Mary Mosope Adeyemi - Visible Strengths: Capitalize on Strengths, Contribute Value, and Communicate Results to Accelerate Your Career

The beauty of your career is the journey of figuring out what you are uniquely gifted at and how you can use it to add value to others in a brilliant, bright, and sparklyway.

Mary Mosope Adeyemi

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to have a fulfilling and successful career? Have you ever wondered how others have achieved this in their careers?

Imagine if you could get all that information without trial and error. This book sets out to help you achieve that.

Before we begin, I would like you to consider three questions about your career:

1. Is your work crafted around your natural gifts and talents?

2. Can you use those talents to solve problems for the people and organizations you serve?

3. Do the relevant people know that you exist and are worthy of their attention and sponsorship?

If you answered yes to these questions, consider yourself lucky. If you answered no, dont worry. That response is more common than you might think.

If someone had asked me these questions fifteen years ago when I started my career in finance, my answers would undoubtedly have been a combination of somewhat, sort of, and unlikely! Yet, by turning those answers into yes, yes, and yes, I have grown in my career to become an executive director at a leading investment bankproof of what timely intervention and support can do.

A whole new world opens up when you leave the petri dish of the formal education system. The ten- to twelve-week terms, assignments, open-book exams, self-selected project teams, meritocratic grading systems, and mandatory spring and summer breaks are left behind. The time has come to generate a return for the years of academic investment and create economic pathways.

Everyone faces many decisions about the type, style, quality, pace, and location of the careers they pursue. Some will go for what brings excitement and fulfillment, some will join only innovative or sexy industries, some will follow their peers and friends, and others will go for what will bring them the most financial gain. Whatever the case, those decisions need to be made with some intentionality to give oneself a fighting chance at success.

Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Many begin their careers with little preparation, only to find themselves in one of these scenarios:

1. By a stroke of luck, they land in the perfect spot. They are growing, delivering, and earning. It all worked out.

2. On the surface they are doing well, but they lack fulfillment. They are in a job that affords them the life they want to have. Yet, every day, they cant connect with their why, impact, or how they are growing. They are not happy but are trapped by the feeling that there is no way out.

3. Nothing is working. They have tried and failed at many career options and hit a dead end. Neither their work nor their money is satisfactory.

Whichever scenario you identify with, you always have the opportunity to accelerate, reposition, or fully reset your career. If you are doing well, you can do better. If you are not doing as well as you would like, you can get back on the right track.

I started my career in 2006 at the age of nineteen with great ambition and motivation to excel. Early on, I identified that the most straightforward pathway was to get excellent grades in school and secure good work experience. So, while studying for my undergraduate degree in Accounting and Finance at Lancaster University, I secured a summer internship at Deutsche Bank and began my first foray into banking.

A couple of years later, after completing my masters in management at Imperial College Business School, I accepted a full-time role as a credit analyst in the London office of Bank of America (BoA) right in the middle of the 2008 global financial crisis. I came in with bright eyes and a bushy tail, ready and excited to start my ascent up the proverbial career ladder.

Unfortunately, it didnt take long before that excitement wore off. I slowly realized that my technical competence and work hard strategy were not fully translating into the perception others had of me at work. Surrounded by high-achieving type-A professionals, I was not standing out. Although I was doing good work, I repeatedly received feedback that I was not visible but couldnt understand why.

Especially as a Black woman working in a predominantly white and male industry, I was convinced I was hyper-visible by default. So why couldnt they seeme?

After unsuccessfully doing everything to be seen, I inevitably internalized this feedback as code for: we dont see you because you are Black or not like us. Eventually, I believed that people like me could not be successful in these types of organizations.

Years later, with strengths coaching and the support of a key sponsor, I learned the pivotal lesson that the visibility I sought was not just about being physically seen. Instead, that visibility was about using my strengths to add value and then communicating this value to others.

Getting this support and gaining this awareness when I did was game changing. I was happier, more energized, and more productive when I started operating in my strength zone. When I started focusing on adding value, I built my credibility and people cared more about me. When I began sharing my results, many more opportunities came my way.

My career success accelerated because I made my strengths visible.

Still, I reflect on my career with awe and wonder how that confused young girl stayed on the path and grew into a seasoned professional. Like many, I used to think that a career was something that happened to you rather than something you created on purpose. Thankfully I know better now, but I often wonder how many professionals do not.

This curiosity and interest led me to spend thousands of hours developing, executing, and managing talent recruitment and training and development programs along with working in my functional role as a risk manager.

My experience then ignited a burning passion that became viSHEbility, a social-first organization I founded in 2018 whose mandate is to improve outcomes for professionals in the marketplace through inspiration, coaching, community, and advocacy.