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Career Disruption: How to Reset Your Brand and Career
Career disruption can happen when an organization restructures, a role changes or an individual decides it is time to pursue something new.
Whatever causes it, disruption often reveals how prepared someone is to explain their value, communicate their experience and take ownership of what comes next.
In this episode of What’s Your Story?, Lia interviews Sally Williamson, Hurst Williamson and LaKesha Edwards about the research and ideas behind Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand and Your Career.
Together, they explore why career disruption is becoming more common, what professionals often misunderstand about career development and how a stronger personal brand and career narrative can help someone move forward.
How to Navigate Career Disruption: Reset Your Brand and Tell Your Story
Knowing how to navigate career disruption begins with understanding your professional value and communicating it clearly. Whether the change comes from a reorganization, a new opportunity, or shifting business priorities, a strong personal brand and a clear career narrative can help you move forward with greater confidence. In this episode of What’s Your Story, Sally Williamson, Hurst Williamson, and researcher LaKesha Edwards share the ideas behind Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand & Your Career and explain why communication plays such an important role in career transitions.
What Causes Career Disruption?
Disruption happens a lot across the corporate world. Sometimes, from a company’s perspective through realigning functions. And sometimes by employees themselves as they make choices to try different things. But whether disruption is caused by a company or an individual, it’s occurring more frequently.
And from our vantage point, we see individuals who aren’t ready for it…and aren’t good at resetting around a challenge or an opportunity that disruption causes. The book sets out to help individuals understand why disruption occurs and how to plan for resets.
This episode of What’s Your Story has guest host, Lia, who interviews Sally, Hurst, and LaKesha about book insights, highlights and maybe a few tips from the latest book, Disrupted! How to Reset your Brand and Your Career.
More about The Creators
Sally Williamson is the founder of SW&A and an expert in all things related to spoken communication. Sally brings more than three decades of experience, insights and a general love of connection to empower more than 15,000 leaders and managers to influence and impact any group. Disrupted! is her fourth book.
Hurst Williamson is the ultimate utility player who can uncover client needs, lead a workshop or weave an incredible tale. He owns every room and brings genuine engagement to communication. He is the heart of the career journey and a proud member of the generation most disrupted. But he sees it as an opportunity to tell your story and own your journey. And he’s helping many of our clients do just that. Hurst co-authored Disrupted! and it is his second book.
LaKesha Edwards is a life-long learner who loves research, insights and discovery. With a Ph.D. added to her own career journey, she questions what we’re learning and how we’re solving it. And with SW&A, she creates the steps to continue a development experience by thinking through what we learn, what we teach and how we coach. And quite frankly, she keeps us all on our toes. She led the research behind Disrupted!
Show Notes
Career Disruption: Why We Wrote Disrupted!
Career disruption can happen at any time. A company reorganizes, priorities shift, a leadership team changes, or an employee decides it is time to pursue something new.
Whatever the reason, disruption creates a moment when professionals have to rethink how they position themselves and communicate their value.
Sally Williamson, Hurst Williamson, and LaKesha Edwards share why they created Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand & Your Career and what they learned from researching how people navigate change.
The book brings together different perspectives on career development, communication, personal brand, and the skills professionals need to move forward when their circumstances change.
Career Disruption: How Talent Priorities Are Changing
Organizations are under pressure to develop the skills they need to meet changing business priorities.
Talent development teams focus on preparing employees for the company’s current and future needs. Talent acquisition teams look for candidates who can fill capability gaps when those skills are not available internally.
For employees, that creates an important reality: an organization’s development priorities may not always align with an individual’s personal career goals.
Professionals who want to continue growing need to understand what their organization values, identify the skills they need, and take an active role in their own development.
Career Disruption: Why You Need to Own Your Career
Career growth is not something to leave entirely in someone else’s hands.
Managers and organizations can provide support, but individuals are responsible for understanding their strengths, recognizing development opportunities, and preparing for what comes next.
That means:
- Seeking opportunities to build relevant skills.
- Paying attention to changing business priorities.
- Asking for feedback from managers, colleagues, and mentors.
- Looking for ways to increase visibility across the organization.
- Understanding how your experience connects to future opportunities.
The more clearly you understand the value you bring, the better prepared you are to communicate it when circumstances change.
Career Disruption: The Role of Personal Brand
Your personal brand is how people think about you and describe you when you are not in the room.
It takes shape through your communication, your contributions, your relationships, and the impressions you create over time.
Feedback is one of the best ways to understand whether your personal brand aligns with how you want to be seen.
Ask questions. Seek input from people whose perspectives may challenge you. Pay attention to the difference between what you believe you are communicating and what others are actually taking away.
A strong personal brand is not about self-promotion. It is about helping others understand your strengths, your potential, and the value you can bring to a new role or opportunity.
Career Disruption: The Skills That Matter Most
Talent leaders consistently look for capabilities that help professionals contribute beyond their current responsibilities.
Three stand out:
- Communication and influence: The ability to express ideas clearly, connect with different audiences, and move others toward a decision.
- Problem-solving and critical thinking: The ability to evaluate challenges, consider options, and make thoughtful recommendations.
- Adaptability: The ability to adjust when priorities change, uncertainty increases, or new opportunities emerge.
These skills become more valuable as roles evolve and organizations need people who can step into unfamiliar situations with confidence.
Turning Career Disruption Into a Reset
Disruption is the change that happens around you or to you. A reset is how you respond.
For some professionals, that means pursuing a new role. For others, it means developing a new skill, repositioning their experience, or rethinking how they want to grow.
The difference is intention.
When you understand your personal brand and can explain your experience in a meaningful way, you are better prepared to turn uncertainty into an opportunity.
Career Disruption: Building a Career Narrative
A résumé lists your experience. A career narrative explains what that experience means.
It connects the work you have done, the strengths you have developed, and the direction you want to go.
That story becomes especially important when you are interviewing, exploring a new opportunity, or trying to help someone understand how your background translates to a different role.
Strong career narratives:
- Connect past experience to future opportunities.
- Highlight accomplishments in a way that demonstrates value.
- Show how skills transfer across roles, industries, or responsibilities.
- Communicate a clear sense of professional direction.
- Make experience easier for others to understand, remember, and repeat.
The goal is not to describe everything you have done. It is to help someone understand why your experience matters.
Career Disruption: What Readers Will Find in Disrupted!
The first part of the book focuses on personal brand, feedback, and how professionals can become more intentional about the impressions they create at different career stages.
The second part focuses on career narratives and how to organize experiences into a clear, compelling story that supports what comes next.
Together, these two elements give professionals a stronger foundation for navigating change: a personal brand that communicates their value and a career story that helps others see their potential.
Explore Disrupted! How to Reset Your Brand & Your Career for more insights on career disruption and more!