Even though she is being pulled in a lot of directions and very busy, Carrie is happy. “I know I’m in the right place.”
Customer Journey Series: Carrie
Carrie is a finance executive who came to coaching during a career transition. Over the years that followed, she navigated new roles, organizational change, layoffs, difficult bosses, and periods of uncertainty.
Her journey explores self-leadership, resilience, confidence, and learning to take ownership of her own growth.
Each post in this series examines a real coaching conversation or leadership challenge from Carrie’s journey.
This is the fifth post in Carrie’s series.
Carrie stuck it out with her terrible boss for another 5 months while the team that she had been asked to apply for came together. She was finally reassigned in March. This team was solidly in the same function where she had built skills for years.
Her boss appreciated her, and she had matured. She knew how to challenge herself. She knew how to challenge her team. She knew not to complain but when to ask for what she needed.
As she started getting back to work where she felt more valued, I asked her what lessons she wanted to take forward from the last year:
- Build my network. We have shake-ups every year, and I need others to see my value and know my work. I especially have to focus on building relationships and visibility above me.
- Be confident in my abilities. Control my insecurities when I report up to people at my boss’s level and above. As a first generation American, I sometimes feel I don’t belong, and I need to control that. I’ve earned my place here.
- Have high work ethics. Go above and beyond. Challenge myself and bring new ideas to the team.
- Take time to help others. Mentoring others helps your own visibility and adds value to the team.
- Be respectful and treat everyone fairly, even when things are stressful. Be empathetic and compassionate for whatever they are going through.
These leadership values helped her stay productive, approachable, authentic, and challenging in a good way. Defining them really helped her mature and become steadier as a leader. When things were stressful, a glance at her list of values settled her down and focused her. She knew how she wanted to show up for others.
As she became more established on the team, she learned how to mature as a leader.
“My boss needs to see me push the agenda, and I’m learning to get out of the weeds,” she said. Her first task was to close out an audit. It was very complicated technically and had to comply with a number of regulatory rules.
Instead of doing the work herself, she managed her two team members and reviewed their work. She encouraged them to improve where she found errors or omissions. She praised their good work.
She did the same for a few people she leveraged in other departments who had to contribute.
By staying out of the weeds, she was able to keep track of a lot of different pieces of the puzzle while getting the work done.
Once the audit was done, she compiled a list of other projects she wanted to push forward, and brought it to her boss to ensure alignment.
She wanted to start working on an understanding of processes and controls in regions, APAC and LATAM.
She also wanted to understand procedures and how to escalate. She felt that a lot of people had problems and didn’t know where to check, and so she added doing training for other departments to the list.
Her boss also noted that he wanted her in charge of conflicts of interest. He suggested that she develop some scenarios and develop papers and training for that area too. She was excited to dig into this new area.
Carrie continued to coach once a month. It was helpful for her to feel like she had someone solidly on her team, encouraging her to grow, stretch, and believe in herself.
“Sometimes when I get into a situation where I’m second guessing myself, I hear your voice in my head encouraging me, helping me feel confident and stay curious, pushing me to push myself. It helps me keep going especially when things get rough.”
“Overall,” she said, “Even though I’m being pulled in a lot of directions and I’m busy, I’m happy. I know I’m in the right place and I can bring value and feel like I’m contributing something of value to the world.”
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