For Charlotte Leech achieving the Associate Chartered Management Consultant award achieved two goals.
One, it told the outside world how qualified she is professionally to solve their problems. And personally, it gave her a better understanding of just how much she has done and how she has developed since she joined Arcadis just three years ago straight out of university.
Charlotte said:
I decided to go for the Associate award as I only had three years experience. A lot of people in my team are Chartered and have gone through the journey and have told me how valuable it is, so while it is too early for me to go for full Chartership, I wanted recognition for that I have done so far.
She does not mind admitting, however, that she found the process of the written submission daunting although on the other side of it her perspective changed.
She said:
It is such a long document. Thousands of words. But it made me realise that I have actually done something in the last three years. It is hard writing something from scratch but I got help and was well supported by my team. I had a mentor, a sponsor and the head of the MCA relations in my team.
Looking back at what I have done has helped me decided what I want to do going forward. It was a long process finding out what you are good at and where you needed to work to be done. Writing it all down has boosted my confidence. Seeing everything written down in black and white.
A Geography graduate from Durham University, a door to door sales role was one of the things that made Charlotte decide that she wanted to pursue a career in consultancy.The desire to do something with social worth continues to drive her.
Charlotte said:
Waiting five years for the full Chartership seemed a long time. I felt I was already at the stage of having to assess and decide where I wanted to go next and doing associate helped me do that.
It was a really good process to help me carry it out. It made me realise I had a lot more leadership and management experience than I thought. I realised that the bits that I enjoyed had social and environmental value and I want to do more projects like that.
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