FutureproofYourCareerwithTracyForsyth–KeyTakeaways
We recently Futureproof Your Career, a two-part webinar series led by leadership coach Tracy Forsyth. Designed for directors and creatives navigating a shifting industry landscape, the session was packed with insights, frameworks, and strategies to help professionals thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Below is a summary of the key takeaways Tracy explored across the two webinars.
Navigating a BANI World
Tracy introduced us to the BANI framework, a powerful lens to understand the volatility of the world we live and work in:
Brittle – Systems may look strong but are fragile. As individuals we should work hard to recognise this and build resilience into our mindset and habits
Anxious – There is widespread anxiety across the world. We can counter this with empathy, attentiveness, and emotional intelligence.
Nonlinear – Progress and problems don’t follow a straight path. Navigate unpredictable scenarios with adaptive thinking.
Incomprehensible – Sometimes, things simply don’t make sense. In these moments, try and find clarity from all the chaos.
Tracy emphasised that while the world may feel chaotic, we can reframe that chaos into opportunities for growth. It’s just a matter of perspective.
The Power of Big Picture Thinking – “The Balcony View”
Tracy encouraged us to regularly take a step back and engage in big picture thinking. Visualised as the balcony view, this exercise involves pulling back from our day-to-day experience to observe the wider systems we are a part of; yourself, your career, your company, the industry, and the wider world.
How often do you zoom out and assess your place in the bigger picture? This perspective is key to strategic thinking and long-term resilience.
Changing Labour Market – A Global Trend
The explosion of digital content and platforms has transformed the creative landscape. With anyone able to create and publish content, traditional roles are being redefined, and the role of the director is shifting. Tracy encouraged members to take a step back, and notice these trends as part of a worldwide shift in the labour market. Tracy highlighted five key forces reshaping the labour market:
• Widespread technological change
• A green transition away from unsustainable energy and resources
• Demographic shifts, and a changing attitude to the status quo
• Geoeconomic fragmentation, as demonstrated recently by Brexit and US import tariffs
• Economic uncertainty
To continue to be resilient throughout these changes to the labour market, we should embrace flexibility, lifelong learning, and develop portfolio careers. Creative professionals such as directors are already well-positioned for the future, with many of the fastest-growing skills already in their toolkit, including; creative thinking, resilience, curiosity and continuous learning, leadership, analytical thinking, talent management, and more.
Develop Self-Leadership
There are numerous benefits to taking the time and effort to know yourself better. Tracy remarked on how many of us associate our self-worth with our job title, which can be very damaging to our confidence when work is far from consistent. Tracy encouraged attendees to ask themselves the following questions:
Who am I?
What do I stand for?
What gives me energy? What drains me?
What values are truly mine? And how do they show up in my work?
“What are your factory settings? And how can you seek opportunities that help you to blossom?”
By knowing yourself deeply, you can build self-worth that isn’t tied to a title or employer, making you more adaptable and confident in career transitions. Another exercise Tracy suggests is to think: What energises you? Try and introduce yourself in three words that reflect what drives you today.
Understanding Your Inner Critic
Especially in the freelance-heavy creative industries, self-doubt can be a heavy burden. Tracy explored the Four Stages of Competence to help us understand the learning process when it comes to developing new skills:
1. Unconscious Incompetence – you don’t know what you don’t know.
2. Conscious Incompetence – awareness of your skill gap.
3. Conscious Competence – capable, but it still takes effort.
4. Unconscious Competence – mastery becomes automatic.
Tracy also encouraged us to recognise and challenge our inner critic. Ask yourself the following:
• What does your inner critic say about you?
• How do you respond to your own accomplishments?
• What would your inner champion say in response?
The Three Ps of Building a Portfolio Career
Tracy wrapped up the webinar by sharing a model to help attendees build a portfolio career. The Three Ps of building a portfolio career are:
1. Passion – First think about what drives you. You can use the above exercises as a starting point to find this out.
2. Purpose – what you find purposeful is unique to you, you could find purpose in; altruism, recognition, affiliation, or something else. Ask yourself what meaningful impact looks like to you. What are you proud of? What motivates you? What purpose drives you?
3. Problem-Solving – Directors are natural problem solvers, and this leaves you ideally placed to pursue a portfolio career. The next step is to connect your passion and purpose to real-world problems you’re excited to solve.
Positioning and Marketing yourself — Finding Your Place on the Shelf
In part two, Tracy explored the art of positioning and marketing yourself in an increasingly competitive creative landscape.
Tracy invited members to think about themselves as products on a supermarket shelf:
Where are you currently placed? Top shelf, own brand, or a specialist product in a specific aisle? More importantly, where do you want to be?
This point of this metaphor is to help us reflect, not just on our skills, but on our own visibility. Today’s marketplace is mostly online, your “shelf” includes Instagram, LinkedIn, IMDb, Talent Manager, and more places for potential clients to “shop” for talent. How are you represented on these shelves? Does your “labelling” clearly tell people what you offer?
The Grunt Test
When someone looks you up, what they find should pass “The Grunt Test”. Is your message clear enough that even a caveman could grunt in agreement? Does it answer the following questions?
• What are you offering me?
• How will it make my life better?
• What do I have to do to get it?
Many of us easily answer the first and last questions (“I’m a director for hire, here’s my rate”), but we often skip the most important one: How will this make my client’s life better?
Do Market Research, On Yourself
We’re used to researching the industry, but how often do we research ourselves? Tracy encouraged participants to seek feedback from peers and collaborators, and ask them:
• What do I do well?
• What’s it like to work with me?
• What impact do I have?
• What’s my USP?
• Which three words describe me best?
This feedback can be invaluable in defining your professional brand and understanding how others perceive your value.
When it comes to pitching yourself, think of Donald Miller’s StoryBrand Framework
Drawing on Donald Miller’s StoryBrand Framework, Tracy invited us to reframe how we think about working with clients. Keep in mind: the client is the hero, and you are the guide who helps them overcome a challenge.
Whether you’re pitching for work or introducing yourself at an event, think of your story this way: you’re the trusted guide who provides clarity, confidence, and solutions.
Crafting Your One-Liner
A powerful way to communicate your value is through a single, memorable sentence: your one-liner.
Tracy shared the format:
“Many people struggle with [problem]. I do [solution] so that [success result].”
This structure allows you to express clearly what you do, who you help, and the positive outcome you deliver. Be sure to make the sentence your own as your personality is also part of what makes you unique to potential clients.
Where is your market?
Many of us are spending significant amounts of our daily life online, so it’s reasonable to assume your market spends most of its time on the internet.
Open a new tab now, Google yourself and see what comes up. This is exactly what customers see so you may want to ensure what you want them to see comes up. We’re all at least partially responsible for our own digital footprint.
Be the best meeting* of the day (*or interaction, call, email, pitch…)
From a customer focus, a good mindset to have is to position yourself as the best meeting of someone’s day. Have a think about what makes the best meeting of the day for you?
It may be:
• Succinct and to the point
• Relevant to whoever you’re speaking with
• Inspire both of you with possibilities.
One way of doing this is to position yourself as the solution to someone’s problem. But how do we do this?
• Listen to understand, not to respond. Think “generatively”. What’s not being said?
• Be proactive not reactive to what’s being said. Go bigger, deeper, wider.
• Adopt an ownership mindset, even if it’s not your job.
• Think about how you can make things better rather than just what needs to be done.
Position yourself as someone who not only understands challenges but actively resolves them with skill initiative and consistency.
Networking for a fearless future
Tracy shared with attendees the “Future Fit” mindset: “Your network is your career insurance policy”.
Your network is:
• An early warning system
• A source of news about new opportunities
• A connection to people who can get you hired
• Your learning community and a way to exchange insights and knowledge.
So how do we go about improving our network? You might want to think about your network as:
• People you know, and relationships you want to retain
• People you want to know. Who’s got the jobs or works at the company you want to? Reach out to them for a coffee
• People you just find interesting and admirable.
Set yourself goals to give attention to your network: who do you need to catch up with? Who do you want to connect with? Who do you admire the work of?
Networking can be difficult, but the rewards are well worth it.
Did you enjoy this takeaway resource? We’d love to hear your thoughts so please get in touch with [email protected] if you have any feedback you’d like to share.