Take More Risk in Your Career

Episode # 99: Are you willing to take more risk to ensure you achieve what you want in your career? Or…are you playing it too safe?  Taking risk is often a mindset issue where you can limit yourself and fear stepping out from your comfort zone. Get vulnerable, develop a plan and find the courage to go after what you want to move toward your long-term goal. No one is going to hand it to you so you have to decide to take action to develop your career with the skills and experience you need to move forward. Decide today to go after it and achieve something amazing. 

Episode outline:

1. Taking risk is about mindset,
2. Gamble on yourself, and 
3. What can we change?

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Transcript

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Are you willing to take more risks to ensure you achieve what you want in your career? Or are you playing it too safe? Taking risk is often a mindset issue where you can limit yourself and fear stepping out from your comfort zone, get vulnerable, develop a plan and find the courage to go after what you want to move toward, and your long term goal. No one is going to hand it to you so you have to decide to take action. To develop your career with the skills and experience you need to move forward. Decide today to go after it and achieve something amazing. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLean. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes. And also, please join the Facebook group I have for this podcast community. Thank you. This is episode number 99. And I'll be discussing taking risk in your career. And that will highlight the following topics. Number one, taking risk is about mindset. Number two, gamble on yourself. And three, what can we change? Michael Jordan said, Some people want it to happen. Some people wish it would happen. Others make it happen. Now that's a great Michael Jordan quote others make it happened. That is powerful. Now why do certain people make it happen for their career and in their life while others do not? What is different about the person who was willing to take a risk? Versus the person who was waiting for something to happen? Or even the person who is super comfortable in their role? What is the difference? In which one are you are you going to be one of the others that will make it happen? I do not support playing it safe in your career. I do want you to be smart and have a plan. So just jumping on anything that pops up is also not something I support either have a plan and be willing to get on a project that may be challenging. Take a risk in doing something outside of your comfort zone. Go beyond your daily task list. Learn new technical skills like coding, or enhance your analysis skills, and develop and grow your soft skills like leadership communication, emotional intelligence, time management, and many others. learning new skills, especially soft skills, and taking more risk can elevate your opportunities in your career in the long run. Last week, I asked why did you choose a career in finance and accounting? Why do you like working in the finance and accounting fields now what drives you? And why did you choose to do this kind of work? Please go back and listen to episode 98. If you missed it, I really want you to explore this question as you develop your plan. To achieve your long term goal. I need you to be honest with yourself as you develop your plans for the future. And as you figure out more about yourself, and why you either take risk or you don't. Also don't forget to finish up any CPE that may be required this year, and get them turned in on time. I always want you to finish up your CPS way before this time of year. So always have a plan, schedule your trainings and get them done. Use any available training funds your company has. If you still have 10 CPE to earn for this year. We need to talk and we need to have a better plan for next year. Let's get those CPE done well in advance before the end of the year. Now what does it mean you have to take more risks to move your career long. Now two things come to mind. The first you have to develop critical skills and experience to move in your career which means you must go beyond your daily job. You have to seek out opportunities to fill out your career history in your resume with what organizations are looking for and higher responsibility roles. And then you have to take action. No one is going to hand you an opportunity you have to go get it. You need to get exposure and face time with key people who can help you move along. Be watching for key projects and opportunities to develop your skills and experience and find new and better ways to add value to the business. Always take action and add value in everything you do. Now what stops us from taking risk. It's the usual limiting beliefs that I talked about in episode 38, which are imposter syndrome. Having a fixed mindset procrastination, seeking approval and people pleasing and needing to be perfect. We must always have self awareness when these beliefs are present in our mindset, because they will prevent you from accomplishing your long term goal. You and your dream and I want you to achieve your dream I do. Success comes with having a plan, making decisions and taking action, you must take action to move forward. Now what do you want to accomplish? Why haven't you done it yet? Ask yourself that. Do you lack a goal? Do you lack vision? Do you lack a plan? Are you failing to take action? Every time we take a risk, we either win or we learn, we never fail. It's a win, we can celebrate and help us move forward. Or we learn something in our experience that may not have executed the way we thought it would. And that is okay, too. You are either winning or learning. That's the mindset I want you to have. And no one is going to just offer you a step up, you have to grab it when it happens. You have to advocate for yourself. You have to minimize your limiting beliefs. I recently learned this valuable lesson that you are going to be either winning or learning you are not losing. This is a mindset battle. If you don't quite get what you want from a decision you made or an opportunity you tried. Then you learn something valuable by trying you didn't lose you learned and that is a valuable and healthy way to keep moving forward. Now let's talk about taking risk in our career. Number one, taking risk is about mindset. How we view ourselves how we value ourselves and how resilient we are helps our career reach factor and that is how far can we go in our career based on our willingness to learn and to take risk. Avoid the usual limiting beliefs of a fixed mindset imposter syndrome, procrastination, people pleasing and many others. These hold us back and prevent us from reaching our potential and our dreams free you're thinking and free yourself to act. Be kind to yourself when you make a mistake or something doesn't go as planned. We are either winning or learning and it's okay to make a mistake. Tell yourself that over and over. You can recover from a career mistake you can. You can not let the possibility of making a mistake to stop you from stepping out from your comfort zone. Number two gamble on yourself. No one is going to hand you an opportunity. You have to believe in yourself and take the chances that are in front of you. Those opportunities won't always be there. You have to take it when they come along and put in 100% see you grow and succeed. You have to decide to advocate for yourself and your career. No one else will always be ready to market your abilities and be willing to get out of your comfort zone. Take the gamble on yourself. Go all in and be smart about it. Have a plan and be ready to jump on an opportunity. Be ready and be strong to apply for a role. You may not be ready for yet go after it. You must take charge of your own career you must write out a plan and be willing to change to grow and to take action. Number three, what can we change? There are a few areas we can change or focus on to improve. We should start with our mindset. We can strengthen our mindset. So we focus on learning and taking action. We must be more self aware and also analyze your skills, your experience and any limiting beliefs that may be stopping you. You must also have a written plan. Write down what you want to achieve. When you see it written you have a greater chance to see it through to completion. You may be more brave to take on risk to achieve it and be ready to be vulnerable. Getting a no responses. Okay, but keep moving forward. Do you fear getting a no as an answer when you apply for a new role or asked to be on a high visibility project. Getting a no gives us clarity because it helps you to be more focused on a more clear pathway. So getting a no is sometimes good. We have dreams and desires for our career. But often we are not sure where to start or which pathway to take. Sometimes we fear going beyond our daily tasks to get more involved with the business or we come up with a great idea but are afraid to get vulnerable to share it. taking more risk in your career is a decision to go after those dreams. So you achieve something bigger than you are today. So you don't waste an opportunity. So you don't regret later what could have been so you achieve your potential. How many of you stayed longer in a role and you really wanted to do the fear or going beyond your comfort zone. Now for action today, here are a few steps to begin. The first list out any limiting beliefs you may have that is stopping you from taking more risk. Go back to listen to episode 38. If you need a refresher on limiting beliefs and do a good self awareness test, really test out what is stopping you and what may be stopping you what you believe that not to be true about yourself. These are limiting beliefs. Really get into that self awareness and how and ask a friend if you need to the next analyzed why you fear getting vulnerable. Getting vulnerable is the first step to taking risk so that you don't worry about what others are going to think about you get a little vulnerable take some risk. The next work on shifting Your mindset so you don't fear taking risk. It all begins with our mindset. Also, I recommend listening to Episode 40. Stop playing it safe, I want you to achieve your potential and achieve your dreams. We all have obstacles to overcome. So let's work on this together. If you have not already, I want to invite you to download a leadership guide for finance and accounting leaders, you can go to Finance leader academy.com and select Free leadership guide on the main menu. It's free, and it may give you a few ideas for your own leadership development. Today I talked about taking risk in your career and I highlighted the following points. Number one taking risk is about mindset. Number two gamble on yourself. And three, what can we change? The beginning of achievement is the realization that we must believe in ourselves. Be strong and having confidence that you can achieve it that you should go after your dreams take a risk get vulnerable, and don't fear getting a no for an answer. Getting that no helps us to find our pathway a little better, and no is often helpful, so we eliminate the wrong possibilities quicker. So we focus on our energy and effort on the right pathway. I'm releasing this episode during Thanksgiving week in the United States. So I wish you a happy Thanksgiving. To those celebrating. Have a wonderful holiday. Enjoy yourselves and stay safe. Next episode I will be talking about impacts you can make as a finance and accounting leader in your organization. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership skills to change your mindset and to clarify your goals so you advance your career. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helped you today, please share and leave a quick review so that others can find the podcast. Until next time, you can check out more resources at finance leader academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you