The Career Refresh is your source for actionable insights to lead, thrive, and succeed in today’s workplace. Each episode tackles key topics like leadership, career strategy, confidence, burnout, team dynamics, and the 4Ps—perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, and personalities. With years of experience helping thousands of professionals achieve their goals, elevate team performance, and embrace reinvention, this podcast is your career blueprint.
Jill Griffin, a former strategist and media executive, has been featured on Adam Grant's WorkLife Podcast. She's written articles for HuffPost, Fast Company, and Metro UK. And she's been quoted by leading media outlets like Advertising Age, The New York Times, Departures, and The Wall Street Journal. Follow her on LinkedIn and join the conversation. Read more at JillGriffinConsulting.com for more details.
Jill Griffin, host of The Career Refresh, delivers expert guidance on workplace challenges and career transitions. Jill leverages her experience working for the world's top brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Hilton Hotels, and Martha Stewart to address leadership, burnout, team dynamics, and the 4Ps (perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, and personalities).
Hey friends, this is Jill Griffin, your host of the Career Refresh. This week, I am doing a recap episode of the five trends that I have seen throughout this year to help us thrive in a modern workplace and to create career resilience. This includes everything from managing setbacks, adaptability, leadership, evolution, building your own professional brand, maintaining or building back your workplace well-being and then redefining your own version of success. All right, let's jump in. So this episode is intended to lay the groundwork and the foundation for as you approach your career and your career strategy for 2025, you want to be thinking about these five things and what they mean to you. So I'm going at them at very high level and the job for you, the task, the hallmark for you, is to decide if these apply to your world and your professional career and, if they do, what do you want to do about them. The first is that recovery is the new success. I'm hearing from a lot of people that last year, even if you maintained your job, was just a challenging year A lot of uncertainty in the marketplace. We had a presidential election, we had very low unemployment, we had high wages, but still people were feeling like things weren't where they should be and career setbacks are no longer about failures in and of themselves. It's the reframe that this is a growth moment. So, finding the way to shift from the focus on failure avoidance to working on recovery and adaptability skills this is where we're seeing people create this new level of success. This is emotional regulation during uncertainty. This is building support systems and networks. Strategic decision-making how are you managing your energy ahead of time when you think about practical applications for this area? I would love for you to think about how you might respond to a career setback and I realize that's a little bit in the void because you don't know what that's going to be but you can start practicing and managing your mind now and also fortifying your network so that if there is a challenge that you need whether it's hiring someone because a colleague or someone who reports to you quit, whether it's looking for a client because a new client is needed to fulfill the roster, or really thinking about where you want to take your career next this is that practical application. It's also thinking about do you want to create multiple income streams Within your employee contract? If you are an employee, you need to read the fine print and make sure that, if you're working in more than one area, you're staying within the lines of that contract, but I'm seeing a lot more people have their main job and then something else, so that they are diversifying their income. Now you may be saying how am I ever going to do that with all I have on my plate? That's the strategy If this is something that you want to do to diversify and have multiple streams of income. Therefore, if one stream of income is impacted, you have your arms and your hands in different areas. It's something to really think about. Lastly, it's developing that member one boss for everything. It's really thinking through the things that you need in your career and then making sure that you're always looking at your mental board of directors and who is playing those roles.
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The next trend that I'm seeing is the transformation of leadership skills. This is about more understanding that leadership is more than just technical expertise. However, you need the technical expertise also. It demands for adaptability as much as emotional intelligence. It's making sure that you're developing others. You're helping everyone on the team manage that uncertainty and, where applicable, is fostering that psychological safety. The things that you want to be thinking about is how are you navigating ambiguity and also working within hybrid teams and whether your team is stretched across multiple regions or countries. How are you managing that team and making sure that people are all marching towards the goal and what your rem, that your, what your remit is and what you need to create? Also, strengthening your emotional intelligence right, we've talked before about how they're sometimes called soft skills and I would challenge that. They're essential skills and really thinking about that empathy, that leadership, that confidence, the ability to hold space and listen to others. How are you providing and being example so that this is the emotional intelligence and really thinking through from all the different parties how they might react to a situation? How is this becoming the cornerstone of your leadership strategy? And lastly, building empathy with accountability right, we can have compassion for people, but you can also still hold them accountable. How does that sit in your space and in your own career strategy?
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Some of the leadership challenges that I'm seeing continue to take hold in this area is managing multi-generational teams. You may have people older than you reporting to you. You may have people younger than you reporting to you. You may have people younger than you reporting to you. You may have someone who's the same age reporting into you. How are you managing that and holding space and making sure that you are adapting your leadership to make sure that everyone is getting what they need and that you're meeting the goal?
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And then, lastly, you want to be thinking about what is the role you play personally in the culture and the climate. The culture is what's there and always there, and that's the foundation. The climate is what happens when we get a little frothy, what happens when we lose a piece of business, what happens when a colleague quits, what happens when a project doesn't go well. That's the climate, and how we bounce back from that climate is really, really important. Your culture is always there. Your climate is going to change.
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The third trend that I'm seeing is the rise of the authentic professional brand. So much is riding on the competition in the marketplace and you need to be able to tell stories that align with your brand. I've talked before about how telling an impact-driven story that also ties to results. Sometimes in this space, people use that STAR method, which is Situation, task, action, result, and while that can be used as an overarching framework, I want to make sure that you're telling the impact and you're also telling stories, whether it's for a case study, an interview, an internal conversation, a board of directors meeting. You're telling that story that aligns with your personal values and the values of the company or the initiative, right? You're weaving those two pieces together.
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When you're thinking about your own professional brand, you want to think through the consistency of who you are online and offline brand. You want to think through the consistency of who you are online and offline. There are some laws coming down in New York State they actually might be federal laws, I don't know. I'll get back to you about that around social media and social media presence and what a company can and cannot do, and whether or not they can look at your passwords. I mean, get your passwords to look at your account or they can just look at your account. So obviously you want to stay in line with your local, state and, ultimately, federal laws. But creating that consistency online if you're one person online and you're talking about things one way and you're very expressive, how are you following that through so that you're the same person authentically? Does that work for you, does it not? You don't have to be the same person, but that consistency is what people are going to look for. Even if they're told that they can't look at it. They're going to look at it because that's human and that's human nature.
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You also want to be thinking about how you're establishing your own thought leadership. Are you publishing content regularly through a company newsletter or the shareholders report? Are you putting content out there through Substack? Are you doing it on Medium? Are you doing it within LinkedIn? Where are you pushing both video and written content to establish your thought leadership and the position that you believe is the right way forward, or to really show that thought leadership?
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And here's also about polishing not polishing to perfection and having prioritization of authentic communication. You know I edit this podcast if I really mess up, but you'll notice there are speech patterns that I don't over edit it because I want you to know the real person and I don't want to hide behind polished perfection. Sometimes there's a need for that. That's not what we're seeing as a trend within. Personal branding is about being authentic, and then some of the more authentic approaches that we're seeing around networking is really moving from transactional relationships Well, I didn't get the job, so I don't need to keep that relationship versus making more meaningful relationships and more meaningful connections.
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The next trend is the integration of wellness and work and while HR departments everywhere have been trying to figure out how to integrate benefit packages and workplace and how to maintain well-being, there's no hero folks. This has really got to be you, and it's great and awesome if your company offers it, but I'm going to tell you we need you to be the hero of your own journey. This is making sure that you're not getting into burnout. This is managing your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. It's understanding that there may be seasons or seasonality to your business and therefore things might be, the climate might be a little bit more intense and if that's the case, how are you taking care of yourself? We also want to think about stress management and how you're managing your stress and what I call the three C's of boundary setting. Where are you using confidence, clarity and certainty to help manage your mind when you're thinking about practical applications, really building sustainable workplaces? Is it expected of you or is it just what you think is expected? Getting that level of clarity? As a leader, it's your role to be telling other people that are around you, or report to you, the own practices that you take into consideration to build your own wellness and to have daily routines, because that will help them have permission to do the same for themselves. That'll help them that if they worked really late last night and they need to get a later start this morning because they need to maintain their exercise, their health and also just visit with the people they love and live with, that is going to be really important for you, as a leader, to be talking in ways that lets them know that that is okay for them to do that too.
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The last trend that I am seeing is redefining career success. Career success is no longer linear. It's about fulfillment, impact and adaptability. Look, if we are going to be living much longer than we are, we are not stopping our careers or, most likely, we are not stopping the work that we are doing in the world, whether we're getting paid for it or not. At 60, right, we've got many years ahead of us to be living in our full capacity and to be adding value to the world. So you really want to be thinking about that.
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Career success is not linear. This might mean in one company, you hold the title of senior director. In your next role, maybe you're holding the title of vice president. Further down the line, maybe you're going back and holding a title of director. So you're going senior director, vice president, director, it's okay. Titles all of that matters and it equally doesn't. You get to define your career success and decide what matters. If you are being fulfilled, you are creating impact and you're getting the financial and intellectual rewards you need. I'm going to tell you, title is important, but it's also not always important.
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So, rethinking that Also, new success, metrics for success Are you integrating life and work and how are you able to maintain both and feel good about both? Is there continuous learning and professional fulfillment in your personal life and your professional life? How are you weaving that in Social impact? Are you donating your time within your professional community or within the neighborhood that you live within? Right, how are you redefining success? And then, when you're thinking through your overall career navigation, you want to regularly assess and develop your skillset. You want to build that adaptability muscle which comes back to mindset and growth mindset so that you can navigate those challenges. And then you want to be all feeding it through your personal brand.
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So you might be listening to this and being like this is a lot. It's in chunks. You have most of this. It's already happening. It's you getting super clear and strategic to where you're putting your attention. Because where you put your intention is what gets attention and that's where you're putting your attention, because where you put your intention is what gets attention and that's where you're going to show up in your career and in your life.
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As we think about the new year, I don't subscribe to the idea that it's January 1, so, therefore, what are my New Year's resolution? As if the calendar is going to control the realities of what's happening. There's nothing different between December 31st and January 1. What is, however, going to help you think through your career is where you're building yourself a strategy to thrive in a modern workplace and, as you approach January and Q1, thinking through that is the way in the path forward. It's not about the new year resolution. It's about being intentional. All right, friends. As always, I love to hear from you, so email me. Let me know what you're doing. Hello at jillgriffincoachingcom. Have a beautiful week and I'll see you next time.
