She's probably said it before, but in the podcast This is Working with Daniel Roth, Brené Brown states that when it comes to your career "nothing is wasted."

That's absolutely true, but it's also a bit more complex than those words imply. I know this, because I used to take the concept that 'everything you've learned is useful' a bit too far.

Here are some myths that have been fully busted.

One of my clients is in the process of earning her graduate degree in organizational leadership and learning.

She’s taking a course this summer on leadership development, and she shared with me that the course materials included a list of 45 must-have core skills for leaders. She wondered about my take on the topic.

My eyes bugged out of my head for a second.

I definitely have a take: 45 core skills for leaders is an impossible standard. It sets all leaders up for failure. It’s unwieldy and overwhelming. And it puts leadership in a place where it will always be just out of reach.

My own leadership philosophy took a while to crystallize, but it's quite simple…

I graduated with a liberal arts degree and absolutely zero understanding of how to frame my skill set. My skills felt like a useless, random, confusing tangle of vague concepts that failed to point me in a clear direction.

It took years for me to understand that, even as someone without specialized expertise, I did have a solid skill set that was marketable, transferable, and valuable—what I didn't have were the right tools to help me articulate and understand it.

Read more about the skills are actually the most valuable and tools in your toolbox—and the ones that you can most easily take with you from job to job.

Resource Friday 5/14/21…

When I was in my early twenties, I watched a lot of my peers go to graduate school.

It mystified me because I always believed that investing time and money in an advanced degree meant knowing for sure that this right here is my specific thing, having a clear sense of direction.

I sure didn’t have that. And I didn’t know how others my age did.

More often than not, I suspected that my friends went to grad school not out of clarity of purpose but rather out of fear.

Education can enrich us—it can be a catalyst that propels us.

But it can also hold us back—it can be a place to retreat to out of fear.

Here are five types of fear that drive us to learn…

In a world where we often feel pressured to zero in on a specialty, having a wide variety of skills can feel more like a weakness than a superpower.

Here's something affirming for those of us with more than one skill set: having a dual career can actually make you happier…

I'm headed to two graduations this weekend, and that sea of caps and gowns makes me think back to my own transition from those "time-honored walls" into the real world. 

Here's a snapshot of baby Carole Ann, with my mom adjusting my silly hat and glasses; I was SO ready to close the "good student" chapter of my life and take the world by storm. But there was a hitch: I graduated with a liberal arts degree and absolutely no understanding of how to frame my skill set. (Can I get an amen?)

Two years ago, when I sat down to write my personal Strategic Career Compass, I identified that one of the key ways that I feel fulfilled and successful is through maintaining something called creative tension.

Creative tension is a simple but powerful concept that was formed by Peter Senge, a professor of organizational learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management…

A few years ago, my book club read a book on being transgressive in the workplace. It wasn't a particularly wonderful or memorable book, but there was one sentence in one chapter that has become a guiding principle for me: Everyone should have their own personal board of directors.

Since then, I've intentionally collected mentors whom (whether they know it or not) I consider to be members of my board.

Here's why your board is a critical part of your career development, and three tips to build you board.