E V E N T R E C A P
Navigating Career Transitions with Clarity
Mapping Out What's Next
1. Career Growth, Development, and Professional Skills
Naomi started the workshop by defining some key terms:
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Career Growth - external markers of progress. This can include promotions, title changes, salary increases, expanded responsibilities, or moving into a higher level role. It is often visible and measurable.
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Career Development - the internal process. It focuses on building skills, gaining knowledge, increasing self awareness, and expanding your capabilities over time. Development can happen whether or not your title changes.
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Professional Skills - the capabilities that help you succeed at work, regardless of your role or industry. They shape how you work, how you communicate, and how you solve problems. Over time, many professional skills become transferable skills, meaning they can move with you across different roles, teams, or even entirely different industries if you decide to change your career path.
Using a Career Reflection Journal, attendees were guided to reflect on their current professional role and their previous two roles.
Takeaway:
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Growth is what changes around you. Development is what changes within you.
2. Group Reflection
Having taken time to reflect on their individual career journeys, attendees were primed to engage more deeply with one another. Working in groups of three, each person was given seven minutes to share their story, while the others listened closely and captured insights using a structured framework in their Career Reflection Journal. When time was up, the listeners then had seven minutes to offer observations and ask thoughtful, probing questions. This cycle continued until each participant had the opportunity to share—and to receive meaningful reflections from their peers.
At the heart of this activity is a simple but powerful idea: others—shaped by different experiences, perspectives, and areas of expertise—can often see things in us that we might overlook ourselves. By creating a structured space for storytelling, reflection, and dialogue, this exercise fostered deeper self-awareness, meaningful connection, and fresh perspective.
People said:
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"After I shared my story, someone asked me, 'If you saw the value of your work more, would that help you feel less burned out?' Wow!"
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"I wouldn't consider myself to be a leader in social situations, but my table-mate said that I am when it comes to situations where others aren't being cared for. I guess I am a leader in those situations."
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"This was the first time someone has ever told me that I'm emotionally intelligent. It felt good."
3. Individual Action Plans
Building on the richness of these conversations, we then introduced templates for a Skills Exploration and an Individual Action Plan. These tools were designed as practical takeaways, enabling attendees to translate the insights they had just gained into clear, actionable next steps.
Takeaway:
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Skill exploration helps you gain clarity about your strengths, preferences, and challenges, while the action plan helps you turn those insights into clear next steps.
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Action plans are meant to be simple and practical. They are a structured way to move from where you are now to where you want to be. They help you break larger goals into smaller, measurable steps so that progress feels manageable.
4. Ice Cream Social
As usual, the night ended with an opportunity for further connection at a Toscanini's. As long as people keep sticking around, we'll keep doing it!
I loved how hands-on it was. We were forced to make new connections and talk about our experiences. It made me feel seen!
I loved getting to meet new people and hearing their stories. Despite having vastly different backgrounds and careers we related on many experiences and perspectives. 10/10
I feel like I learned about myself and my career path, which I haven’t thought much about in a while.