Pay Attention to the Road Ahead: Advice on Transitioning into a Leadership Role

Computershare, an Australian stock-transfer company that provides corporate trust, stock transfer and employee share plan services across all corners of the globe, believes in investing in their people. 

“We invest in and develop our employees so they can achieve their professional goals,” the company tells Fairygodboss. “We encourage our people to dive in, roll up their sleeves and take on the many opportunities bound to come their way.”

Katie Larson, for example, is an employee who did just that. In the 20 years she’s been at Computershare, Katie has held six different roles across a gamut of teams. 

Along the way, she says that she’s had the right mentors to help support her journey. And, she’s always kept a focus on inclusion and engagement. It comes as no surprise, then, that Katie became the global diversity and inclusion manager at Computershare in 2020 — a role she transitioned into from a Change and Community team focused on people engagement and change management. 

In this article, Katie took the time to talk to Fairygodboss about her best career advice, learning from mistakes and more. 

Advice on growing your career.

Having a trusted mentor or sponsor can unlock doors for your career path, but you have to be ready to take that next step when offered the opportunity. 

For instance, when Katie was moving into her latest role, she says that she trusted her mentor when they came to her offering a new opportunity. She allowed her mentor to guide and teach her — as nervous as she was — and the result was a successful career move!

This success was aided by following some great leadership advice: to draw inspiration from leaders you’ve worked with and admired. When taking on this new role, Katie says she focused on taking “the best traits of leaders who led [her],” while aiming to “do the same for others.” One of these traits is making sure that she always checks in to ask her team how she can help — always making it about “we” and not “me.”

Katie has learned the importance of being resourceful, which is especially useful when moving into a new role where she had to develop new skills. “I don’t know all the answers, but I know where to find them,” she tells Fairygodboss. “I love networking and connecting people. I guess it’s part of the inclusion and engagement aspect that I love.”

Strategic planning, on the other hand, is something she strives to work on. “I like to get things done ASAP,” Katie says. “But, sometimes, you need to take a step back on the doing and pay attention to the vision and the road ahead.”

After all, Computershare has a lot of work on the company’s hands as the world’s largest stock transfer agent. 

“We have pioneered many of the securities industry’s innovations to help companies build and maintain strong relationships with their investors, employees and customers,” the company says. “We gain unique insights from around the world and integrate best practice and innovation to strengthen our competitive advantage and deliver market-leading solutions.”

And, to achieve this innovation, Computershare focuses on helping employees like Katie advance on their career journeys. “Our global team of champions are working toward a strategy that values the differences people bring to the workplace and provides a fair opportunity for everyone to succeed,” explains the company.

You, too, can be part of the team and grow your career with employees like Katie. Computershare is hiring!

Fairygodboss is proud to partner with Computershare. Find a job there today!