What’s This About Then

Hi, my name is Nicholas

Foster, and I am leadership &
performance coach, start-up
advisor and proud dad.

I spent 15 years as a successful leader at Credit

Suisse and UBS. During this time, I built and led
global teams of over 300 people, managed complex
strategic change programmes of up to $40m and was
accountable for one of the most critical trade
management systems in the bank.

In parallel to growing this successful career, I got

married to my wife Debby and became a dad to two
amazing children.

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During my long and successful career, I have
observed and also made some of the mistakes you
will read about in this mini eBook. Mistakes that
hindered and slowed down the progress of my
career as well as the career of others.

I have compiled what I view to be the top seven

career mistakes made by me, ex-colleagues and
clients while scaling our success.

Enjoy
Nick

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 Mistake #1
YOU RELY TOO MUCH ON YOUR BOSS TO
BUILD YOUR CAREER

“You know who’s gonna give you everything? Yourself.”

Diane Von Furstenberg

Don’t restrict your career growth to your boss or

even the company you work for. If you do, you are
limiting your career and future to their limitations,
not yours.

Here are five core strategies I used to build a

successful career under five different bosses -

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1. Create a Personal Brand
According to David McNally and Karl Speak, your
brand is a perception or emotion, maintained by
somebody other than you, that describes the total
experience of having a relationship with you.

For you to be successful, you have to stand out from

the crowd by building your personal brand. The
easiest way to do this, is to identify a niche set of
people in your company and use your key strengths
to provide value to them.

For example, one of my key strengths is establishing

and building relationships. When I started my career
at Credit Suisse, I focused on building relationships
and providing as much value as I could to a
particular set of business clients that my

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department delivered solutions to. Over time, I
became their go-to person, a trusted partner.

2. Create a Strong Network

If you build a strong internal and external network,
it can provide you with the support and
opportunities you need to excel in your career. It
can also help you when things are not going well.

How does anybody know who you are and what you
can bring to the party unless you get yourself out
there? Build relationships with people inside and
outside of your organisation with the intent to be
curious. Learn about them, the problems they are
having, offer your help and keep in contact. It will
pay off believe me.

Internally

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 • Whose desk can you walk over to today and find
out some information about this person?
• Who can you ask for a coffee to find out what
their team does?
• What internal networking events can you go to?
• What regional initiatives can you get involved in?
• What else?

Externally
• What ex-colleagues can you connect with to find
out what they are doing?
• Who can you connect with on LinkedIn and start
building a relationship with?
• What meetups can you attend?
• What conferences can you attend or talk at?
• What else?

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3. Focus on Your Team
Your team will make or break your career for you,
so treat them as importantly as you treat your
clients.

Invest your time with them, build a personal

relationship with them, coach them, mentor them,
remove blockers for them, protect them, promote
their work, take them on the journey with you and
make them proud to work for you.

4. Invest in Continuous Improvement

The market is continually changing, and it’s up to
you and not just the company to invest in your
professional development. This will ensure you stay
current and bridge the gap of where you want to be.

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I have not got the time, the energy, the money or
the motivation are excuses I hear all the time from
those whose careers are stagnating. Are you willing
to put your role at risk of deployment or even
redundancy?

Of course not, you want to be successful and to do

that you have to invest time in developing yourself.
If you spend just one focused hour a day, you will be
amazed at the results over a week, let alone a year.

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5. Seek Help and Guidance from Others
Please don’t do it all on your own, get help from
people who have done it before. Why make the
same mistakes they did?

• Read, watch videos, attend courses, etc.

• Build a strong peer support network.
• Build a network of mentors.
• Invest in a professional coach.

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 Mistake #2
YOU THINK HARD WORK AND TIME IN THE
ROLE WILL GET YOU PROMOTED

“It takes more than just fancy flying”

Top Gun

After coaching many of my team for promotion and

evaluating many others on promotion committees, it
takes more than just hard work and time in your
role to get you promoted. Here are seven strategies
that will improve your chances.

1. Visibility
Can your boss’s peers, their boss and other members
of the promotion committee talk about what you do

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in detail and recognise you are ready for a
promotion?

If not,
• What stretch tasks can you ask your boss for that
will give you visibility?
• Is there something you have done in your
department that would be valuable to other
departments?
• What internal events can you attend to build a
relationship with your boss’s peers?
• What else?

2. Performance
Have you a track record of high performance over
the last few years? If not, what do you need to do to
make this happen?

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3. Sponsors
What senior clients and partners in technology can
talk positively about what you have done for them?

4. Impact
Do you have the impact that the next level requires?
- Take leaders at the next level that you admire and
look at the impact they are having on the company,
their clients and their team. Now how can you have
the same impact?

5. Professional Skills
Do you have the professional skills to survive at the
next level? I have seen people who have been
promoted and struggled to compete at the next
level. Their performance, reputation, compensation
and career all suffer.
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It is great to get promoted, but you need to feel you
can compete at the next level. Take the same
leaders you admire and work out, what is the gap in
your professional skills. Now find help to bridge that
gap and continue to develop those skills until you
feel comfortable.

6. Saboteur
Who could talk badly of you? - Repair and build a
strong relationship with these individuals.

7. External Recognition
I have only seen one promotion candidate that I
searched for on Google and found he was having an
impact on the industry as a whole. Out of a high

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number of senior promotion candidates, this was the
one that stood out from the crowd.

You can read about Joe at - Create Exciting

Opportunities by Building Your External Brand

Now, what external impact can you have?

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 Mistake #3
YOU DON’T UP YOUR GAME AFTER BEING
PROMOTED

“What got you here, won’t get you there”

Marshall Goldsmith

You have just been promoted from the

Championship to the Premiership, the new money
and status is fantastic, but the top four and those in
the relegation zone are not going to pay you any
respect. Unless you up your game, they will kick you
straight back to the Championship.

From experience, here are the top ten areas you

need to think about -

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1. How do you build relationships with your new
peers at the level above?
2. How should you now behave? - Your new
premiership presence
3. Can your current support network help at
this level? - If not, build a new one
4. How do you need to work differently? – more
delegation, less in the detail?
5. Do you need to build a stronger leadership
team to free up some of your time?
6. How does the organisation see you
differently? How can you help more? - Regional
events, etc.
7. What you say now has more impact. Be
careful with that
8. What training, mentoring and coaching do
you need?

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 9. How are you going to deal with the new
workload?
10. What quick wins can you have to gain some
respect from your fans and peers?

And most importantly, how can you celebrate?

In any transition, the first 90 days are critical to

proving you have what it takes to stay up in the big
league. People’s perceptions are always hard to
change after that.

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 Mistake #4
YOU CAN’T SAY NO TO YOUR BOSS OR
STAKEHOLDERS

“When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying
no to yourself”
Paul Coelho

• Are you always saying yes to work from your boss

and stakeholders in the belief that it will
progress you to the next level?
• Do you feel overwhelmed, exhausted or
stressed?
• Are you constantly context switching and not
spending the time needed on each project?
• Are you missing the gym because you have too
much to do?

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 • Are you feeling guilty about missing more time
with your family?
• Is there any time left for you?

When you have your head down focused on hitting

the next level, you do whatever it takes. However,
are you creating risks for you, your team, your
career and your stakeholders?

Let’s see.

Have You Too Many Balls in the Air?

With so many balls in the air, you are bound to drop
one or two. When you do, what impact is that going
to have on you, your team or stakeholders?

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Are Your Team Losing Respect for You?
Are you and your team continually working long
hours to bring the work in on time and fire-fighting
quality issues because the work is done when people
are tired, and corners are cut to hit imposed
deadlines?

Are your team thinking – “thanks boss, for

committing us to all this new work?”

The team respects you and will go the extra mile for
you today, but how many extra miles will they go
before you exhaust their respect?

Litmus test - If you get promoted, will they say you

deserve it?

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Is Your Health Starting to Suffer?
Your employee handbook should come with the
same type of health warning as you see on cigarette
packets i.e. you career could seriously damage your
health.

Stress, overwork overwhelm all come with an

impact on your health. Are you losing sleep, getting
headaches, always exhausted?

Listen to your body. It is telling you something. If

you don’t listen to your body, then listen to your
family and friends.

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Are You Missing Special Family Time?
As a father of two beautiful teenage children, I can
tell you that they grow up fast. Before you know it,
they will have their own lives, and you would have
missed some of that special family time. When I say
time, I mean time where you have the energy to
enjoy and be present.

When you are about to say yes to your boss or

stakeholders, think about your children’s faces
when you tell them you are stealing more time from
them to do so-called important work.

Now take that feeling and think about each person

in your team as they will be feeling it too.

When my children were tiny, I took them to a

Christmas party at work. As we were standing in the
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queue to get our faces painted, one of my peers
pointed to me and said to two children of a
colleague who was in my team – “See this man, this
is the man who keeps your dad late at work, so he
can’t spend time with you”. I will never forget the
looks my colleague’s children and wife gave me.
Although it was said in jest and we laughed it off, it
was in reality true.

5 Tips to Mitigate the Risks

• Prioritise your commitments with company value
and team in mind
• Put in time barriers for you to go home, go to
the gym, develop yourself
• Work out what high priority commitments you
can comfortably deliver with these barriers in
place

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• Have some hard conversations about the ones
you can’t – this may help How to Deal with an
Irrational Stakeholder
• More importantly, learn to say NO and manage
expectations

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 Mistake #5
YOU THINK THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS

That’s just the way it goes. You can’t look at that and try
to make an excuse. It’s just the way it’s been. It comes
down to one game and we’ve got to come out hard and play
our best game”
Daymond Langkow

Well, it does not have to be that way. You have the

power to make it better in your span of control i.e.
you and your team. It just takes you, your will and
someone to show you how.

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You can make it -
• A better work environment
• A fun and exciting culture
• An environment of continuous learning
• A place where fewer hours are needed to get the
job done
• A safer place to work i.e. a place where people
can fail, learn and innovate
• A better…

You may have to stick your neck out, fight and even
put your career on the line. But that’s what makes a
great leader.

When I decided to transform my global team of 150

developers from waterfall to agile & lean during the
most intense time of regulatory and market-driven
change, colleagues thought I was mad.
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My boss had no idea what agile was, his boss thought
I had joined a cult, programme managers and other
waterfall loving dependent programme managers
were escalating because they thought we would fail,
but I had a belief and trust that the team could
make their life’s better, the platform better and
the delivery to our stakeholders better.

And they did. I set the vision, provided the air cover
and broke down the barriers to change. They did the
rest.

To this day, I still talk about their achievement. I

also know that the two agile coaches I collaborated
with also use this team as an example of what to
do.

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 Mistake #6
YOU DON’T INVEST IN STRATEGIES TO HELP
MANAGE YOUR EVER-INCREASING
WORKLOAD

“You can do anything, but not everything”

David Allen

Fact – as your leadership career grows, so will your

workload. This is especially true in an industry that
is going through so much change. How many hats do
you wear today?

When you become overloaded, you start to live your

life in the reactive zone and quickly move from one
fire to another.

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• Your head is just above the water, but you could
sink at any time.
• You are coping now, but the long-term results
may not be pretty.
• You career suffers as you do not have the time
to invest in developing yourself, networking and
spending time more strategically with your
team.
• Your health starts to suffer due to overwork,
stress, not getting to the gym and eating what
you can when you can.
• You have to spend more time at work, so the
relationship with your family and friends starts
to suffer. Even when you are with them, you are
not really there.

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Here are four strategies I have used in the past to
help -

1. Define Success at Work

Write down what success in your role means. This
should be aligned to the places where you add the
most value to the organisation i.e.

• Spending time with your team

• Removing blockers for your team
• Building relationships with your clients
• Adding value to strategic initiatives

Now look at what you have on your plate and

determine how it aligns to your success criteria.

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If it does, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, then it is time
for some difficult conversations.

I use the same strategy today for my business. My

success is measured by having a conversation with a
client or potential client every hour of my working
day. If I am not doing that, then it is doing what I
need to do to create that conversation. Everything
is left until later.

2. Define Success at Home

Write down what it means to you to be a good
parent and a good partner.

Are you meeting this? If not, then it’s time to create

and enforce some boundaries.

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 • What time are you going to leave the office?
• Will you do some work in the evening - if so
between what hours?
• Will you answer emails and calls at home? – if so
between what hours?
• Will you attend late-night conference calls? – if
so between what hours?
• Are there fixed / unmovable appointments in
your weekly calendar?

Also, check out my blog post on boundaries - How to

Use Work Boundaries to Find Time for You

3. Define Success for You

Many people I know spend time on their career and
family but always forget themselves. Self-care is so

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essential for your wellbeing. Don’t skip yourself and
create and enforce some more boundaries.

• Will you have some time for lunch? – if so what

time and how long
• How often and what time of the day will you to
the gym?
• How much time do you need for self-
development?
• What other boundaries do you need?
• What else?

I always used to book a lunch date with myself every

day. I would take a walk, read, listen to a podcast.
Just some time for me every day.

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4. Crack Open the Productivity Hacks
There are thousands of books, blogs and videos from
gurus on the subject.

I have also created a few targeted posts around

areas that my clients tell me are the biggest
timewasters at work –

• Ten Leadership Hacks to Slash Time Spent in

Meetings
• Reduce Email Overload by Curving Your
Addiction
• Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Outlook and Go
Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead?

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 Mistake #7
YOU DON’T ENJOY WHAT YOU DO, BUT YOU
DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO
DO, SO YOU JUST STAY PUT

“Life is like a coin, you can spend it on anything you want,

but you can only spend it once”
Lillian Dickson

Are you saying to yourself?

• No other industry pays as well
• It’s easier to do what I already know and what I
am good at today
• I feel safe and comfortable here so why take any
risks
• I just haven’t got the energy to think about it,
let alone do something about it

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 • I will mess up and will lose everything I have
worked hard for
• It just seems impossible right now

This was everything and more that I kept saying to

myself when I no longer enjoyed what I did. I
became anxious and very unhappy, as I could not
decide what I wanted to do next. My daughter even
called me grumpy old dad. Grumpy I will accept,
but old?

This was a trigger for me to act, so I worked with a

coach for over a year to figure out my next path and
help me along the new exciting journey I am living
today.

If you want to do the same, here are three biggest

tips I can give you from my own experience -

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1. Speak Up
Talk to your partner and children and tell them how
you feel. I didn’t do this for a long time, but when I
did, I felt a large tremendous lift from my
shoulders.

They knew I wasn’t happy but did not know how

they could help. When I told them, I was unhappy at
work but needed the money I earned there to
support our lifestyle. They said something to me
that I will always remember. They told me they
would rather have a happy and healthy dad than the
house, cars, holidays we have today. They are not
important you are.

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If you cannot talk to your family, then find someone
else to speak to. Keeping it to yourself is not
healthy.

2. Find Out What Really Want to Do

• Get out there, speak to people and do your
research
• Connect to your ex-colleagues on LinkedIn and
find out what they are doing and then talk to
people they know
• Look into organisations you would love to work
for and speak to people in those organisations
• Attend events, conferences, seminars and
meetups
• Read books/blogs on how others have done the
same

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Try new things
• Set up a part-time business
• Ask to shadow someone
• Donate some of your holiday time to try
something out
• What else?

3. Have a Long-Term Outlook & Take a

Calculated Risk
My business is going to take at least 18 months or
more before it produces anywhere near the income I
earned before. We, as a family decided to cut back,
use our savings and invest in our happiness.

An ex-colleague of mine decided to move to a job

that he loves in a rapidly growing company. He

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knew he would have to take a cut in compensation,
but from his analysis of the company and the
confidence in his ability, he is sure he will back to
the same level in a couple of years.

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 DID ANYTHING RESONATE?

“Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge

without action is futile.”
Abu Bakr

Did you find the mini eBook useful?

You did.

If you are like me, you read lots of useful

information. Get inspired to take some action, but
then get busy again with work and forget to follow
up.

As the above quote says – “knowledge without

action is futile.”

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So, before you get busy again, let’s ensure you
commit to one small action you can complete over
the next two weeks. Take one of the actions in this
document that you want to execute -

• Write it down.
• Set a completion date.
• Commit to someone who will hold you
accountable.

If you cannot find someone to hold you accountable,

then email it to me at nick@nicholas-foster.com,
and I will challenge you to get it done.

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 Additional Help

As well as this mini eBook, I offer other channels of

support to help with your career success –

Website: https://nicholas-foster.com/

Blog: https://nicholas-foster.com/blog/

Tel: Schedule A Call

Email: nick@nicholas.foster.com

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nfosterweb/

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