Your career isn’t something that passively happens to you.

Instead, your career should be a relationship that you’re proactively managing, just as you do the other relationships in your life that help you thrive. My favorite tool to help my leadership clients take control over their career and start creating the milestones they’re wanting is to practice reverse engineering.

I find that thinking about a problem from the same perspective without finding results is frustrating and exhausting. So when it comes to setting career goals, I encourage all my clients to develop a new perspective by  literally thinking in reverse. Here’s how!

  1. Start with the goal. Spend some time clarifying where exactly you want to be in 6 months. What would you like to have accomplished in your role? What kind of feedback do you want in your annual review? How would you like to feel differently at work and at home?

  2. Assign a benchmark that will help you measure your success, beginning with month 5. Ask yourself – in order to achieve x by month 6, what would I need to have completed by month 5? Repeat the process working backwards until you’re at month 1 and know exactly where to start.

  3. The key to making this plan actually happen is consistent check-ins and accountability. Add a 15 minute meeting with yourself every Friday morning to sit down, compare your monthly progress with the planned deliverables for the month, and make any needed adjustments. You’ll likely find that some goals will need to be extended or shortened, or that an alternate approach is needed. But as everyone knows – the first draft is the toughest. Get that 6 month plan down on paper and the tweaking process will feel much more simple.

I spend a portion of each Powerhouse day doing this exact process with my clients. Powerhouse is my one day leadership incubator designed to help rising women leaders create a plan and execute it confidently as they shift into true career leadership. Learn more and apply here!



I offer professional coaching for rising women leaders in the corporate world, with a focus on helping them overcome lack of confidence via professional coaching, virtual coaching, invitation only masterminds and powerful online courses. If your goals for the year include confidence in the workplace, let’s talk! I’d love to help you build an action plan for success. Click here to apply for a free coaching consultation with me directly!