What do you want in this season of your career? 🌱

I have a secret mission. Okay it isn't that secret.

I want to see more women at the leadership table of organisations.

Why...?

Because companies, and humans in our society in general are aching for a little more of the feminine leadership energy that we have spent our whole lives trying to suppress.

My mission is to help more women who more naturally lead with feminine energy to find the means to do that.

But what if I don't want to lead?

That's okay, you are already leading by reading this post! It proves that you are thinking differently and trying to navigate the working world in a way that works for you. Sometimes leading means doing less, sometimes leading means doing more. That is all for you to decide.

There are three sacred foundations of your career:

1. Reward; the total value you extract from your career, learning, growth, compensation and benefits
2. Recognition; being seen and respected by leadership peers, and heralded as a thought leader and game changer
3. Rest; stepping into the most at ease and well nourished version of yourself, bringing your best to each and every role you fulfil

In Bloom, we support you to figure out exactly what you seek in this season of your life across all of those areas, and reflecting on the five P’s of career freedom helps us to do that.

• Pay: we often tell ourselves things like; pay doesn’t matter to me, but that simply isn’t true. HR can be the lowest paid member of the leadership team, but is that right...?
• Promotion: you might be getting ready for leadership, or you might already be at the top table, but your title is ‘Head of’ and not ‘Chief People Officer’. Are you satisfied with what that is...?
• Progression: are you in a season where you want to dedicate time to growth? If so, are you growing in the way you want to be? Are there courses or things you have been interested in exploring?
• Peace: are you in a season where you are looking to simplify your career? Perhaps work less hours? Perhaps leave work at work?
• Pivot: do you have a sense that you are looking for a more radical shift in your career? Perhaps you are looking at others and feeling a sense of jealousy, which let’s be clear is simply self fury, because you know deep inside that you could be doing what they are doing.

Different seasons of life call for different things, and in Bloom, every season is catered for.

You might think you don't want to lead, and if that's true for you, then great! But if you take a deep breath, and get really still for a moment, is that reeeeeeally true...? Or is there a little part of you that is curious?

Whatever your role is today, I just want you to know, you can do and be whatever you want to be.

There are a lot of women in HR, and I can't help but wonder if this might be an opportunity to revolutionise the workforce even more radically... because fun fact, CHRO's or CPO's can make excellent CEO's.

And if you don't believe me, here is a whole article on the topic, where HBR concluded, '...the executive whose traits were most similar to those of the CEO was the CHRO.'

We know how to create strategies that are human centred, how bring the right people together, nurture them and support them to thrive. We've often dealt with complex organisational challenges, like mergers and restructuring.

We also tend to be pretty rad at communication and building trust, especially once we know how to give ourselves a little confidence boost and overcome imposter syndrome (enter Bloom haha).

I am not saying that you have to be anything at all my friends, I just want you to start to be curious about what might be possible for you, and to commit to living your whole life as who you authentically are.

I would love to see those of you who are CEO curious to explore that though, whilst there are finally more women CEO's than men named John, earlier this year there wasn't!

Here are three things that I want you to always remember to help you get there:

1. Your community is everything. Women are great at fighting for others and horrible at fighting for ourselves. Intentionally building the right tribe of peers around you who understand that their role is to empower and unblock each other. This is what the next season of Bloom is all about.
2. Whilst the modern workplace isn’t made for us, it is only part of the problem. You have to be willing to learn a different way of being, and be prepared to work against the expectations of women in the workplace. That can feel a little uncomfortable at first.
3. You will have to lean into fear to step into your power. That means moving beyond being a great consultant into being a powerful and decisive leader. That means mastering your nervous system, setting boundaries and leaning into your zone of genius.