Navigating a Career Turning Point | Management Tip: Unpacked

22:02It makes me think about one of the first roles that I had coming out of school where I was in a marketing position, but I was also given the responsibility to take care of what was really an administrative task, but was the budgeting for my division. And so that gave me experience from a finance standpoint. Now, I didn't want to be a finance person, but it did give me that experience. So I think the first place to start is to be creative, to see if you can get some on hand finance experience, even if it feels like it's, you know, beneath you. But just to kind of get get your foot in on that type of experience within your role, and then within the company.

22:46Then I think the second way to look at it is, is there a possibility for you to move to a different company that has the same, that focuses on the same things that you're focused on now, meaning maybe it's an environmental engineering company, but you're moving there in a, in a finance position, right? So what you're bringing to the table is the technical knowledge that you have about the field, but you now want to express it through finance. So that would be the second thing. I think the third is, here's my third, is not to necessarily transition directly into finance right away, but is there another role, another stepping stone that could then move you into finance?

23:26So what are particular roles like that? Something like strategic planning and analysis, where the numbers are involved, but you're not directly in finance. Something where you have a managerial role, again, where you have budgeting responsibilities. So even being more of a chief of staff, where you actually get to see those types of activities taking place. So starting to think about, are there stepping stones that I can take that might not necessarily put you in the finance division, but still give you exposure to those types of activities that could eventually lead to you being in finance?

24:03Amy Gallo:I love that. And I'm a big fan also of finding someone who's done the thing that I want to do. So maybe there's Samuel, maybe there's people in your finance program, and your corporate finance program who've made that transition, who are about to make that transition, or alumni from that program who you could contact and ask, how did you do it? What were the hurdles? What helped, right? That's right. And if you're fortunate enough to have somebody who is in finance and who's in a position of, you know, hiring and power in their organization, but they are kind of a sponsor to you, they might be willing to just take a bet on you, you know, and that that would be great, right?

24:40Like take the opportunity and say, hey, I might not have experience in this, but I want to learn. I'm hungry to learn. I'm, you know, I want to perform. I want to lean into this. You know, would you be willing to take a chance on me? And they might not give you the level of role that you want. That's sometimes a trade-off, but at least you'll be getting in the door. So if you have somebody like that in your life, I would definitely leverage it as well.

25:01Amy Gallo:That's great advice. Thank you. So we have another question from Seta from the UAE, and apologies if I'm not pronouncing your name correctly. I'm going to just read the question. When do you know it's the right time to make the jump from corporate to entrepreneur? I have a great idea for a new business in mind, but I've been debating it for a few years. How can I finally move forward? Okay. We could talk about this that way. I know. This is a whole other show too, right? Yeah. When do you know? So let me start with when you know you know. If you're in a state of ambivalence, if you're kind of like, should I do it or should I not, then it's not time to do anything.

25:42It means you still need to kind of sit with it and do your research and ask the questions that you're asking. When you know, you know. And I think this is particularly important as moving from a corporate position to entrepreneurial, because as being an entrepreneur, and I've lived both lives as a corporate worker and then being an entrepreneur for now almost 20 years. As an entrepreneur, you go a lot with your gut. And I think that that moment of deciding it's time, it's informed, but it's but it's an informed gut decision. And why? Because you're taking a leap of faith, right? In terms of moving there.

26:18So that's one. I think the second is to be to move to being an entrepreneur, you really want to think about why you're doing it. and so because you're wearing two hats you have the idea that you want to bring to life and that could be your purpose and your passion and from my standpoint my whole purpose and passion is helping people live and lead with a little more ease but then I have to ask my question the question is is my own business the best place to express that because as an entrepreneur you're what you have to wear that business hat and what I find is that a lot of people want to practice and create the idea, but they don't necessarily want to also be the business person and all that comes into play with that.

27:04So do you love both of those? And that is a big distinguishing factor that I think you really need to be honest with yourself before taking the leap and deciding you want to be an entrepreneur to decide is entrepreneurship the way that you actually want to express the purpose and the passion and the idea that you have.

27:22Amy Gallo:Yeah, I love that. I have a good friend, actually from childhood, who was in a marketing role in a media company and really wanted to start a business as a master gardener. And she decided the way to do it was to ramp down to part time because she couldn't afford the income, complete income loss and try out. She took a course, a master gardening course, like Samuel, who's taking this corporate finance course. And then she took on two clients and that was just like, OK, let me let me feel it out. and she's back to full time in her marketing role because she realized exactly what you were saying is that her reasons for doing it didn't actually turn out to be what she was able to do.

28:02Amy Gallo:She loved gardening, but she didn't like serving clients, you know, gardening. And I think that's something to consider. We think our passion is where we're going to want to put all of our energy, but we have to think about how it actually gets executed in these entrepreneurial endeavors. Exactly. Exactly. And you should always have a plan, right? Like I know when I made the leap and I, you know, I sort of just said, okay, today's the day. But I had a plan, you know, and I had a plan. If this doesn't work out, if I don't hit these milestones in the next six months, then, you know, potentially this isn't right for me.

28:36So whether you have that plan while you still have a job or you take the leap of faith because you're able to, and you have the financial backing, you know, you should still have a plan versus just, you know, chasing it indefinitely, and then not really getting to fulfill your purpose either way. Right.

28:52Amy Gallo:So we've talked about a couple different types of transitions. Let's talk about another. Shirley from DC asks, how do you make the move from VP to C-suite? And I know this is something you have helped many, many people do to rise up in their organizations. Any advice on for Shirley on that? Yeah. So I mean, that's a big question, You have to realize that when you're making the move from, and it depends on the company you're in, what VP means in one company is something very different in another, but essentially you're scaling up. From a VP standpoint, you are probably primarily, I don't know your particular situation, but you're primarily focused on your function.

29:33And when you move into the C-suite role, you have two responsibilities. You're responsible for the function that you are the chief of, Right. Let's say you're the chief marketing officer, but you also have a responsibility as being part of the executive team of thinking about the overall business. So one of the biggest things that I see people are missing as they try to make the leap from before being in the C-suite to the C-suite is that they don't have the overall business perspective. They haven't built the business acumen. So they might be a great marketing person, but they haven't really built their financial chops.

30:05Right. And really understand how to understand the finances and the economics of the business or of the organization. So starting to think about the business more holistically and strategically rather than just through your own function is one of the biggest areas. I think the second is really being able to operate and navigate at the C-suite level in terms of with your peers. And that takes a lot of leadership presence, executive presence, how you communicate. And then the third is, again, depending on the size of your company, can you demonstrate that you can manage and lead others at scale?

30:44Right. Because you now have amplified the number of people that you might need to lead and need to manage. And are you able to do that at that level where you're effective, even though you might not be as hands on as you were as a VP or as a manager, you know, are you still able to move people towards a particular goal at that level? And so there are a number of other things, but those are probably the three areas that I see as the biggest hindrances from people moving into the C-suite level. And therefore, what one should really look to build some muscle in and be able to demonstrate to position themselves that they're ready for the C-suite.

31:24Yeah.

31:25Amy Gallo:I would also say one of the things I think holds a lot of people back unknowingly is that they never told anyone in their company that they want that role. Right. They're doing their work. They're trying to do the things you say, right, demonstrate. But they've never told their manager or their boss's boss that I want to move into the C-suite. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, this is where we also talk about sponsorship, right? Like I think, you know, having a sponsor is inevitably one of the most important things that you can do in your career. And having multiple sponsors, quite frankly, and certainly to try to get into the C-suite, having a sponsor is a huge asset.

32:07And it starts by telling people what it is that you actually want to do, which brings us back to our first question, what is it that you want? Right. And why do you want it?

32:16Amy Gallo:I heard you draw that question out as well. We have a question from Sangram I love. How important are gut feelings during a career transition? I think that gut feelings are important during a career transition and in many other areas of your career. It doesn't mean that you should solely go on gut. You want to weigh both, right? What you know from your experiences and the facts that you have and the data that you have, and then how does that inform what you think you should do, right? And the what you think you should do, you know, like the more eloquent way of saying gut feeling is what's the stake in the ground?

33:02What's the decision that you make? When we make decisions, they're informed based on data, based on facts, based on what we've done. But we're making a decision about the future without really knowing what's going to happen next. So can that come from your intuition and your gut? Absolutely. And so the more the more experienced you become, the more you start having pattern recognition, the more you start understanding, you know, when I made a decision that if you are learning from your past experiences, the more your intuition will become stronger. And so is it important? Yes. But make sure that you've cultivated it over time.

33:37You're not going to wake up one day and all of a sudden say, oh, my God, I have great, you know, I have great gut feelings. I have great intuition. It doesn't happen that way. I also think it's helpful if you have some trusted advisors that you then, you know, have them kick the tire on what your gut feeling is. Right. Doesn't mean you need to listen to it. But I am a strong believer in triangulating. Go ask a couple of people. Hey, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? OK. And listen, doesn't mean you have to follow it. But at the very least, you get a chance to have other people check you on what you might be leaning towards.

34:11Amy Gallo:Yeah. My husband, who's a therapist, as you know, has this great trick. He uses when I'm like, my God is telling me to do this. He said, OK. And he'll tell me you have to do it. You have to do it. This is what. And he's like, OK, how do you feel? Right. And he sort of check it. He's sort of he's like, if that's your gut, if I'm telling you it's going to happen, how do you then react? And it's really helpful because sometimes I'm like, oh, no, I don't want to have to do it. Right. And it checks. It helps me assess. Is that gut feeling, you know, actually valid? Does it can I can I imagine doing what I my gut is telling me to do?

34:44Right. Right. I mean, we could have, again, a whole nother conversation of how do you know if it's a gut feeling versus something else? Right. But how you're you know, how your intuition speaks to you varies from person to person. But one thing I will say, it's never really loud. It's often pretty, pretty silent. And that's why. So you have to you have to actually listen for it rather than it chasing you.

35:11Amy Gallo:Yeah, that's that's really smart, especially because we all get so wrapped up in the day to day and what we're doing and the stress and the, you know, the huge inbox and all of that. And it's hard to sort of pick our head up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, Amy, what I'll say here, though, is it's also recognizing that whatever decision you make, it'll be OK. Right. And most people fear that they'll make the wrong decision when it comes to their career. If you believe that there's always room for course correction, that that this is not no decision that you make is ever forever, even though you might feel like it's forever.

35:45And, yeah, it might lead you on a detour, but that's OK. Detours still lead to somewhere, you know. And so I think at some point it's making the call, am I better off, whatever better off means for you, staying, right, in what I know versus going to something that I don't know. And there's no right or wrong. It's just trusting that either way it's going to lead you someplace and you can then determine if that someplace is what's right for you at that time. Yeah.

36:12Amy Gallo:And one of those one of those transitions I think people make and they're they'll they fear it will not be able to be undone as becoming a manager or having a bigger team. And I know many people who moved into those positions and then were like, nope, this is not for me. And we're really struggled to get back to the individual contributor role. Yes. But but like you say, most almost always those decisions are able to be undone or you're able to pivot to something else. Yeah, I mean, the struggle is because we're told that, you know, success means moving up and success means managing people or success means working, you know, in a certain environment.

36:51I mean, even when I made the switch from moving from a corporate world to being an entrepreneur, I remember, you know, most people said, are you crazy? Like you're getting, you have a nice corner office. You finally made it. People that you manage, you make a great salary. Why would you ever do that and work out of your dining room? And I was like, well, those things aren't really important to me, you know, but these other things are. So I followed that path. So I think you have to be really grounded around why are you doing it? Because that's what's going to, that's what's going to anchor you in whatever decision you make.

37:26Amy Gallo:Yeah. We have a great question from Christine from New York City. um how do you communicate your aspirations for a career transition with your manager and so and i'm getting the sense because she has this parenthetical or should you if you know they would view it negatively so if they're if you're talking about a transition out of that field or out of that company is that something you talk to with your manager about yeah i mean i think um you know obviously it depends right like it depends on what is your relationship with your manager? Are they somebody who supports career development and career growth in whatever way is best going to serve you?

38:07And are they operating from that standpoint? Or is it a situation where they might view it as negatively, right? Obviously, if it's the former, it's a little easier, and you tell them and you share with them, and hopefully they partner, they support you, and they, you know, support you in making that transition. If your sense is that they view it as negatively, I think one of the things is what is it that they're viewing negatively? Is it that you are leaving or that you're making the transition? Or is it that they're concerned around the impact of your transition? And what I have found is that many times, particularly if you've been a good performer, the fear for the manager or the concern is more about the impact of that person leaving.

38:50And so if you're going to communicate it, I would be ready to communicate how your career transition, what you're going to do to make your career transition as easy as possible for the manager, right? How long you'll stick around, how you'll help groom people to take over your role, how you'll leave everything documented so nobody's left in a lurch, how you'll wait till another resource is on board. Obviously things that are your control, but this is where you can partner with the manager. And I think going in with that spirit, often helps allay the fears. You cannot control somebody else's emotions.

39:26So if they're disappointed, they're disappointed, right? What you want to make sure is that you're not exacerbating the disappointment.

39:33Amy Gallo:Right? Yeah. And I think that I think about the the importance also that some managers put on loyalty. And I wonder if there's a way to communicate that conveys current loyalty, Right. I'm not I'm not leaving tomorrow. I'm not quitting. This is not a quitting conversation, but that you're loyal to this company and this team right now. But you also have different, you know, have aspirations for the future. Yeah. I mean, I think it's an and right. I can be loyal to you without necessarily being right next to you. And so, you know, it all comes down to to all all of our relative definitions of what loyalty means.

40:14But I think that that's what you convey. I can be loyal to you. I can support you. I'm just going to be doing it from over there instead of right here. Right. Yeah. And so it's helping reframe what the what that change is going to look like, you know, for that manager or for anybody else who's impacted. it.

40:33Amy Gallo:Yeah. You know, I put my difficult conversations lens on this also and think about how sometimes people are not, you know, you might have a very good manager who you think will be supportive, but if they're not in the right mindset at that moment, you catch them off guard, you know, they might panic. Like what you're thinking about leaving? Oh, I'm not a good manager. I'm not able to keep you. Right. It could trigger all this stuff. And I wonder about setting up the conversation by asking them, like, you know, what do you think about your career? Like in five years, what are you hoping to do? Right?

41:02Amy Gallo:So then they're in that mindset. And then you can say, Oh, here's what I'm thinking about, right? Yeah, I mean, Amy, you bring up a great point, too, which is, it makes it a much easier to have the career transition conversation with your manager, if you've had career development discussions all along, right? But if your career transition conversation is like the first career conversation that you're having beyond your annual performance review, then yeah, it's not, it's probably not going to go as well, because you even, you haven't even had a chance to gauge how does your manager perceive your career and how you should be managing it.

41:38Career development conversations engages that person in partnering with you, hopefully, and supporting you. And so, and then you have a better idea of how to, again, frame that message when it comes to that point and knowing how they might react. And so you can prepare for that.

41:54Amy Gallo:Yeah. I want to ask this question from Nure from The Hague in the Netherlands. How do you find the best sponsor for yourself in your career? And do you need an internal or an external sponsor? You and I've talked a lot about this on the Women at Work podcast. And I know you think about sponsorship a lot. So I'm curious what you think. Yeah. So I think it's important to define what a sponsor is, right? And particularly how it differentiates from having a mentor. So if you think about a mentor, a mentor is there to support you and to give you guidance and advice. A sponsor is there to do that and advocate an influence on your behalf, primarily through two ways, by getting you exposure to opportunities or getting you exposure to other individuals, all in the support of advancement in your career.

42:46And so there's a very specific role that a part that a sponsor plays. And by advancement in a career, I don't mean promotion. OK, that's not always what advancement means. Advancement is just moving, right, moving to the next thing, growing, changing. So when you're looking for a sponsor, what do you need to make sure that there are people who actually can advocate on your behalf and be have the influence to help you make those moves to give you that exposure. And so sometimes what what we see a lot of is with mentors, people tend to seek out people who are like them. Right. Which is completely natural.

43:26They can relate to them. It resonates with them when it comes to a sponsor. that doesn't necessarily need to be the case. And often it's not right. They need to be somebody who's in a position of power, who, as I say, you know, they have juice, okay, they have some chips that they can play on your behalf, and then they're willing to do it. How do you know if they're willing to do it? Again, I think it's important to cultivate those relationships that can be done through a mentoring relationship, it can be done through somebody that you've worked with. If it's not somebody that you've worked with, at the very least that they have line of site to you.

43:58And if your company happens to have a formal sponsorship program, that's another way of cultivating those relationships. Externally, I also think it's important to have sponsors, so you can have them internally to help navigate where you're going inside an organization. Externally, they might be helpful in terms of you doing that within the industry, or they might also be helpful in terms of the role that you have. Particularly if you have, for example, a sales role, you might have somebody in the industry who is a sponsor, who helps open doors that then help you with your job internally. So getting a sponsor is extremely important.

44:33It takes some work, you cultivate it over time, you want to be strategic about it. And then you want to make sure that when you are in a sponsorship relationship, that you are making it easy for the sponsor to sponsor you. Yeah.

44:48Amy Gallo:Yeah. So, so helpful. That's really great. Okay. I want to end on one question, one sort of tactical question from Elsa from Ottawa who asks, are there any resources, books, or podcasts you recommend about making a career change? Okay. Oh my goodness. Wow. This is catching me off guard. First of all, I'm going to make a little plug for your podcast because I know in this, was it the most recent episode? There was an episode this season where you talked about helping someone through a career change. So I will suggest my podcast, which is called Coaching Real Leaders and is also affiliated with Harvard Business Review.

45:24And you can find it anywhere on HBR or on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. And we've had a couple of episodes about career change. One most recently, an episode that dropped this past Monday about transitioning into a new career and how do you prepare for that. And earlier this season, we had one on somebody who was looking to transition from being a specialist to a generalist. And we've had quite a few episodes on people looking to move into the C-suite. So definitely recommend that. And that's, again, called Coaching Real Leaders. I think that there is a great book by Scott Eblen called The Next Level, which really articulates well things that you should be thinking about, particularly as you're looking to transition at different levels of your career.

46:12So highly recommend that. It's kind of a classic. I think if you are looking for information on getting feedback and how, if there's anything specifically that you need to work on, Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There is excellent and highly recommend. So those are some of my my favorites. I think if you are a woman, definitely listen to the Women at Work podcast, because they have great suggestions there on what to do.

46:45Amy Gallo:Yeah, we did an episode last season about one specifically about a woman who was trying to make a big career move, but then also two women who were sort of boosted their career during the pandemic, which both of which would be relevant for folks. I will also say there's the HBR guide to changing your career, which is a very tactical cool book that's available as well. And perhaps we can drop that into the comments. Muriel, as always, this has been a pleasure. We could talk for hours about pretty much anything, but this was particularly fun. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

47:21Amy Gallo:Thank you for having me. So keep an eye on your inbox every Tuesday for our Management Tip of the Week LinkedIn newsletter. We'll announce our next LinkedIn Live there. And if you haven't subscribed yet, look for a link in the comments of this video. Thank you so much for joining us.