Why More Women Don’t Lead and Innovate - Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation - page 49

After you have logged your behavior, thoughts, and emotions for at least a
week, list the following based on the time, activities, and behaviors in your pro-
fessional and personal environment:
1. My top three spontaneous thoughts for the week(s) occurred when and were
about what topic?
2. My top three yearnings for the week(s) occurred when and were about what
topics?
3. My top three rapid learning experiences happened when I was doing what?
4. My top three feelings of satisfaction took place when I was doing what
activity?
Once you've answered these questions begin to assess how you can integrate
more opportunities to experience these affirmative behaviors and feelings in
your current task. Ask yourself what aspects of my job generate these positive
feelings? More importantly, begin to assess how your next career move should
be designed to integrate your strengths. It is important to also consider the per-
sonal environment because we may find our greatest strengths not being used
in the work environment. In this case, we will need to evaluate how to identify
tasks that we can engage in where our primary strengths can be utilized. Once
you have identified your strengths, it is useful to create a plan to enhance these
strengths and align your career goals with activities where your strengths add
value. Know your strengths and build on them. We have spent enough time
learning about our weaknesses and agonizing over how to change them. While
we must address critical weaknesses that could be detrimental to us, we should
spend much more time focusing on developing our natural abilities, as these
represent our greatest areas of growth potential and career success.
Perception of Limited Opportunity or Failure
to Recognize Opportunities
Wherever there is a problem there is an opportunity. Gaining access to the prob-
lem and acquiring the permission to “lead” is the goal. Getting into a position to
address the problem must be the top priority of every aspiring leader. Although
the higher you climb the ladder, the fewer formal leadership opportunities, be
comforted that an array of leadership opportunities exists throughout most orga-
nizations. In the topic Leaders , the authors point out that “The truth is that lead-
ership opportunities are plentiful and within reach of most people.” [17] The key
is to be able to recognize those opportunities. Simply put, wherever there is a
challenge, problem, or pressing issue you can be sure there is an opportunity - an
opportunity for a leader, an opportunity for leadership. Chanda Kochhar, ICICI
Bank's joint managing director and chief financial officer, shared her ability to
recognize how a challenge can become a leadership opportunity in her discus-
sion with Wharton Professor Michael Useem at the World Economic Forum in
Davos [18] . ICICI is India's largest privately owned bank with assets of nearly