Throughout my career I’ve been on a learning journey regarding how I communicate. When I first started out, I was very shy and found it difficult to communicate confidently. I’d be nervous sending an email to someone I’d never met and spend hours over-analysing the content to make sure it was ‘perfect’ before sending it. As I sent more and more emails, met more people, and put myself out there for presentations, I grew in confidence but I still had a lot to learn. I’d often go into the specifics of everything and give people information overload because I was worried about missing something important. I got a lot of feedback around this and was regularly asked to “keep it high-level”. I really had to work at this, and I needed to get help from peers, mentors, managers and external research to understand what this meant, when it mattered and how to be effective at a higher level of detail. With years of practice, I am now much better at communicating and that’s helped me progress into a leadership position. This is just one example of me learning a skill which I thought was impossible. If I can do it, so can you!

I’m a natural introvert and I don’t think anyone in my personal life would describe me as outgoing or confident! But, I’ve found in my career so far that the occasions where I’ve been brave - whether that’s deciding to move away from HR (even though I studied a Masters in the topic!) or saying yes to presenting in front of a crowd of senior leaders - have been the times where I’ve grown and developed the most. I’m at a point in my career where I’m eager to grow and progress, so being brave is something I try to make a conscious effort to do. It can be scary to say yes to things you might usually shy away from but, by getting more practice and exposure to these things, over time they naturally begin to feel a bit easier. Even if things don’t always go to plan, it’s all part of the journey.

It sounds obvious, but sometimes it can be easy to perform the actions required for your role in a way that doesn’t best amplify your strengths. Be acutely aware of your own strengths and play to them, putting together a development plan for areas of improvement. I’d recommend developing your strengths too. Just because you’re naturally good at something doesn’t mean you should rest on your laurels. Have a mindset of wanting to move from the top 10% to top 1%. Always welcome feedback too whether it’s positive or constructive. Don’t take constructive feedback negatively, to be imperfect is to be human. We all have areas we can improve on.