Creating Your Own Life Report Card

“I thought that was what I was supposed to do?”

Throughout my interviews for Redefining Success, I heard time and time again that individuals had followed a certain career path or made certain life choices because “that’s what they thought they were supposed to do.”

Whether it was because they chose a certain entry level job and felt that they had to stay the course to “climb the ladder” or they simply felt some form of pressure from parents, loved ones, or society – they pursued someone else’s definition of success. Note – often times this pressure was in actuality self-imposed!

Last week I was listening to Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast in which he shared a conversation he had with Carla Harris during his Authors at Wharton series. I encourage you to listen to the podcast for yourself, but I wanted to share some of my big takeaways from her chat because, while she didn’t use the exact words, her last piece of advice for the UPenn students was to proactively Redefine Success for themselves by creating their own report card. No – I did not pay her to say that.  

To provide some background, Carla currently serves as a Senior Client Manager at Morgan Stanley with 30+ years of experience in investment banking.

Carla is a bonafide badass, having been named to Fortune Magazine’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America”, Fortune’s Most Influential List, U. S. Bankers Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance(2009, 2010, 2011), and Black Enterprise’s Top 75 Most Powerful Women in Business (2017) – just to name a few.

Carla’s work on Wall Street was so well recognized, that she was appointed by President Barack Obama to chair the National Women’s Business Council.  And in case you needed just a bit more, Carla has also written 3 books: Strategize to Win, Expect to Win, and Lead to Win based on her extensive experience.

My 3 Big Takeaways from Carla’s interview when it came to career & life choices:

1) Be flexible - Don't be so rigid with your goals that you miss out on serendipitous opportunities. Sometimes opportunities will come that you did not anticipate but that can open new doors for you. They may be lateral, but those lateral moves may actually give you the chance to accelerate vertically later.

2) Redefine Success for Yourself - It's so easy to start looking to your left and right - evaluating yourself against somebody else's report card. Take the time to define your own report card and what's important to you. Maybe that means a slower pace, different job, or less money is going to be fine with you, but don't feel ‘less than’ about yourself because somebody else is doing something differently.

3) Try to enjoy yourself. Life is indeed short. – No explanation needed here!

Reflection Exercise:

Think of a time that a serendipitous opportunity presented itself to you in life. Did you take it? What were the results?

If you had to create your own life report card, what 5 categories would use to grade how you are doing?

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