Celebrating your progress

Hello!

I hope you’ve had a good week.

For those of you who have newly discovered OnUpBeyond, welcome to my weekly newsletter. Every day, I'm privileged to meet or interview amazing professionals and advise my coachees on their most pressing career questions. And I use this email to share the insights from those conversations with you.

I hate spam and needless self-promotion. So I only email with my best insights and resist the temptation to share lots of sign-up links. I figure that if you need some expert career advice, you know where to find us!

- - -

Cataloguing & celebrating progress. 

Matthew Wright (former CEO of Russell Reynolds) joined us for the Compensation Masterclass this week (great to see so many of you there, and thanks for sending such positive feedback). One theme that Matt kept coming back to was progress towards a long-term goal.

One of the easiest but most useful exercises you can do to support your career is to sit down once every 6 months and catalogue your progress. 

It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we can / should be moving further and faster at work.

Cataloguing progress helps us celebrate and remember everything we have achieved in the past 6 months. It's amazing how much comes out of the woodwork.

Perhaps even more importantly, it helps us focus on being intentional about the 6 months ahead.

Practically speaking, it's also a very useful preparation for any review or personal development type conversations with your boss!

When your cataloguing session is linked to your long-term career goals (see my "taking stock" masterclass and "career wheel" planning tool), you start to feel continuous momentum. Every 6 months, you recognise your progress towards your goal and work out what to adjust and add in for the 6 months ahead.

- - -

Taking my own advice.

In the spirit of cataloguing my own progress, I thought it'd be useful to share a summary of my previous email newsletters. All of these can be found via my newsletter homepage here. 

I've grouped them into themes below and hope you enjoy digging into whatever is of most interest.

Leadership & CEO Insights

• Success as a CEO — Lessons from former CEOs on leadership, organisational alignment, and leading through uncertainty.

• The 1 thing that makes or breaks your success (it’s not strategy) — Why relationships, influence, and leverage often matter more than merit alone.

• Interview with Meta's MD — Career and leadership lessons from a senior Meta executive on her career path from consulting to in-house strategy to P&L.

• Your edge in the AI era — How to stay valuable in an AI-driven workplace by strengthening human skills and adaptability.

- - -

Career Growth & Planning

• The most important thing for career progress — Explores the key mindset and behaviours behind long-term career advancement.

• Strengths — Why building a career around your natural strengths leads to greater success and fulfilment.

• Goals — How clear personal and professional goals improve decision-making and direction.

• Reflection — Encourages taking time to assess your career, priorities, and next steps.

• Making plans — Guidance on building a realistic and fulfilling long-term career plan.

• Recognition — The importance of visibility and ensuring your contributions are recognised at work.

- - -

Networking, Recruitment & Opportunities

• Leveraging headhunters — How executive recruiters work and how to build productive relationships with them.

• How to make networking work for you — Practical advice for building meaningful professional relationships and uncovering hidden opportunities.

• Balance of power — Insights into job offers, negotiation, and understanding leverage during hiring processes.

• The jobs market - 6 trends — Key hiring and workplace trends shaping the evolving job market.

- - -

If you're new to my newsletter, I hope you enjoy exploring these previous editions and/or celebrating your last 6 months of impact. And if you've been signed up for a while, I hope you enjoy recapping on something you found particularly helpful or discovering an article you missed.

Wishing you a great weekend.

All the best,

Rich