PROTAGION
  • Proteges
    • Now What?
    • Career Support Guide
    • Career Goals >
      • Promotion / Raise
      • New Skills
      • Further Qualifications
      • Moving Countries
      • Switching: Consult/Contract/Startup
      • Transition: Specialism/Profession
      • Managing a Business
      • Portfolio Career
      • Purpose & Meaning
      • CPD
      • (Conference 1-5 Mar '21)
    • Example Professions >
      • Accounting
      • Actuarial
      • Asset & Investment Management
      • Risk Management
      • And more... >
        • Talent Management for Professionals
    • Our Services
    • Courses
  • Mentors
    • Encore Mentor
    • Featured Subset >
      • Anne - Australia
      • Boniswa - S Africa
      • Bradley - UK
      • Hafsa - S Africa
      • Lee - Hong Kong
      • Lusani - S Africa
      • Margaret - S Africa
      • Michael - S Africa
      • Natasha - UK
      • Nikki - UK
      • Sumit - India
      • Trevor - UK
      • And More on our Protege Platform...
  • Subscribe
  • Platform Login
    • Login
    • Sign Up: Free
  • Stories
    • Our Stories & Articles
    • Our Principles
    • Books
We help professionals achieve their career goals
OUR STORIES
Over 150 career-related articles and counting... Scroll down to read
NEED MORE CAREER SUPPORT? Our professional mentors & coaches are here to help
Join our in-a-group facilitated sessions & explore your career questions with us​
SUBSCRIBE TO JOIN OUR
IN-A-GROUP SESSIONS

Managing My Career: Natasha Naidoo's Personal Journey

27/4/2020

20 Comments

 
Natasha Naidoo is the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) for a UK subsidiary of an international insurer. She has consciously and deliberately managed her career since her early roles as an actuarial student, through qualifying as an actuary, and completing her Executive MBA at London Business School, and has worked for insurers directly as well as a consultant. In these reflections on her career, she shares three elements fundamental to her career success so far:
Natasha is a mentor on the Protagion platform. To experience what we offer our proteges or arrange a mentor session with her, signup as a member:
SIGN UP NOW
“I realised relatively early in my career that I had a strong interest in risk management. I entered a risk role in my second year of work, and have performed risk-related roles for most of my career since. I also have the view that most of the benefit of risk professionals is when they are seen as a key decision-maker, effectively supporting and steering business decisions. As a result I have had, at times, an almost singular focus on managing my career path towards an executive risk role.
Picture
There were three elements that were common in the approach I took as I transitioned different career stages towards an executive position: (i) profile exposure, (ii) mentorship and (iii) sponsorship. Before I describe how I actively managed these elements in my career, a brief interlude on foundations in my education that I was fortunate enough to benefit from. In those formative years, the systems at school and university provided me with a blend of the three elements without me having to put in additional effort… Those experiences did highlight to me, however, their importance for me to manage in my post-qualification years.

Read More
20 Comments

How can leaders ignite the best thinking in others?

19/4/2020

6 Comments

 
This article is by Soshan Soobramoney, one of Protagion’s mentors. Soshan is a qualified actuary who has worked in a number of product and customer-facing roles in the insurance industry, and now is a lecturer teaching future actuaries at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He is also a Time to Think facilitator – in that capacity he teaches others how to create environments that enable people to think beautifully and courageously for themselves. Such training allows us to improve the quality of our relationships, structure meetings to maximise their impact, boost the quality of the thinking of our team members, and increase our effectiveness as leaders. Here is his introduction to the Time to Think principles:
Soshan is a mentor on the Protagion platform. To experience what we offer our proteges or arrange a mentor session with him, signup as a member:
SIGN UP NOW
​“What is the one thing that, if it could, would change everything? This important question and others drove Nancy Kline, bestselling author of Time to Think*, to a lifetime of work on how human beings could “be” with each other in such a way that ignites our human potential and increases our intelligence. 
Picture
Up, Up & Away: Igniting Our Ideas to Soar
I first came across Time To Think in a three-week leadership course I did while working in the insurance industry several years ago. I was fascinated at how the facilitators of that course made me feel that I was thinking, growing and flourishing during every single minute of those three weeks. “How did they do that?” I wondered after each day of that course. And how could I be the type of leader that generates that kind of creativity and energy in people? I soon discovered that those facilitators understood some powerful things about how the human mind works. What ignites it and what blocks it. How it hates to obey but loves to play. How it dances at the sound of a question but stumbles when given an instruction. How it creates in the presence of ease but freezes up in the presence of urgency. So when I was due to move to London at the end of that year, I made it a goal to meet Nancy Kline and started studying with her. I’ve been studying this work for nearly a decade and I continue to get more and more excited about its potential to change the world, the more I learn about it... 

Read More
6 Comments

Busyness, Breaks and Building the Future

9/4/2020

2 Comments

 
Some of our members are finding themselves with more time than usual on their hands: extra time not spent commuting as we’re working from home, and less in-person socialising as we isolate ourselves in our free time too, all to slow the global spread of the viral contagion. A positive perspective is that it’s forcing us to take downtime, to step away from the hustle and bustle, and reflect on whether perpetual busyness really is good for us and our businesses…

Some are investing their extra capacity in personal development, and building new skills. Examples include learning a new human language or programming language, reading business books* or tackling new online courses in meditation, cooking, statistics... Reinvesting in themselves is however not possible for everyone at this time, perhaps because of increased family care responsibilities or stretched finances. We also need to bear in mind that doing less may lead to achieving more - Tim Maurer argues that busyness leads to us being less productive, and says that “many are finding enjoyment in more productive work at a less busy pace”. 
Picture
This post is inspired by by a recent LinkedIn article by Frances Mensah Williams called The Joy and Pain of Busy-ness. Frances is immensely qualified with respect to busyness, as evidenced by her varied portfolio career, including her concurrent roles as:
  • Author of fiction and non-fiction books*
  • CEO of a London-based consultancy managing skills and human resources development projects across Africa
  • Managing Editor of ReConnect Africa.com, an online careers and business publication for the African diaspora
  • Executive Coach...
Frances is also a passionate advocate for skills and capacity building in Africa, and was awarded a CBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List for services to the African community in the UK and in Africa.
I’ll admit that at times I relish the pressure of racing through the to-do list, ticking off task after task and writing up a new one for the next day. I know I’m not the only one who has experienced feeling so deep in the flow of what I’m doing, that I carry on for hours without taking a break...”
FRANCES MENSAH WILLIAMS
Frances warns against being busy at all times, as this can impact our work/life balance, our relationships and even our health. The first step, she argues, is admitting and owning the problem. However, she writes: “There is a big difference between knowing something intellectually and embracing it fully. I’m just as guilty as many people of thinking that a bit of hard work never hurt anyone. And yet, it does. Burnout isn’t a myth, and if we don’t control our hyper-busy selves, it doesn’t take long to lose the joy you once found from whatever it is you’re busy doing.”

She quotes Kelly Feehan of the UK’s Chartered Accountants Benevolent Association, the charity supporting the wellbeing of past and present chartered accountants and their families: “People have the tendency to believe that to achieve personal success and happiness they need to be busy at all times – often at the expense of their [physical and mental] health and relationships.”
While we at Protagion are mostly fans of keeping busy (as opposed to being lazy!), there is a limit to how much we can accomplish if we push ourselves too far. It’s about being in the sweetspot of motivated, engaged and productive, rather than dispassionately listless at one extreme, or crazily overextended at the other. Another key aspect for us is thinking about work not in terms of hours spent, but rather in terms of value delivered i.e. an outcome-focus. To build a diversified income stream (and a successful portfolio career) and see yourself as a business, it’s important to have at least some sources of earnings which aren’t linked to selling your time… Examples include rental income, investment income and royalty income.

In fact, if you do find yourself incredibly busy, we’d suggest pausing to question whether the effort of ‘getting your hustle on’ is contributing towards you building a sustainable income for the future. Is your work building ‘assets’ (such a business) that can generate ongoing revenue for you?
Picture
​Ryder Carroll, a digital product designer, as reported by Tim Maurer for Forbes, feels that we should take the time to enjoy the fruits of our labour too. Taking a “moment of closure to catch [our] breath and regroup” helps us to mark the occasion, “get perspective and reconnect with [our] purpose”. 
Working intelligently is not about being busy, it's about being productive.”
RYDER CARROLL, as told to Tim Maurer
And, if you need a tune to lift your spirits while hustling, remember the 1975 disco hit by Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony.
Picture
Stay well, be productive and enjoy what drives you in your work”
FRANCES MENSAH WILLIAMS
* PROTAGION is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk. The links with * participate in this programme. ​
2 Comments

    Follow @Protagion

    Author

    Bradley Shearer
    ​Founder of Protagion
    My Personal Journey
    I'd love to hear your stories

    SHARE YOUR
    STORY WITH ME

    Categories

    All
    Active Career Management
    Branching Out
    Connection
    Consulting
    Contracting
    Future Of Work
    Inspiration
    Leadership
    Learning
    Mentoring
    Non Executive Directors (NEDs)
    Personal Journeys
    Professions
    Psychology
    Real Life Examples
    Role Options
    Routes To The Top

    Tweets by protagion

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017

    RSS Feed

"NOW WHAT?" - a common question our visitors ask...
​WE CAN HELP!
Examples of common career goals, with resources for each: promotion, new skills, further study/qualifications, moving countries, switching into consulting / contracting / startup, transition to new specialism or profession, managing a business, portfolio career, purpose & meaning, CPD, and more... 


Follow @Protagion
Home / Proteges
> ​Services
> Subscribe
> CPD
​​

​Mentors

Our Stories / Blog

Sign Up to use our System
​
​
Privacy Policy​
Career Development and Talent Management for professionals: accountants, actuaries, analysts, asset managers, bankers, CFAs, data scientists, engineers, investment managers, risk managers, and more...
Protagion currently offers services in English, although some of our mentors & coaches speak other languages too. ​Please email us if you have any questions.
Picture

​© 2017-2023 PROTAGION LIMITED (10721032) is a company registered in England and Wales.
Registered Address: 128 City Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1V 2NX
Photos used under Creative Commons from Pjposullivan1, paul.horsefield, flazingo_photos
  • Proteges
    • Now What?
    • Career Support Guide
    • Career Goals >
      • Promotion / Raise
      • New Skills
      • Further Qualifications
      • Moving Countries
      • Switching: Consult/Contract/Startup
      • Transition: Specialism/Profession
      • Managing a Business
      • Portfolio Career
      • Purpose & Meaning
      • CPD
      • (Conference 1-5 Mar '21)
    • Example Professions >
      • Accounting
      • Actuarial
      • Asset & Investment Management
      • Risk Management
      • And more... >
        • Talent Management for Professionals
    • Our Services
    • Courses
  • Mentors
    • Encore Mentor
    • Featured Subset >
      • Anne - Australia
      • Boniswa - S Africa
      • Bradley - UK
      • Hafsa - S Africa
      • Lee - Hong Kong
      • Lusani - S Africa
      • Margaret - S Africa
      • Michael - S Africa
      • Natasha - UK
      • Nikki - UK
      • Sumit - India
      • Trevor - UK
      • And More on our Protege Platform...
  • Subscribe
  • Platform Login
    • Login
    • Sign Up: Free
  • Stories
    • Our Stories & Articles
    • Our Principles
    • Books