15// Nurse Career Growth Series: Strategies for Meaningful Growth and Advancement for the Experienced Nurse

Discover the crucial difference between career advancement and growth in the world of nursing, as I guide you through bridging the gap between your current position and your professional aspirations. 

This episode is a catalyst for both new insights and practical strategies, tailored specifically for experienced nurses ready to redefine their impact within healthcare and their communities. We’re not just talking about making strides in your career; we’re talking about defining your mission and shaping your influence in ways that resonate with your core values and psychological needs.

 Whether you’re seeking joy, flexibility, or the opportunity to empower others, we're unraveling how to align what you want with the actions to get you there. It’s time to expand your horizons beyond what you thought possible in nursing.

 Tune in and transform ‘more’ from a vague desire to a well-defined goal, as we tackle the essence of self-awareness and its pivotal role in your growth journey.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Ambitions Nurse podcast, where I provide tips, tools and resources for the experienced nurse to put in your career bag to help you be a better person, a better leader, a better professional and, most of all, a better nurse. I'm your host, bonnie Meadows, a career coach and a clinical nurse specialist with over 18 years of experience in healthcare and nursing. It's my passion to help experienced nurses develop their careers to impact healthcare and their communities. So this is the last episode for our walkthrough of self-awareness as an experienced nurse, for nursing career growth and to develop your nursing career path, and so I'm going to jump right into it. There will be a little bit of a repeat, but to me it just helps to bring the full picture together when I am just repeating just a little bit more information from previous episodes to help you pull that full picture together about self-awareness and how it applies in nursing. So I'm going to jump right in. The first thing I'm going to say is, when you're walking through a process of the how just apply the nursing process, we're going to assess, we're going to determine outcomes, we're going to determine, like, our interventions, and then we're going to evaluate all of those pieces in. That's what we do when we do the how we're walking through the nursing process. The first thing I'm going to do is start by assessing. So that goes to my number one. Start assessing the gap between your current situation and your desired future situation and career goals. And I said this in the last podcast episode. But if you do not know what your future career goals are, if you're like I have no clue, that's okay too. There's something that is guiding you there, in whatever direction. That is. You just need to sit down with someone and talk through it so that you can understand what are your career goals or what is your future situation. It doesn't necessarily have to be a job, but what is the mission that you are on? What is your mission? What is your vision? What do you? How do you see yourself impacting the profession? How did you see yourself impacting the profession when you came into the role, and is it? Oh well, I wanted to become a nurse because I wanted to be a CRNA. Okay, well, in that space, what do you want to do as a CRNA? Oh, I want to take care of patients. There's got to be more than that. If you're listening to this podcast episode, you want more. What is that more? How does it go beyond? Because, once you get there, it's like, okay, well, if you're ambitious which I'm assuming that you are if you're listening to this podcast episode, if you're listening to this podcast, you want more.

Speaker 1: 3:23

More doesn't always mean advance. It might mean outward growth. So what does that growth mean to you? And I am going to do a podcast episode on what is the difference between career advancement and career growth, because those are two different things, and I had this conversation with a coachee of mine. I had an understanding of it, but I wanted to get her words of what it means and it was spot on one and it really helped me to tease out. Okay, this is something that needs to be talked about. Advancement and growth, two different things. More to come.

Speaker 1: 4:03

So, one, assess that gap. Two, you develop it by being more aware of your psychological needs, which can increase your motivation by helping you to discover the rewards that you truly desire. You want more joy. Do you feel like you want to do more with your hands? Do you want more flexibility in your schedule? Do you want the opportunity to help others a little bit more? Like? I've gotten to the point in my career where I want to be able to help others to do their work better. So what is that thing for you Like? That is my goal. How can I help you? How can I help you, as listeners, do your work better, obtain your goals in your career? In my regular job, it's how can I help these nurses work better, be better professionally, grow better. How can I help to impact each and every nurse that I come in contact with so that we are able to grow a better nursing profession? That's my goal. It's not tangible, it's not I want that thing over there, but that is the psychological need that fills me, because I enjoy helping people to find their peace and their joy in the work that they do.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Third, I'm going to have you to write down a series of questions in your how do I develop self-awareness? I'm going to walk through these questions and I want you to answer them for yourself and then, once you answer them for yourself, I want you to send me a message in my DMs on LinkedIn to let me know what you come up with. First question so here's the questions that you're going to ask as we talk about how to develop your self-awareness, because these are the questions that I ask coaches. They're not always in this series. A lot of times it just depends on how the conversation is flowing. I may not ask all these questions. I may not get to all of these questions. They may already answer these questions for me, but it helps me to guide them. I'm here as a guide, I'm not the answer. I've just been blessed and gifted with the vision to help guide people in their career path. So one and some of these questions I've been asking all along.

Speaker 1: 6:45

First question what drives you? What is your passion? I'm going to pause. You need to have out of sheet of paper. If you're driving, obviously, you will not have out of sheet of paper. That's cool. If you're walking, just think about it. What drives you? What is your passion? Number two what do you want your life to look like in the future? What do you want your life to look like in the future In general? If you've got kids, then once they graduate from school or once they are done with school, then what do you like? What does that look like five years from now? What does that look like 10 years from now? Do you want to be a speaker and speaking across the nation? Do you want to be on board? Do you want to be like? What do you want your life to look like in the future? Do you want to be more impactful in the community? Do you want to be more impactful in your, in your life, in your faith area? What do you want your life to look like in the future?

Speaker 1: 7:43

Do you like people? Yes, this is a valid question. It's a valid question Do you like people? Because if you really don't like working with people like that, there are nursing careers in which you can support others without being forward-facing. There are some of you who really should be forward-facing and you're not, and there are some of you who are forward-facing and you really should not be forward-facing other people. You really should be an admin support to others. Let's think about that. And you can be an admin support to others in various ways. You can do it as a nurse, scientist, in doing research projects, in doing statistical analysis, like there's just there's different things that you can do.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Don't limit yourself. Do you wanna work in the community or in acute care? Are you in acute care? But you have a desire to do work in the community and just to be out and about in the community doing nursing but you're like, oh, it just doesn't pay, well, so I can't do that. Okay, well, what can you do to fill your cup in the meantime? Or are you out in the community and you really wanna work in the hospital but somebody's pulling you into that other space or not? Somebody's pulling you. Your life just works better now in this space of having this type of schedule. Don't limit yourself. There are some things that you can do to fill your cup now until you can get to that point of being in the acute care space.

Speaker 1: 9:31

What are your beliefs and what are your core values? Those are two separate questions, but they are important, as we as nurses can work in so many different secular and sections of healthcare that we need to know what our beliefs are and what our core values are, because as we work for other organizations that may not align their mission and vision and, whatever the case may be, may not align with your beliefs and your values, that's a stressor. Understand those things. What is essential for my family life? And that kind of goes back to that.

Speaker 1: 10:18

I can draw on that other example that I talked about earlier. Or when I was offering free sessions about a month ago. I had a few people that I had some conversations with, and one our goal was she wanted more autonomy, to be able to make more of an impact within her family. She had a high level of self-awareness of I need to work in an autonomous environment. I love what I do, but I need to work in an autonomous environment. How can we work to get there and what are those things that I can do to work autonomously? So we talked through a few of those things and she had a good list of action items that she could go ahead and start implementing, because that is what her family life was her focus. But, yes, she wanted to work on her nursing career. Number one priority was family. Number two, how do I still grow in my career with my family? And then the last.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Lastly, in this list of questions, I want you to examine your life compared to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I will have a link to Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the show notes so that you can start to look at how does it apply to my life and to my career and my career growth? I don't want anybody to ever feel like I can't do just because of where you might be now in life. Do what you can now, because that helps to fill your bucket, even if it's just a little bit, so that later you will be ready to step into, and it'll be easier for you to step into those things in which you want to do once your capacity opens up. So I want you to take the time to examine your life experiences, your work experiences, your school experiences, to get an idea of what you may be interested in. Take all of those questions and then take some time to examine and that'll give you a better idea of what you might be interested in to help you to drill down to your nursing niche.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Lastly, I want you to look up and I will have a link in the show notes of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and analysis and just do an analysis of your current life, whether it be work, whether it be home. Somebody who is single, who does not have a lot of responsibilities, they might be able to go a little bit faster than someone who has like five kids, but somebody who has like five kids might have a big, a whole support system. So just don't judge anyone or think that, oh well, so-and-so might be able to do all those things because they don't have any children, well, you don't know what their other responsibilities are. Or, oh gosh, they got like five kids. They might not be. No, just unbiasedly strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, obstacles. See threats has just obstacles or barriers, because those are outside things that may hinder you from moving forward or it may slow you down. Sometimes the outside threat is us.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Let's just put that out there and then, once you have written all of that down, send me a message on LinkedIn. I am Bonnie Meadows, nurse career coach. You find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. Let me know what you thought of the episode and what you thought of the self-awareness series. Let me know what you came up with in your analysis and then, if you feel like this really resonated with you, you wanna talk through it a little bit more. I have a link in the show notes in which you can jump on a call with me in which I'm offering one-on-one coaching calls to help walk through this process of developing your self-awareness so that you can discover your nursing niche and then help you develop a plan for your career path. I'm so excited to have you here, so excited to walk through this with you Next in the next series, still continuing on the Nurse Career Path series and next we're gonna start to tackle building confidence and imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1: 15:07

So hope you stay tuned, thanks. Thanks for joining us this week on the Ambitious Nurse podcast. To review the show notes and any links mentioned in today's episode, please go to theambitiousnursepodcastcom. If you enjoyed this conversation, follow or subscribe so you don't miss a future episode. Also, please consider leaving a rating, review and or comment about what you want to hear. This helps more nurses, just like you find this podcast. Thank you for joining me, bonnie Meadows, on the Ambitious Nurse podcast. I look forward to chatting with you the next time and remember you don't have to grow your career alone. As iron sharpens iron, one person sharpens another. Thank you for letting me sharpen you as you take this knowledge to sharpen the next.