We’re often encouraged to think about where we want to be in five years. What’s the next promotion? What role are we working towards? How does that fit with everything else happening in our lives?
For a lot of us, having goals can be a great motivator, and there’s nothing wrong with knowing what you’re working towards. But there’s a difference between having a sense of direction and feeling like every step needs to happen according to plan.
That’s something Amy Childs has learned throughout her own career. The Vice-President, Small Business & Partnerships at RBC has taken a varied path, moving through consulting, human resources and different roles within the bank. But some of the biggest shifts in how she thinks about her career have come from changes happening outside of the office.
“I think trying to have a perfect plan for your career is not going to work,” she said. “Perfect plans rarely do.”
Learning to be flexible
Childs will be the first to admit that learning to let go isn’t always easy – it comes with time and experience. When she was thinking about growing her family, for example, she remembers laying out a plan to put her career advancement on hold and wait to pursue her next role until after her pregnancy.
But when she and her partner began experiencing fertility challenges, she started to reconsider whether putting those ambitions on pause was the right move.
Listen to our podcast episode with Amy Childs
Realizing flexibility mattered just as much as planning, Childs decided to pursue new job opportunities, some of which accelerated her career in ways she hadn’t anticipated.
“I’m glad that I did that because there was a part of my life that was really important to me that sort of felt stalled, and that was frustrating,” she explained, referring to her fertility journey. “It was a bright spot for me to sort of keep going and feel like, ‘Well, okay, this isn’t happening. I’m doing everything I can here. At least life is still progressing.’”
That experience also changed the way Childs thinks about planning for the future. While it can be easy to get attached to a particular timeline, especially when you’ve spent years thinking about what you want your life and career to look like, sometimes holding too tightly to that picture can leave you feeling stuck when things don’t unfold as expected.
By embracing that flexibility and being open to new pathways, she’s become much more comfortable with the idea that what she wants from her career will change over time, and that the ambitions she had earlier in life might look quite different a decade from now.
“I think careers are long, and life is unexpected, and your interests shift,” she said. “What I wanted 10 years ago is different from what I want now, and it’s probably going to be different from what I want in 10 years.”
Learning that balance… isn’t always balanced
That flexibility has also shaped how she approaches work and family. When Childs landed her first executive role at RBC, she was on maternity leave, and she remembers being very clear with the hiring leader about what mattered to her.
She was excited about the opportunity and wanted to do a great job, but she also wanted to be a good mom. She didn’t see those things as competing ambitions, but rather an acceptance that her attention would be divided at different points in her life.
That perspective has also extended beyond her career. Childs talks about looking at her life in different buckets, from her work and relationships to her health, finances and the things she enjoys doing. Some will naturally need more attention than others at different times, and she makes a point of checking in with herself to see where she might need to make a change.
“They’re never all going to be entirely full,” she said. “But for the ones that are feeling particularly low, there needs to be some sort of recalibration to try to fill those buckets up a little bit.”
Those moments are a good reminder that we don’t have to get every part of our lives perfectly balanced all the time, or measure our progress against a timeline we set for ourselves years ago. And it’s something Childs hopes more women will give themselves permission to embrace, particularly those who feel they’re somehow behind where they thought they’d be by now.
“You don’t know what life’s going to throw at you…you have to be open to the opportunities that come,” she added. “My advice would be: careers are long. You can do lots of different things. Don’t try to lay out the perfect plan!”
Lisa Thibodeau
