I Want to See How Far I Can Go. As Myself.

One of the things I enjoy most is connecting people.

I like bringing together colleagues whose functions might not appear to have much in common and helping them become a team. That process interests me: finding the connection, creating a sense of working together and helping people see where they fit.

I also love supporting someone’s development. Giving people a platform so that their work and abilities become visible within an organisation is a part of management I find especially rewarding.

There is a particular pleasure in helping someone else have their moment. I want people to be seen for what they can do.

That tells me quite a lot about the kind of work I want to keep doing. Whatever the title or the project, I want people to be part of it.

I have been described as a cheerleader. I can see why.

I bring a lot of energy to my work, and I am good at passing that energy on. I can get people enthusiastic about something and help them see a possibility worth moving towards.

I want to keep that quality. An overly stiff version of professional life would be a poor fit for me. I would spend far too much energy trying to inhabit the character.

I am also naturally empathetic. I pick up on how things feel and bring that awareness into my work. My sense is that people often become comfortable with me quite quickly, and trust matters enormously to me. I want to return the trust people give me.

Alongside that, I am good at separating the central issue from the surrounding detail. I can step back, see the bigger picture and find a route through a complex problem.

It is the combination that feels like mine: energy, empathy, an overview of the work and a desire to help people get somewhere.

I recently qualified as a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner. The programme includes the Prosci ADKAR Model, and I found the subject genuinely interesting.

My attention is now very much on AI adoption in the workplace, which I am exploring with my team.

That brings together several things I enjoy: learning, solving problems, working with people and looking at how something new can become part of everyday work. It is a direction I can imagine wanting to explore further in the coming years.

I am largely self-taught in many of the things that interest me. I learn quickly and enjoy getting to grips with something new. When I can see a possible solution to a complex problem, I want to understand how to make it work.

AI adoption gives that curiosity somewhere to go. I am interested in the people who will be using the technology as well as the technology itself.

I have little patience for the suggestion that a woman has been given an opportunity because she looks a certain way.

It reduces someone’s work and abilities to an assumption before the conversation has properly begun. I want the work, the judgement and the contribution to be taken seriously.

I often work in environments with many men. At times, I have felt that my presence or my way of approaching things makes some people uncomfortable. That is my experience; I cannot know every person’s motives.

I can speak for the way I work. Empathy is a strength I bring, alongside an ability to see the bigger picture and identify what matters. I want to keep using those qualities as I develop.

I don’t need to become less recognisable to myself in order to take my career seriously.

I enjoy my job and the organisation I work for, and I hope I can continue there for a long time.

I am also interested in doing something different within a few years. Perhaps that means moving further into innovation and AI adoption. Perhaps it means leading a substantial project and working with the business in a different way.

I don’t assume I will always need to be a manager. I am interested in the work I could do and the contribution I could make, so I want to leave room for the form of that work to change.

I have spent roughly ten years working within the energy transition. It is a field that continues to interest and attract me, and one in which I can see a future for myself.

There is ambition in that openness. I want to keep developing enough to discover what else I might be capable of.

Essy’s Essentials gives me a place for a different part of my creativity.

I try to bring creativity into my work as a manager, but I could feel that there was more I wanted to make. Ideas, worlds and details in my head that I wanted to turn into something people could visit and use.

That is what I am building here.

My career belongs in it because work is such a large part of my life. So does home: the things I care about, the surroundings I enjoy and the small choices that make everyday life feel better.

I want to show how those parts come together and give someone else something they can apply to their own life. Sometimes that might be a practical way of organising work. Sometimes it is a much smaller thing that makes a day more enjoyable.

Helping someone move forward, with something large or small, gives me a great deal of satisfaction. I can see that thread running through both my job and this business.

I want to keep learning. I want to see what happens when I follow the work that interests me and give myself room to grow into it.

I also want to keep the energy, the warmth and the pleasure I take in helping people. Those are useful things to bring to a career, and they are things I like about the way I work.

I don’t yet know where my ceiling is. Finding out feels worth the effort.