367: Leading Through Transitions: The Messy Middle

What if the most important infrastructure of your career has nothing to do with your skills, your credentials, or your hard work, and everything to do with the people you have intentionally built around you?In this special episode of Leading Yourself, I am sharing the full recording of my live book launch event for Build Your Career Squad: The 9 People You Need in Your Career Squad , the book I have been carrying for a long time and that officially came into the world on September 5th.This is not a typical book launch. It is a real conversation.I walk you through the full Career Squad framework, nine relationships organized into three families that determine not just how far your career goes but how you feel getting there. We do a live assessment together so you can see exactly where your own squad stands right now. And then I sit down with two guests who have built extraordinary careers and who know this framework not because they read the book, but because they lived it.Joining me on the panel:Charlie Ackerman — former SVP of Human Resources at Bosch North America, executive coach, and one of the people in my own Career Squad.Andy Storch — author of Own Your Career Own Your Life, keynote speaker, and host of the Talent Development Hot Seat podcast.Together we talk about what it actually takes to find the right people for your squad, how to onboard a new relationship without it feeling transactional, what it means to show up for someone else's career over a long time, and what most professionals leave on the table in the relationships they already have.Whether you have read the book or this is the first time you are hearing about it, this episode will change how you look at every professional relationship in your life.Grab a copy of the book: https://buildyourcareersquad.com

This week, I'm doing something different. Instead of talking about the book, I'm reading it to you, straight from the opening chapter.It starts in Honduras, at a wire harness plant, where I was twenty-two years old and had just been handed the wheel of something I'd never driven, HR Manager for a manufacturing facility of 4,200 employees. I had no business being in that role. I didn't tell anyone how terrified I was.What got me through it wasn't talent. It was people. I just didn't have a name for them yet.This is the story behind the whole book, the moment the road trip metaphor was born, and your first real introduction to the idea that no career was ever meant to be driven alone.The 9 People You Need in Your Career Squad: How to Build the Relationships That Drive Every Career Breakthrough is available now, paperback and Kindle.Get the book: https://amzn.to/46abYicLear more: https://buildyourcareersquad.com

“The right people won't just celebrate your success. They'll care about who you're becoming along the way.”

On September 5th something that's lived privately in my head, my laptop, and stolen early mornings for two years becomes a real, my book The 9 People you Need in your Career Squad is launching. In this episode, I'm telling you the truth about launch week that nobody puts in the highlight reel: the pride, the discomfort, and why promoting something you believe in isn't the same as bragging about it.In this episode:The honest, not-so-straight-line story of how a twenty-year-old idea finally got written, two years of early mornings around a full-time job and a family that needed me tooWhy I chose to self-publish instead of chasing a traditional deal, and everything I learned the hard way about editing, formatting, and coversWhat The 9 People You Need in Your Career Squad is actually about, and the one missing piece I kept finding in brilliant, hardworking people who still felt stuckHow the book is built, three parts, nine chapters, one framework, and how to read it depending on where your biggest gap isWhat I hope this book does for you, and the one small thing I'm asking you to do if it doesThis is Episode 1 of a five-part series walking you through the book alongside the real launch. The book goes live September 5th, paperback and Kindle, wherever you get your books.Join the free Book Launch event. Details here: https://buildyourcareersquad.com

“Your dream life isn't just about what you accomplish. It's about how you feel when you wake up every morning.”

One question to close out the month. It sounds simple, and it is not.What are you transitioning from, and what are you transitioning to?Most of us cannot answer that, not because we do not know, but because we have never stopped long enough to ask. So in this series close, we stop and ask it together.Part one is a coaching session: why transition starts with putting something down rather than picking something up, why your TO should be a direction and not a title, and the thread that survives both.Part two is your questions. Three that came up again and again this month: how to lead yourself through a transition you never chose, what to do when you are clear on what you want but cannot make yourself move, and the one I am hearing most right now, you have decided you want to be someone different, with different priorities and a different relationship to your career, and every time you try to shift, fear pulls you back.Plus the From / To reflection to close your month.In this episode:Why you cannot step into what is next while still holding what is overHow to answer the TO question without knowing your destinationWhat travels with you through any transitionLeading yourself through a change you did not chooseClarity without movement and the fear underneath itWhy changing an identity is harder than changing a behaviorThe From / To reflectionCheck out my new book and join the free launch event here: https://buildyourcareersquad.com

“You don't need everyone to understand your decisions. You need to understand why you're making them.”

This is the most personal episode of the series. I share the two years I spent in the middle with this book: writing, deleting, scrapping whole sections, and the quiet stretch where I thought I might not finish. I also share something I am not proud of, that I broke my own pattern and never announced it, because I was afraid I would fail.And I talk about the moment it stopped being a question about the book and became a question about me. Maybe I am not a writer. Maybe I am not the person who writes a book.Then we get practical. The two ways we all get the middle wrong: freeze and thrash, and the three-part anchor that actually gets you through when certainty is not coming: your values, your throughline, and your next honest step.If you are in the foggy, unglamorous, nobody-claps-for-this middle right now , this one is for you. I am in one too.In this episode:Why the middle is where transitions are actually won or lostFreeze and thrash: the two failure modes, and how to tell which one you are inTwo years, one book, and the middle I went through over and overWhen a practical question quietly becomes an identity verdictThe three-part anchor: values, throughline, next honest stepWhy clarity comes from the walking, not before itThe Anchor Card, and two questions to sit with this weekSubmit questions you would like me to answer live on the next episode here: https://forms.gle/7YdF8VMa3voUnjA69Subscribe to the Monday Brew here: https://leadingyourself.myflodesk.com/mondaybrewCheck out my upcoming book here: ⁠https://buildyourcareersquad.com⁠

“When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different.”

Think about the last time you started something new at work. What did you do in those first few days?If you are like most high performers, you got moving fast, head down, proving you belonged. And you ran right past the one moment that mattered: the quiet window at the very beginning, before anyone had decided who you are here, when you could have asked a different question. Not how do I prove myself. But who do I want to be here?This is week two of Leading Through Transitions, about the loud, visible career changes (new jobs, promotions, pivots) and the ones nobody hands you: the scope you stretch into, the project you raise your hand for, the decision to show up differently.I pick up right where last week left off, and get specific about what I did when I switched companies: I slowed down, blocked time each morning to map how the place actually worked before volunteering, and chose who I wanted to be as a leader before I got busy proving myself. Then I bring back the Four Zones of Work as your compass, and explain why the transitions you choose yourself can be the sneakiest burnout traps of all.If you are starting something new, thinking about raising your hand for something, or just deciding how you want to show up this season, this one is for you. In this episode:Why every new job, team, role, or project is a window, and why it closes fastWhat running past the window actually costs you six months from nowThe question to ask before what do I want to accomplish hereThe concrete slow-start practice I used at a new company, and what it producedThe Four Zones of Work, and why high performers burn out in the Excellence zoneA three-step Four Zones audit you can run today