Work It Like A Mum
Work It Like A Mum
Taking Control: How to Reclaim Career Confidence and Balance Life
Have you ever felt unsure of how to regain control of your career while juggling the demands of family life? Or wondered how to boost your confidence in the workplace, especially after a significant life change like becoming a parent?
In this episode, we sit down with Nicola Semple , a seasoned Career and Confidence Coach and author of The Career Confidence Toolkit: Take Control of Your Career and Fulfil Your Potential. Nicola has guided countless professionals in taking charge of their career paths and achieving fulfilment, all while balancing the demands of everyday life.
What We Cover:
From Big Four to Balance: Nicola shares her decision to leave corporate life after becoming a mother and transition into self-employment for better work-life harmony.
Building Your Stay Plan: Nicola offers tips on how to make the most of your current job while preparing for future growth, especially in today’s uncertain economic climate.
-Boosting Career Confidence & Balance: Learn how Nicola helps clients set boundaries, avoid burnout, and find fulfilling work aligned with their values.
-The Journey from Consultant to Coach: Nicola reflects on her career shift and how she discovered her passion for coaching.
Empowering Growth: Discover Nicola’s coaching philosophy, which helps people take control of their careers and find satisfaction in their roles.
Why You Should Listen:
Whether you're navigating your return to work post-maternity leave, seeking to balance career goals with family life, or simply looking for practical tips to boost your career confidence, this episode is packed with insights. Nicola’s journey from corporate life to coaching is a story of resilience, self-discovery, and finding fulfilment both in and outside work.
Book - Nicola Semple - Career and Confidence Coach
The Career Confidence Podcast Podcast Series – Apple Podcasts
Website-Home - Nicola Semple - Career and Confidence Coach
Listen now for a candid and empowering conversation on taking control of your career and finding happiness in your work.
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Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life. I'm a working mom with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community. In this show, I'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business. They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance. We cover it all. Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school. So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, make sure you're cosy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays. This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast. This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women. Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers. Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you. They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job? Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity. Now back to the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to this week's episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast. Today I'm delighted because I'm chatting with Nicola Semple, who is a career and confidence coach. She has recently published the book the Career Confidence Toolkit Take Control of your Career and Fulfill your Potential. Nicola is an ex Big Four consultant. She's passionate about helping people find happiness and fulfillment in their work and she's now worked with hundreds of professionals to help them take ownership of their careers and fulfill their potential. She's also the host of the Career Confidence Podcast and the creator of the you Are Enough coaching cards. Thank you so much, nicola, for joining me today. Today I'm really excited because we're going to be talking about a topic that I know is going to be helpful to so many people listening about how to take control of your career while juggling life and family. So welcome to the podcast, nicola, hello, hello.
Speaker 2:It's very, very good to be here. I've been listening to the podcast for a while and it's wonderful to actually be speaking with you today.
Speaker 1:I mean you. I mean this is a busy week, fiona, because we're recording it now and your book is out on Wednesday. So I think, well, by the time the podcast is released, it should be out. But what prompted you to want to?
Speaker 2:write a book? Great question, and actually I should say, when I told my mum I was writing this book, she said well, are you not shooting yourself in the foot? Nobody will come and work with you if you've already written it all down. And actually so the reason for writing the book is twofold. One, I know that not everyone is in a position to be able to work one-to-one with a career coach and lots of free content on LinkedIn and through my podcast, but I wanted to have another way of helping people, to help them start to get that clarity and that focus that they want, and so that was really the driving force behind writing the book so that, if people aren't in a position to work one-to-one with someone, they still have access to those resources and to get that help. And the other thing, for those who might be thinking about working with me, then it's an opportunity for them to get to know me a little bit better, because if you read the book, you very much get a sense of who I am and what I'm like to work with.
Speaker 2:It's certainly not AI generated career confidence content. There's definitely a lot of my personality shining through and to the extent that my editor contacted me and said you're gonna have to take out the Spice Girls quotes because you have to. You have to pay royalties for that. So, yeah, what were gonna be some of the quotes? Tell me what you want, what you really, really want. What's your zig-a-zig-a? So yeah, that's very much the style of the book, so it will help people to get to know me a little bit better. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So what made you want to leave the Big Four and become a career and confidence coach?
Speaker 2:So my self-employment journey has been a real evolution. I had my kids, so my eldest is nearly 15. The working world was very different 15 years ago. The working world was very different 15 years ago. So when I got to the end of my maternity leave with her, I had been working on a project that was it was a global project, and the programme manager said to me well, we know you won't be able to travel very far, so we'll give you I think it was France, belgium and Holland as the countries that you'll look after. It was France, belgium and Holland as the countries that you'll look after. And then you know you won't have to have quite such a long travel time and travel journey. And this was in the time before we're so used to operating on Zoom and online and on Teams. But that wasn't the case 15 years ago.
Speaker 2:So I was staring into a future where I just had this baby. We lived in London, didn't have any family around to support us, and I was just thinking how on earth are we going to manage this? How do we both work full time and quite full on jobs and manage to juggle having a family as well? And so I made the decision at the time that I was going to be the one that would go self-employed, so that I had the flexibility that I needed to be able to allow us to have the family life that we wanted to have. So I started out. I was coaching, but I didn't realise I was coaching. So I set up an agency supporting women who were making the decision about whether or not to return to work after their maternity leave, and it was very much coaching based, but I don't think at the time I really realised that it was coaching. Yeah, so was this 15 years ago then yeah, and so from there, lots of people were asking me how I had set that business up and I then transitioned into supporting people to set up their own business, so working with solopreneurs and people who wanted to work flexibly around their family. Again, that evolved in that we started to take formal coaching qualifications to help best equip me to serve my clients.
Speaker 2:Then we got to the point where COVID hit and, if I'm quite honest, business dried up because small business owners were not in a position to be paying for that level of support. But at the same time, I had a lot of ex-colleagues get in contact with me saying you know, we're really starting to get a sense of perspective in terms of being at home, either being on furlough or just in lockdown, and I'm not sure that this is the career that I want to continue to have when we come through the other end of this. Can you coach me?
Speaker 2:And then it was like a natural evolution for my business, moving away from supporting the small business owners to actually going back and helping people in corporate, people who were just like me kind of 10, 11 years before, and helping them unravel the career quandaries that they had going on in their heads. And for some of them that meant changing career or for some of them it just meant having a shift in perspective and looking at their career through a different lens so that they could make sure that they were getting what they wanted from it. And then over the past three years, that that's really where the bulk of my work is coming from. It's supporting people with those career decisions and also increasingly working with organizations to help them develop and retain their talent. I'm finding more and more that people really want, or organizations really want, to help support their people to to have that fulfilling career so that they can go to work and genuinely enjoy the work that they're doing and feel like they're making a contribution.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting. So I mean, what sort of stories are people coming to you with now? Then, you know, is there some common themes, common threads about why people are a bit confused about their career and how they've got to this point?
Speaker 2:So a big thing that I'm doing at the moment with people is helping them develop what I'm calling their stay plan. It's not their exit plan, it's their stay plan. So you know, we're recording this right in the middle of a cost of living crisis. People are hesitant sometimes to be leaving the security of the job that they're in, yeah, but they're also really unhappy in that job, and so I'm. I've been working with them to develop what I call their stay plan, which is the okay.
Speaker 2:How can you make the most of the opportunity you've got in front of you at the moment? How can you make sure that you're getting the development that you need to be able to take your career in the direction you might want to take it in a few years time? Or how can you get better balance? Because perhaps the issue with them at the moment is that they're just working all the time and they're feeling, you know, overwhelmed, they're on the path to burnout. How do we help you get better balance? And a lot of that is about people having accountability and having that ongoing relationship where I can say to them on a fortnightly, monthly basis okay, what, what's going on? Because it can be very easy to say, oh, I'm going to work less hours, but then you get sucked into.
Speaker 1:You get requests, you get emails. You get. You know your boss messages.
Speaker 2:You you know five o'clock Friday and you're like no and so it's how do you put the boundaries in place and actually communicate those boundaries and I'm pretty much there holding their hand and helping them to do that so that they can eventually get that balance that they're looking for yeah, because it's not.
Speaker 1:I mean as a recruiter, I mean it's obviously jobs, but I know it's not as buoyant the job market as it maybe was this time last, you know last year. So it probably is good to develop a bit of a stay plan, unless you are desperate to leave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know it's. Every person's decision is individual to them, and there will be reasons why people have got to a point of no, I absolutely have to go, like I just can't be in this environment anymore, or there will be reasons why people decide to stay. And what I hear quite a lot is that people might not enjoy the content of the work that they do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they enjoy the lifestyle it gives them Because they've got quite competent in their job now. You mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They can do things quite quickly when the minimum stakes Okay, and helping them acknowledge that and realise that that's okay mean and yeah, take quite quick, they can do things quite quickly when the minimum stakes okay and helping them acknowledge that and realize that that's okay, like that's absolutely okay.
Speaker 2:It can be quite uh, or people can get a real sense of relief from that, because why do a?
Speaker 1:lot of people come to you because they feel they maybe they're finding their job too easy and therefore they think they need a new challenge.
Speaker 2:That potentially, yeah, you know they can come for a whole host of reasons, but it's like I like, am I really should I be pushing myself more? Because, you know, we've got this well in society, we have this whole. We've got to keep striving, we've got to keep working, we've got to push, push, push. And sometimes it's the right thing to do and sometimes it's not, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. I know we're going to cover here, like, obviously, the topic how to take control of your career while juggling life and family. And you know, some of the topics I hope you're going to dive into is like seasons of your career, when's a good time to progress at the same pace or not, and capacity what's your current capacity, etc. So it's really interesting how do you get comfortable, maybe, with feeling like you're staying stuck?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I don't think it's about being comfortable with staying stuck. Yeah, sorry, I probably phrased that all wrong. No, no, no, but what I? What I often do with people is get them to think about the season of their career that they're in, as you've just mentioned. So, like, think about the seasons of the year. There are times when things grow, and they grow rapidly, and there are times when we have to take a rest. Yeah, and the same is true within our career.
Speaker 2:So I know that a lot of people that listen to your podcast are parents and potentially have just returned from work after a first, second, third maternity leave, and actually it's about really thinking about what season of my life am I in? Yeah, so you're not going to be able to progress your career at the same speed at all points in your career, and so it's thinking about right, well, what season am I in just now? Am I in more of that quiet period within my career where I need to just hunker down and get on with stuff rather than trying to press ahead? Push ahead, have those big challenges or actually, have I got loads of support at home? Have I got brilliant child care? Have I got people that are going to pick up the slack in other areas of my life and then I can really focus on my career. I can be in that spring summer period where things are flourishing and pushing ahead and moving forward so do people get nervous?
Speaker 1:they're coming to you that, if they choose, you know the form of where they think. Do you know what? Life is busy and and you know we, life is busy for all of us and I 100% get that and therefore maybe we need to hunker down. There is a danger, particularly for women, that then they end up being sidelined and put on a mummy track their entire career, and I wonder if that's a fear.
Speaker 2:I think it can be to a certain extent, but it's also about helping people to look holistically about what does success look like for them now? Success will look like different things for different people and at different phases of their career. So if success is making sure that you are staying on the radar for the promotions and you know, let's say, being on a director track rather than a mummy track, then they absolutely need to put the focus in to do that. But they also need to acknowledge and appreciate that they're going to need a lot of support to make that happen. They can't do it on their own, and by support I don't just mean support internally within the organisation. I mean they need support at home. People put so much pressure on themselves to excel at work while juggling young children, and it absolutely can be done. But don't fool yourself that you're going to be able to do it all by yourself. You're going to need support, and good support that you can rely on.
Speaker 1:So what support would you advise to your clients to get in?
Speaker 2:place. So I think the most underrated part of anyone's career network is their home support network. So I'm talking about the childminder, I'm talking about the cleaner, I'm talking about the person that comes to mow your grass every couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:And you know, I've got a cleaner and someone I'm going to say I've got a cleaner and I've got someone that mows my lawn every two weeks, and you know what? That's brilliant, because that means the weekend isn't like mine.
Speaker 2:A million percent. But if you think that you're going to be on and I'm going to say director track, because that's the language that's used in the industry that I predominantly work in but if you think that you can be on director track, maintain business as usual in your working environment and then do everything else at home, you are going to run yourself into the ground. And on the topic of cleaner I've my cleaner's been coming to me for about 10 years and she I tell her all the time I could not do my job in the way that I do my job if she didn't come yeah, and I think it's just that pressure, you know.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just that I don't have to do it and it just takes that whole weight off your shoulder yeah, and I know that not everybody can afford to have a cleaner, but also and again for the people that I work with who tend to work in professional services, they generally can't afford it, because it's about making choices. It's not that they just don't have the money at all, it's that they might be spending it on other things yeah, I mean, I only have mine once a fortnight, but that's enough to take that pressure off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ours only comes once a fortnight because, quite frankly, I can't get the place tidy every week. So I don't know, the thought of having to have the place tidy every single week is too much. But I tell you, every second Friday afternoon I walk out of my office door and I'm just like, oh, this is just so lovely. It is, yeah, absolute delight. But, as you say, it then means I don't have to do it at the weekend. Yeah, and for people who are busy and trying to take control of their career and managing that whole juggle, get yourself some help. There's no prizes for doing it all by yourself, and help doesn't. When you think about help, it doesn't necessarily have to be directly related to your career. What where in your life can you get some help that will take the pressure off and then that will allow you more time, energy and attention to actually focus on your work?
Speaker 1:yeah. So what about those people that are in that phase of life and it might because they're children, it might be, you know, looking after elderly parents who have whatever, where they're hunkering down at work. Maybe they're not focused on that promotion, they're just going to work hard, do their job. Then they've got off, go home but say in a couple years time, they now you know they decide they, you know want to go time. They now you know they decide they, you know, want to go off. That moment you know you want me tracking a bit of comments want to start going for that role. What advice do you give to them about, like, putting their hand up now and, you know, maybe changing that perception of them?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think there's a few things there. The first thing is don't just wait until that time. Yes, until that time comes. Think about, while you are hunkering down, you can still be building your personal brand. You can still be telling people about the great work that you're doing and I think, sweeping stereotype but I think as women, we are less inclined to be telling people about the great work that we're doing. We're more likely just to be getting our head down and getting on with it, because you know who has time for any of that.
Speaker 2:But actually you need to find time for that. So it's carving out little pockets of time and it could be like it could be as simple as going to a networking event once a year. Right, it doesn't doesn't need to be something that takes up heaps of your time. Or you've completed a project and you've done it really well. Just drop a note to your manager or your manager's manager and just let them know how it's gone.
Speaker 2:Just anything you can do to kind of sprinkle the breadcrumbs, sow the seeds, so that people have an awareness of who you are, so that people have an awareness of who you are even if you're not directly on the radar for promotion and for progressing in that way. But when you get to the time, when you make that decision and you go right, do you know what? I now have the capacity to do more and to be more. It is, first of all, making the decision, because a lot of people can be quite half-hearted and oh, yeah, yeah, maybe I would, maybe I could, I'm not too sure. You've got to make the decision and then you've got to commit to.
Speaker 1:I guess there's no shame. Keep like in that home, cream down mentality, you know absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 2:And the other point on this is and I know, I know this is really hard but just don't compare yourself to what others are doing.
Speaker 2:So if you've got a colleague and you're in similar situations where your kids are roughly the same age and you might look at them and think, oh my God, they're doing so much more than me, you can really see that they've got their eye on that next promotion and they're giving it their all and you're thinking I just don't think I can do that. That's okay. And it's so hard not, I know it's hard to to not compare ourselves. You're on your track and they're on their track, and so do your best to put your blinkers on and stay on on the track that you're on. And also, you've got no idea what's going on in the background for them, because while they might be the swan that is gliding along the pond, but underneath is paddling furiously, trying to keep up with everything, and you also don't know the level of support they've got. Like, we just cannot compare ourselves to other people and so, yeah, just be very clear that you are on your own path how do you get comfortable then, being on your own path?
Speaker 1:you've got any tips for people you know and, as a business, then this is also something that you know. I I'm guilty of comparing myself to other business owners. You know it's not just, I guess, um exclusive to employees yeah.
Speaker 2:So we we touched on this briefly earlier about that question of what does success look like to you? Yeah, but there's two stages to this. It took me a long while to understand this. There's a difference between writing down what success looks like to you and then really owning that. That's what success looks like to you because you can write it down. You can write down and say you know, success to me looks like, I don't know, being home for bath time four nights a week and you're having that balance. But if you don't own that, when you're getting home for bath time you're then thinking, oh, I should be at that networking event or I shouldn't have left the client's site so early, because they'll they'll wonder what's going on. But it's, it's been really confident about it and it's saying you know, this is what's important to me and this is making a decision and then being comfortable with that decision and being present then in that decision Exactly exactly, and I know.
Speaker 2:When I first started my business, my version of success was that I wanted to be able to work flexibly and I wanted to be around as much as possible for my young family. But then what I was doing was, when I was being flexible and being around for my young family, feeling really resentful that I wasn't spending more time in my business. I've had that, you know yeah, I.
Speaker 1:And then I'm a bit resentful of my husband that had a full-time job. Yeah, oh, why does he get to do all this time on his work and mine's all in snatch little moments and exactly, and I I talk about not certainly not now, but in the early days.
Speaker 2:I would say that I had built a business in the margins, so it was kind of like everything by that. So everything that I was doing was kind of round about other people and round about other people's needs, okay, but when I really thought about it, it was making sure that we could have the family life that I wanted. That was really my measure of success. I had to get to a point of really owning that and really admitting to myself that, yeah, that is what's most important, and then saying to other people yeah, that's what's most important. So that means that my business isn't going to move as quickly as I would like it to. That's okay.
Speaker 2:And I even went through a phase of saying things like that but not meaning it like I would say it. I could hear myself saying it, but deep down inside I didn't believe it. Yeah, and it was only when I got to the point of really believing it, really really embodying what my version of success was, that I was like, yeah, this is fine, this is, this is all OK, and so that that's what I would really encourage people to do Figure out what success looks like to you and get comfortable with it, and then after that nothing else really matters.
Speaker 1:That's really good advice. I'm pleased you said that and yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? And I wonder as well if, like you felt, I've definitely felt this. I know that people feel like this mum girl when they're working and they're not being, like you know, with their children etc. And actually I feel a little bit better about things since putting my children in a bit more after-school clubs and having that.
Speaker 1:And actually I feel a little bit better about things since putting my children in a bit more after-school clubs and having that and actually I feel I'm much a better parent than in that time I have with them because I can be more present and I haven't gotten so much work to catch up on. But that took me a long time to get to that point because I had a stay-at-home mum and you know she'd have always been there at 3, 3, 30, whatever it was picking up and would never have dreamt of putting us in after school. But and actually it took a long time to sort of realise what's right for us as a family. It's different than what it was like when I was growing up and it's back to that thing of you can't.
Speaker 2:You can't do everything all by yourself. So you know, it was interesting Over during the COVID period and then certainly after COVID. What I would notice at school pickup were the amount of parents, and there were then a lot of dads on the school pickup that had never been there before, but there were a lot of parents who were picking up and you could see that they were on calls, they were on work calls. Now, that's not something that would have happened pre-covid, I don't think, and I think we've we've kind of got to this point of more people are working from home. Therefore, kids can be picked up at 3, 3, 30, but then what's the impact of that? The impact is that the parent is then trying to juggle working at the same time as having their kids around, and actually is that right for anyone?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's actually really stressful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. No, some people can make it work, some people can't, but there is nothing wrong with using child care so that you can work.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, really good point and it took me a long time to get there. I mean, I did you. I'm actually going to go to nursery, so but you know, it's that whole. Oh, I think it's very hard. It's this mindset thing, isn't it? When you have been brought up in a certain way, and obviously that is so deep down, isn't it in your subconscious of what a family life should look like?
Speaker 2:but the opposite. So my mum didn't really work, so she she worked um. She was a college lecturer and she would lecture at evening classes rather than during the day.
Speaker 2:Until I was born so I'm the youngest of four when I was four years old, my mum went back to work full-time yeah and so my upbringing was quite different to my brothers and sister yeah, in that that they'd had her around all the time, and so I spent a lot of time, not so much in childcare, but with grandparents, all right, and I was absolutely determined that that was not going to be the case for my children.
Speaker 2:So, you know, your upbringing does have an impact on you, but it can sometimes be the opposite from what you want it or you reject it, isn't it but the the interesting thing is I was talking to my kids it was only about a month ago, yeah and talking about how they hadn't gone to nursery when they were babies and how they'd always been picked up from school, and they were like, oh, really oh, and they like they don't remember any of it.
Speaker 1:So, so, while at the time, like we're having this whatever decision you make, you do you think oh, is it the right decision or is the wrong decision?
Speaker 2:we're having this major stress and the kids don't even remember it. You just think, wow, maybe, maybe I should have been sending you off five days a week.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's just how are you juggling the business then?
Speaker 2:when you first started, Were you just doing it after they'd gone to bed At the very very beginning it was like nap times, nap times once they'd gone to bed, but then they went to nursery. They didn't go to nursery full time, but they then which? When I look back on it now, I just think oh my God, I must have been so tired all the time. It must have been, and you forget. You very quickly forget about it. But yeah, it was done, as I said before in the margins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's actually one of the topics you've said we're going to cover is managing, maintaining, not managing, maintaining your self-belief when you're knackered and feeling like you're being pulled in a million directions.
Speaker 2:So what would be your advice to those people that are really in the trenches with toddlers, babies and oh, first of all, I send you my love, I send you my support because I've been there and I know how hard it is.
Speaker 2:Um, what I always recommend to people is to start to create a file like a happy file and it can either be a notebook that you keep or a file on your laptop but start recording all your achievements, all the things that you've actually managed to do, and also keep a note of positive feedback that you get, so that when you have those moments of oh god, I just can't do this anymore or it's just not worth it, go back and look at it and remind yourself of all the brilliant things that you've already done and I'm not talking. You can put the big achievements on there. You know the projects delivered or whatever the outcomes you've had at work, but it could be. I managed to get everybody's shoes on and out the door by eight o'clock this morning, because there will be days when that is an achievement in itself and it's really. If you can do that, along with being really clear on what success looks like to you.
Speaker 2:Get your blinkers on so that you're not comparing yourself to other people and I know that's easier said than done yeah then you're more likely to be able to have that sense of self-belief and really know that you can handle whatever's thrown at you and I guess everything's just a phase, isn't it?
Speaker 1:now your children are at high school. I mean, I was gonna. I was gonna ask the question that everyone probably asked and you know probably hate. Like, does it get easier?
Speaker 2:it gets easier but it gets different, right.
Speaker 2:So there are just different demands on my time now.
Speaker 2:So, as we were saying before we started recording, I now in school holidays, I have to plan out my working time around who needs dropped off and picked up from where. So there will be time blocked out my diary and it's just like half an hour slots when I need to make sure that I've not got clients booked in, because I know that somebody needs to be dropped at gymnastics or that you know somebody needs to be dropped at a basketball club or whatever it might be, and tweens, teens, are not very good at remembering to tell you where they need to be at certain times, so it takes quite a lot of communication. But certainly, oh my goodness, so so much easier. So you know well, we're recording this on a school day and there's nobody in the house. But even if there wasn't and the kids were around, I could comfortably come on record this podcast and know that nobody's going to knock on my door, because they know if the door's shut you don't come in. So yeah, so much easier, I promise.
Speaker 1:Oh good well, mine are at school now and it's definitely I mean they're younger than yours, but it does. Like you know, we are recording this on a school day.
Speaker 2:It's nice and quiet in the house, but there for years for years you would be or I would be in complete tenderhooks thinking is somebody going to walk through that door?
Speaker 1:yeah, but no, it does get. It does get slightly easier. Um, another thing you mentioned is about focusing on what you can control, because obviously some things you know are out of control. You're trying to work maybe and the toddler comes in they've wet their knickers or you know they're covered in jam or whatever. How can you focus on what you can?
Speaker 2:control. So it sounds overly simplistic, but it really is about letting go of that stuff that you can't control. So if we go back to the promotion example now, whether you're going hell for leather with your career or not, if you're about to be or you would like to be promoted, there will be certain things that you can do that will help you to be promoted.
Speaker 1:What would those be? That'd be interesting to know so well.
Speaker 2:Again, it's going to very much depend on the individual situation and the role that you're going into, um, but telling people about the great work that you're doing, making people aware. So the absolute foundation is always do good work right. We're going to take that as a given, because if you're not doing good work then you can't expect to be promoted to the next level. But you've got to demonstrate that you can already operate at that next level up, and so anything you can do to show that you can make that shift, and it's then making the people that need to know aware of the work that you're doing yeah, that's good advice and I will say this over and over and over again it is not enough to do good work.
Speaker 2:You've got to let other people know that you're doing good work, because if people don't know, you can be doing the best that you possibly can, but if people don't know about it, then it's pointless.
Speaker 1:That's self-promotion, isn't it? People don't like. Not everybody likes self-promoting, no.
Speaker 2:So there's a brilliant programme called I Am Remarkable. It's a free program If you Google it. If empty listening is interested, Google it and you'll be able to find sessions that are running. I'm one of the facilitators for them and it's completely free to join. It's a 90 minute workshop, predominantly online. You might be able to find one local to you, but they're predominantly run online and it's about helping you to get better at self-promotion.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna put this. I'm gonna put the link of this in the show note. I am remarkable.
Speaker 2:I am remarkable and there is a line in there that I think is a game changer. Yeah, it's not bragging if it's based in fact. So people don't like self-promotion because they don't want to feel like they're bragging about themselves, but if all you're doing is stating a fact, stating something that's true, so I have delivered this outcome at work, I have completed this project You're not bragging about it, you're just telling people what you've done, and so if you can take the emotion out of it and just think about the facts that you're presenting, then it can help you to get much more comfortable with it and also with self-promotion. It's a muscle, right.
Speaker 2:So when you first start going to the gym, it's really painful. You get on, you know whatever machine it is, you get on the treadmill and you try and run and it really really hurts and you can't last more than two minutes. Keep going for a month and you might be able to run for 10 minutes without stopping. Self-promotion is exactly the same. You've just got to build that muscle, and the more that you do it, the more you're going to become comfortable doing it. So actually, here's a challenge for everyone listening what one thing can you do this week to tell other people about the good work that you're doing. I like that. That's really good. What could it be? It could be sending an email to someone, sending a WhatsApp message. It could be I don't know posting on your intranet internally about something that you're doing, something really simple that will let other people know about the good work that you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good, really good advice. What about setting yourself manageable goals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is a good one. Quite often I work with clients who try and set these really massive stretch targets for themselves and I think, particularly when you're in that juggle and you know we're not sure what season everybody's in in their career at this point in time and how much time and energy and attention they've got to actually devote to their career it's about thinking about what actually is possible for me to achieve yeah, and we're not saying that we don't want people to stretch themselves, we absolutely do but also, is it even achievable within the time that you've got available? And being really clear about what you can do.
Speaker 1:Is it helpful to break the goals down? And then you think, okay, this is going to take much longer than I thought. Oh, whatever.
Speaker 2:So the way I get people to look at it is to talk about how do you eat an elephant? You eat it one chunk at a time, so you might have this overall vision of what you want for your career, but it's then breaking it down into right. Well, what are the steps that are going to be required to help you get there? And it's then right. What are the first three things I need to work on and just focus on those, and if you can just focus on those, you're much more likely to get it done than trying to set yourself up with these huge targets that might not even be possible within the time that you've got available.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that, that's really good. We've had so much. We've covered a lot, isn't there? Is there any final words of wisdom you want to share with listeners that you know trying to take control of their career while juggling life and family?
Speaker 2:so the main thing is just figuring out what. What's your season, what's the season you're in, what have you got the capacity to be able to take on at this point in time? So one thing I talk about a lot is think about your capacity in terms of a bucket, and your bucket will be a different size of bucket depending on what else is going on in your life. So for some people their bucket might be, you know, like a big barrel that whiskey is matured in. It's this huge, big, robust barrel, but sometimes it'll be the size of a kid's sandcastle pail. It'll be tiny, and the size of your bucket is heavily dictated by what else is going on in your life what's your physical health like, what's your mental health like, what are the family commitments that you've got. So you know, first of all, what size is your bucket and then it's thinking about being selective about what you put into your bucket so that you are not putting so much in that it's overflowing yeah, that's really good advice.
Speaker 1:Think about your bucket and the size of your bucket, so remind everybody what the book is called, where they can purchase it and where they can find you, connect with you and also your podcast.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. So the best place to get information about me is my website. Just go to Nicola Semple and it's S-E-M-P-L-E not simple as a lot of people. Or I get a lot of letters addressed to so Simple as a lot of people. Or I get a lot of letters addressed to, so it's nicolasemplecom. From there, you'll be able to listen to the podcast, which is the Career Confidence Podcast. You can purchase the book, the Career Confidence Toolkit, on Amazon, and that's both in Kindle and paperback edition. So those are the places you can find me. I also post pretty much most days on LinkedIn, so come and find me there and let's connect brilliant.
Speaker 1:We'll put all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much, nicola, for joining me today. Thanks so much, liz. Thank you for listening to another episode of the work. It like a mum podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend. If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode. You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram. Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.