111: Your next chapter starts with what you know: Seeing your skills in a new light
Summary
In this episode, Kirstin Duffield reflects on moving into a new chapter after more than 30 years in the insurance market, and why reinvention is not erasure. Changing career, company or direction does not mean leaving everything behind. The experience, knowledge and transferable skills we have built along the way become the foundation for whatever comes next.
Kirstin and Sandra explore the value of recognising what we already bring to the table, from organisational and technical skills to the behavioural skills and experience that can take years to develop. They also discuss authenticity, and how we may adapt depending on the people and environments around us without losing who we are at our core.
A thoughtful conversation about recognising your own value, carrying your experience forward and seeing your next chapter as an evolution of everything that has come before.
Key takeaways
You rarely start from scratch. When you change career, company or direction, you take your experience, knowledge and transferable skills with you.
Reinvention is not erasure. Your previous experience can become the raw material for something new rather than something you need to leave behind.
Experience is portable. Skills developed in one industry or role can have value in completely different environments.
Authenticity can adapt without disappearing. We may naturally adjust how we show up depending on who we are interacting with, but authenticity comes from staying connected to who we are at our core.
Resilience is not endurance. Resilience is not about absorbing more and more indefinitely. Recovery is an important part of resilience too.
Being in the room is not the same as having power in the room. Representation matters, but so does who is making decisions, holding authority and influencing outcomes.
About the guest
Connect with Kirstin on LinkedIn.
About the host
Connect with Sandra on LinkedIn.
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