September 24, 2021
Driven to Thrive:
10 Proven Strategies to Excel, Expand, and Elevate Your Career and Life
Alicia D Reece
Aviva Publishing (2021)
ISBN: 978-1-636180564
New Book Helps Readers Put Lives and Careers into Overdrive
In Alicia Reece’s new book Driven to Thrive: 10 Proven Strategies to Excel, Expand, and Elevate Your Career and Life, readers will learn how to manage and overcome the obstacles they face in their pursuit of career and life satisfaction. Reece, who has had a successful career in HR and today coaches Fortune 500 executives and serves as a business consultant, shares her own personal career tribulations and triumphs as well as stories of how she helped her many clients take control of the steering wheel for their careers.
Reece knows many business, self-help, and career books are already out there; what sets her book apart is she believes the solutions to job stagnation and dissatisfaction are best resolved when you learn to harness your own voice and deepen your self-awareness while cultivating the skills needed to improve or change your situation. She advocates for increasing your emotional intelligence, which includes becoming more self-aware of who you are and what you want.
Being self-aware is not easy. Too often, people try to be what they believe others, especially bosses and colleagues, want them to be. Reece discusses how this leads to imposter syndrome—feeling like you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. She discusses how to overcome this situation by embracing who you truly are and beginning to live with intention to achieve the success and happiness you really want, and not just what others think you should want. When we do not pursue the goals that are right for us, or we take on jobs that are not the best fit for us, we can end up feeling exhausted or unmotivated. Reece reveals that 50 percent of her clients seek her services because they feel deenergized in their jobs, a number that Gallup polls reveal is typical across the workforce. Reece wants to change that.
Throughout the book, Reece offers tools to help people take back their careers, and with them, their personal lives. She walks readers through her D.R.E.A.M. model (Discipline, Resilience, Energy, Adaptability, and Meaning), which represents the power sources instrumental to fully igniting your career. She notes that “meaning” is one of the most important power sources today, as evidenced by research that Millennials in the workforce do not just want a job but work with purpose. As one of Reece’s mentors told her early on, “A career is a collection of experiences that allows you to develop and grow while leveraging your capabilities to add value.” When people feel they are contributing value and have a purpose, they have greater overall happiness and feel they can thrive.
One of my favorite parts of Driven to Thrive is Reece’s discussion of the four career stages: building, climbing, coasting, and leaping. I especially appreciated that she talked about coasting because it has been overlooked in every career book I have read before. She gives readers permission to coast in their careers at appropriate times, such as when a loved one has died or a new baby has been born. While we always want to be moving forward in our careers, sometimes life gets in the way and we need to do a little self-care until we’re ready to climb or even leap again.
Other topics Reece explores that I will not go into detail about, but that are all worthwhile discussions include the importance of cultivating relationships, including finding sponsors. She also clarifies what is wrong with many organizations’ current strategies to create diversity in the workplace. Hiring people from diverse backgrounds is not enough; instead, a culture of inclusion must be put into place. One of the most powerful discussions in the book is about building your financial sustainability, including through entrepreneurship. I also appreciated how she emphasized that when taking a job, we should, “negotiate, no matter what. It could be something as minor as asking for an additional week of vacation. Negotiate.”
Another valuable chapter focuses on winning at the game of organizational politics. Reece notes that no one teaches you in school how to play at politics on the job. She explores how to learn the rules within your organization, but also emphasizes that it’s not enough to know the rules; you also must strategize to win. That doesn’t mean you need to manipulate or crush others. Rather, you build relationships in valuable ways by learning the language of the business, understanding how your organization makes money, realizing what is at stake for your colleagues, and ultimately, influencing decision-making to get the results you want. Sometimes it even means realizing a company is not a place where you can grow and thrive, so you decide not to play its game but find a new position.
Most readers of Driven to Thrive will be seeking a change in their careers, possibly because they are new to their careers, possibly because they are unhappy in their current situation. Change, however, can be scary, so I’ll end with a quote from Reece: “Change is not something to run away from; in fact, you should consider running toward the change. When you run from change, you risk being stuck and left behind; as life continues to move, businesses continue to grow and evolve. Choose to flow with the current, enabling you to move in sync and even, in some cases, influencing outcomes.”
I am confident that reading Driven to Thrive will help you improve the outcome for your future and that of any organization you will be a part of. I wish someone had given me this book when I was in college so I would have better known what to expect when I entered the work world. It will be a true game-changer for readers.
For more information about Alicia D. Reece and Driven to Thrive, visit aliciadreece.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of The Nomad Editor and Narrow Lives
