During her presentation on Sept. 24 to 70 students, alumni, and other professionals at UConn Stamford, author and career expert Suzy Welch shared a confession.

Her oldest son had always been a great student, an athlete, and had earned a degree from Stanford University. His parents had high expectations of him. He had accepted a job as a consultant, was not overly excited about the position, and ultimately got fired.

“It was not my finest moment as a mother. I lost my cool. I was so frustrated with him,’’ she says. “Where’s the job? Where’s the payoff? Where’s the purpose?,’’ she wondered.

Eventually she realized that she had to help him figure out who he is, “not who I want him to be,’’ she says.

That experience was one of the driving forces that led Welch to write “Becoming You: A Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career,’’ and its companion assessment, to help people navigating career decisions with clarity, purpose, and personal alignment.

Welch also created a course at NYU’s Stern School of Business on the same topic. As soon as registration opened for the original class, 800 students signed up. The thirst for this personal advice and direction is significant, both in the U.S. and around the world, she says.

In addition, her expertise has led to coaching opportunities with the NBA staff, prominent banking organizations, and even home-improvement celebrities Chip and Joanna Gaines, where she helps clarify team values and organizational strengths.

Three Important Data Points Should Guide a Career

Welch recognizes that a personalized road map is essential to creating a productive and joyful career.

The three factors that everyone needs to assess are:

• What are your deeply held beliefs, values, and priorities? In her evaluations, she asks participants to rank 16 priorities, from making money to having time for family, in order of importance. The interesting thing, she told the audience, is that most people have strongly established values from the age of 5, and they rarely change much.
• What are your cognitive skills, talents, and emotional strengths? “You may want to be a famous actor or a singer, but if you don’t have those skills, that’s not going to happen,’’ she says.
• What are economically viable career paths that will be personally rewarding but also financially practical? There are some 135 different career industries, and most people explore only a couple of them, she says.

“Not surprisingly, happiness is an outcome of having a productive, meaningful and authentic life,’’ Welch says. That doesn’t mean that everyone will have the perfect job all the time, but it helps to have a blueprint to get there, she says.

She recalls as a younger woman driving a car that was so worn she could see the highway through the floorboards. She had to continue to work to survive. But other times she says she “zigged and zagged’’ and stayed in unsatisfying jobs for too long. A blueprint for success would have helped her be more decisive and make choices more quickly.

(Her son, now in his late 30s, is thriving in a completely different industry.)

Success on the Heels of Loss

Welch is the widow of the late Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, with whom she authored several books. In March 2020, she was faced with the death of her husband and the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’d had a long career but at that point I didn’t know what I should do next,’’ she says. On a walk with the family’s seven dogs, she came up with the idea of addressing career placement with a focus that had been missing. She recognized that many employees are restless for changed but also rather paralyzed in their attempts to find a new path.

Welch began her career as a reporter for the Miami Herald and The Associated Press before earning an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She became a consultant for Bain & Co., and later editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, where she wrote extensively about leadership and organizational change.

She now teaches in the MBA program at NYU and hosts two podcasts. She is a frequent media contributor with recent appearances on CNBC and NBC’s “The Today Show.’’

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes, They Make You a Better Person

The event was moderated by Kelly Kennedy, the School of Business’ director of transformational learning and co-sponsored by The Women’s Networking Group of Fairfield County.

In response to a question about one of the biggest errors young people make in the workplace, Welch said it is being excessively cautious because they fear making mistakes.

“I was always terrified of making mistakes and I was trying to always be on the success train,’’ Welch says. “Then I got fired. I thought my life was over; I’m doomed; I’ll never work again. I’m a loser.’’

She went to a party and was speaking with [business and civil rights attorney] Vernon Jordan. “He told me, ‘You’re scared of your own shadow. All these people here have failed bigger than you have. Then they got back up. Are you going to get back up?’ ’’

She replied that she would.

“Then you can be in the society of interesting people!,’’ he told her.

“I take risks now. I encourage people to try hard things and be less scared,’’ she said. “Because when you fail, and you get back up, you’re nicer, smarter, softer and more loveable.’’