Do you use avoidance tactics? Given the amount of times I’ve seen them cropping up recently, there’s a good chance you do.
What do I mean by avoidance? Well, time and time again I see women being offered a big opportunity. A chance to interview for their dream job perhaps. Or to present their work on big stage.
Of course, they jump at the opportunity.
And then, rather than preparing for their big shot, they ignore it. They procrastinate. They deny it’s happening.
Eventually, the opportunity arrives anyway. And these women find themselves feeling unprepared. Inevitably they don’t perform at their very best, leaving them room to beat themselves up.
It becomes a nasty cycle. But it doesn’t have to be.
By meeting the opportunity head on, you put yourself in a position to shine. If you feel like you’ve been employing some avoidance tactics, here are some tips to get you back in the game.
Tips for eliminating career limiting avoidance tactics
Work through the discomfort
Pull out your trusty journal and dig into what’s concerning you and why. Really try to work out why you are avoiding preparing for your opportunity. Perhaps you need to explore the worst case scenario. Or maybe you just need the time to plan.
Often times, the thoughts whirling around in our heads lose their power when you see them on paper. Ask yourself if the stories you’re telling yourself are true. Chances are they won’t be.
Find real life ways to practice
Many women do practice before a big event. But they’ll practice in the privacy of their own office or home. This allows them to skim over the hard parts and it eliminates the benefits of feedback. When I have a big opportunity on the horizon that I really want to perform well in, I’ll practice in front of my team. Or I’ll ask a trusted mentor to mock interview me.
These actions help to crystallise the talking points in my mind and allow me to refine my messages. Experience tells me that by taking these actions I’ll always perform better on the day.
Make time for preparation – and use it
Commit to your success and show up for yourself. Use your calendar to support your goals and actually lock in the practice time. Make notes. Even just think about what you want to achieve.
And don’t fall into the trap of not keeping your appointment with yourself. It is very easy to book over these sort of appointments or to fill the time with something else.
Tell me. Do you employ avoidance tactics? Or perhaps you have some tips that help you to prepare? Either way, I’d love for you to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Warmest, Janelle.
Photo Credit: Haute Stock
This is such an important post! Me to a tee, for so many years. I wish that I had read it about 40 years ago, but I wonder if I would have seen myself in it?
I would like for all of us who are – ahem – ‘more mature’ to share this with our younger women colleagues in an appropriate way. Then, I think I would have seen myself and have profited.
And I think we don’t do this enough; we look at young women who seem to have it so much easier than we did and we don’t look deeper to see that they struggle in many of the same ways that we did/do.
Only once or twice in my career was I the recipient of advice from an older woman. Decades later, I still remember those occasions and those pieces of advice. We do make a difference when we take aside our younger colleagues for a few words of advice or encouragement.
Hi Alisa. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts – I’m so glad you saw value in the post. I feel like my own career benefitted greatly from the advice of those who’d gone before me. And these days I feel that sharing what I’ve learned and observe with younger colleagues is a way to pay those generous women back. You are right that about young women not always seeing the areas they could grow in. But of course you don’t know what you don’t know. Which is why that guidance from those who have walked the path is so powerful.