, what sparks you, and what drains you and depletes you. In Joey's case, her primary SPARKO type showed up as the essentialist, which suggests that she's really energized by creating order, clarity and utility from chaos. Her shadow sparko type also something that energizes her shows up as the sage, a love for teaching, instilling insight, educating, sharing knowledge and wisdom, and unlocking understanding in others.
As you listen to today's coaching session, I want you to actively listen. Don't just listen to Joey, but also listen to yourself and there are three different things I really want you to pay attention to. One, I want you to notice where her energy shifts when she becomes more animated, and when she sounds excited versus when she sounds frustrated or drained.
Because your energy is incredibly important data, then I want you to pay attention to the moment where everything clicks. There's a very specific moment in this conversation where she stops describing her past and starts describing her future. That's the moment of clarity and you wanna pay attention how big frustration becomes a specific direction.
At the beginning you hear a lot of things like I like a lot of things, I'm good at a lot of things. I don't know what my next step is. And by the end, that becomes, yes, this is the type of work I want to do. This is how I want to contribute. Yes, this is the direction I want to move into.
And that shift is truly everything.
After the session, I sent Shei a recap of what I was hearing and what stood out to me most is that she truly comes alive when she's turning chaos into order that she loves designing workflows and systems. And she is exceptionally good at deciding who should be doing what and when. But at the beginning of this conversation, none of that was crystal clear.
And that's what you're gonna hear about. You're going to hear someone go from, yeah, I'm good at a lot of things to, yeah, this is exactly how I want to work and contribute. And once you hear it, you won't be able to unhear it. So as you listen, also reflect on all of this for yourself.
Ask yourself, where in your work do you naturally try to improve things? What problems do you love to solve, even without being asked? And where do you feel most frustrated and like banging your head against the wall because maybe that is also a really important data point. Your frustration is often pointing directly towards your next level.
All right, let's get into the session.
📍
A lot of my career I've been in roles that are completely disorganized, chaotic, or in roles that maybe someone retires and mm-hmm. Leaves just. Not using efficient or optimizing processes. Mm-hmm. So a lot of my career has been finding ways to build efficiencies and reorganize the data, validate data. , Or some of the companies I've worked in have been so chaotic that I have to build some organization at some point somewhere.
So, yeah, essentialist. Resonated with me completely. Yeah. And outside of work, I, as a young kid, was always organizing my room and I loved to build lists and I was consistently like refolding my clothes or moving them and moving my dresser, moving my, my bed. And so it just makes sense that I, yeah, have this brain that constantly is.
Looking at something and trying to make it better.
Yeah. Oh my God, I love this. And like, yeah, you probably can't even look at chaos or disorganization without your brain automatically be like, oh, I can see through the chaos of how we could create a system or a process of the out of this.
Exactly.
Sometimes I have to turn that off. Otherwise, you know, the world is just disorganized. Yes, full stop period. It is disorganized, so I have to turn that off. Um, so I don't become overwhelmed in trying to organize things that I have no control over.
So you already, we talked about it last time a little bit of when you times where you got to optimize, create systems, organization, reorganize data.
What were some of the funnest times when you think back of when you got to do that, what were the projects or the tasks that you really enjoyed working on?
Mm-hmm. So there was one role where the. Prior person was retiring. Mm-hmm. And what happened is she trained me on her current processes and then once I felt comfortable and once she saw that I was succeeding using her processes, that's when she retired.
And I said, let, here we go. Let's whip it out and let's turn it upside down on its head. And I built in some processes, so I built an Excel macro. So that I wasn't consistently completing the same steps over and over every week. Mm-hmm. So there was some time savings if I can just complete a Excel macro to do the work for me, and then I can step in and analyze and put the brain, the human brain to work.
Mm-hmm. Um, instead of just the step by step mundane processes. I've done that at two different companies where actually three different companies where the, there's this mundane process and you have to prep a file, an Excel file, and all this prep work is step by step, very process oriented. And if you can just click a few buttons and then start your analysis work, you save yourself the time as long as you understand what the macro is.
Yeah. Short cutting. Um, so that. Learning part of it is not lost. Then that's, that's been the most enjoyable. That's something I've been able to carry through to Yeah. From company to company. Um, so
the automating of a manual process, and it probably is also, it feels so good because what took 10 hours before can be done in 10 minutes.
Exactly. .
When you were. Sharing knowledge with others, in what ways do you prefer to do it?
Do you like sitting with someone one-on-one, walking them through? Do you like to just put it into a SOP or into any other document and be like, here's your instructions or a slide deck and here's the instructions. Like what is your preferred way of passing on that knowledge written speaking.
My preferred way is when the trainee knows how they receive the knowledge the best because I can, I can adjust my training style based on the needs of the trainee.
Yeah. So I
just want it to click for them and I can change my style so I can meet one-on-one. Physically one-on-one next to them. Shoulder to shoulder, like I, I like to call it.
Yeah. Or I really enjoy a virtual. If we're over screens, that's fine too. So I enjoy training and sharing knowledge, however the trainee knows, they enjoy and catch on to the material the, the quickest.
I love that you can. Easily pivot into all of these. Mm-hmm. For your satisfaction and your fulfillment, is there one that you prefer over the other, or are you, for you it feels the same no matter how you share it?
My ideal way would be to either virtually over screen share or shoulder to shoulder sit with someone and have them take notes as I'm showing them.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. And. In either scenario, do you prefer one-on-one small group, larger groups?
Uh, probably one-on-one or a small group because a large audience, if the audience has to take away and actually understand the knowledge that's being shared, I don't enjoy it as much because.
There, you can tell the audience is not gonna understand it after one session. Mm-hmm. Totally.
And you correct me if I'm wrong, but also what I'm hearing under that is that it's not just sharing knowledge.
It's sharing knowledge and seeing and knowing it clicked for the other person, which you really get in a virtual or shoulder to shoulder situation, is you. Know if it clicks or not and can't work with them till it does. Exactly, exactly that. It's a one way communication, which a recording or a document would be.
You, you don't know if it ever clicked or not, and I would imagine a large group too, it's like, you don't know, is anyone gonna walk away with anything? Mm-hmm. Is that a part of it?
That's definitely a part of it, yeah. Otherwise, you know, if, if you're just sending a document and I, let's say I built the whole document.
How many wasted hours is that if they don't even open it.
Right, exactly. Exactly. The feedback loop, like hearing , oh yes, this is what I took away and I was able to apply that. Mm-hmm. That is a really important process for you. It is, yeah. Do you remember me sharing the screen of process versus service driven sparker types?
But do you lean towards one or the other? More would you rather, the essentialist is a very process driven sparky type, , which suggests that there's enjoyment from the process of creating order systems, processes. The sage falls in the middle because some people prefer that.
Face-to-face teaching. Others prefer to create a SOP and never speak to a human. Mm-hmm. , How do you feel about the balance between people interaction and process-driven work?
Enjoy the people part of it, just as much as the process part of it. And it could be just because of my line of work is very people . Driven, , work
and so. Like the essentialist and it has a, all of them have a spectrum, right? Some essentialist fall here, some of them fall here, and that's H two.
Mm-hmm. And the performer, which is interesting with the anti, yeah.
It's also very much in the middle. So I mean, it does suggest that. It feels energizing for you to have a balance between process driven work people. , Have you had any weeks where you were nonstop with people like meeting after meeting or training after training where it's like there was no time to be by yourself, it was always people interaction.
Yeah. I, I actually. This is so good that we're landing here and that , I know this about myself. If I have a full week of meetings or a full day of meetings and I don't get a chance to be productive and actually have some output for the week, yeah, it feels like a wasted week. Oh,
yeah. Even though
in the long term, it might not be if I'm sharing information, you know, someone's walking away with something, but it fills my cup if I'm able to produce Yeah.
As well. Yeah. Instead of meeting after meeting and just sharing around information, because if you're in meetings constantly, it's, there's nobody's putting pen to paper to move things for you.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
What is a good balance for you that , fills your energy the most? Is it when half of your time is spent in meetings and or with people?
Service driven work where you work with people and process driven work more. The solitary work, is it, do you feel like it's ideal for you when it's a 50 50? Is it like a one, a third, two thirds?
I would say 50 50. , I'm an extrovert. I get a lot of, , energy from others. Yeah. So it's, it's helpful for me and energizing for me to be able to.
Chat with others in service, others. , I'm a helper by nature. I enjoy helping others too, so that also fills my cup. But again, it's the productivity that I also need it. If that's missing, then it's, it's not a great week. So 50 50 is, feels very, yeah.
That's awesome. This is really good to know that you need both in a role.
How does that compare with your current role? Is it about right now 50 50 or is it very leaning heavily on one side?
I think our company culture tends to be meeting heavy, and I think a lot of people rely on memory instead of policy and procedure, and unfortunately because of that. We meet a lot and we discuss, well what?
What did we discuss last time? Well, here we are discussing it again because nobody wrote anything down and we're changing the process again because someone else said something new. So it's a lot of meetings and then
rush at the 11th hour to get things done.
Oh,
that sounds
so frustrating.
Yeah, the company is very much so stuck. , It's behind in terms of technology and in terms of processes. , Yeah, the legacy knowledge is amazing to work with. Mm-hmm. The, there's just updates needed to the internal culture.
Yeah. Yeah.
I have a question on that, but I'll, I'll ask something else first. When we think about the essentialist and that creating order out of chaos, what are things that you love to organize the most? So that could be physical things like how you explain in your room and the clothes, or it could be data, like organizing data, or is it people or workflows, like who does what and how, or is it.
Well, like process and systems of how things are done or automating with, with the Excel macro, automating certain processes, is there anything that you feel drawn to the most of , yes, I really love taking this type of mess or chaos and do this with it.
I would love my, I think my ideal role as I'm learning through Tiffany's program and speaking through you with the Spark type, I believe I would love a role where I'm organizing the work and the workflow that people do.
Yes. And knowing, oh, you can, your capacity is X, Y, Z.
Mm-hmm. You
have these skills. And you are able to understand this knowledge about this certain process. Let's have this person work on this part of the process and this part of the project, and this person over here, this, this part of the process and this part of the project.
I, I believe that's where my career might be headed. I'm hoping, I guess I'm learning and I, I, I don't know quite yet how to. Interview or apply for those jobs. That's, it's a very intangible career path, I guess. Um, so I'm trying to figure that out. But I also love coming home and organizing a pantry. Yes.
The physical part of it. Yeah. Um, or organizing my closet or my, my dresser, or, I love hiking and I love organizing my hiking closet. Or when I go hiking and backpacking, when we pack up and leave, I have the best organized bag. Everything. Oh my God. I can imagine it. Everything has a place and I'm usually the last one packed up.
People aren't really waiting on me 'cause I'm quick, but everything has a place and that's, I'm not anal retentive about it, but it, yeah, it just, everything has a place then I know that I have it and I didn't leave it on the trail, so I do like the physical. Yeah. Probably not for work. I'm, I'm kind of a little person, so I'm not cut out to physically do the physical labor in the workplace, but at home I love the organizing, physical organizing of things.
And then, yeah, in the workplace, it seems as if I like the idea of organizing people and what they do and organizing their workflow and their processes for a project. Right now I'm finding that I'm organizing a lot of data. , I have a knack for looking at data. Mm-hmm. And, and seeing patterns that comes very naturally to me.
So seeing the data, seeing the patterns, seeing what's wrong, what needs to be fixed mm-hmm. Of getting that other team to fix it and then learn what they're fixing so they don't have to keep re-fixing it. They don't have to keep analyzing
Uhhuh, which really ties into the workflows of like, let's also look at the data of what does it tell us.
And where can we improve? And it makes so much sense that outside of work, it's the physical 'cause I personally, I also like organizing a closet or something like that. Like you see at the end of the day, you see the work you did and it looks beautiful. Mm-hmm. And it's just that satisfaction that, that you get from seeing something physical.
Mm-hmm. Um, and same in at work. It makes so much sense that you're saying that. Organizing a workflow. , do you enjoy the companies that are more behind or older systems, processes behind the technology, getting them to 20 26 up to speed, or would you rather be in a company where it's very modernized and they are already up to speed on technology?
Is there, is there a part of you that enjoys taking the old and, creating a new way of doing it? With the modern tools we have now,
I think it would be. Fun to flip the coin and actually learn from others . For once it, it would be really fun to work at a company that was more modern and I could learn new technologies.
Mm-hmm. And bring them to another company. I feel like I've been at most companies where I'm just getting people to use the snip tool. Okay. Or how to build formulas in Excel. And pivot tables. , Because I'm training so many other people to just get a foundation, I wonder sometimes if I'm not continuing to build out my own foundation.
Right. And if I'm letting other technologies pass me up that Yeah, eventually someone's gonna be teaching somebody and say, how do you not know this, Joey? .
So the pieces we already have is one A 50 for 50 split between process driven work and service driven work. Mm-hmm. Then working in a company that's more modern, uses new technology, where it's actually a.
Interesting and fun, new technology or new processes that you get to teach others. Mm-hmm. And then ideally a role , where it's not as much chaos as in your current role is what I'm hearing is mm-hmm. Where they are a little bit more in the current day and age, and you get to be handed a maybe more of a manageable workflow or new project that is then where you get to organize or structure the workflow.
And then also get to maintain that for a while.
Yeah, I agree.
Others that you get to learn
from. Yep. Great summary.
Yeah. When you think about this ideal role, what would be the funnest parts of that job that you'd be already looking forward to? Like what do you picture yourself doing on a day-to-day basis?
That would be just super fun.
Really like tracking things in spreadsheets. I like tracking progress towards completion. Mm-hmm. I like to see when others. Get excited about something working out.
Yeah,
and
I like to see when others are motivated.
Mm-hmm.
I've been somewhat on the fence about a managerial role just because the human element is so unpredictable. Mm-hmm. But I do believe someone that's in a manager role can influence that motivation for someone to understand the goal and how they fit within the goal. And I, just thinking back to what I was explaining earlier.
Getting an opportunity as a manager to have that opinion or opportunity to make decisions of who's working on what and when.
Mm-hmm.
Planning that work, planning the full-time employee, planning the. Amount of hours that are going to take to do something. That would be really fun. Oh, I can imagine. So that really ties into
the workforce planning.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah. And I can see you doing really well in a manager role. I mean, yes, manager roles also comes with the challenges, but you'd be a manager where everything would be organized. There wouldn't be any confusion about who is doing what and when and how. Right. Like it would be a structured system and process.
People love that. Right. And you are great at teaching. Mm-hmm. Um, to really important qualities of a manager. Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah.
We need more clear
managers
in this world. Exactly.
And when you think about your current work, what feels like the heaviest lift?
You already mentioned that it's getting people to buy in, which is obviously. Probably exerting a lot of energy for mm-hmm. Little forward movement. Um, is there anything else where you're like, that just zaps my energy? I can do it, I can do it well, but whew. That is taking the energy out of me. Mm-hmm.
Um, actually having to repeat myself a lot.
It is where I find myself just in training that does happen. Oh yeah. And. Not everybody receives information the same way, so you have to repeat yourself, but you're saying the same thing in a different way and or a lot of the time, folks need that one-on-one training. Mm-hmm.
So you're
meeting with people directly one-on-one and saying the same thing over and over again when you could get away with a group.
Training and say the same thing once, but people get distracted by others and they think, oh, well if that person understands it, I'll just go connect with that person after this. So it's a lot of repetition
that
gets
exhausting. Oh yeah. I can imagine that being exhausting. Mm-hmm. Do you think that has something to do with the level or the types of employees that you interacting with?
Mm-hmm. I
do, so. I, I'm a very kind employee and colleague. I'm a very knowledgeable employee and colleague, but I don't have that authority.
I'm not a manager title. Yeah. So I don't have that credibility always. Yeah. And it's especially hard when another leader who does have the authority mm-hmm. Is contradictory. Yeah. So, yeah. That is a big drainer
as well. Oh, a hundred percent. And that's. Two things that really play into is one, the repetition, and from what I'm gathering, it sounds like you do really enjoy teaching and seeing it click, but it's like there's no forward momentum. You're just repeating the same thing over and over and over. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Then on top of that, you don't have that authority in your title. And then a manager who does contradict you. Mm-hmm. So, exactly.
It's then you're teaching and they're like, well, we don't care what she says because the manager says something different. Right. So being in a role where you actually have the authority and credibility to mm-hmm. Make decisions and share information and be taken serious, that might also be a really big change.
Right. And I've heard from other managers, they'll tell me, . Just because you have the authority doesn't mean that they'll always listen to you and or just because you have a manager title, would that mean that you're trying to influence them any differently? And while I don't think I would have a very different leading style in a non-manager role versus a manager role.
I genuinely do believe that the authority. Does allow people to fall into place a little bit quicker. Yeah. Um, so while I understand what I'm being told of,, they don't always, employees may not always listen to you, even if you are a manager and have that authority. I see it. Yes. And so that's kind of confusing to me.
Yeah. And I agree with you. I mean, yes, you can lead without the title. You can be a leader without the title, but also as a manager, the manager is directly responsible for your career. They can make or break your career if they want to. Mm-hmm. So. . They're writing a performance review.
They're responsible for your raises. They can advocate for you or they cannot advocate for you. They can make your life easier. They can make like your life harder. Mm-hmm. So there is tangible things that a manager has control over that automatically. Yeah. I I It makes it more likely people listen to them.
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So there is definitely something to, yes, you can show all these leadership qualities, but I agree with you that there is that extra credibility or authority that comes with having the title and the decision making authority.
Exactly.
And the decision making authority is big too.
Um, because if a manager makes a decision, people have to follow it. Mm-hmm. Or if they change their decision. Exactly. , There's only so much you can do. Right. Which you don't have that same authority if you don't have the title. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think your, your reality and what you're perceiving is correct.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I need that. Yes, you're welcome. And there might also be a slight difference in different companies, company cultures. , But overall I do think. Your perception is very much true too. The reality. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome.
So , after we get off the call, I will send you a recap email and I'll include some job titles that I feel would be very aligned, not Oh, I would love that. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome.
How do you feel? Good. Like I said at the beginning of the call, I have been looking forward to this meeting. Um, I'm someone that just really soaks up clarity and I can find myself sometimes wondering what's the next move?
And I'm very ambitious and motivated, but. Don't always know the next step. , So I've had to kind of stumble and figure it out, and it's almost like swimming through concrete to figure it out that yes, I'm a millennial and I just want it to happen right away, but I don't step back and enjoy the journey.
I just want to know and I just want to see the progress Yes. That I want to get through. Yeah. Um, and have that clarity.
So, yeah. That makes so much sense. Yeah. It's coming. It's coming. Mm-hmm. Yes. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for your time.
So let's unpack what just happened because there was a really important shift in this conversation. The biggest breakthrough moment in that session was that showy realized she doesn't just like organizing things. But that she wants to organize work people and workflows and yeah, that might sound subtle, but that is a completely different career path.
Before that moment, she was describing tasks that she's good at, responsibilities she's taken on, things she's done in different roles. After that moment, she started describing how she wants to contribute, how she wants work to function, and the role she actually wants to play inside a team or organization.
That shift from what I do to how I create value, that is where clarity happens, and most people never make that shift, which is often the reason that they stay stuck. Even when they're super ambitious and talented and capable. So let's talk about why this matters so much because this is about you, not just about Joey.
And I would bet that you don't lack skills either. Joey didn't. She's analytical process oriented, great at improving systems, a strong communicator and capable of teaching others. But what she lacked was direction. She didn't yet have a clear understanding of how those skills come together, of what kind of role actually uses them at the highest level and what kind of work would energize her long term.
And this is, we are so many ambitious women get stuck because when you're good at many things, you become useful everywhere, but very likely aligned nowhere. And being useful is not the same as being fulfilled. And the second thing that really stood out to me is that Joey's energy was giving us all the information we needed.
It was crystal clear that she's drained by repeating herself, by the lack of alignment from leadership, by training people without authority and by doing work that didn't move forward. And she was clearly energized by structuring workflows, planning work across people, tracking progress, and seeing things actually move and improve.
And this is the most important takeaway I want you to remember. Your energy is the most important thing to pay attention to. What energizes you at work? What fills your inner battery? Where do you feel motivated and energized after you did that task for a while? And where do you feel drained? And we want to find work that revolves around the things that energize us, because that is where we gonna make the biggest, most significant impact.
And this is where our growth opportunities lie. But most people ignore this type of data because they're taught to prioritize what they should be doing instead of paying attention to what actually makes them come alive.
Now, let's zoom out because Joey's situation is not unique. It's actually a pattern I see all the time. It usually looks like this. You enter a role where things are a little chaotic. You naturally organize things, fix inefficiencies, create structure, and improve how things work. You become the go-to person, people rely on you.
But then over time, something starts to feel off because instead of moving into more strategic work, you get stuck doing support work, cleanup work, repeated execution, and you start to feel under leveraged, frustrated, and unclear about what's next. For Joey, the really important shift is going to be moving from doing the work to designing the work, and that is gonna be her core transformation. So if you now zoom outs on Joey specifically, what can became really clear is that she's not just good at organizing. She's actually wired for three things.
First systems and structures. She's clearly energized by turning chaos into order. Hello, essentialist, cleaning up messy data and building systems that actually work. The second are workflow and planning. She lights up when she's talking about tracking progress, planning who does what and when, and creating accountability through structure.
And the third piece is the teaching and human enablement. She loves helping people succeed by specifically giving them clarity that they can work within, not by convincing them or pushing them, but by creating the system that they can be successful in. And then when you combine those three things, you get a very specific type of role, roles where you are designing workflows, structuring how teams operate.
Planning capability and execution and enabling others to do really great work. And this is what translates into roles like workforce planning, process improvement, operations, and capacity planning. But notice Joey didn't come into the session saying that in the beginning. She said, I'm good at a lot of things.
I feel stuck. I don't know what my next step is. And by the end, we could clearly see the direction. And that is the power of naming the pattern and translating the pattern into a direction that makes sense. Now, let's bring that back to you if you want to start getting this kind of clarity for yourself.
Here's a simple exercise you can do, and I'm gonna have it download so that you don't have to write these questions down. If you are driving or on the go right now, I want you to answer four questions. What problems do you naturally fix without even being asked? What part of that do you actually enjoy the most?
What part of it drains you or feels repetitive or boring? And if you only did the energizing part. What would that role actually look like? And your free download for this worksheet can be found on career bloom coaching.com/episode 88. We are also gonna link that in the show notes in this is exactly what I did.
Was Joey, just in the conversation, we didn't invent anything new. But we did identify the pattern that already existed within her draw, drew it out, and then translate it into a direction that makes sense when you're going through the worksheet and doing that work yourself. Please be gentle and patient with yourself.
This isn't as easy when you do it on your own because a lot of times we are too close to ourselves to see it clearly, and this is where a great coach comes in and can be extremely impactful. Here's what I want to leave you with for today.
Clarity, most definitely doesn't come from thinking harder, from overthinking, from analysis paralysis, and thinking more. Clarity comes from seeing yourself in action, recognizing your patterns, and then putting a language to how you naturally create value. Clarity isn't just about figuring out what you're good at, but it is about understanding what energizes you, understanding how you create value, and then building your career around that.
If you're someone who feels like Joey capable, driven, but unclear on your next step, and maybe you've been thinking this is exactly the support I would need, then you don't have to figure this out alone. You can book a free career clarity call with me and we'll work through your situation together. The link for that is also in the show note.
And of course, don't forget to join me again next week on another episode full of insights, inspiration, and action advice on a finding a career you love because you shouldn't, and you truly do not have to settle. Keep chasing what makes you come alive, and I'll see you back here next week on Career Clarity Unlocked.
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Career Clarity Unlocked, if you feeling stuck in that. What's next? Spiral and are ready to finally break free. Let's chat. You can book your free career clarity call where we'll uncover what's really important to you. Tackle any obstacles holding you back and map out your best next step.
Schedule your free 30 minute call today on career bloom coaching.com and before you head out, be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode. If today's conversation gave you new insights and inspiration, please leave a review. It really helps us reach more amazing listeners like you.
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