Focus determines your future and your fortune - II

In my previous post on this topic, I addressed how your focus determines your future. (Read it here).

The reality is that it also impacts your fortune, even without you recognising how the status quo has a hand to play in this dynamic.

As you might know, I coach women at the three major career stages: young aspiring leaders, mid-career women looking to enter senior leadership and senior leaders who want to make a bigger impact in their organisations.

What I consistently see is that the status quo has the power to hijack the focus of these women in three ways:

• Discomfort: This is when early career women start doubting themselves and their capabilities

• Denial: Many mid-career managers (whether or not they are mothers) are conditioned to put everyone else before themselves 

• Distractions: Even with a great track record, senior leaders are being judged or held back on account of trivialities

  
  

This dynamic (whichever version of the above you experience) disempowers you and reduces your confidence in yourself, plus your confidence in how much agency you really have over your own career trajectory.

Then the resulting frustration, disappointment and anger get lost in the drama of every other thing that makes you frustrated, disappointed and angry about the status quo.

So a lack of confidence can take away your focus from what you really want to achieve in your career - rather than allow you to double down on your goals and make them a priority.

But the consequences go far beyond the emotional, and a diminished focus can mean that:

• you do not reach your full earning potential

• you do not enjoy the quality of life that you aspire to

• you are not selected for the opportunities that can boost your profile and your portfolio in a competitive job market

  
  

For most women I speak to, this tends to be a blindspot: in our coaching conversations they find themselves surprised when they see just how much their focus has been off-target and misaligned with their actual goals.

Once that clarity has been established and their focus is pointing in the right direction, they can achieve their end result with far more ease than expected.

Focussing on the right drivers can boost your fortune. 

For my coachees, this has meant:

• bigger pay rises than they had ever hoped for

• more senior roles than they thought they would be considered for

• increased authority, influence and impact on projects that anchor their positioning within the company and sometimes within the industry

  
  

If you have been wanting a promotion or a pay rise or bigger opportunities and this message has left you wondering what you might need to do to realign your focus to achieve those goals with more ease, book a coaching consultation with me to get clarity on what needs to change.

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Better focus means better results for you:

• Leadership Lab: Early career support to get your first leadership role

• Power Pose: Overcome limiting beliefs to finally step into senior leadership

• Director's Cut: Achieve your results with ease as a senior leader