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Marion Debruyne & Katleen De Stobbeleir

Making your way The (wobbly) road to success and happiness in life and work

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CONTENTS Preface - Making it, your way 9 LIVE

1 2 3 4 5

Feel the fire in the belly 15 The myth: you can be anything you want to be Go for happiness 33 The myth: happiness is painless Carve your own path 47 The myth: the only way is up Embrace the imperfection 61 The myth: the perfect job is out there Be a juggler 73 The myth: to be successful, I need to “sacrifice” everything else

LEARN

6 7

Make learning your job 85 The myth: learning stops at graduation Become your best self 99 The myth: you should fake it till you make it

Seek out the tough love 113 The myth: a good boss/mentor is understanding and supportive

9 10

Know that you are the company you keep 125 The myth: careers are self-made Make yourself visible 139 The myth: you need to play the game

LEAP

Take the lead 151 The myth: you’re either a natural born leader or just not meant to be one

12 13 14 15

Get into the arena 163 The myth: before I take on a challenge I need to make sure I’m competent Be courageous (and thus vulnerable) 179 The myth: it’s all strictly business Be your own boss 191 The myth: freelancers and entrepreneurs have easy, flexible lives Create your own ripple effect 203 The myth: one person cannot change the world

Sources of inspiration 213

We are all works in progress.

Preface - Making it, your way Be the hero(ine) of your own life. Nora Ephron

A real gentleman does not discuss the women he’s broken up with, the taxes he pays, or what he does to stay healthy. That’s what Haruki Murakami, one of our favorite novelists, wrote in his inspiring memoirs. He, of course, made up this saying. But if there really were such a saying, it would proba bly also say that a real gentleman should keep quiet about what he does to be successful in life. We’re not gentlemen. So we shouldn’t be worrying about this in the first place. But we admit that, just as Haruki Murakami felt hesitant about writing his own memoirs, we felt some hesitation about writing this book … a book about career success and living a purposeful life. After all, who are we to tell you what to do? The last thing we wanted to do is to write a recipe We want to encourage people to set thembook. The type of book that is full of ad selves free from such vice that says: ‘Ok, everybody — read myths and to pursue this and you’ll be successful. Follow our their dreams with conrecipes and, whoosh, all of your trou fidence and optimism. bles will go away.’ Yet we do need to talk about it. About what it takes to thrive in today’s world. That mission is close to our hearts. Because of our work, as a business school dean (Marion) and leadership expert and personal coach (Katleen), we touch the lives of so many students and young professionals. It is

our professional duty to think about the messages we want to convey to them. We wrote this book for them. We often meet people who have amazing potential but who don’t re alize that potential because of some limiting beliefs about what a career and happiness should look like. We want to encourage people to set themselves free from such myths and to pursue their dreams with confidence and optimism. In every chapter of this book, we tackle one of those myths that we often encounter. We hope you find inspiration in each of the 15 chapters we have written, whether you are a young student embarking on your career, or a seasoned lead er looking for new insights. With this book we hope to stim ulate you to live your dream and pursue your goals. That re quires living with intention, which is the focus of our first five chapters. Call us naïve, but we believe that dreams can come true. Yet not necessarily like in fairy tales. To live your dream, you need to pursue it, and be willing to stumble and learn every day. And even though we work at a business school, we’re not just talking The journey to happiness about the learning you do in the class in both work and life is room. It’s about challenging yourself most often a messy one. in different areas of life. More about And that’s ok. We are all that in chapters 6-10. After all, every works in progress. one has potential to make it. All it takes is a little bit of guts to take the leap. In chapters 11-15 we discuss how that feels, and the ripple effect that you can set in motion. After all: no guts, no glory. By pure coincidence, you may recognize Vlerick Business School’s Live-LearnLeap credo.

In an effort to gain insight into our personal experiences and the stories we encounter, we dove into the research. That helped us to discover that personal stories contain universal truths. You will find these under the heading “What we know for sure”. (A shameless rip-off of how Op rah Winfrey describes her personal life lessons.) As academ ics, in science we trust, so we’re only sure when we find the research to back up our claims. This book does contain a certain amount of what might be called life lessons: both our own life lessons (and we’re hopefully only halfway through our own lives!), and also the life lessons of the people we were fortunate enough to meet and talk to. They are personal lessons, and that’s also what this book is to us — personal. As professionals, mothers, wives, friends — juggling many roles — there is one thing we really know for sure: every picture-perfect moment hides a less glamorous reality. As Indra Nooyi’s mom told her when she became global president of PepsiCo: ‘Leave the crown in the garage’. So, as ambitious as the title of this book may be, its subtitle reveals the other side of the coin: that the jour ney to happiness in both work and life is most often a wob bly one. And that’s ok. We are all works in progress. So we have left our crowns in the garage, We present the things we would like to tell in an effort to keep it real and reveal the our younger selves. mistakes, the doubts, and the slip-ups The things we wish that are part of even the most seamlessly we had known. upward career. Many of the lessons we present in this book are lessons that we also had to learn, sometimes the hard way. The things we would like to tell our younger selves. The things we wish we had known.

We’ve written honestly about what we think and feel and we have tried to stay true to our own styles. And this book is really the product of two very different styles … brought to gether in the same way that a jazz combo plays together. Without talking, following each other’s leads, and adding to each other’s written words on the page. “Take it from us” is the message you will find at the end of each chapter. However, the most important take-away is this one: Don’t follow our recipes too closely … add your own grain of salt (or pepper or whatever spice you fancy)! Everybody’s story is unique. There is no recipe book for life. So off you go, carve your own path, and make your own de cisions. Making it, your unique way.

Do you even dare to say out loud what it is you are dreaming of ? 14

Feel the fire in the belly The myth: you can be anything you want to be

It always seems impossible until it’s done. Nelson Mandela

‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll still be among the stars.’ That’s how the saying goes. So are you shooting for the moon? Or are you keeping yourself to more modest goals? Do you even dare to say out loud what it is you are dreaming of ? It takes guts to do so. Take Felix van de Maele, co-founder and CEO of Collibra. Felix started the company while he was still a student, together with 3 other friends. At the time, the company was a pioneer in data governance. Less than a decade later, the start-up became a unicorn: a company less than 10 years old, but nevertheless valued at more than a billion dollars. This was already a formidable accomplishment. But when asked about how he felt about realizing that milestone, Felix only said: ‘I’m not really thinking about it. I’m now already thinking more about how we will get to 5 billion in value.’ Is this going to be one of those books that tells you how to get to that 5 billion? Far from it. Because that may not be your goal at all. Or you may have no clue what your goal is yet. And that’s ok. You’ll discover it along the way. Very few people have dreams and goals as explicit as Felix’s. Yours may be much less clear. But no matter how big or small, ex

plicit or vague your dreams are, none of them will come true without chasing them. So, yes, this is going to be one of those books. About the wobbly road to happiness and success, whatever your defi nition of happiness and success is. We’ll share with you a few things we have discovered along the way. Through the people we were fortunate to meet. Through the research that we, as academics, can’t help but dive into in the search for wisdom. And the many times we learned a lesson our selves the hard way. Are you coming with us on the journey? Then read on!

The power of dreams ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ It’s a simple question that virtually every child on the planet can answer in a snap. For many years, Marion wanted to become a balle rina, while Katleen dreamed of being a Dreaming big propels you forward. cook or a fiction writer. Look at how that turned out. Very few of us actually go on and realize our childhood dreams. Not even someone like Richard Branson from Virgin, who dreamed of being a poet. Despite all those unmaterialized childhood dreams, grow ing up doesn’t mean that we should stop dreaming alto gether. In fact, if you think about it, dreams are the source of most human progress. President John F. Kennedy (who actually did want to be come a president when he grew up) dreamed of putting a (wo)man on the moon … and he mobilized an entire nation to make it happen. It was literally a moonshot project. Pledging to achieve something as big as going to the moon is probably as crazy as buying a lottery ticket against all the