For a woman, a career can be convoluted, especially if she wants to have children. That is her context and context is everything! Here are 5 useful tips for how to maintain your momentum in the face of the obstacles that slow you down.

1. Have a live connection with your genius. If you are going to make a case for promotion, for you or for a project or just to ensure your colleagues understand your contribution, you need to know consciously, precisely what that is and be able to explain it in terms that resonate with your audience. This takes work, preferably in partnership with someone. If you don’t really ‘get’ who you are then no one else will. I call this your Focused Personal Brand.

2. Tell people. Be able to articulate powerfully what you want to make happen as a result of your contribution. By that I mean, be genuinely excited by it! If you can’t experience real excitement when you imagine yourself in the role/situation you aspire to, it isn’t going to happen. To keep it live, tell people, especially the ones who can help you get there. On the whole, people want to help but you have to tell them how they can.

3. Have a strategy. Identify who are the key players who can help you towards your goal. If its getting a promotion, who in your organisation an help you? If it’s finding a role outside the organisation, who in your network can help you find and connect with the right people. If you don’t know, ask people you think might know, what they would do if they were you.

3. Be in action: Always have a doable next step underpinned by daily, weekly or monthly targets. Then you will know you are working steadily towards your goal and if you keep going you will get there. This will enable you to keep at bay the negative self talk that occurs when the younger men you trained up get promoted ahead of you! If this happens routinely this is the time to ask yourself if your genius may be better appreciated elsewhere!

4. Build useful relationships. The centuries old practice of having a coffee can be elevated to an art form opening up all kinds of creative potential. Work out how often it is feasible to arrange them and make sure you block out the coffees in your dairy at manageable intervals.

5. Don’t get distracted. There is a set of circumstances that ideally suit your unique contribution keep pushing until you get it, you deserve it and so does everyone else!