Career Leap by Michelle Gibbings is an outstanding guide for leaders and individuals to draw their own map to leap up, out or across to expanded or radically different career paths as the future of work in Australia rapidly changes from emergent technologies.

— Anne Bennett
Executive General Manager, NAB

Warning … if you aren’t looking for a new career yet, by the end of Michelle’s wonderful book you just might be! She packs the pages with tools and inspiration that will have you seeing your own potential. You will be excited, energised and equipped for your next career move.

— Kieran Flanagan
Co-Founder, The Impossible Institute

Taking the Leap is something many ponder, dream about, fantasise over and procrastinate on for months or years. Sadly, some miss the opportunity by allowing it to build into something bigger than it needs to be. I’m the type of person that often takes the Leap and then does the thinking. Michelle’s book has given me fantastic insights into what can be defining moments and decisions in your life. If you’re considering taking the Leap, stop and read Michelle’s book first. I’ll think about my next Career Leap differently now having read the book.

— Peter Baines OAM
Founder and Managing Director, Hands Group

Pablo Picasso’s famous quote comes to mind, ‘Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist’. Jam packed full of provocative thinking, actions and ideas, Career Leap by Michelle Gibbings does just that. It also shares anecdotes and personal insights of those that have gone before and taken the leap, giving us real-life examples of what IS possible. A must read for all, no matter what age or stage of life.

— Dr Jess Murphy
Founder of Pathway to Your Potential experiential programs
and self-confessed Career Leapist

We have all come across highly successful people who have been able to leap from role to role, and industry to industry, leaving a trail of achievement behind them. They seem to be powered by self-belief, adaptability and enthusiasm. In our rapidly changing world this is a skill we will all need to acquire, as existing roles disappear to be replaced by new ones and as entire industries are disrupted.

In this book Michelle clearly identifies how to analyse your existing situation and motivation. She provides a powerful case for personal change, with many examples. More importantly there are a wide-range of practical tools to help you prepare and execute your own career change. Michelle is passionate about helping people to attain career success and anyone reading this book will gain valuable insights and skills to perform their own career leaps.

— Chris Whitehead F Fin
CEO and Managing Director, FINSIA

There are rich veins of gold threaded throughout this book. It’s a refreshing and contemporary look into the often daunting prospect of career planning and provides great tools and tips such as the four career health zones which, whilst a tad confronting, is spot on!

If you’re seriously looking to invest in your career, are willing to put in some good old fashioned hard work with the promise of delivering tangible results, then this is the book for you.

— Leigh Bryan
Financial services Executive, Suncorp

Disrupt yourself … Michelle provides wise counsel and great tools to help you thrive in (the future of) work. Drawing on her experiences, advice of experts and interviews with people who have leapt in their career, this book provides a handy guide for shaping your own. Love the focus on life-long learning and continual leaping.

— Mette Schepers
Partner, Mercer

It’s strange to think that many of us began our working lives in rather less enlightened times when ‘job-hopping’ was very much frowned upon. Indeed, I remember resigning from my first role after University (because I knew deep down that it wasn’t right) and being told by my manager that ‘people don’t move jobs before they’ve done 10 years’. Well what a difference a lifetime makes!

And what a difference this book makes. Career Leap is an insightful, practical and incredibly useful guide to analysing your current career situation and assessing whether it’s right for you or whether a ‘leap’ into something different is the most appropriate path to follow. Far from advocating a leap in the dark, Michelle advocates a much more considered and thoughtful approach. Changing careers — she argues — is a project that, like all successful projects, needs to be managed closely from start to finish. In this sense, Career Leap is best described as the ideal guide for project managing your career.

The central message of Career Leap is one that I find both powerful and incredibly liberating; it’s my career and I’m in control of the path that I take. If I know that the path isn’t the right one, it’s probably time to take a leap. As someone who has ‘leapt’ a couple of times since that first role after University, I couldn’t agree more!

— David Pich MA (Cantab) FIML
Chief Executive, Institute of Managers and Leaders and
author of Leadership Matters: 7 skills of very successful leaders.

In the uncertain world that is the new world of work, Michelle has given us a really practical and wise handbook full of clarity, optimism and inspiration. She deftly combines some of the most useful models from diverse research fields, with personal insights and powerful stories from professionals who’ve excelled at career transitions. Best of all, she provides a practical and accessible step-by-step guide to help you leap with confidence into your new career.

— Professor Richard Hall
Deputy Dean, Leadership and Executive Education
Monash Business School

Career leap is a fantastic read for anyone who’s contemplating a leap or change in their career.

Coming from the recruitment industry I can appreciate where Michelle describes the change to our future work with the introduction of automation. It’s time to think ahead and differently about our careers and start to future-proof.

I love the approach of the open workbook style throughout allowing you to work through and assess your career re-invention. I am lucky enough to love my work, however in the back of my mind I have considered a career leap for a few years and after reading this book it inspires me to take that leap! Thank you Michelle for the great insight and motivation!

— Jemma Dougall
Regional Director, M&T Resources

In today’s fast paced world where we are constantly reading about the future of work, this is a great practical handbook that everyone can use to proactively face these challenges head on, take control and have the confidence to make that ‘leap’. For many of us, we take the time to do a health check, but when did we last look at our career? Michelle’s ‘how fit is your career’ health check is a must do for all of us! A highly relevant book regardless of your industry or profession.

— Somone Johns
Head of Business Development, nbn and Commercial Delivery, Telstra

I really enjoyed reading and experiencing Career Leap. Having leaped myself a couple of times through my career, Michelle’s book really resonated and I found it inspirational. I wish I could have read it sooner as it could have helped me with some of my earlier career choices too, and I will definitely hold onto it.

It’s a very practical guide that helps you to get to know yourself better, helps you understand what makes you ‘tick’, moreover assists you proactively with your choices so you can take charge of your own destiny. The framework and the many tools shared are a must-have as you navigate through your career journey. It warns you of the possible pitfalls, however also gives you the confidence to back yourself, and as you re-invent yourself, you truly feel supported.

Agility has become the new currency, and it’s so important to stay relevant on so many levels. This book is a great source equipping yourself for the present and the future, so you can be the one proactively steering on to what’s next, and re-inventing yourself along the way.

— Anouk De Blieck
Global Senior Human Resources Leader
(Connect on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/anoukdeblieck)

Career Leap is the concentration of years of accumulated wisdom from Michelle Gibbings — a brilliant practitioner who has taken the leap many times in her career. Michelle is well credentialed to provide invaluable insights on what it takes to build a plan to optimise your career and take a leap forward — from a small step to a seismic shift in career direction.

What I most value about this book is its practical orientation. Michelle speaks directly to the reader about what you can do to future proof your career; through the application of four simple considered stages, you will avoid career stagnation, skills obsolescence and navigate career leaps to help you promote success in work and life.

The pace of change in today’s world is blistering and whether by accident or design, change brings both opportunities and rampant chaos. Career Leap is a cornucopia of insights and additional website resources to help readers cope with these challenges. It provides tangible and practical examples of career leaps made by successful Australians who share their inspirational stories. Their stories and anecdotes are complemented by a practical guide on how to capitalise on opportunities that come your way.

By reading this book you’ll discover new career possibilities, reinvent yourself and put in motion a realistic and achievable career plan. I highly recommend Career Leap. Read it and apply the learnings — you will come on in leaps and bounds!

— Dorothy Hisgrove
PwC Partner, Chief People Officer

Foreword

The great challenge of the modern workforce isn’t so much finding work, although that can indeed prove difficult for the young and the non-skilled workers. It is steering a way along a tricky pathway that presents many twists and turns along the way.

Work was a straightforward concept in the twentieth century. Everyone was scooped up by the globalisation of the great manufacturing companies both in Australia and abroad. There were jobs aplenty. All you had to do was learn the rules, put your head down, and work day-in and day-out for the whole of your working career.

And that is precisely what many workers did for their entire working lives, whether it was for a car manufacturer or for a professional services firm. It was a process that delivered prosperity but it also set up expectations about how work should be, and that needs to be unravelled by workers in a post manufacturing world.

In Career Leap author Michelle Gibbings shines a light on the way forward for workers in the twenty-first century. Gone or going are the great global manufacturers. Long gone is the idea of working in one job for the entirety of your working life. Now in are bold new concepts like digital disruption, globalisation, mechanisation, artificial intelligence and, perhaps most powerful of all, the desire for personal growth and development.

Working on an assembly line might have delivered an assured job from an early age but, gosh, it wasn’t exactly a personally fulfilling use of time. The next generation of workers see work differently, and indeed they have to see work differently. The skills now required are far more complex including agility, sociability and self-confidence, and this on top of the need for technical and entrepreneurial skills.

In this masterful and engaging work Gibbings is a bit like the conductor of an orchestra. She draws on research evidence here, on the experience of notable individuals there, on her own insights and experience and even on quotes from famous people in history. Aristotle gets a mention. I even saw a quote from Geronimo.

In many ways Gibbings has constructed a how-to book on career growth and development for the twenty-first century that mirrors the way careers must unfold in the twenty-first century. A bit of this, a bit of that but always with an underlying theme, a rhythm if you like, of personal growth and development and with a watchful eye on prosperity and commerciality.

This is a complex story well told by an experienced story-teller and conductor who adroitly brings in different players to add just the right note at just the right time. I loved this book, not just for its insight into navigating the modern career, but also for the way Gibbings pulls everything together for the reader’s engagement and enjoyment.

Congratulations Michelle. Career Leap is a great leap forward for anyone navigating work in the twenty-first century!

Bernard Salt AM
Author, columnist, speaker, corporate advisor
Melbourne, December 2017

Acknowledgements

The idea for this book had a long gestation period, with many people I’ve met throughout my career influencing it. It is by seeing what others have done, and through my own experiences, that the ideas in this book have come to life.

A book is never written alone, and this one wouldn’t have been possible without the many generous people who helped along the way.

To Ann Crabb, thank you for listening to my early ideas and helping to constructively challenge them.

Thank you to Alicia Beachley, Andrew Wiseman, Christine Bartlett, Christie Kerr, Glenn Brennan, Julian Fenwick, Peter Griffin, Robyn Weatherley and Russell Yardley, who all, without hesitation, reached out to people in their networks to help me secure interviews for this book.

A massive thank you to all the people who so readily shared their thoughts, ideas and experiences about their career leaps, including Andrew O’Keefe, Aneka Manners, Anna Jenkins, Dr Bronwyn King, Christine Bartlett, Clare Payne, Gorgi Coghlan, Helen Silver AO, Janine Garner, Jessica Watson OAM, John Bertrand AO, Layne Beachley AO, Dr Lisa O’Brien, Marc Alexander, Nigel Matthews, Rodney George, Sandy Hutchison, Simon Madden and Steve Bracks AC.

Your generosity in sharing your ups and downs, and your wisdom, have made this book rich with real, tangible and practical insights.

While it was an idea for a long period, the manuscript itself was written in super-fast time. Thanks to Kelly Irving for her amazing work in keeping me on track and making sure everything came together.

Thanks also to Adam Matthews and Drew Blatchford, two amazing osteopaths, who made sure my wrists and forearms survived the writing onslaught, and to Chris Nikola for the PT sessions that helped keep me physically focused.

This book wouldn’t be the same without the advice and efforts of the Wiley team. To Jem Bates, Lucy Raymond, Ingrid Bond and Chris Shorten, thank you for helping bring this book to life.

A special thanks too for Bernard Salt for writing the Foreword for this book. His expertise and forward thinking approach to the world of work has influenced many — including me — and I am very grateful to him for sharing his thoughts on Career Leap.

Most of all, thanks to Craig for putting up with the many weekends when I was bunkered down in my study writing. You really were the best decision I ever made!

Preface

My first career ambition was to be a member of Charlie’s Angels — that’s the original 1970s TV show starring Jaclyn Smith, Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson. As I grew up, at different times I thought I wanted to be a librarian, a teacher, a journalist or a lawyer — though I never did get a degree in education (well, not yet) or take the bar exam.

Like many of my friends, after high school I enrolled in a course at university (a Bachelor of Business Communication) because, well, back then it was what you did. You’d do a trade apprenticeship or go to university, which is still very much what happens today. I had no idea where it would take me.

It ended up being the start of a 20-year career that involved working for six different companies, moving to a different geographic zone nine times, getting promoted 10 times, working in seven different functional areas, completing three degrees and eight certifications, being a member of six professional associations, and holding three board positions and one advisory role.

Throughout this time, I took what seemed like large leaps as I moved from one discipline to another, one industry sector to another, one career field to another. I moved from politics to mining to banking, from being a company spokesperson to working on a large project, from working in corporate affairs to working for the CEO.

Often people would ask me how or why I did this. One friend once remarked, ‘Michelle, your career terrifies me.’

For some of us, these leaps are scary. They seem not just impossible, but implausible. I mean, how on earth do you move from being a teacher to a state premier, a lawyer to a TV personality or a banker to a fashion designer? (All are completely possible progressions, as you’ll soon see.)

Yet for others, like me, these leaps are born out of a love of learning and challenge. Sometimes our needs or interests have changed or we simply feel we are in the ‘wrong role’.

Over time, I have come to realise that making these leaps has actually helped advance my career. I learned to take advantage of opportunities as they arose, and to sustain my career when times were tough or challenges arose.

This attitude and approach is, now more than ever, something we all need to embrace.

In this age of robotics and automation, work roles that were once seen as ‘secure’ over the long term are disappearing faster than new and different roles are being created. The number of us facing redundancy or being forced to move on to new roles continues to increase.

The upside of all of this change is the new opportunities it brings.

There are amazing opportunities for you to embrace a role that you love, that inspires you, that makes you want to get up for work every day. Perhaps it’s a role that uncovers a hidden talent, or provides you with the chance to do truly meaningful work that makes a difference on either a local or a global scale.

If you sit back and wait, these opportunities will pass you by and go to someone else, so it’s up to you to do something about it, which is where this book comes in. It will help you:

assess where you are in your career now
architect where you want to leap to
activate how you get there
accelerate how you leap successfully.

This book does not set out to assess artificial intelligence and its impact on the world, or to offer an in-depth critique of changes to today’s workforce — there are plenty of books in the market that do that. Rather, I want to offer an incentive and a source of inspiration that will challenge you to make deliberate decisions in your career, as well as a practical guide on how to take advantage of what the future brings.

I’ve helped countless people transition into new careers. In Career Leap, you’ll hear about these people. You’ll read their stories and those of others who have successfully made leaps in their careers — for example, from banking to fashion, sport to corporate or public to private sector.

But there is a catch. The strategy I will outline is only effective if you actually do the work, and complete the exercises contained here. They require deliberate time, deep thought and reflection, potentially with the help of a trusted adviser, partner or colleague.

That’s why I recommend you print out the exercises and complete them in your own time, and not just once but at different stages in your career.

Career success and ongoing employment require you to actively manage your career each and every day. You can’t afford to play safe, to stay small, to not take risks, to not change or position yourself effectively. You must continuously develop yourself, constantly look ahead and actively plan your career.

You can jump over a little stream or you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s just a question of how high and how far you are prepared to go, and how much risk you are willing to take.

So as you embark on this quest and leap into your brilliant future consider the words of the inventor Thomas Edison, a man who was famously dismissed by a teacher as ‘addled’: ‘If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.’

That’s what happens when you learn to leap.

Foreword

About the author

Acknowledgements

Preface

Leap online