2 minutes
10 actions to identify your uniqueness and use it to grow your career
You can use how you are different to empower yourself and others to move your career forward. But not everyone knows how to discover what makes them unique and how to put that to work for them.
As a transgender woman, I’ve learned a lot about how to leverage my uniqueness. I started in banking struggling to get bank managers to hire me as a teller. But over time, I have grown my career to the VP level. Along the way, I identified 10 empowering actions that have worked well, and I’ve included them in my new book (and ebook) called Empowering Differences, as well as in the accompanying workbook (and eworkbook), and online course.
The 10 empowering actions are guides to live by. “Access” is one of my favorite empowering actions because it builds such strong connections with others. In my career, I constantly check to make sure I have access to key leaders and cultivate those relationships. Building up my contact database of leaders created mountains of advocates for me and was one of the keys to my successful career development.
The book includes a self-assessment that’s even easier to do when using the workbook. After presenting the assessment, the workbook describes activities and lessons designed to help you connect and grow the skills sets for each of the 10 empowering differences. The online course is like 11 coffee chats with me that will help guide you through the workbook and the principles contained in the book. In the spirit of diversity, I thought it was important to offer a variety of tools to connect with people who learn in a variety of ways.
My vision with empowering differences is full-scale empowerment for all people, especially allowing individuals to showcase all of themselves. During this time when organizations are dedicating themselves to having (and reaping the benefits of) diverse talent, I think people will feel that they can do anything they put their mind to and that they can own their career development journey through the principles of empowering differences!
Ashley T Brundage is the founder and president of Empowering Differences.
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