The habits you build as you embark on your career can shape your professional life for decades later. 20 years on from my first steps into an impact-driven worklife, here are four things I’ve learned that keep on giving.
Early in my career, I was trying to do a good job, understand what was expected, and learn quickly. I cared about being useful and not wasting people’s time.
More than 20 years later, I’ve held a huge variety of roles, but those learning habits I built in the first few years have been an advantage in them all – not least, in my current work leading a global communications agency for nonprofits. With these four learning-oriented approaches, I am ready to create excellent work across the impact sector, and to embed these skills in the AMS team.
So, for anyone setting out in their career, here are four of the patterns that shaped my work early on and still shape it now. (You might also like our recent post on starting out in an impact career.)
1. Learn to listen properly
In my first role at the FCDO, a trainer told me to read Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence. This completely changed my life and it still defines how I engage and interact with colleagues, clients and communities.
Listening is not just hearing the words. It is noticing the need behind the question. Based on the book, feedback and experience, I learned to
- Reflect back what I thought I heard, in plain language
- Seek for the outcome, not just the task
Over time, this became less a technique and more a reflex. It’s also elevated the quality of my decisions: listening carefully helps you spot assumptions and risks. You make it easier for people to tell you the real truth. Better listening leads to better judgement, and better judgement leads to fewer mistakes.
2. Coaching is core
In the impact sector, we work across partners, communities, donors, internal politics, and deal with real human stress. Emotional intelligence helps you hold that complexity without becoming reactive.
Building on that, coaching skills are a toolkit for handling conversations and supporting people forward. By investing in my coaching skills and facilitation, I have learned to slow down conversations and hold silent space. (Not my natural tendency, I assure you!) And coaching frameworks are also rich in tools to take insight and make it into action.
Coaching skills are not just for having good relationships or being a good manager. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs reports consistently place skills like empathy, collaboration, and self-awareness among the capabilities employers value in shifting labour markets. In impact work, the same skills also protect people’s dignity and get to the real problem with respect and kindness.
Learning coaching early is a great idea because it’s a skill that compounds. Start getting experience early and get 1% better every day, and 20 years later the empathy muscle memory will be a part of you.
3. Do not dismiss experience from other jobs
Some of my most formative learning came from student roles or low-status jobs. I worked in an insurance call centre, the best-paid job for uni students I could find. This work was all about speed, clarity and attention to detail. Rankle a customer by spelling their name wrong, and a lot of downstream problems will follow. Small communication failures can escalate.
That experience helps me today when I set standards, guide strategies and design communications.
Evidence also backs the value of early work exposure. OECD research on work-based learning links practical experience to smoother transitions into employment and stronger long-term outcomes. The mechanism makes sense. Real environments mean you have to learn to prioritise: they show you consequences. We learn what “good” looks like under pressure.
One piece of advice I have heard from a senior leader in the education sector: get real-world exposure before you invest heavily in qualifications. Study can help, but getting real experience, as a volunteer for example, helps you decide what to pursue and whether you need to invest funds and time in more qualifications (or not).
4. Build self-awareness and admit when you’re wrong
Two early habits reinforced each other: knowing my limits and widening my frame.
First, I learned to admit when I did not understand something. Early career culture can reward confidence over clarity. That is a trap. When you name uncertainty early, you can ask better questions, seek input, and avoid false certainty. Harvard Business Review has reported that self-awareness is rarer than most of us assume, and it links strongly to professional effectiveness.
Second, I learned that perspective changes the quality of your work. Different contexts, cultures, and systems challenge your defaults. They show you that what feels “normal” is often just familiar. Research has also linked international and cross-cultural experience with stronger creative thinking and problem-solving.
In practice, this does not require constant travel. It can look like working with partners outside your usual network, reading beyond your sector, or spending time with communities who experience the system you are trying to change. Ideally, getting exposure to different cultures and situations opens up so many ways to learn and experience the world.
…and finally
Whatever happens in our crazy career world, we know that our human skills and intelligence are going to be essential. To get those skills, we should all be consciously building these strong habits as early as possible. Listen with humility. Treat emotional intelligence as a core skill. Learn from every job (and enjoy it). Keep widening your context and don’t take yourself too seriously.
If you want a practical next step, pick one habit and make it measurable for a month. For example, reflect back the brief in every meeting, in two sentences, before you start work. You will feel the difference in speed and alignment by week two.
If you’re ready to start or deepen your impact career, you can consider applying to AMS’ consultancy roster. We are regularly looking for a variety of skills and experience levels. Find out more here.
