Carla Miller 00:00
Have you ever felt bit stuck? When it comes to developing your career? Have you thought I need to go on more training, but there's no budget available in my organisation? Or I don't know what to do next in order to get myself ready for that next level or promotion? Well, if that's you, you're going to find today's episode super, super helpful. Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders. My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF that you didn't know you were Missing until now. So my guest on this episode is Career Coach Fay Wallis.

Fay Wallis 00:59
The big thing for all of us is that we have strength, even when our confidence is absolutely at rock bottom. I promise you if you've you know made a mistake or you're doubting yourself, you have got incredible strengths, but you probably don't know what they are.

Carla Miller 01:17
Now, Fay has a fantastic background in HR and she specialises in coaching HR and people professionals. She's the founder of bright sky career coaching. And she also has a five star rated podcast called HR Coffee Time, where you can hear free advice and ideas every week. Now you absolutely do not need to be an HR professional to get any value from this episode. It is packed full of value for anyone listening. And I have recently recorded an episode on Fay’s podcast as well. So if you are an HR professional, I would absolutely recommend that you go and check that out. So in this episode, we talk about what you can do if you want to develop your career, and how sometimes the things that developers most in our career are quite surprising.

So Fay is going to share with you her top tips on what you can do to get ready for promotion, how you can get the experience you need, how you can ask your line manager for the experience you need, and how to get the exposure that you need as well. I think you're gonna find this a super helpful episode. It also aligns with a couple of other episodes along this theme. So we have an episode as well on taking control of your career, and one on increasing your visibility that after you've had a listen to this, you might want to head on over and listen to those. Now before we roll the episode in terms of what's been going on in the life of Carla, I am still super super busy. But my exciting news is completely not work related at all, which is as many of you know I had a trampolining accident which makes my life sound far more exciting than it is it would been was my first time on the trampoline for years. And I managed to completely rupture my ACL on that. That was over six months ago. But I can now climb stairs like a normal person. Trust me that has been very embarrassing and going up and down stairs at very busy train stations like a small child and I climbed a fell the other day. To be fair, I walked up the fell climb would be an exaggeration. It was like a steep hill version of a fell but I moved here to Cumbria six months ago, I have been looking longingly at the flowers for six long months, just thinking I really want to go up one. And so Charlie claimed his first fell. I mean, he did moan most of the way up it had to be incentivized with chocolate. But afterwards, he told me it was fun. And I really enjoyed climbing my first fell since my move up here up here to Cumbria. And it was just nice to be out there in nature. So that was brilliant. I'm also very much looking forward to December when I'm hoping to slow down a little bit and do some much needed deep work. And I've scheduled out time in my diary and call it deep work with the idea that I'll do some proper thinking and making decisions on things. And yeah, I think that's about it in my world. So let's roll the episode and give you all a big boost when it comes to developing your career. So I'm delighted to welcome the lovely Fay to the podcast.

Hi, Fay. How you doing today?

Fay Wallis 04:42
Hi, I'm doing very well. And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. As you know, I am a genuinely huge fan. I've been listening to your show for years. So I'm a bit overexcited about being here today.

Carla Miller 04:53
Well I was excited to be on your podcast too. So we've done a good swap and we'll let you know about face podcasts at the end of the The episode today you can go and have a listen to that as well. We are talking career development today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be focusing on this area. And I know you work a lot with HR leaders as well.

Fay Wallis 05:14
Before becoming a career coach, my career was spent mainly working in HR and recruitment. And actually, for a long time, a huge part of my role was recruitment. And I didn't particularly want to do that I remember asking my boss repeatedly, please, please, can you move me into more of a pure HR role. And what I didn't realise at the time was that I was actually being set up for my future career. I always think that's so interesting, when we look back and can see that things we didn't recognise the value in necessarily, they're not actually going to help us in the future. So what happened was friends and family started saying to me, that you know, about recruitment, don't you? I just cannot seem to get a new job, would you take a look at my CV for me? And so I'd say, Yeah, of course. And they'd put their CV in front of me. And because I was literally looking at hundreds, sometimes 1000s of CVS every week, straightaway, I would be able to say, oh, yeah, no, don't worry, all you've got to do is change this change this, you know, put a bit more information in here. And then they'd go away. And I still remember the first person I helped with this.

They were absolutely astounded. She was so grateful, it was one of the most rewarding moments ever, because she said you don't understand, I've been trying to get a new role. And it was a career change. For over a year. I haven't got any interviews. And I've just got one straightaway. Thank you so much. And I think that's really nice to have been able to help and I didn't really think any more of it. But of course, what happened was word started to spread. So friends of friends and family would ask me more and more, and I was just doing it on the side. And I didn't really think anything of it apart from both nice helping everyone. But then what happened at work was that my boss finally took pity on me and said, Okay, I'll move you out of the recruitment role into an HR role. And I would like you to take the lead on our employee engagement strategy.

So I thought, I really had been really hoping for this for ages. And when I looked into our results, I realised that one area we weren't scoring very high on was around a perceived lack of career development opportunities. And I was quite surprised to see that because working in recruitment for that time and working within the organisation, I knew that there were huge opportunities available for everyone. So I thought, okay, I can do something about this. So I went away, and I did a bit of training on career development and career management. And I designed and put together a workshop that I delivered with my colleagues all about how you can manage and develop your own career. And I remember promoting it, you know, internally throughout the organisation. I had run other forms of learning and development and training before. But often that was sort of mandated stuff like that you were expected to go to, and you'd have to strong arm people into going. So I was so taken aback when actually, we were completely oversubscribed, for this career development workshop, we had to keep running it again. And again, I had people queuing down the corridor to get in, I thought what is going on?

This is just I can't get over it. It got rolled out. Globally, it got picked up by our parent company, it just a really small idea that I hadn't expected to have an impact had a huge impact. And I had people coming up to me at the end of that workshop saying, I had no idea I had this much control over my career. Thank you so much. I had one person in tears. It was it was just really, really amazing to have that happen. And as an offshoot of that I started being asked if I could coach and support people within the organisation. And it was at that point that I suddenly realised, oh, this is what I should be doing. It's so rewarding. It's so wonderful thing, the difference you can make in people's lives. Although I still really enjoy my HR role, I'm going to step aside from it. And I'm going to train to become a career coach. So that's what I did. And I set up my business bright sky career coaching six and a half years ago. And I predominantly focused on helping people either get the next job, change career, or excel in the career that they have. But more and more recently, partly because of my HR background, and partly because of my podcast, I seems have attracted more and more HR professionals. So now I predominantly coach HR professionals with their careers.

Carla Miller 09:31
Fantastic. And I love that journey and how eventually it just became completely obvious because we can sit down for ages and think what do we want to do with our lives, but sometimes we just discover along the way, the stuff that we love now and I know that my audience be very cross with me if I don't ask you about what makes a good CV because you've mentioned that you're a whiz with CVS. And maybe I hadn't prepped you for this question, but maybe let us know what some of the mistakes people make with CVS or What makes a good CV to you are your top tip that someone listening could use?

Fay Wallis 10:04
I’m a complete CV geek, I have a whole course on how to write your CV. And I don't actually write many myself anymore because when I started out, I did a lot of CV writing. And I started being referred to as the CV lady. And I'd say, no, no, no, no, I'm not CV lady. I'm a career coach. I'm a career coach.

So I had to kind of really pull back from that to try and make sure that I was still spending most of my time coaching. But that oh my goodness, there are so many tips I could give you about CVS. I think my biggest tip often feels like the most obvious one. But it isn't one that I've realised people think of necessarily, and it's Yaks. Make sure you're tailoring your CV for every role that you apply for. I think most of us are familiar with that advice. Lots of people don't follow it, even though they know that they probably should. And it's just because it's time consuming and boring. And there's a real danger that you can just keep clicking apply, apply, apply online, because it's so easy to apply online for roles now. And it can be tempting to think if I just apply for everything, I'm going to get something.

But actually the opposite is true, the more targeted that you are in choosing the jobs you apply for the more you give yourself time to tailor your CV for that role, the much bigger your chances are of getting it. And I can absolutely see when I was in that internal recruitment role, the people who had tailored their CVs because they would reference the organisation, they would be really highlighting the key skills that they knew were required for that role. So they would just instantly go to the top of our shortlist when we were looking at who we were going to invite the interview. And the easiest way in the world to tailor your CV to the role you're applying for is to read the job description.

So sometimes there will just be quite short job adverts, but if there isn't a full job description attached, contact the organisation and ask them if they have one. Because, again, having done internal recruitment, I would notice if someone asked, because you think gosh, they're really interested, like no one bothers to ask for a full job description, I'm gonna keep my eye out and see when they apply. And then once you've got that full job description, just go through it and see the language that you're saying and try and make sure that you are reflecting that in your CV, the skills they're asking for. Even if you haven't got evidence of having used those skills, reference them in the CV. So for example, you know, coming from an HR background, let's say that I was applying for a role and I needed solid employment law knowledge and experience but I hadn't really ever had to use it well, I can still put the words employment law on there, because I've completed a module in that as part of my HR training.

Because if your CV is read by a computer, so lots of Seabees are initially screened by software, they're looking out for key words. And these key words are often just how much of a match is this CV to our job description. But even if it's not being looked at by a computer software, the person who first reviewed your CV is going to be comparing it to the job spec a lot of the time. And so they'll go, oh, look, all these words, we'd said that we want all the skills we said we want. Their will in the CV are wonderful, this person is a great fit. So as with so many things in life, it's about taking it back to basics and just thinking through those sorts of essentials.

Carla Miller 13:41
I love that. And actually, despite the fact that I have been a recruiter and ran a recruitment company for a while, I've always tailored my covering letter and sort of made sure that I'm emphasising the right things within the CV but I wouldn't have actually thought of using the same language. And it's exactly what we do in influencing I was encouraged people trying to influence someone listen to the language that they use and start using their language. So that is a really powerful tip definitely next level from anything that I've suggested in the past. So my listeners will be thanking you for that one. Definitely. Now, you also talked about career management and this amazing course that you created. What What was the course about? Because I think we're all curious now.

Fay Wallis 14:24
There were lots of components to it.

One component to it was we actually offered everyone who signed up for the the training the development day, or I don't think what I'm called it, yeah, the Career Management session was the option to take a StrengthsFinder assessment. I've looked at all different kinds of strengths assessments, and it's my absolute favourite. It's also really inexpensive.

So anyone listening, you don't need to have some sort of fancy corporate account to access this. You can just buy the StrengthsFinder book and there's an access code at the back or you can go online to As strengthsfinder.com, and I'm not under commission from them at all, I always feel like I should be, but I'm not. Because the big thing for all of us is that we have strength, even when our confidence is absolutely at rock bottom, I promise you, if you've, you know, made a mistake, or you're doubting yourself, you have got incredible strengths, but you probably don't know what they are. And the reason we don't know what they are, is that our strengths come to us so naturally, so easily, that we dismiss them, because we don't realise they're hard for other people. So our strength, our skills, but they are our highly developed skills that energise us when we use them. So I passionately believe that if we understand what our strengths are, we are far more likely to have a fulfilling career, because we can make sure that we get to craft our roles or take jobs that really hone in and use those strengths.

Carla Miller 15:54
I always forget about it. But I've got the book. And I ended it ages like years ago, and I was thinking, what do I want to do with my life. And it was really interesting. But it's a great prompt, actually, because we do in various courses and programmes, we talk about your personal leadership brand, and uncovering your zone of genius or your superpowers. And sometimes people get quite stuck on what they are for exactly what you say they undervalue the things that come easily to them. But that is a great tip. Because what I will say to people before they do that module going forward is if you're not clear what your strengths are, go get the book and do that before the session. So thank you, I'm wrapping up the tips today. Brilliant. So what else is important when it comes to career management? What else do you think is important?

Fay Wallis 16:37
One of the other elements from that particular career management workshop that I ran that I still use all the time, and I still talk about all the time is something that's called the three E model.

For anyone who's listening who might have a learning and development background, you have probably come across this before, but you've heard it called something else. So it's also called the 7020 10 principle. But I like the three E's because I think it's easier to remember words, the numbers, I'm definitely more of a words person than a numbers person, the very first e which is there. 70% is experience. And oh, actually, I'll just take a step back for a minute to explain what an earth I'm talking about when I say 7020 10. So the idea with our professional development with our career development is that if we turned ourselves into a pie chart, and said,

Oh, okay, I'm going to look at this pie chart, and I am going to work out actually how this person has developed their career and develop professionally, you will find that 70% of the development has come from experience. And then 20% come from something else, and 10% come from something else. But I'll talk about those in a moment. So by experience, I mainly mean on the job learning. And what that means to your career is thinking about the fact that actually to step up to the next level, or to enjoy your job more or to feel that you're developing, you haven't just got to go away and do a course. I think for a lot of us, that can be our default response.

I know that is definitely my default response. If I think, Oh, I think I want you know, before I worked myself out, we think I want to promotion or I want to do this, I think I've got to do a course, what causes that to do that, actually, so much of our learning happens on the job. So if you feel like I've got a bit stagnant in my role, or I'm not getting to where I want to be, just give yourself that moment to take a step back and think, How can I be stretching myself? What kind of stretch goals could I be asking for and when I say stretch goals, I mean, that means doing something that's outside maybe of your comfort level and also outside of what you've done before.

So you're going to have to learn and develop new skills to be able to complete it successfully. Other things you can do are thinking about things like well, what cross functional projects are going on, within the organisation that I could put myself forward for, even if I'm busy, because I know that I'm going to really learn different skills and get an opportunity for the exposure as well. And then if you really stuck, if you're in an organisation where even though you're saying I want to progress I want to develop. Here's some stretch goals. Here's something I could be working on. And you have an unsupportive manager and unsupportive both naked. No, stay in your box, just do what you're doing. We're not interested. I mean, I think you're very unlucky. If that does happen, but it does sometimes, then don't forget about the fact that actually you can develop these skills on the job by doing some sort of voluntary work as well. And, again, sort of like with the CV when I said we all sort of know we should be tailoring our CV to each role. I think lots of us know we could be developing skills through voluntary work. But what often stops people is thinking, Where are these magical, voluntary work jobs? Where do I volunteer? How do we even do that and then it feels bit hard, so you don't do it. And you just carry on being really unhappy in your role or not developing in the way you want to. So just one other tip to give everyone listening if they're thinking, Yeah, I want to do that I want to volunteer is that if you just put in voluntary action to Google, or whatever web browser is that you use, and then you put the area you live in, that is a specific hub in every area across the UK, dedicated to promoting and supporting voluntary work. So I live in a tiny little town called Banstead. And we have got voluntary action, Reigate and Banstead. And you can just sign up to their newsletters and I have been so impressed by the kind of quality of the roles that come through the breadth of the roles. They also run free training days on things like how to be a trustee. So if you're looking at, I want to get to a really senior level, you can still do that through voluntary work as well. If you haven't got that senior level experience, you can put yourself forward as a trustee, or to be an advisor at a senior level for maybe a small charity in your area.

Carla Miller 21:05
There's so great, brilliant insights there. Thank you. The other place to look for trustee opportunities is do it. I think it's due it.org. But some of those will be national. And so if you're looking to move into a senior leadership role, and you want a trustee ship, definitely worth doing that. If someone wants to get more on the job experience, how would you suggest that they see, given the ideas what they do? Which is fantastic, how would you suggest they asked their line manager to do that without making it seem like I'm preparing for the next job? And it's not in this organisation? So how would you help that conversation with your line manager?

Fay Wallis 21:46
It really depends on the culture of why you're working and what your line manager is like. Because hopefully, if you're anywhere enlightened, if you're working anywhere that's remotely enlightened, they'll realise the power of career conversations. There's a big trend in the whole sort of HR space at the moment for organisations to be leaning more towards career development conversations and away from performance evaluation conversations. Because of course, what we found that everyone listening will have experienced at some point is if you sit down for performance appraisal, you instantly feel a little bit defensive, like oh, what if they say I've not been doing a good enough job, but what if they don't realise all the hard work I've been doing. Whereas if that conversation is phrased differently, if it's taken from the approach of let's make this a career development conversation, the person is so much more likely to be engaged. So I'm hoping that lots of listeners will be working in a wonderfully enlightened organisation that is all about career development conversations. But if, if that's not the case, it really is just about making that space and that opportunity to have a chat, you are going to know your manager much better than I do. So I guess my biggest tip would be to make sure you've got to know your manager before you hit them with this idea.

So, so much of what you talk about Carla with building influence and impact. It's all about building relationships, isn't it. So even if your manager seems a bit scary, try to have put in some of their foundational work first. And by that foundational work that sort of getting to know them, try and spend some regular time with them, even if it means asking to put a slot in their diary for them. If they're not very good at doing one to ones with you find out what's important to them. So what did they care about getting done in your organisation? What did they care about delivering for their career and see how you can support them with that, so that you're going to be seen much more favourably, and they're going to look kindly on you when you go to them anyway. And then it really is just about having that conversation and saying, I've been thinking about, you know, how I can progress? Or if you're worried they're going to think Oh, no, they're going to do a runner and leave the organisation then it's, we were chatting about this a bit before Carla, before we hit record, it's about how you can add value to that organisation. Because there is a danger sometimes. And I have seen this actually where we can become very fixated on our own career development. And we sort of forget that we are there to add value to the organisation, we're not there for them to give us this fabulous career. So try and tie in ways of, you know, I've noticed that if we change this process, we could save hours for the department, and it's going to be a huge cost saving, I'd love the opportunity to lead on that, that it's going to be looked on so much more favourably than saying Oh, I really want to have a promotion. And I think I could get one if I start doing some process improvement without mentioning what the impact is for the organisation. So I suppose thinking on the spot where you just asked me, Carla, that would be my main tip. It's about things make sure you've built a relationship and think about how does your idea add value to the organisation that you're in?

Carla Miller 24:55
Brilliant and you have lots of influencing tools that you can use to do that you will have picked up in the podcast, I was on a call this morning talking about stakeholder management actually. And one of the things I said when talking to senior people is frame whatever you're proposing in terms of how it solves organisational problems, which is exactly what you've said, we need to do for our line managers, think about how it helps them, and how it helps them to achieve their goals. Love it. So what's the second e I'm dying to know.

Fay Wallis 25:23
So, the final E, which is if you imagine you're a pie chart, and you've been carved up is the 20% bit, and that is exposure. So this is all about making sure that you have got exposure to people within the organisation. So you've talked about this load, vary a foot collar, you know who going back to what you were just saying about stakeholders, who are the key stakeholders that you need to know that you need to learn from and that you need to be able to influence but also actually not just being very narrow and thinking about the organisation you're in, who are people you could be getting exposure to outside of the organisation as well, because it can be tempting to just be looking inwards, like inwards at ourselves, and inwards in the environment we're in. But there's so much to be learned by looking outwards as well. And so that's also about getting exposure to other things around your profession, and your industry and your sector.

So some different ways you can do that, you know, the classic thing that people are probably thinking of straightaway is getting a mentor. And that can be daunting for some people, it can be easy for others. One thing that I always think is, it's great to have a formal mentor, but also there's something to be said for just kind of spotting and identifying people, you can almost make an informal mentor without them even realising what's happening. I know I've got people in my life who I really value their opinion, they're at a different stage, potentially, in that. So for me, I'd be thinking of this from a business perspective where I have my own business. So I would look to people who have a more established business, and think, oh, it'd be great to be able to meet up with them regularly, just because it's great to network anyway. But I know that I'm going to learn from them. Hopefully, they're going to learn something from me as well. But I see them almost I've never said to them, could you be my mentor or you are my mentor. But in my mind, I know they are a bit of an an informal mentor figure for me. So that's one thing is around getting a mentor. But the other point around networking is kind of get yourself out there, whether that's out there on Zoom, or it's out there in real life, going to events. If you belong to a professional, what are your a professional association is very likely they're running all these events that when the email just comes into your inbox, you go delete on too busy and don't even look at it. But actually, a lot of these events are fantastic. And if you are a member, you can often go for free or hardly anything at all. And you're not just going to get the benefit of keeping your knowledge up to date. And really being aware of new things that happening in your profession or in your sector, you are going to meet other people who do similar roles to you or who are at a more advanced level from you. And you just learn so much from hearing about what they're up to what their challenges are, what other things they think a good for you to know about. So that's one thing to really think about. If you don't belong to a professional body, or a professional association, that doesn't matter, you can still find out about other events that are happening. If you're on LinkedIn, they're promoted on LinkedIn all the time, if you go on to Eventbrite and have a little search around, you'll be able to find all sorts of things. But I think it's stuff like that, that when we're busy, it's easy to just go, I don't have time for it. But if you're serious about developing your career, it's actually a brilliant way of being able to really move forward. And then the other thing about exposure is not having to spend any of this time networking or going to things, it's just making sure you're keeping your hand in. So you're developing your business acumen. So maybe you're following your competitors, not your personal competitors, the organization's competitive, you might be following them on Twitter, or LinkedIn or online, or you're just keeping up to date with trends that are happening in the sector that you work in. So that's a very, very quick overview of exposure.

Carla Miller 29:20
Brilliant, and just to signpost, people to we did an episode on visibility and increasing your visibility at work, which might be really helpful. I love the idea of looking externally as well. I can get really focused internally because that's my happy place and forget to look externally. And I can't remember which guest it was I had a guest on the show recently that said, if you can't find your own mentor, then have an imaginary board of mentors and think what would they do in this situation? I thought it was quite a fun way to do it. Brilliant and then tell us about the final E.

Fay Wallis 29:54
So the final E is the 10% of that pie chart which is Education. And that's what I mentioned, I think at the very beginning, which I know for me was always my default response if I wanted to progress, I think, right? What cause what else can I do? But actually, if you think of that pie chart, and we think of our professional development, for anyone listening, if you look back over your career, yes, any formal training, you've done any formal education will have helped you develop your career. But it is really by applying what you've learned on the job. So that 70% experience piece, that's what makes the difference. So I'm not saying to everyone, oh, don't worry about doing any training, because you're gonna be able to develop just by learning on the job and going to events and making sure you have a mentor. Yes, education has still got its place. But don't worry about making that the kind of default reaction if you're thinking about how to progress and how to move forward. So the other thing to mention when it comes to education is we are so lucky now, because we have all got resources, like your wonderful podcast, caller, stuff like this just didn't exist 10 years ago, where if it didn't exist, no one really knew about it. We've got TED talks, we've got the events I was just talking about. So even if you're not committing to any sort of formal training, then there are so many other ways of helping you to learn about new skills, new ideas, new approaches, but to really move yourself forward with your career, please, please, please, then think about how you can implement them. So it's just so easy to for me to sit back and listen to your podcast colour and decor. I love all these wonderful ideas. They're brilliant, you know, but they're not implement any of them. So I guess my challenge for everyone listening today, if maybe pick one of your episodes and think that was my favourite one, I learned so much. I am going to go away tomorrow. And I'm going to try what Carla's suggested.

Carla Miller 31:49
Thank you. I like that suggestion. I also am a big fan of training courses, because I read a couple of them. But I know a lot of theories that you never do anything with. It has to be actionable, doesn't it? And yet, we're both coaches. So we're both very action orientated in terms of right, so great. Now you've had that insight on what's his hair look like in your daily life, and what's going to change? Fantastic. Now, the other thing we like to do on the podcast is to look at things from both angles. So as an individual listening to this, people have got lots of tips. I was as you were listening, I was thinking as a line manager, this is super helpful, because often people come and say, I want the training course. And like you say, it might not be the best option. It also might be out budget, so you've given them some really great ideas. One thing you talked about is you hope most enlightened organisations and are encouraging career conversations. I think I know quite a lot of not yet enlightened organisations, or at least my clients, some of them work for not yet enlightened organisations. If you're a line manager, and you want to be having career conversations, but you're not really receiving any messages from your HR team about how to do that. Any tips and advice on what makes a good career conversation from that line manager's perspective?

Fay Wallis 33:06
Well, the first thing to say is if that is what you're thinking, hurray, that's wonderful. And you are going to reap such dividends from doing this. Because if it's not happening in your organisation, you are going to end up with the most committed engaged team out of all of your colleagues, because it's so important to everybody. And as far as approaching the conversation is concerned, someone asked me for advice on this last week, actually. So it's funny that it's coming up again.

So she said to me, I really want to start having these career conversations, really sure how to stop them. Another client mentioned about a month ago to me that she had arranged one to ones with all of her team. And she said to them, this is your space, you use it however you want, you come to me, and let me know how I can help. And then there was just like, complete silence and terror from everybody, whether or not used to it.

So prepare yourself for the fact that although you are doing a wonderful thing, it is going to reap dividends, it may take everyone a little while to warm up to it. And you're going to benefit from putting some structure in place. So let people know before they're coming into their conversation with you, what you're going to be talking to them about and explain why. So you can say, Look, I know that your career is going to be important to you, I really want to make sure that you're developing and enjoying your role. So I think it'd be great if we could carve out a time to have a chat about it. And I can learn more about you know, what you think and what you want. And then you can share things like the three E model with them. There are other models that you can use as well. There's one that I really, really love. If I'm allowed to point people to an episode of my podcast, I had a guest on the show called Steve McIntosh and he had so I have to give him full credit he had created this model. It's absolutely brilliant particularly for using with people who are at the beginning or the mid stage of their careers. And so they are the ones I think who find it hardest to have these career development conversations with their managers. So as a, if you're listening, and you're a manager, and you want to have this conversation, this may particularly help you when you're talking to them.

So Steve has come up with these eight different value drivers. So when I said earlier on, always think about how you adding value to the organisation, he has identified eight different ways, just even having a couple of them can be helpful, I think, remembering them off the top of my head. One was impact on morale. So how are you impacting your colleagues, when you show up to work every day? How are you making it a positive experience for everyone else? I think that can be a very interesting question to ask people, it can really make you reflect on your own behaviour. Another one is around I believe, from memory is around leadership. So how are you modelling leadership behaviours? I mean, I really, truly do believe in leadership at every level, you do not need to have the title leader to be demonstrating leadership behaviours. So how are you bringing everyone together? How are you inspiring people to take action? How are you sharing ideas? So really thinking that through as well find, oh, innovation? I think that's the one that really landed with me, actually.

So you can say to people, when you're having this career development conversation, look, I've got a couple of different frameworks that we can try out? Shall we explore them together and and see what you think. So it's really not about placing any judgement at all? It's around? Let's have a conversation about this. What do you think about it? So you could share the three E model and say, I want us to have a career development conversation, I'm really interested in learning more about what your hopes are for your career. There are these models we could try out, let's see how they land, shall we start with a three one and then you can run through it with them? So experience exposure, education, what's your thoughts, and just see what they say. So you really don't need to be directing them at all. It's about taking a coaching approach and asking them to think and reflect. So going back to Steve's model, it's the same thing you can say, there's this idea that there are value drivers, shall we have a look at them? See what you think so one of them is innovation? So how comfortable do you feel? Or how effective do you feel at bringing ideas for change within the organisation? Because what you don't want them to think it's all new, they think I'm terrible at bringing ideas. It's not that at all, it's just helping them to think, Oh, right. If I want to progress my career, I've really got to be thinking, bigger picture, not just about me about where that value is that I'm adding. So I guess that would be my recommendation. If you like the sound of that model, you can have a listen to the interview with Steve. He's far more articulate than I am. That's explaining what it is. I'm definitely a lot more familiar with and more knowledgeable when it comes to the three E model. And if you don't like either of those ideas, literally just have a little bit of time on Google and put in career conversation frameworks. And you'll be spoilt for choice. There are loads of different ways of doing this.

Carla Miller 38:09
Fantastic. Well, those are two really useful structures. And I understood what you're talking about. So I think that was very clear. But we'll we'll go and have a listen to that episode. Now. And as we bring this episode to a close in a moment, I'm gonna ask how people can work with you. But if you wanted people to leave this episode, taking away just one thing, from all the brilliant stuff you've said, what's the one thing you would like people to remember from this episode?

Fay Wallis 38:36
That you have control over your career. So many people think their career is something that is done to them or that they are completely at the mercy of their boss, or the organisation they work in. And if that's how you're feeling, it's not true. Even if you've got the trickiest boss in the world, and the whole organisation is falling apart around you. You've got control, there are things that you can do to make sure that you are happier, you're more fulfilled, you're getting to where you want to be. So that is what I'd really love people to take away from this to know that they can be empowered to take action.

Carla Miller 39:10
What an empowering message. I love it. And if people want to find out more about you or know how they can work with you, where should they go.

Fay Wallis 39:18
So my website is called Bright Ssky Career Coaching so you can have a look on there. And you can also find me on LinkedIn, I'm always really happy to connect with people on LinkedIn, I go through phases of being very good at being active on there and other times where I'm a bit quieter, but I do try and share lots of stuff on there when I'm in an active phase. So feel free to come and find me on there, too.

Carla Miller 39:39
Yes, so if you've listened to this podcast, go and connect with bae and let her know that you listened to the podcast and you heard her helpful tips it well thank you so much. I love the energy that you bring to this and your experience just gives it so many different angles. So thank you. I think it's gonna be a very helpful episode. people hope to have you back as a guest another time.

Fay Wallis 40:03
Oh, exciting.

Carla Miller 40:11
if you've listened to the podcast and you want to know more about how we can work together, here are a few places you can look.

First of all, I've got a couple more freebies. I've got a free PDF on increasing your leadership impact at work, and I've also got a free masterclass on becoming a more influential leader without letting self doubt hold you back.

So head on over to the website to book yourself a place on the masterclass or to download that PDF. There are my open programmes influence and impact for women at management and leadership level and be bolder a four week live assertiveness and confidence course for women at any level. You can preorder my book closing the influence gap, a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard. You can also work with me one to one particularly if you're a senior leader, and you can hire me to work in house to do talks for awareness weeks, one of workshops, a series of workshops, or to run my influence and impact programme or be bolder programme in house as a women's leadership or women's empowerment offering. If you want to talk about any of those on my website, you can drop me an email or you can also book a quick 15 minute chat so we can talk about what you need and how I might be able to help you or your organisation so I look forward to chatting to you. Take care