Women in their late 30s to mid-50s offer business advice in a 2006 Career Journal article, “Secrets of Success From Women for Women,” Barbara Moses provides 12 career management tips for success by women by women. Her tips are based on compilation of a survey questionnaire and online poll survey results of university-educated women in their late 30s to mid-50s. While the article is no longer available on Career Journal, here’s summary from those results:

1. Know yourself: Moses asks, “What do you need in your work and personal life to be engaged and feel good?” You can spend years trying to figure yourself out. But chances are, you’ll know what resonates with you and you’ll be attracted to those opportunities.
2. Act on what is most important to you: what did I learn? Which of my values are being met? Looking to the future: How can I make my work a better fit with what I need? These are excellent questions by Moses. Checking in with yourself once a week, twice a month, once a month. Whatever the interval, just check in.
3. Maintain your integrity: stay firm on the issues that go to the core of what you believe in. It’s all about integrity. Once you compromise, you will feel used, cheap…you fill in the blanks.
4. Distinguish between the big issues and the smaller ones: ask yourself, “Is this really important?” Pick your battles. Get perspective and know what the goal is so you can determine which battles to choose.
5. Find a mentor and be one: it’s wonderful to have a mentor and even better to be one.
6. Don’t make work the centerpiece of your identity: for some of us that don’t have children, it’s easy to make work your identity. You’ll ebb and flow on this one, but generally, do NOT make work your identity.
7. Be able to navigate office politics mastering politics is a must. You don’t have to a player, but you have to know when you are being played or lobbied.
8. Invest in yourself: take steps to ensure your employability. If you lost your job tomorrow, could you find another? Measure the currency of your skills according to industry standards, not your employer’s.
9. Don’t let a lack of confidence deter you: ask yourself, if you had a lot of confidence, what would you do? Confidence is there. You just have to find it and build upon it.
10. Don’t worry if you don’t know what you want to do “when you grow up:” we learn from failure and poor job fits as much as success. You can’t opt out. You have to pursue the not-so-great jobs. You have to start and go somewhere; it’s called progress. Keep chipping away until you hit the track that you are supposed to be on.
11. Think trade-ons, not trade-offs: you can have it all, but it may not be all at once. Prioritize what is most important at this stage of your life. Focus on satisfying one need, rather than compromising on all of them. Read Just Enough by Stevenson Nash, that explains why we cannot have it all and we have to choose.
12. Be yourself: express who you are in your work. “It’s OK for people to not like you. You won’t die if you have enemies. In fact, if you don’t, that’s not good.” You may want people to laugh at your jokes. You make want people to like you. But at the end of the day, you want them to respect you by just being yourself.

Managing your career is hard, but this 12-point framework is a shortcut for women and men alike.

Recommended Reading List

• Why some women just can’t fit in - Barbara Moses
• Ambition a loaded word for women - Barbara Moses
• Dish: Midlife Women Tell the Truth about Work, Relationships, and the Rest of Life by Barbara Moses
• Women Confidential: Midlife Women Explode the Myths of Having It All by Barbara Moses

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