Hello there, it's Amantha. I'm currently on a Christmas break, so I've handpicked a bunch of my favorite episodes from the last year to share with you. Okay, on with today's best of episode. A great piece of advice can be powerful. It can set you on a whole new trajectory, land you a new job, or even prompt you to make a big career change. So through the many interviews I've conducted for this show, I have asked a lot of the leaders that I have had on for the
best career advice they have ever received. And today I want to share with you four pieces of advice that have set them up for success. My name is doctor Amathemba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show
about how to help you do your best work. So, for Wendy Stops, who is a non executive director on the board of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the largest bank here in OZ, the most fundamental piece of career advice she gives to people is to do your job well. And interestingly, Wendy says that people's first reaction to this advice is well, that's obvious, to which Wendy replies, it's not. I mean, whatever you're asked to do, do it and
do it well. So if you're asked to go and photocopy two hundred pages, show them that you're the best damn photocopier that they have ever seen. And Wendy also recommends not whinging about the boring or tedious parts of your job, because every job has good bits and bad
bits and you just have to do them all well. Now, another piece of advice that Wendy had been given is that she has been through plenty of hard times in her career, such as being on the board of Combak during the Royal Commission into Banking in twenty eighteen, and Wendy believes that the bad times are actually the best times for development because of how much we learn. So what Wendy shared with me on the show is she said that bad times make you a better person for
the next job. So for her, sure, the Royal Commission was tough, but she learnt a lot as well, and she's a big believer in learning from the bad times and not just bailing, like actually sticking it out because you will learn so much and you will come out the other end much stronger and much tougher and be in a much better position to move your career forward.
The next piece of advice I want to share it comes from Kendra Bank, who is the Managing director for Australia and New Zealand at SEKH And if you don't live in Australia, you will not know what seek is and it's essentially the largest online job board in Australia. So Kendra has spent the last two decades rising up the ranks in the digital sector. And advice that Kendra received early on in her career is to be in
sectors and businesses that are growing. So she told me that where there is growth in a sector or a business, that creates opportunities and you can grow along with that business or sector. And for Kendra, having been in digital for two decades, that's been a big part of her story in cementing her career and rising right to the top. Now, for Allison Watkins, who when she was on the show was the group Managing director of Coca Cola Amatol, she told me that she started her career as what she
described as an insecure overachiever. So Alison had a level of insecurity that she said made her somebody that just wanted to please, and this makes you very vulnerable to the judgments of other people. Alison eventually realized that exposing yourself to the judgments of others puts you in an untenable position because some people who pass judgment may not
actually have particularly good judgment. So for Alison, during her career, she has become a lot better at accepting that not everybody is going to agree with the choices that she makes all the things that she does, and she's learnt to value the judgment for those who were well placed to be wise and considered, and for those people, their feedback is really important to Allison, and then she tries not to leave herself vulnerable to the judgments of less
inform people. So essentially, remember that not all feedback is created equal. Now finally, some bad advice, and this comes from some advice that Kendra received in the form of parenting and career advice. Someone once said to Kendra, now that you're having your second child, you probably want to come back to a job that's a little less demanding.
But fortunately for Kendra, she didn't take that advice, and she finds that there's a lot of assumptions made about how parents want to drive their careers, which can be very detrimental. And for her, it's not that slowing down is the wrong choice, but it's to assume that slowing down is the choice for everybody that is the wrong thing. So equally, to assume that staying in a similar career path is the right decision for everybody is also wrong.
So what we need to do is enable people to look at what's really important for them and make choices that work for them and avoid making assumptions about what is best. So those are four pieces of advice and one not so good piece of advice to take on board to help you in your career. Hello there, that is it for today's show. If you enjoyed today's episode, why not share it with someone else that you think would benefit and maybe get some useful tips to improve
the way that they work. How I Work is produced by Inventing and with production support from Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for every show and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time,