Carrying on from yesterday, as part of celebrating National Careers Week, #NCW2020, I am continuing my week of blog posts about some of the key the people and events who have inspired my own career journey. Hopefully this will guide and inspire young people looking to start out in their career journeys and qualified professionals looking to make changes to theirs.

 

I doubt it will come as a surprise to anyone that data shows that bad relationships with managers, account for one of the top three reasons for employees to resign and statistics range from 50-75% of employees leaving for this specific reason. It is a crucial factor for organisations to look at as part of their #OD strategies around #retention rates.

 

At some management training I recently delivered, we talked about the best and ‘worst’ managers the delegates had ever had and what they could learn from them in their own management style.

 

I’ve had a few challenges on the management front over the years (being unnecessarily micro-managed to within an inch of my life by an inexperienced manager was a particular low), but one of the best managers I’ve ever had was great for a number of reasons. She appreciated that my, (and not her), specialisms were in careers coaching and training, so although she supported me when needed, she gave me lots of autonomy so that I could really ‘get stuck in’. I was given the space to develop my role to support clients and make the role fit for me and I truly believe this was a turning point where my professional career really took off as I was given the opportunity to spread my wings. Crucially for me, she was also great at showing her appreciation for a job well done but in an authentic way, where I truly believed she did appreciate the work and that was due to us having built trust with each other. And I decided to play that forward. Here is a picture that sums that up well. At the end of one of the first ever National Careers Weeks, I held a party for all the Careers Prefects who had helped me throughout the week, to thank them. During this, my manager gave me a lovely thank you card and flowers. It was a great end to a brilliant week. I hope those who’ve been working hard all of #NCW2020 have some celebration plans for the end of this week!

 
 
 
 

Are you a Careers professional working with young people in schools, trying to make a limited budget stretch far? Contact me for some tips and advice on how you can hone your craft and develop a programme to be proud of which also meets all the Gatsby Benchmarks.