In this short coaching video, Margaret Spence – founder of the Employee to CEO Project and the 10X Leadership Academy for Women – delivers Day 8 of her 30‑day “30/30 Career Transformation Challenge.” She asks viewers to pinpoint the hard conversations they must have about their careers—whether with themselves or with managers, mentors, or peers. She lists common examples (being passed over for promotion, lacking boss support, wanting a career pivot, feeling stuck in a role) and explains why people avoid these talks, often to protect others’ expectations or their own dreams. Spence stresses that living without regret and achieving success on one’s own terms requires boldness: identifying who to talk to, what to say, when to say it, and rehearsing the dialogue repeatedly. She also advises detaching from the other person’s emotional reaction, focusing only on one’s own feelings, which are the only controllable factor. The video ends with a reminder of the ongoing challenge and a promise of the next day’s content.
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Day 8 of the 30/30 Career Transformation Challenge. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we've made it to day 8. Hi, my name is Margaret Spence. I'm the founder of the Employee to CEO Project and 10X Leadership Academy for Women. So we started out at the beginning of September, um, a week ago with the 30/30 Challenge. And we've gone a full week. 30 days, 30 bold questions to help you upend everything you thought about your career. Think about it differently. Take bolder risk. Do things differently. So today's bold question is, what tough conversations do you need to have about your career? Sometimes We need to have tough conversations with ourselves and tough conversations with those around us. Tough conversations like, I've been overlooked for a promotion 3 times and I'm wondering if I'm valued in this organization. Tough conversations like, I don't think my boss supports my vision. Tough conversations like, I'm ready to change course and I don't know how to do it. Tough conversations like, I'm in the middle of this career, but this is not what I really want. Tough conversations are at the core of who we are, but tough conversations are the things that we put off for another day, because honestly, we don't want to deal with them. We don't want to have those hard conversations about what we want. We don't want to dash somebody's dreams for us, not our own dreams, because we're willing to put our own dreams on the back burner. We don't want to disappoint others who think that we are high potential or who see us as something else. We're willing to hide what we want because we don't want to have the tough conversations with those who we think care about us. But in order to live a life without regret, in order to have the vision that you want, in order to have the success on your terms, you have to be willing to have tough conversations. You know, sometimes those tough conversations go something like this. You know, I went to law school, but I want to be a baker. Or, you know, I'm in this particular role. I'm really good at it, but this is not where I see myself in 5 years. Tough conversations are things that we must be willing to have. So who do you need to have a tough conversation with? What do you need to say to them? When are you going to say it to them? And what's the conversation going to look like? Normally I don't give advice on these videos, but if you're going to have a tough conversation with someone, you need to rehearse it. You need to say it over and over, not only to yourself, but you also need to be not connected to how they feel about the conversation you have, because their feeling about the conversation is their feeling. Your feeling is the only thing that you can control. So in order to have tough conversations, we must be willing to be bold. You've gotta be willing to have the conversation. So we're on day 8, day 8 of the 30/30 Career Transformation Challenge. Thank you for joining me on this journey, and I hope that the videos that I'm putting out is empowering you to think about your career differently. Stay tuned. I'll be back with day 8, day 9. We're going to keep going. Thank you for joining me. Take care.
