My career history here at Nottingham started in 1994 and I joined on a one year contract.
I had a joint appointment between the, what was then, the Department of Nursing Studies
and the local Community Trust.
So I was working clinically as a nurse but I wanted to do a PhD and got offered an opportunity
to come here to work on a Fellowship application.
I have found that the University has been a fantastic place to work and it’s really
the people that I’ve worked with that have enabled me to have the kind of career that
I’ve had here.
For me, my career has been developed by people who’ve listened, by giving opportunities
and taking risks with me, and I can’t thank people enough for doing that and it’s something
that I hope I do for others.
I think that my career has just been able to blossom here and that’s been one of the
things I’ve most appreciated.
So in terms of some of the practical things that have helped in my career I think it’s
been very much about being able to work within a role, but of course you have to deliver
certain things at a certain time, I can do that flexibly. So I have been fortunate in
that I’ve been able to manage my family life as well as my work life. I have been
fortunate in that I can work flexibly, and that means sometimes I’ve had to leave work
to pick up children and then finish things off later. Maybe take time off because my
children have been poorly, but absolutely still being able to do the job and I think
that’s a number of things, one is that people understand about what you’re doing and how
you’re doing it because you’ve talked to them and you work with them closely. Secondly,
I think those really practical things about having good tools to do the job, it’s not
just work tools, it’s actually relationship tools as well.
And I think that sense of trust and confidence again is really important and that’s a two-way
thing and so I think that you have to build that up in terms of how you work and how you
deliver. And build up trust that you will do that and you also have to trust that the
workplace and the people you work with will allow you the time and the space to do all
the things that you need to do in order to have
a great home life as well as a great work life.
For those people who are supporting colleagues developing their career I think it’s really
important to think about the person themselves. So where are they, what stage are they at
in their careers and what else might be going on for them in their lives and don’t make
assumptions. So sit down, and if you can do the one-to-one,
I think that’s incredibly important.
So things like one-to-one discussions, 360 feedback, but supported 360 feedback, and
enabling individuals to take time out and reflect on who they are and where they are
and again that’s coming back to the listening, the thinking about the individual within the
broader context.
Secondly, I think I would be encouraging those supporting others to get them to be ambitious,
to think about things that you would quite like to do that you maybe thought you couldn’t
do and then to give that a go.
I think that’s some of the things that I’ve found really helpful, people taking risks
on you but you feel supported in doing that, because you feel they’re with you, they
put support in place and you have continued conversations about it.
So I think it’s understanding the individual and then encouraging them, I suppose, to be
the best that they can be.
Thinking about navigating a career I think is something we don’t often do, actually.
Careers are incredibly precious, whatever they are and whatever stage you’re at. And
actually we need to give them a little bit of time and a little bit of thought.
So my first piece of advice would be, step back, think about who you are, what you’re
doing, where you would like to be doing things and how you’d like to do them and then work
out if there are things that you need to change, do differently, to get there.
The second is that careers are part of our lives and I think really important to think
about how you are, not just working to develop a career, but actually, how does that fit
with who you are, all the other things that are going on in your life.
Actually being more reflective about what’s shaping how we’re thinking,
how we’re feeling.
So for me the personal and the professional, incredibly intertwined, but it’s important
that we acknowledge that and then use it to advantage.