Leaders Needed: Apply Within

  • 1 min read
Communicate

It’s Not Too Early or Too Late

You have to continue to differentiate yourself at each stage in your career. Regardless of your age, at every point in your life, there is a younger person eager to step into your job. If you are 30 years old, there is an impatient 20-something coming up on you; at 40 there is that pesky 30-year-old. One 60-year-old CEO told me about a 44-year-old knocking on his door to take over the company—his own son!

The problem is that you, like others, had the impetus to “do something” and “be someone” when you started your career, but then the realities life set in with marriages, children, divorces, debts, illnesses, and career hiccups. Then someone “sped up the clock” when you weren’t watching, and now a bleak picture frequently pops up of you aging fast in an outdated building, lined with long rows of gray cubicles, and you are pushing paper and working in a mundane and mind-numbing job, with no excitement or significance.

Put all that real life together, and it can become a little discouraging. It could make you question yourself or even give up, disengage, chuck it all, and drop out. But you can’t because you have responsibilities, pride, dreams, hopes, and the need to prove to yourself you do have it in you to create an extremely meaningful personal and professional existence.

When you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done. Whatever your age, job situation, work history, or family way, turn up the juice going forward. Do it now, do it for your team, your company, and yourself—that is, unless you are ready to give up. But if you are like me, you aren’t about to give up. You must realize that personal reinvention never ends whether you have a little gray hair or no hair.

Picture of Debra Benton

Debra Benton

D.A. (Debra) Benton has been helping great individuals and organizations get even better for over 20 years. Just as exceptional athletes rely on excellent coaching to hone their skills, Debra's clients rely on her advice to advance their careers. She focuses on what is truly important to convert what you and your organization want to be from a vision into a reality. TopCEOCoaches.com ranks her in the World's Top 10 CEO Coaches noting she is the top female. And as conference keynote speaker she is routinely rated in the top 2%. Her client list reads like a “Who's Who” of executives in companies ranging from Microsoft, McDonald's, Kraft, American Express, Merrill Lynch, United Airlines, and PricewaterhouseCoopers to the Washington Beltway and U.S.Border Patrol. *She is the author of ten award-winning and best-selling business books including The Virtual Executive and CEO Material. She has written for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fast Company. She has been featured in USA Today, Fortune, The New York Times, and Time; she has appeared on Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS with Diane Sawyer. To learn more Debra advising leaders, coaching, facilitating a workshop, or speaking: www.debrabenton.com

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Psychology says people who tolerate being talked over, dismissed, and quietly diminished usually don’t lack self-respect — they were taught that keeping the peace was their job

Psychology says people who tolerate being talked over, dismissed, and quietly diminished usually don’t lack self-respect — they were taught that keeping the peace was their job

The Vessel
People born between 1945 and 1965 grew up hearing that feelings were something you managed alone, and many are only now learning there was another way

People born between 1945 and 1965 grew up hearing that feelings were something you managed alone, and many are only now learning there was another way

The Vessel
The friend you haven’t texted in too long would probably be gladder to hear from you than you expect — part of it is the shock of seeing your name

The friend you haven’t texted in too long would probably be gladder to hear from you than you expect — part of it is the shock of seeing your name

The Vessel
The brain predicts the end of a sentence before it arrives, the same trick language models use to write

The brain predicts the end of a sentence before it arrives, the same trick language models use to write

Global English Editing
A 1988 study had one group of people write about their most traumatic experience for 20 minutes a day, four days in a row, while another group spent the same four days writing about something completely ordinary, and when researchers measured their immune response afterward, the group who wrote about the hard thing came out with a measurably stronger one

A 1988 study had one group of people write about their most traumatic experience for 20 minutes a day, four days in a row, while another group spent the same four days writing about something completely ordinary, and when researchers measured their immune response afterward, the group who wrote about the hard thing came out with a measurably stronger one

The Blog Herald
We can describe exactly who we used to be. We still don’t have the words for who we are now.

We can describe exactly who we used to be. We still don’t have the words for who we are now.

The Vessel
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore