Power Moves by Lauren McGoodwin is a book about taking control of your career and achieving your goals. The book provides advice, tips, and strategies for making the most of your professional life. It covers topics such as how to craft a career plan, how to make the most of your talents, how to create a professional network, and how to stay motivated and focused on your goals.
The book also provides advice on how to handle difficult situations and how to develop confidence and resilience in your career.
3. Take Control of Your Career
Take control of your career and become your own career coach. In movie terms, you’ll be the producer, director, and lead actor. Now that you appreciate the importance of taking care of yourself (self-care) and developing the support of others (relationships), it’s time to manage the career you want.
No matter where you are in your career, no one is going to understand and look out for your needs and interests and career progress with the same commitment (and obsession) as you. That shouldn’t be a surprise, because no one cares about the outcome more than you do.
The Right Approach
What determines the Power Moves you’ll make, when you make them, and how you’ll make them—all part of your Power Moves approach—is career awareness.
While anyone can make a Power Move, the more informed your career awareness, the more likely you’ll make a successful Power Move with purpose and intent—one that is part of an overall approach to managing your career.
Stop believing your self-worth is your net worth
Put an end to the thinking that your worth is tied up in the amount of money you make and stop using the kind of language that surrounds it. Here are some steps to combat this thinking:
Find examples in your life that are not related to money that make you feel good about yourself. Share those moments with friends and family, and even write them down. The goal is to start associating your self-worth with feelings and experiences that deserve it and have nothing to do with your bank accounts.
4. Don’t forget money
It’s nearly impossible to hear the words “career success and fulfillment” and not think about money. It’s likely that all of us (at some point) have used money as a measure of our career success and fulfillment.
You really do need to be aware of how it can affect your thinking, and how to have a proactive and realistic relationship with money so you can build a fulfilling career on your terms. There’s little doubt when it comes to earning and managing money that a lack of this resource can limit your career flexibility and critically impair your ability to make a Power Move.
The Tool Kit
The Power Moves Tool Kit creates a foundation for career awareness. This understanding enables you to make planned, successful Power Moves (as part of your own integrated approach) to achieve the career you want.
The importance of self-care should be obvious, but it always seems to be ignored until it’s almost too late. You can’t be your best and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way if you don’t take care of your emotional and physical self. This is kind of required to make any informed, effective, and ultimately successful Power Move.
2. Relationships Matter
Even in our ever-isolated, online-driven, increasingly VR world, IRL relationships matter. When it comes to your ability to make successful Power Moves, your personal and professional relationships are absolutely critical. Knowing that getting along with other humans is important to your success seems like a no-brainer, right?
Still, Most of us struggle to prioritize strong, healthy, supportive connections with the people in our work world.
What’s a Power Move?
Every single Power Move is made with the intent of helping you achieve a successful, fulfilling career—on your terms. They can be bold or subtle, grand or seemingly inconsequential, but all of them contribute to the path your career takes.
The challenge of defining a Power Move is that it is never just one thing—but there is a clear theme. Power Moves are the decisions, or actions, or behaviors that make it possible to have a fulfilling career on your terms.
It’s a Lifestyle!
Start today, this minute, making decisions that are right for you, not just “right.” Your career awareness has already expanded. Use it to harness your own power, take control of your career, and propel you into a working life that you want, that works for you, in the right here and the right now.
Building a career full of Power Moves—developing your own Power Moves approach—will always be and should always be a work in progress.
It’s an approach that becomes a lifestyle. It builds upon itself. It’s something any of us can do to experience the career we want, on our terms. The only way to not make progress is to not move at all. Take your power back.
And that’s the greatest Power Move of all.
The Power Moves Approach
Developing a Power Moves approach begins with the question, “How do you (want to) manage your career?” A lot of people don’t really think about “managing” their career. It just sort of happens. Others take the “kind of, sort of” approach to career management.
They tend to make decisions in response to something that’s happened, usually something unexpected (even bad). Both of these approaches offer little, if any, control over the direction of your career.
Remember It’s the Company, Not the Job
Sure, there are some situations where you genuinely hate the duties at hand, when your core competencies are not being put to their best use, but for the most part, the reason you hate your work is because your boss is terrible, the company culture is soul-sucking and toxic, or you are undervalued, overworked, and/or treated with disrespect or disdain.
You could be doing the exact same job you are today at a different company or for a different client, and instead of dreading work, you’d find that you missed it when you were gone.
Play to Your Strengths
Strengths are important because people who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job, and we all want that. Surprisingly, according to Gallup, research also shows that people who use their strengths are 8 percent more productive and 15 percent less likely to quit their jobs.
The obvious conclusion: planning a future based on your strengths is the smart thing to do. You’ll experience more engagement, opportunity, and career fulfillment. Your strengths are essentially your competitive advantage.
Relationship with coworkers
When we invest in high-quality, positive relationships with coworkers or those in our professional orbit, when these relationships are grounded in respect, cooperation, and trust, we become better workers, more open to feedback and more engaged in our day-to-day tasks, no matter how mundane.
Put another way: being close to coworkers makes work more fun.
1. Self-Care Is Mandatory
Self-care and self-discipline are some of the few defenses you have against burnout; they can reduce the effects of stress on your body, help you work more efficiently and make more thoughtful decisions, and refocus your energy. Internal tools like mind-set shifts, resilience, grit, and silencing your inner critic, as well as overcoming comparison and envy, are what it takes to secure yourself not in momentary feelings.
You cannot develop and build these internal tools without prioritizing self-care. The other great thing about these internal tools is that even if/when you do get off track with prioritizing your self-care, you can get back on track by starting over. There are no start and finish lines that you’re abiding by.
Set and Manage Career Goals
Even if your boss has their own goals for you (but especially if they don’t), begin a running list of everything you’d like to achieve at work in the next quarter, the next six months, and the next year.
This could be milestones like a raise or a promotion, but could also be smaller, quieter things like learning a new internal system, taking the lead on your own project or attending more high-level meetings.
Understand When and How You’ll Be Evaluated
What are the goals of your position? Which are your relevant KPIs (key performance indicators)?
It’s critical to have clear expectations about what comprises success in any role you’re in so you know where you stand and can track your performance, and, ultimately, do what’s needed to achieve what you want (more responsibility, a bigger paycheck, another project with this client).
Power Move Examples
Quitting your job is definitely a Power Move, just like a decision to speak up at a meeting. Starting a “whisper network” or sharing your salary with your colleagues is a Power Move, just like scheduling an informational interview.
Volunteering for a work assignment—one that requires a new skill set—is a bold Power Move, but no less valuable than making a habit of greeting your supportive colleagues with a smile and encouragement.
