We’re showcasing the best business books by members of our sister company Innovation Women. If you’re looking for a professional mentor, we have the book for you! “Evolve! With the Wisdom Whisperer: More Insider Career Secrets From Your Virtual Mentor” by Kathleen E.R. Murphy will guide you through developing your career. Murphy’s passion for teaching makes this book a must-read for anyone looking to advance in their professional life.
What is “Evolve! With the Wisdom Whisperer” about?
Evolve! With the Wisdom Whisperer is for people just starting out in their career who are seeking more effective ways to fast-track and navigate their professional journey, to leaders in the Executive Suite. Supported by 30-plus years of proven, common sense and thought-provoking advice, author and business and sports team performance coach Kathleen E.R. Murphy offers readers highly actionable insights through a compelling, storytelling format. Her insights and guidance are based on leading and working with thousands of people, and from years of traversing the business world from start-ups to billion-dollar companies. Everyone needs a mentor, and you found one. Open Evolve! With the Wisdom Whisperer and begin learning new insights that will help propel you forward in your current career, or the one you aspire to have.
Topics include:
- 5 Tips to Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone, Building a Strong Team
- 10 Ways to Own Your Confidence, Harnessing Your Leadership Skills
- 5 Ways to Manage Your Boss
- 5 Ways to Deal With High Maintenance Colleagues
Why should people read it? Who is the book for?
Ever wish you had a coach or mentor to help you surmount obstacles in your life and propel you to the next level of your career? You just found one! Evolve! With the Wisdom Whisperer is for people just starting out in their career who are seeking more effective ways to fast-track and navigate their professional journey, to leaders in the Executive Suite.
Single most important takeaway
“Everyone needs a mentor or coach. They just might not know this or know one to help them.”
Skip to Page – Pages 89-90: 6 Ways to Boost Aspirational Thinking
There are plenty of people to want to be like, but what if you are like me? Someone who has always seemed to have a foggy image of who I wanted to be when I grew up? Like many little girls, I wanted to be like my mother. I have always admired her many incredible qualities. However, she was in an entirely different profession than I was, so aspiring to be like her professionally was not possible. She was a nurse and I have always been a businessperson. My father was a businessman, but I still am not sure exactly what he did. He never talked about his work. So, wanting to be like someone who does not communicate about their work is difficult, but I absolutely wished to have his and my mother’s work ethics, which were both impressive.
I believe it is natural to want to be like someone you admire, especially if it helps to motivate you in some way. I wanted to be like my parents based on some of the aspects of how they modeled their behavior, and which I admired. Over the years, as a business professional, I had few other females to look to as role models. They were not physically present throughout most of my career. However, there have been a few women who significantly and positively influenced my career.
One of them is Myra Hart. Myra was my first real boss when I was working at the corporate headquarters of Staples. This was at the time when Staples had only four stores and were in the process of taking the office supply industry through an enormous paradigm shift. Myra was the only “C” level woman executive on the team, and she and co-founder Tom Stemberg were both newly minted Harvard Business School graduates. Myra was the only woman executive, so I carefully watched her style of interacting with the other executives, and how she led our Growth and Development team. Since I did not have anyone to compare Myra’s management style to, I was able to, later, model from her management style in the leadership roles I have had. There were a couple of other businesswomen who influenced me and who I aspired to be like.
As my management career progressed, I realized there wasn’t anyone else I wanted to model. This was an epiphany and made me realize I had to strike out on my own and simply make a commitment to be the best I could be at whatever I chose to pursue, including serving as an inspirational and motivational leader for others. I am on my way to do this as I write these words, so keep your eye out for me in places you might not expect to see me. Having goals and finding people or things that inspire you are important tools and can serve as your compass when you need them. You may not be in a place right now where you have a person or something to inspire you but keep on the lookout as most people can benefit from having one or both of these.
Something that kept me motivated was the ability to travel outside of the United States. I was able to start accomplishing this dream when I was in my early 30s and have continued to leverage travel as an inspirational tool. Here are six things to think about when trying to determine what can help you decide what you want to do professionally, or personally.
- Print or cut out images that inspire you, or that you want to achieve in the future. Place them on a piece of poster board, and in a location, you can look at it every day, or on days when you need visual inspiration.
- Create a list of people you admire.
- Write down the characteristics of the people or things you want to be doing. Use this list as inspiration. Think about some of the qualities or characteristics you already possess which will help drive you towards who or what you aspire to be or do. Chances are, you have more of them than you might think.
- Have you considered whether you might be someone that other people aspire to be like? Perhaps people have told you they admire you, your work or something you have a talent for.
- Set a realistic goal to work towards achieving what you want to do, and then keep yourself accountable. This takes discipline, but it will be worth the effort.
Now that you have some ideas about how to map out something to aspire to, don’t just give this lip service or put the idea up on a shelf. Go out and start making it happen. As the saying goes, “there is no time like the present, and the present is now.”
Meet the author
In 2018, after spending over 25 years in executive marketing positions in the technology industry, Murphy decided to pivot her career. From this point, she became a published author, speaker and Gallup Certified StrengthsFinder Coach. She is the Founder and CEO of Market Me Too, and specializes in helping workforce and sports team clients to deeply understand their own talents, and appreciate their colleagues/teammates’ innate talents.
Murphy’s coaching systems enable team leaders and individuals to feel more motivated, engaged and united. This results in the people on these teams feeling more appreciated, and the leaders to see increased team performance metrics. Her passion is coaching and teaching others about what she has learned, and she shares her experience via her books “Wisdom Whisperer” and “Evolve! With the Wisdom Whisperer”, workshops, team and individual coaching and professionally speaking about what she does via all forms of media.
Add Comment