Is your career coming to an end? Why it is just a transition and you shouldn’t be scared

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Alexandra Humbel standing in front of a painting by Franck Stella at NSU in Fort Lauderdale, FloridaAlexandra Humbel Coaching

Do you experience a fear of loss, when you realise that your days are numbered in your current job, position, and career? Is this sense of loss mingled with anticipation and excitement? Lots of bonuses will soon be yours: No more back-to-back meetings, no more answering emails on vacation, no more power games, luxury to dispose of your time as you wish.

So why is the joy tainted with anxiety? Why are you struggling with the feeling that you are now entering a grey zone? Why are you feeling defined by the fact that this is the last segment of your life?

Several factors are in play, mostly pushing you in antagonist directions, so no wonder that the result is uncomfortable, if not painful. Let’s try to untangle the inner conflict that undermines your energy and obscures your future.

There is no script. You are on your own

As a professional and a person, you’ve been motivated. Always. Through thick and thin, you knew where you wanted to be: Grow, climb the ladder, get a better job, launch a new company, or a new project, succeed, fail, rebound, and mainly stay in the game.

While you owe all these achievements to yourself, there is a blueprint for this. From student to junior to high potential to senior professional, the direction is clear and unmistakable. It is a growth pattern, and growing is an attribute of life. Every day you are exposed to stories that inspire you and show you what is possible. In your magnificent way, you realised your potential despite – and sometimes thanks to- the hurdles and backlashes thrown at you.

When your career comes to an end, there is no script. Not anymore. Language like “Golden years” (coined in the seventies to sell real estate to retirees) or “Silver power” (marketing term for a growing consumer segment) sounds phoney. Besides, what does it have to do with you?

It has a lot to do with expectations

For decades, you were supposed to work your ass off and grow. You were encouraged to do so. The work culture had your back.
At the end of your career, no one expects you to deliver. You may get lost in a space deprived of reference points. You are like a wagon decoupled from the train. The train goes without you. It is a relief, and it feels like an injustice at the same time.

People around you tell you repeatedly how lucky you will be, getting ample time for golfing, travelling, gardening, painting, yoga-ing, biking, learning languages, enjoying family time, and doing the things you love. The more they praise your soon-to-be happiness, the more confused you feel. Not that there is anything wrong with these activities. The confusion comes from the lack of purpose.

It is time to get real, brave, and creative

How do you build a house without a blueprint? You don’t. You’ve got to create a blueprint for yourself. Honestly assess your beliefs about who you are, your place in your world, and your values. You want to let go of a persona that beautifully served you in the past but is no longer who you want to be. Explore what makes you feel alive and driven. Be curious and open. Once you get this clarity, it is time to draw your blueprint and jump into action. It is scary. And it is so exciting. The difference is, this time, you are the architect, the builder, and the proud owner of a beautiful, unique work in progress.

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Retirement Age Versus Marketplace Reality: The Elephant in The Room

Retirement Age Versus Marketplace Reality: The Elephant in The Room- By Alexandra HumbelAlexandra Humbel

While the debate over extending the retirement age rages on in the French political arena, the reality screams one figure: Only one-third of the 60-64-year-olds are still working.

Is this new? Hell no. Against senior unemployment, “we have tried everything”… said a former French president thirty years ago. As stated by Jean-Francis Pecresse in Les Echos, “this calamitous admission on the fight against unemployment remains relevant to the specific employment level of the over-55s.”

We can only rejoice that the debate is finally widening to the reality of a labour market that is consistently getting rid of experienced workers to replace them (or not) with younger employees.

On the bright side, governments are now aware of the cringing gap between what is requested of experienced professionals, and the lack of opportunities available to them. The French government considers launching an index on equality between the ages, a tool that is quite effective to measure professional equality between women and men. Let us salute this initiative. Hopefully, governments will do what they are supposed to do to bring about change: Evaluate, incentivize, regulate, reform, and provide resources.

On the corporate level, one can shame and blame companies for their policies. But how does it help individuals? What are your career perspectives for the next decade? While governments govern and companies question their HR policies regarding age, experienced professionals must do their share of the work.

Hanging on to your seat in the hope of keeping your job as long as possible is just one way to stay in the game. It may not be possible. It may not even be desirable.

Where do you stand?

You don’t have to wait for the sky to fall in the form of a layoff. Change is going to happen anyway, whether you like it or not.

You are the only one in this situation. An entire generation is between a rock and a hard place, between the necessity to work longer and the lack of perspectives. However, only you know when it is a good time to figure out the next stage of your career.

When you start this reflection in a moment of relative calm, the work gets done, not from a place of fear, but from a place of anticipation. Not from a place of scarcity, but from a place of abundance.

Is now a good time?

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7 Tell-Tale Signs You Need a Career Transition

7 Tell-Tale Signs You Need a Career Transition - By Alexandra HumbelAlexandra Humbel Coaching

You may be surprised to hear that most of my clients do not feel an urge to change careers because they hate what they are doing. Like them, you may feel it deep down, even though things are going smoothly. Work is good, pay is good, and the position is generally satisfying. Everyone else thinks you are in an enviable place and have no reason to change the status quo.

Here are some signals that should get you curious:

1. When asked about who you are and what you do, you deliver a conversational version of your CV, which starts to sound like a well-rehearsed loop. You actively mask your boredom behind a cheering tone, but something is just … off.

2. You avidly read articles and stories about people succeeding in another area, living a different life, or both. Your rational self tells you it is too late anyway and that this would require a massive set of skills you don’t have. But you persist in documenting the topic. Avidly.

3. You go through the moves at work because you have mastered what you do. But you are not completely at it. You are on auto-pilot more than you want to admit.

4. You wonder, so often this thought has become a part of the furniture in your mental space, whether you will do the same thing until retirement. The question remains open and makes you slightly anxious.

5. You are getting intrigued when you hear people talking passionately about the job you are doing right now. You used to be that passionate person. In the past.

6. You are experiencing more and more internal conversations starting with “What if… I was doing this different thing, living this different life, woke up every morning with this different agenda”. These internal conversations both scare you and make you feel incredibly alive.

7. You focus on small increments in your life, your health, your home, and your work. Without a sense of purpose, your energy focuses on fixing stuff while avoiding the fundamental question:

Why are you doing what you are doing?

If you experience some of these feelings, it may be time to ask yourself this question. There is no wrong answer. Money, status, convenience, and safety are valuable reasons to continue doing what you do. What else needs to be heard? Who is the person you would like to be? How far are you from becoming this person? Where would you be in a year if everything went as you wished? What are you ready to say “yes” to and say “no” to? How would it feel to remain in the same place for one year? Five years?

Every life-changing decision starts by being the best listener of your true feelings. Accepting the confusion and antagonist demands that will inevitably come out. It requires some guts to question the status quo of your life and work. If you do, you may be in transition already.

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Is it Too Late For a Career Change? 10 Essential Questions to Ask Yourself First

When it's too late for a career change - Alexandra HumbelAlexandra Humbel

When one of my beloved clients shared this graph with me, I had to laugh. Then I kept thinking about it. Is there an age limit for changing careers? According to the standard, this limit is around the corner. From the moment any high performing professional subtly slips, without knowing it, from high potential to senior, options are shrinking at a dizzying pace.

You can’t do anything about the corporate culture. But you are in the driver’s seat to challenge the limits you impose on yourself.

For instance, here are some of the most common and fearsome beliefs:

  • Is it worth it?
  • How much effort does it take to start a new professional adventure, when everything pushes you to hold on to your position, in the hope that you won’t be pushed out prematurely?
  • If you start a new career now, how long will you be active?
  • If it doesn’t work out, will you regret your decision?
  • What will your entourage think?
  • Are you a fool to even consider it?
  • What does it mean financially?

All these questions are valid. All of them need to be explored with courage and integrity.

I will add another set of questions:

1. What are you craving? What makes you tick?
2. What life do you want?
3. Are you prepared to say “no” to some benefits, so you can say “yes” to new stuff?
4. What is the best-case scenario?
5. Who will you be, if everything unfolds beautifully?
6. What will your everyday life look like?
7. How will you feel?
8. On the contrary, what is the worst-case scenario?
9. What are the consequences?
10. And eventually, what is the price of letting life decide for you by default?

Have you been thinking about changing careers?

I would love to have a chat to see if we are a good fit.

Click here to book a call with me at a time that suits you: https://alexandrahumbel.com/discovery/

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Katie And The Self-Confidence Paradox

The Self-Confidence Paradox - Alexandra HumbelAlexandra Humbel Coaching

In the space of personal growth, and especially when it relates to women, the expression “self-confidence” is omnipresent. Or rather the lack of, the need for more, and the pursuit of.

I have observed the paradox of self-confidence many times in my female clients, especially high-profile achievers who feel drained by inner doubts. Or struggling to nurture their self-confidence.

One of them, whom I call Katie, told me “I wish I were more self-confident. I am good at what I do. I kick ass. Why do I struggle? Why don’t I take credit, once and for all, for all my achievements?”

We explored what self-confidence meant for her. What, exactly, made her want more of it. How it made her feel, physically and emotionally. What she valued and who she was in this space. We explored how self-confidence served her, what expanded, what was unleashed, and what felt good. We examined real-life situations and the impact on decisions taken in this state of self-confidence. We observed, with blunt honesty, what self-confidence did for her, and what it did not. We were also curious, what was the fear behind the lack of self-confidence? What would become possible if self-confidence was granted?

Her perspective shifted. Awareness is power. Self-confidence became no more a constantly escaping feel-good state. It lost its power, as a prerequisite for meeting challenges and asserting herself. It had depth and implications. It connected to what she really, really wanted. Something more important than self-confidence emerged. A higher sense of purpose, served by abundant inner resources.

On this basis, she was able to build strategies to get to where she wanted. Made her inner resources available to serve who she wanted to be. Self-confidence, eventually, became irrelevant, the middle-man. She decided to take the faster route.

And you, are you craving more self-confidence? How does it serve you?

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Why You Should Spend More Time Thinking About Career Transitioning

Why you should spend more time thinking about career transitioning - Alexandra HumbelAlexandra Humbel Coaching

“In the first half of life, ambitious strivers embrace a simple formula for success in work and life: focus single-mindedly, work tirelessly, sacrifice personally, and climb the ladder relentlessly.
It works. Until it doesn’t.” says bestselling author and columnist behind The Atlantic’s popular “How to Build a Life” series, Arthur C. Brooks.

The momentum that drive you in the first part of adult life fuels your motivation to earn expertise, power, financial success, mastery, leadership, learning, excitement and social acknowledgement. Hard work pays. Challenge makes you grow. Experience makes you hone your skills to excellence. Your peers think highly of you. You belong to a league of successful professionals.

Then something happens. A subtle decline of interest for what you have been doing with drive and perseverance for a couple of decades. A crave for something. The next thing you know, here you are, a corporate leader, a respected expert or a successful entrepreneur, admired and envied by your peers, now questioning the meaning of this story you tell about yourself.

Some will suggest mid-life crisis. The terms, which was coined in the 70’s, evokes a number of clichés, among which a man in his 50’t divorcing his wife to marry a younger woman and buying a red Ferrari. Or a Porsche.

Is that it? Or is there more to it?

Arthur C. Brooks offers a radical, and somewhat controversial explanation in his best seller “From Strength to Strength”. He explains that the first part of adult life is driven by “fluid intelligence”, a resource that make you prone to create, innovate, find new paths and out-of-the-box solutions. This form of intelligence tends to fade away with time, creating a feeling of inadequacy that persists even though you try to ignore it, or work harder to compensate. The second half of adult life favors another resource called the “crystallized intelligence”, a pool of wisdom made of knowledge and experiences, available for you to tap into. This form of intelligence excels at training, sharing, creating human and social bonds and produces work based on cross-fertilizing different corpus of acquired knowledge.

Brook’s message is that this new resource can serve you beautifully to fuel a redesigned purpose.

Accepting a decline in interest and accuracy is difficult. Nothing prepared you to hit this wall at the prime (or so you think) of your professional journey. Avoidance and denial are normal reactions.

Now consider this: How many transitions did you already have in your life? Many. From student to professional. From job to job. From corporate to entrepreneur. From single to partner, to parent, to care-giver for your ageing parents. Some transitions were deliberate, and some just happened. Your transition muscle is trained. You are just not prepared to this one, which is insidious, because it comes from within, sending a message you may not understand, and even less like.

Change is inevitable. If you continue ignoring what your gut feeling is trying to tell you, it will unfold in ways that may not suit you. Some of you will double their efforts to stay in the game at all cost. Some will experience an enduring lack of motivation, or both. The wake-up call may come sideways: Loss of job, decline in performance, feedback from your loved ones who worry for you.

So, what now?

It is time for a reset, a profound, authentic reset, including every stable and moving part in your life. The idea is not necessarily to make big changes. However, some take a giant leap into their new chapter.
The idea is to question and assess with radical honesty your current situation and beliefs, your image of yourself and what you think defines you. It is also an invitation to explore what makes you alive, what you want more of in your life and what you crave. This first step is vastly destabilizing, but extremely rewarding to help you shape your future self.

Resonant choices come next, made possible because you are now deeply connected to your heart and attentive to your inner wisdom. These choices involve that you say NO to beliefs and habits that do not serve you any more, and possibly to a job, or a lifestyle, that served you well but now plays against you. It is also time to say a massive YES to the things that you really care for, relationship, work, personal care, and YES to new avenues of personal and professional development.

Action naturally derives from these choices. Action is inevitable and exciting because it comes from a place of alignment with everything you value most. Fuelled by a renewed energy, you are ready to surprise yourself and others – and live out of your so-called “comfort zone”, which had become obsolete anyway.

You will hear that it is too late anyway to reboot your professional life. Is it?

Let’s say you started working at 28 years old, and you are now 48. Considering that the retirement age is inexorably pushed back in all countries, you may be exactly midway in your career. Don’t wait for the unwanted wake-up call. Take the lead.

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A Bold Change of Career: On a Mission to Celebrate All of Life’s Events

Valery Guyot-Sionnest who embraced a bold change of career to become a Funeral PlannerValery Guyot-Sionnest

Valery Guyot-Sionnest had a successful and envied career in the world of luxury, from cosmetics to fashion to hospitality, as a Communications Director for leading groups such as Estée Lauder and Barrière. Today, she reinvents an industry that is as muted as it is essential, the last farewell to loved ones. Meet a remarkable person who embraced a bold change of career and made it her mission to be a precious ally to families when they need it most.

Why such a bold change of career?

I was born an organizer, this is what I do. I’ve taken care of all of life’s events, now I’m taking care of the last one. The decision was both linear and mission-driven. I have been a Communications Director most of my adult life. It’s a job that already existed. As a Funeral Planner, I am breaking new ground. I feel like a warrior and a missionary. This profession is known in the USA and in the Northern Europe countries, whereas it is quite new in France.

What motivated you?

First, I believe that a 50+ years old Director of Communication is irrelevant. Secondly, the human factor has guided me all my life. The last tribute to a person is fundamental. It is a one-time event. There is no possible rehearsal.

I embraced this new change of career with a sense of mission combined with business ambition. I had this idea for a long time. What makes one farewell ceremony different from another? People. Every human being is unique. Every last tribute has to be unique as well.

Most of us are afraid of death. In the Western world, when we lose someone, it is a disaster. I am aware that I am touching on a real taboo. During the pandemic, families could not attend funerals. I, therefore, organized video recordings of funeral ceremonies. It is a very delicate work, which requires two professional cameramen for a high-quality rendering. We have to respond to all situations and sometimes to very specific requests.

Faced with an inanimate being, empathy comes first, a deep concern for the person. It’s also a race against time. My job is to think quickly and take flawless action on very short notice. A wedding planner has six months to prepare. I have three days.
I take care of families of various faiths, sometimes multi-religions. I quickly understand the situation. I work without a safety net. At my age, it suits me well!

How did your change of career go?

I took 240 hours of training on topics including legal, religion, civil ceremonies, police, and cemetery regulations.

While I was taking the course, I kept running my communication agency. There were intense moments. One day I was in charge of a Muslim funeral. The same evening, I was organizing a lingerie catwalk show. It was challenging. In the funeral business, you have to be very flexible. I went looking for the right energy.

My goal was to be acknowledged by the profession. I started by setting up a company with partners, but it did not work, so I had to change the structure of my business. Today, I am backed by Funecap, the 2nd largest funeral group in France. I will continue to develop my partnership with the group, and expand my reach in Europe.

I have an exciting project, to develop a Funeral Planner module within the training academy, to share the concepts and the best practices with a new generation.

I am making a film about the construction of a chapel ordered by a family, in tribute to a loved one. Eighty professionals, representing seven different trades are at work. Again, the human factor is at the heart of this project and I am very proud to contribute.

I also work on more accessible concepts. Many people ask me for a “simple” ceremony. But this notion means something different for everyone. All lives are unique and deserve to be celebrated.

What did you learn about yourself?

I continue to learn from each family. These encounters give me 250% more life energy.

It’s a wonder. Living in service to others gives me a purpose. Should I have done it before? I don’t think so.

I’m not interested in retirement. My partner and I have raised eight children (four each). My professional life is humanly rich, infinite, and magnificent, even though the emotional load is sometimes heavy.

This career change did not change me. It improved me. I experienced my mother’s death with serenity and peace of mind. I am closer to my truth.

In my work, I am very attentive to the well-being of families. I am particularly attuned to children. I find solutions that are both creative and technical. I care for them. This goes through simple things: Did you sleep? Did you eat? I try to restore a daily routine for people who feel lost.

Your advice to those who want to embrace a second act?

When you get close to retirement age, you realize that you still have a lot to do. You have to go for it, and at the same time, adopt the strategy of taking small steps. During a change of career, you need perspective, empathy, and a business mind. In the beginning, I launched myself into a partnership which proved to be a bad experience. It didn’t stop me. I moved on quickly. I have a great energy that pushes me forward.

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Are you unhappy at work? Beware of the Sunk Cost Fallacy

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Are you unhappy at work? Be aware of the Sunk Cost FallacyAlexandra Humbel Coaching

If you are considering making a big decision, like changing jobs or embracing an entirely new industry or career, you better be aware of your decision-making process. What stands in the way of making educated choices and how can you debunk your own biases?

I had an aha moment when I discovered that what I had experienced myself, and observed in others for many years, had a name. Award-winning journalist David Mc Raney masterfully described the Sunk Cost Fallacy:

Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments, and experiences.

Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman gave a fascinating insight on the topic. According to him and his colleague Amos Tversky, organisms that placed more urgency on avoiding threats than they did on maximizing opportunities were more likely to pass on their genes. Over time, the prospect of losses has become a more powerful motivator on your behaviour than the promise of gains.

According to Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the “pain of paying” arises whenever you must give up anything you own.

How does the Sunk Cost Fallacy impact your career decisions?

You, and possibly your parents, have invested in your education, giving you opportunities to start a career in an area of your choice. Since then, you have made your way in the corporate world to better jobs, better pay, more empowering positions. Or you may have created your own company, maybe several, and led them to growth. You had your share of successes and failures. The sum of time and effort you have put into your career has created the professional you are now, at this moment of time.

Even though you are not happy with what you experience at work now, the idea of giving up what you have built, year after year, is just unbearable. David Mc Raney gives this example:

“Have you ever gone to see a movie only to realize within 15 minutes or so you are watching one of the worst films ever made, but you sat through it anyway? You didn’t want to waste the money, so you slid back in your chair and suffered.”

Your career is not fiction and your investment is worth more than a movie ticket. But still, why are you staying? Are you paying a tribute to all the pain, time, and effort which resulted in this not-so-fulfilling position where you are now? How do you bypass the Sunk Cost Fallacy?

Awareness starts with small things

In your everyday life, you make dozens of micro-decisions, from what to buy for dinner to how to respond (or stay silent) when you disagree in a meeting. Become an avid observer of your decision-making process. I recently bought a suitcase, however, I was not 100% sure that it was the cabin size I wanted. I came home and realized that it was the wrong size, which hardly surprised me. I had completed the purchase at the end of an afternoon of shopping which was all but enjoyable, for various reasons, including that I did not find the things I wanted to buy. So I wanted to go back home with at least one useful item to justify my unsuccessful shopping afternoon. Our decisions patterns are pretty much the same for every instance of life. Get curious about your own bias.

There is no loss, only transformation

This is not an easy one, rather a big chunk of wisdom that takes a lifetime to digest. How does it relate to your career? Wherever you go, everything you have learned and achieved stays with you. Think of the value you will bring to a new environment, a new team, and a new project. This travels with you and continues to expand as you challenge yourself.

Zoom in: Transferable skills

This is something I invite my clients to explore thoroughly at some point. You think all your skills are described in your CV, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. At this point in your life, you deserve more than doing the things you know you can do. You want to focus on what you shine at, on the things that come to you so naturally and willingly, that you are in a flow and deliver your best work with the greatest impact. For more on this, read my post here.

Zoom out: The big picture

Questions about your next career move can become painfully obsessive, for a good reason. There is much at stake and you want to make educated choices, especially if you have to step beyond your comfort zone and take risks. At that point, I invite my clients to put aside, for a moment the career topic. This can sound counterintuitive, as this is the very reason why they hired me. It takes one session to understand that your real agenda is the life you want, including your health, how much time do you need for your family, for your personal wellbeing, how much money you need to sustain this life, what needs to change to put your project in motion, among others. Read more about the big picture in this article.

 

 

Sources
Mc Raney, D. “You Are Not So Smart” Book Depositary Link
Kahneman, D. “Thinking, Fast And Slow Book Depositary Link
Ariely, D. “Predictably Irrational” Book Depositary Link

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The Big Picture

The Big Picture - Alexandra Humbel at the Wynwood Walls in MiamiAlexandra Humbel

The Wynwood Walls, in the famous street art district of Miami, are a source of awe for me. I love to feel dwarfed and overwhelmed by these powerful pieces of mural art. My latest visit inspired me with a question: Are you watching the big picture in your life? Or only some fragments of it?

The big picture of your world is what you call reality. Because you have been taught that what you see, touch and feel at every moment is reality, the very idea that the person sitting next to you in the bus or at a concert has a different perception is weird. Aren’t you seeing the same buildings, feeling the same bumps on the road, hearing the same music? Nevertheless, your neighbour’s experience is vastly different from yours. Her values, her culture, the past and current circumstances of her life are telling a different story from the same material. Even you, are having a different perception today than you did a few years before. Do you remember how the building next to your childhood house looked high at the time, and how average it looks today? Like the child you use to be, your world is changing with you. This is why you need to update your big picture, embrace it as it is now because you don’t want to carry on old beliefs and outdated perceptions into your current and future life.  

The big picture of your achievements is much, much more than your CV. Slow down a moment and consider this: If someone was introducing you at a conference, and detailing all your achievements until now, all of them, what would she say? Your marathon running, your dedicated parenting, your sales targets outperforming, your engagement with ageing parents, your capacity to thrive in a new job, a new country or a new industry, your capacity to learn new competencies, your incredible taste at decorating a home, your resilience and courage facing disease, your priceless friendship… You know what value you are bringing to this world. Is this reflection an apology of self-satisfaction and idleness? Not even close. It is an invitation to consider, once in a while, how great and brave you are. Studies say we celebrate our successes for minutes and our failures for years. Does it ring a bell?

The big picture of your dreams is directly connected to the previous. While we worry about the things we did not do, did wrong, should do, or should not do, there is not much brain space left for our dreams to expand. Big dreams need big walls. You need space to explore them, embrace them, get inspired, get excited and eventually, driven to action. Once in the middle of the action, you may lose sight of the big picture while achieving smaller goals. One of my clients was feeling out of sync, whereas she just had achieved major progress in her ambitious project. Something was blocking her energy just before the finish line. We realized that she has lost sight of the bigger picture beyond the immediate goals. We built up a strategy to overcome the hurdle and accelerate the process by visualizing the next steps as if she was already there. 

And you, what does your big picture tell you?

 

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3 Leadership Lessons I Learnt From Working With Thierry Mugler

Alexandra Humbel - Career Transition CoachAlexandra Humbel

I have sometimes heard that people who change careers more than once are somewhat unstable or shallow. This is not true. While they are in a career, they are 100% engaged. This was me around 2000, immersed in a corporate career in the fashion industry that I thought I would never leave. The recent passing of the insanely talented and highly regretted Thierry Mugler reminded me of the time when I served as Director of Public Relations of the company he had created. A very intense period of my life, rich in learning, hurdles and inspiration. 

This picture shows me with an air of calm confidence, the kind of confidence Thierry Mugler wanted for his clients. As soon as you put on one of his perfectly cut jackets, supremely elegant with a sexy edge, you instantly felt your self-confidence boosted a notch higher. Well, that was the effect it had on me, and the many other women who vowed him something close to a cult. As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

It was a promotion for me, my first job as the head of the most strategic department in a highly regarded fashion Maison in Paris. During these intense two years, I had a chance to hone my leadership skills in a complex and challenging environment. Here are a few insights I am happy to share:

1. About leading people who are more skilled than you

In my previous jobs, I was the uncontested expert in my area, and as such, I was able to hire junior persons that I trained to the job until they were able to handle projects with some autonomy. When I joined Thierry Mugler, I found a team of extremely skilled and independent professionals, who looked like they did not need me to tell them what to do. For the fashion week, they were able to organize perfectly choreographed fashion shows from A (early casting of models, negotiate the venue, hire logistics, technic, music, dressers, make-up and hair etc.) to Z (showtime, executed to perfection, with 100 persons backstage and, in the audience 250 prime journalists and TV crews from the entire world). They did this within the budget and, last but not least, with enough flexibility to serve a designer who requested frequent and sometimes drastic changes on short notice. I was impressed, for a reason. So, I did what I did best: I boosted the media coverage, offering more and better exposure to the brand while optimizing the international PR resources. But you don’t lead experts by becoming one of them. My role was to help them grow in their roles, feel valued, be attentive to their needs, help deal with conflicts, and stand for them to the higher leadership when necessary. 

2. Stay curious about change, especially if you don’t like it

As the company went through some drastic changes, I started to feel between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, the CEO counted on me to pass on the message and help the team accept and adapt. On the other hand, our work was deeply disrupted by changes that affected our performance directly. As we moved the offices and showrooms out of town to a new industrial location in the North of Paris, we were at risk to lose contact with journalists and stylists who picked up pieces from the collections for photoshoots in the magazines. While I was loyal to the leadership and willing to support executive decisions, I was discouraged by the caveats of the new situation and did a poor job at hiding my doubts. I was true to myself by not sugar-coating the story. Now, with more experience and perspective, I think I could have been curious a bit longer about the possible positive outcomes of these changes. My lesson here is that being right in the short term may not be the best choice. Rather leave the door open for possible further positive developments. Bringing this mindset to the table is not lying, it is allowing some time for settling, and empowering people to find creative solutions. 

3. Never underestimate the culture – but don’t fall for it

It was an incredible honour to work for a designer I admired and to get invited into his world. The beauty and inspiration were everywhere, from the iconic haute-couture creations to the whole futuristic environment. Thierry Mugler was a fascinating human, with so much culture, intelligence and artistic flair that journalists – always in a hurry- would forget time to spend more time with him. In spite of this privileged exposure,  I was not prepared for a Maison with such an incredibly strong culture, none of it was clearly articulated. It took me a while to uncover the do’s and don’ts, the somehow intricate communication patterns, the sophisticated support system around the designer, the subtle powers and counter-powers, and the working pattern of people driven by passion and urgency, in total disdain for standard working hours. I spent a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to adapt and fit in, but being the mother of two young children, this unpredictable way of life started to take a toll on my personal and family life. 

My takeaway from this time is a sense of gratitude for having a chance to “touch the stars”, the symbol of the perfume Angel by Thierry Mugler that I will cherish forever, and gratitude for the opportunity to push my limits and grow as a professional and a human.

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