Episode 7 - Your Experience Is Impressive. But Is It Pointing to the Next Chapter?
A serious career can become surprisingly difficult to understand when every part of it is brought forward at once.
The experience is impressive.
But the relevance gets lost.
In this episode, Elaine explores why senior leaders often make the next chapter harder to see by trying to include everything they have done.
Years of commercial responsibility, transformation, governance, growth, crisis and change all matter.
But a Chair, recruiter, CEO or referrer is usually trying to answer one specific question:
“Is this the right person for this?”
A long career history does not automatically make that clear.
In this episode, Elaine looks at why experience needs to be organised around where you want to go next, rather than presented as a complete record of where you have been.
Because your profile, board CV, bio and introductions should not read like a menu of every possible option.
They should make the most relevant parts of your experience easier to recognise.
In this episode:
• Why including everything can make senior experience harder to understand
• The difference between showing your career history and showing your relevance
• How to identify the thread connecting NED, advisory and consultancy work
• Why your positioning may keep attracting an older version of your career
• The practical test for whether your experience points towards the work you want next
This episode is for experienced leaders whose background is broad, substantial and credible, but whose next move may still be unclear to the people reading about them.
Because the issue is rarely whether you have enough experience.
It is whether that experience has been shaped around the contribution you want to make now.
You do not need to show everything you can do.
You need to make the right parts clear enough that someone understands why you belong in the next conversation.
Further thinking:
Elaine shares ongoing perspectives on executive visibility, positioning and commercial perception on LinkedIn.
