How Taking Multiple Small Chances in Your Career Can Help With Confidence and Resilience in the Long Haul  

You’ve probably felt it, more than once. That gut feeling that you are not in the right place with your career or your life. Or maybe you were once in the right place, but you’ve since outgrown it and are eager for a new challenge. Perhaps you’re eyeing a completely new career path — a fresh start. Or maybe you just need to stop the world for a few months and recalibrate yourself.

Let’s face it: it can be terrifying to take a leap into the unknown. And there are so many “practical” reasons not to — staying safe, after all, is a basic human instinct. Or coworkers, family and friends may be skeptical. And there are always logistical and financial considerations to work out.

But the truth is, the cost of stagnating in a situation you’ve outgrown is far greater than the risk of going with your instinct and following that faint (or not-so-faint) signal you’re hearing inside.

Here’s what we’ve learned from our own life experiences: You don’t get there by taking one giant leap. And fortunately, you don’t have to. You just have to follow your inner cues and take small, smart leaps in the right direction, supported at each stage by your core talents.

Every time you take a little leap, be it in your career or in life, you earn a new measure of self-knowledge and confidence — the very assets that can help you know when, where and how to take your next little leap. And these little jumps? They help prepare you for the bigger leaps in your career and in your life.

Little Leaps: Sometimes a “Yes” Leap, Sometimes a “No” Leap

Earlier in our careers, neither of us could foresee how our professional lives would evolve.

We both started in government work — Sloane as an officer in the Air Force, Marissa as an intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency — but neither of us imagined at the time that we would leave the cocoon of public service. Neither of us anticipated we would end up in leadership positions with our current firm’s Global Crisis Centre, helping commercial clients navigate critical challenges.

So how did little leaps prepare us?  Sometimes taking that first small leap means saying yes to a new, but different opportunity in a still-familiar realm. For Marissa, that meant that after six years working in counter-narcotics intelligence for the DIA, when a new the opportunity arose to join the then just-formed National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) –she said yes. Sure, this was met with doubts from a few colleagues – but by taking a new position, and utilizing the same skills, Marissa was able to take a small leap that built her confidence.  And the new analytic group that she helped found still plays a key role in the Center’s mission.

Marissa’s successful transition from one intelligence agency to a new one opened two important doors for her. It gave her the gumption, when the time was right, to take the next little leap — from government work into the rapids of the private sector in investment banking. These little leaps continued to build confidence, building the revelation that, starting with her role at the NCTC’s analytic group, she was already acting as a consultant – just an internal one. Marissa’s “aha!” moment came one day when she realized: “OK, so I’m pretty good at this; I could teach others.” That was the leap that eventually led to Marissa assuming the role of US territory crisis leader.

Sometimes the leap involves saying “no” to a new opportunity that just feels like the wrong fit — and doing something completely different instead. That was Sloane’s experience. After three years in the Air Force, she was in the midst of a downsizing. The opportunities she was offered in the civilian world, while peripherally related to her core technology skills, did not pass Sloane’s “career gut test.” So the little leap she took was to decline those job offers — and instead take a pause to travel to Nepal. She wanted to step back, take a break and figure out what was important to her before deciding on her next career move. A planned month in Asia turned into a half-year adventure of backpacking in Southeast Asia, and a whole new outlook.

By the time Sloane returned to the States, her global acumen had grown (which would serve her well in her future career), and so had her confidence from trusting her instincts and letting them lead her. This growing confidence led Sloane to approach one of the largest consulting firms in the world for a job, where she started her career as a consultant to their cyber security practice. That leap eventually led to Sloane’s role as the global relationship partner for a large government agency. Today Sloane has made one more leap — she’s now back consulting for commercial clients as Asia Pacific Americas Coordinator for the Global Crisis Centre of the same consulting firm she started her career.

Swallow The Fear, Follow Your Gut, and Build From Your Core

While these stories look good in the rear view mirror, we would be lying if we didn’t admit each of us was terrified taking on a whole new role. (We don’t call them “leaps” for nothing.) The fear of making a leap in the dark is pretty much universal. Fears of failure, of having made an embarrassing mistake — or of being called out as a fake — are absolutely normal. They’re part of the price of admission. But we’ve also learned that these fears and stresses, when approached with a constructive attitude, can be the very fuel you need to succeed. And when you do make it across, they fuel the confidence you need to make your next move, should you desire to. Each individual story, each career path, is unique and has its own power and internal logic.

So let’s start with a gut check — are you happy? Are you feeling fulfilled, or on the path to getting there? Is there something at work you’d like to change? Are you feeling a tugging inside that may be pulling you in a different direction?

What are your core abilities and interests — what are you already good at? Take that core as your professional backbone, then follow your instinct: Where do you want to go next? What opportunities are there? What feels right?

Ability and Agility

Remember, leaps are not always 180-degree changes. Maybe you’re fundamentally happy with your job now but you’d like to restructure a few things. It could be as simple as asking to work on a more flexible time schedule. Or telecommute one day a week. Or perhaps it involves volunteering for a service organization that has always intrigued you. It could also be saying no one thing to refocus your time on another.

With every small leap that you make, you are building your abilities and your agility. When you decide to take a leap (whether it’s saying no to something that doesn’t feel right, or yes to something that does feel right), the events that follow have the potential to change your career and your life. They can reward you in two ways — internally, with hard-earned confidence and wisdom, and externally, with opportunity.

You don’t always understand what you’ve accomplished until you look back and see the decisions you’ve made and how they’ve propelled your path.  So the next time you want to try something new, but fear the doubters, go with your gut. Take the leap. It’s preparing your confidence, your abilities and your agility for those bigger leaps that will come your way later on. That one schedule change request? It could turn out to be the catalyst leading you to an entirely new and satisfying career.

Written by: Marissa Michel & Sloane Englert Menkes, Business Leaders @ PwC