8 Career Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

Careers don’t just build CVs — they build identity.

In this reflective episode of the Career Labs Podcast, I share eight of the most important lessons I’ve learned throughout my career — not from success, but from difficult experiences, tough environments, and moments that forced me to grow.

From humble beginnings to toxic workplaces, great managers and destructive ones, each chapter of a career shapes how we see ourselves, how we work with others, and the kind of professional we become.

In this episode we explore lessons about:

• Why you should never despise humble beginnings
 • How managers can shape your self-confidence
 • Why prestigious jobs can hide toxic cultures
 • The danger of unclear roles and identity confusion
 • Trusting your early signals about workplace culture
 • How to build a reputation that makes you valuable
 • Why adaptability is one of the most underrated career skills
 • How high-performing leaders raise your standards

If you’re mid-career or reflecting on your professional journey, this episode will help you think differently about the environments you choose, the leaders you follow, and the identity you build through your work.

Because the biggest risk in a career isn’t failure — it’s misalignment.

Listen now and take a moment to reflect on your own career journey.

This episode is sponsored by MyCareerLabs

Transcript

A Birthday Sparks Reflection

Femi 0:06

Hi everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the Career Labs Podcast. I'm your host, Femi Akiemi, your career coach, looking to share some great wisdom with you to help you navigate the wisdom and overcome the challenges as you grow and nurture your career. So, today's episode is going to be different. This time last month, it was my birthday, and I was getting ready to put out the latest podcast episode. And I started to reflect. And obviously, birthdays make you pause, and it wasn't a time to celebrate titles, to count achievements, which is good to do. But at this particular time, I was feeling very reflective. And as you get older, I guess, you start to reflect on your wins, your losses, things you could have done better, things you could have done differently, things that you flat out just made the wrong decision on. And it forced me to start to reflect on who I have become as a person. Now, over the course of my career, I've worked in places that built me and places that almost broke me. And what I've learned is this careers don't just build CVs, they build identity. And if you think about it, your career is made up of you work with people morning, day, and night. You go through trying to deliver great products or deliverables. You work on delivering timelines. You deal with some people who are, should I say, backstabbers, and you deal with people who are your champions. You deal with people who, the moment you leave the office or you leave that company, you never want to talk to them again. But then some of us have left organizations where up to now some people are still your friends. In effect, they've grown from colleagues to friends. And some people even say you spend more time with your colleagues than with your family. So how can you not be impacted, be transformed for better or for worse, by the people you work with? It's impossible. If you're gonna work with people, you're gonna be impacted by them because you interact with them. So careers don't just build CVs, they build your identity because these people you work with, they shape you, they create coping mechanisms, they create mindsets, they create attitude to work, they create either an environment where you have confidence to go out and speak what you want and not be afraid to back down, or it's an environment where everything is criticized, and from there you shrink and you become lesser of yourself. And that's why I say careers shape identity. So today it's a bit late because it's been very personal, very deep, and I've been sitting on it to let it cook. But today I want to share eight lessons I've learned, not from success, but from experience of the places I've worked and how they've shaped me. And I'm hoping you take something from this that can help you too, or you reflect on it and see something similar as well. Or you might even have a different perspective, which I would love to see in the comments. Before I go on, if you've listened to Career Labs before or this is your first time, please click on the like button, leave a comment, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so that we can grow and more people can hear about this and people's careers can be transformed. I look forward to this. So let's get straight back into the podcast. Lesson number one never mock humble beginnings. My first company I worked for, it wasn't a big company in the city, it wasn't a big, it was a financial organization, but it wasn't some big investment bank. It wasn't prestige, but it was foundational. Now there's a small psychological concept called delayed compounding. This is where early experiences feel small, they don't feel like a big deal, but quietly they build capability and sometimes confidence over time. So we often underestimate early environments because they don't impress others. And you've heard people say this a lot. The good book says do not mock the days of humble beginnings. For a lot of us, sometimes when we're working through the early days of a project, of learning a new skill, of being on a new job, we often underestimate these early environments because to other people it's not a big deal. I remember when I started my podcast and we were like, oh, how many listeners do you have? Five, ten. It's grown to thousands now. But then people didn't look at it like a big deal. And in some ways, I thought, ooh, that's not big. But the reality is, these earlier experiences they train you, they give you discipline, they give you exposure, and they give you confidence. Because don't forget, every time you do something small, over time it compounds to the point where it becomes muscle memory, and all of a sudden, you're great at it. So the lesson is never despise where you start. You might be further along in your career, but actually just working on a project right now, and you're in the early days of the project, or you're just learning to adopt AI and you're getting a bit used to it, but you're still a bit shaken up, not quite sure. Don't mock it, just take each day as it comes. Never despise where you start. The step you're on may just be scaffolding for a level you haven't reached yet. People talk a lot about overnight success. You putting in the work in the early stages is what makes you to be a great person later. Lesson number two: a manager can shape yourself concept. At my second organization, which was like a telecoms organization, I learned something harder. Your manager can alter how you see yourself. Within the same organization, I had two diametrically opposed experiences. I had one leader who took me onto the role as a strategy analyst, and he coached me hands-on development, stretching me. But then his manager changed, and they brought in a lady from some another organizational consultancy, which doesn't mean anything, but she came in with her own approach, and the very traits that were coaching, that were seen as coaching became flaws. Because very quickly, instead of her seeing a leader coaching me, she saw a leader that was babysitting me. It's all perception. She saw someone who was inadequate, and she saw someone who was incapable. So from being someone that was being coached, I all of a sudden became a liability. Same person, same ability, different concepts. Now I must rewind and tell you: before I started this role, and when I had interviewed for it, I was very honest. I had completed my MBA. I wanted to move to strategy analysis. I had the theoretic knowledge, but I needed the practical knowledge, spreadsheets, forecast models, predictive analysis. All of these things are things you need to be coached in real life. You can't go by gut feel with strategy. When I was hired, the coach, my manager wanted to coach me. His leadership changed. She came in with her own perception, and instead of that, she saw someone who was incapable and weak. And the very traits that were coached became flaws. And that feedback that he was giving me positive became criticism. And eventually, I was fired. Cruelly so, I was fired. So if I'm going from someone who had all my career in front of me, a planned strategic change of career, moving from technical to leadership and strategic, I was fired. So psychological psychological psychologists call this reflected appraisal. And that is we partly form our self-image through how our authority figures respond to us. Now I want to take a minute to pause here. Regardless of what you do, it might not be your manager, but anybody of authority you work with, be very careful who you give your power to. You see, we form, we partly or in totality, we form that self-image we have ourselves through how our authority figures respond to us. Regardless of how confident you are or who you think you are, I promise you, if a leader or someone in your organization or someone who is a really senior leader says, Femi, well done, or whatever your name is, well done, great job. You feel 10 feet taller, you feel more confident, you're unlikely to say nah doesn't mean anything. You would always attribute value to it. So you have to be really careful. The psychological dynamics of the workplace means that that would always be the case because in HR and in HR personnel management, they tell you because the person that is your manager, they draw their influence from being able to fire you, being able to give you pay raise, and being able to give you positive or negative feedback. So there's a psychological contract there. So naturally, they will always have an influence on you. Your own responsibility is to make sure you are very good at filtering feedback or filtering any feedback they give you to see it as positive or negative or adding context to it to make sure you don't take it as gospel for better or for worse. So when you work under a good leader, you grow. When you work under a destructive leader, it can internalize this distortion and create a warped view of yourself. Most of the time, we are not as good as we think we are, and we're not as bad as they think we are or they say we are. Be very careful or else your self-image and your self-reflection will sway from left to right. And the reality is that for years I carried that damage. I remember years later, I went to visit a friend in that same office. And would you believe it, I got into the lift with this manager that ended up firing me. And throughout my time in that lift, I was literally squeezing my knuckles, squeezing my knuckles and my fist because this well of emotion, bitterness, anger, a very mix of emotions I cannot explain was in me. And I wanted to just turn to her and scream. But I held it in because reality, she didn't even recognize me. She didn't even realize that this was one person whose career she had had an impact on because of her decision. She didn't remember me. I was nothing in her universe. And here I am, stewing over it. So who's the one who's left to deal with the damage? Me. So you have to separate feedback from identity. Feedback is feedback. Feedback is not who you are. Okay? A toxic manager can mislabel you, but don't let that label define you. It doesn't define you. Okay? We move on. So move along in the journey. Prestige can mask toxicity. That's nest number three. So I've been to the early stages and now I got a job with a prestigious bank in the city of London. High flying, three-piece suit, 30th floor of the bank, technology strategy. I wake up every morning and I'm on the train going into central London and I look the business, I dress the business. I just I am it. I am it. And the suit, the image, it just fits everything you thought of. I have arrived. But guess what? I joined this company, and the very first thing I realized is that the culture was high performance at its most toxic. Nobody leaves the office first. Anyone who leaves the office first is seen as weak or a slacker. Leaders on the tele on conference calls swearing at people, directors making people cry, people backstabbing each other just to make themselves look like the better person or the better employee. And this was sort of a concept called cognitive dissonance where your values clash with the environment. You want to be somewhere. You really want to be there because you think it's where you want to be, but it doesn't align with your values. And it's creating this sort of weird feeling. And I could feel it. As a person, I'm wired as an encourager, which is why I do what I do. I coach, I train, I encourage people, I support organizations through change. But I was in a culture of pressure and fear. I had the trauma from being fired recently, and my nervous system was just a complete mess. I didn't realize it at the time. I do now. But at the time, it was a complete mess. And eventually I had to quit. And why did I quit? I could not afford to go to the trauma of being fired again. I literally said, I'm handing in my notice. So what's the lesson here? Prestige is not peace. I'll say that again. Prestige is not peace. All that glitters is not gold. The thing you see are shiny, and you think, wow, I would love that. Careful what you wish for. If your environment consistently violates your values, your body will tell you long before your brain admits it. You'll start having stomach ache, headaches. You might, your body might start to clamp up, sweat. Before you go into the office, your arms get sweaty. Your body, way before your mind realizes your body will start to tell you, friend, this is not the place for us. Okay, moving along. Number four, ambiguous roles, which is roles that are not clearly defined. Identity confusion erodes confidence. So at one stage, I was operating in my next organization. I was working um in two different roles. I was brought in as an office manager and as a change manager. Office manager, literally there for that team to keep things ticking over, the financing, the HR, just being the one who manages the team. And then the change manager. I had a product I was managing. Two completely different identities. I could do either of them, but the office management roles requires detail obsession, attention to detail, financial tracking, microcontrol. A change manager requires influence, ability to deal with sort of ambiguity, strategic thinking. Psychologically, I bet that ambiguity created this identity confusion. You're neither one thing or the other. So the lesson from that one is know your core strength. Whatever organization you work, I would encourage you to know your core strength. Ambiguity for short periods that builds range. It builds range. But long-term ambiguity that just erodes your identity and you end up not being sure of who you are. Okay, we're moving on now. So the next lesson I've learned is trust your early signals. So now you're getting a bit, I'm getting a bit much more mature in my career. So you know early when a culture does not fit your personality or your person. So it might be the first day of the week, it might be the third day, or it might be the first day you've worked today, it might be the third day, but very early you know. And the thing is sometimes we our intuition is telling us something, but we override it, we ignore it because of self-doubt. And there's a sort of and it comes from this sort of survival instinct called belonging bias, and it's the desire to fit in, even when something feels wrong. It's what happens in peer pressure a lot. A young person may know this isn't the place for me, but because they want to belong, they sort of do activities that signal they want to belong. And that's what happens to me. And the thing is, your self-doubt can just make it even worse. And I learned this. So some places are toxic, we know that. And no amount of self-development will make poison nutritious. I'll say that again. No amount of self-development will make poison nutritious. Poison is bad for you. It's as simple as that. So in this place, when I worked here, what I found very quickly was there was this culture, very macho culture, but it was also a culture that was not very accepting of people like me, if I'm being honest. And what I found very quickly was that even though I had a role that had authority, they just would not accept or embrace my authority. And because I was not good enough or I was not confident enough to go in and make it explicitly clear about what my role was and that I had the authority to deliver it, I sort of dithered, moved the self-doubt. I didn't speak up with clarity. I remember when I was being let, when I was leaving, and I was speaking to my manager there, and I said, Well, why? And she said, Femi, you're a brilliant guy, very intelligent. But sometimes when you say something in a meeting, instead of saying it with authority, with power, you slink back. And that came from self-doubt. And really, when I look back at that time, that's one of the few times I realized that there's nothing better than going out gunslinging. You know what's right, stick to it. And if they at least they fire you, you know you got fired doing the right thing, standing on what you know is right, standing on what years of experience have taught you. So the lesson here is when you know the right thing to do, be assertive. Even if it costs you, it's better to fail doing the right thing than to survive by shrinking. Okay. Next, build a reputation around one thing. The next organization I worked for, massive oil company, and the one thing I learned there was that reputation is important. I remember sitting down with my manager there, very clever. It was actually a young guy, younger than me, but intelligent, hardworking, everything you want from a leader. And I remember asking him, and he said, Fermi recommendation, find one skill in this thing, in this team. Find one thing this team needs and become great at it. In every organization, there is something visible and valuable. There is something very, very important to them to perform and deliver on their mission, their goals, their objectives, whether it's in a department, in a function, in the overall organization, find a role to play in delivering that value. Find it, own it, and become known for it. Psychology calls this sort of distinctiveness theory. It's people remember you when you are clearly associated with something specific. The worst thing than being known is not being known. The main thing is to be known for something. Don't be forgettable. Be memorable. I'll say that again. Don't be forgettable in the workplace. Be memorable. And it doesn't mean be memorable for being for being the joker, laughing, or anything. Be known for value. Because when it comes down to it, organizations are built to earn money. And if you add value to the bottom line, you help them make money or you stop them from losing money, they'll always think of you last when they're trying to get rid of people. Not everything. You don't need to be known for everything, just something. So lesson is don't try to be broadly impressive without being known for anything. Just be specifically reliable. Okay? Reputation compounds quietly. Number seven, adaptability is seniority. We're getting somewhere now. I joined the next organization and it felt like I was joining a moving train. The team was already in motion, high performing environments. But when you're in a high performance environment, it requires adaptive intelligence, the ability to read dynamics before asserting yourself, getting in there, observing where is the power dynamics. Where is the power structure? Where is the delivery gap? Where am I needed? And in those places, ego is the fastest way to fail. So the lesson is observe before you impose. Understand before you optimize. And flexibility is not a weakness, it's maturity. When a team is high performing, your job isn't to come in there and just muscle in. It's to observe, find out how you can help, where they need you, and just fit in seamlessly. Support the team. The last thing any high-performing team needs is someone who's going to derail them and turn them to a non-performing team. And then lastly, working under a high-performing boss changes you. When I look back on my career, I've worked with a lot of bosses, and the bosses I remember the most, funny enough, are those that during the time I felt they were stressing me, they were pushing me. But actually, that's when I realized I was at my optimum. I was working at my highest performing. You see, working under a high performance boss changes you. Expectations rise, standards sharpen, speed increases. As I say, iron sharpeneth iron. As you start to have intellectual, high performance discussions, this riding tide raises all boats, and everybody is operating at a maximum level. Team meetings are focused, intellectual, solution-oriented, and that's the psychological effect called this Pygmalion effect. People rise to the level of the expectation placed upon them. High standards lift you, low standards shrink you. And what's interesting about that team is that is the one team that almost 10 years later we still meet up, hang out because we had an amazing experience, which in looking back, we didn't enjoy too much at the time, but all of your life, that was one of the times when in our careers we were high performing. So the lesson is choose environments that stretch you without breaking you. Choose friends that stretch you. Choose environments that force you to go beyond what your ability is. Stretch you just a bit. Not break you, just stretch you till that becomes your new level, and then you stretch again. So, what has all of this taught me? Here's what I now understand. Careers are not primarily about titles, they're about self-concepts, how you see yourself. They're about environments, the environment within which you work. They're about the quality of your manager or the person who is responsible for your performance and the person with whom you place your mental and your psychological and performance security in. It's about role clarity, being clear about what you're responsible for. It's about value alignment. There's got to be an alignment between your core values, what makes you tick, and the values of that organization. But it's about reputation. Building a reputation known for quality. And it's about courage. The courage to stand up for what you believe in. The courage to build up your skill set. And when you know what you know, don't be afraid to stand on it. And above all, if you don't know who you are, your environment will define you for you. I'll say that again. If you don't know who you are, your environment will define you for you. And that is the real risk in mid-career. Not failure is misalignment. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong position, wrong time. So my birthday false reflection, albeit a bit late. Clarity doesn't require birthday, it just requires honesty. And if you're listening and you're mid-career or you're in that stage of a career, just ask yourself: is my manager multiplying me or diminishing me? Am I ignoring the early warning signs around? Am I known for something valuable? Am I staying somewhere because it's right or because it looks right? Career shape character. And sometimes the hardest lessons become the most important ones. This is the Career Labs podcast. And if this resonated with you, share it with someone navigating their own journey. Like, subscribe, follow, sign up to our newsletter, check out mycareerlabs.com and stay intentional. Have a great week and I'll see you at the other side.