Hi Career Mamas,
December has been about protecting your priorities during a full season. With year-end deadlines and personal commitments converging, the focus was on getting clearer about what truly matters, communicating trade-offs, and releasing expectations that quietly drain your time and energy.
💬 Monthly Slack roundup
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Celebrating work wins from you all!: Wins included promotions, leading teams, stronger relationships with managers, honoring boundaries to spend more time with family, prioritizing self, and so much more. Drop your wins (nothing is too small) in the Slack thread.
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Identify your overwhelm pattern: Take this 2-minute quiz to see what’s quietly draining you and get a recommended action plan to help you show up more fully these holidays.
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When milestones bring up more than joy: A reminder that meaningful moments can bring up mixed emotions, that joy and grief can coexist, and that you’re not alone if things feel heavier than expected.
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Parenting support recommendations: Yina T. asked for recommendations for structured parenting support, including experiences with Good Inside, to help with power struggles, big emotions, and daily routines.
January: Control the Narrative - Nail Performance Reviews
Focus on goals for the year and influencing the direction in your performance reviews. Know how to handle your performance review conversation with confidence and how to turn it into clarity, leverage, and momentum for the year ahead, even if feedback is already submitted.
Up next: January events, challenge, Circle prompt, and Kajabi updates.
🗣️ Events
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Coaching call: 1/6, 11am–12pm PT (optional)
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Circle: 1/15 & 1/16
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Connection call: 1/21: 12-12:30pm PT
🎥 Resources
How to Nail Your Performance Review - A short video lesson in Career Mama Platform to help you prepare for review conversations, clearly communicate your impact, and align with your manager on next steps.
🎯 Challenge for January: Control the Narrative - Nail Performance Reviews
January is a critical window for shaping how your work and leadership are perceived. This challenge includes one focused action each week to help you lead that conversation intentionally.
📆 Week 1 Challenge (January 5th week): Set Your 2026 North Star
📆 Week 2 Challenge (January 12th week): Prepare to Receive Your Review Like a Leader
📆 Week 3 Challenge (January 19th week): Identify the Visibility Gap
📆 Week 4 Challenge (January 26th week): Shape the Forward Narrative
Look out for MJ’s Slack on January 5th to kick off our challenge.
✍️ Circle prompt for January
Turning Performance Reviews Into Career Leverage
Performance reviews are not just a summary of past work. They are a signal-setting moment that shapes how your judgment, readiness, and leadership potential are perceived for the year ahead. This Circle is about identifying where your real impact may be misunderstood and choosing how you want it to be interpreted moving forward.
Prompt Discussion:
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What is an actionable goal you want to achieve in your career this year?
(For example: lead one visible, cross-functional initiative that stretches my influence beyond my core role, be promoted, set boundaries on X, want my behind-the-scenes work in [X] to be better understood and credited in reviews.)
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Where is there a gap between the work you are doing and how that work is understood or credited, and which part of that gap feels most important for you to address this year?
(For example: delivering complex work that looks simple, influencing decisions behind the scenes, or owning outcomes without being visibly associated with them.) -
Even if feedback has already been submitted, what is one concrete action you can take now to shape the narrative of your performance review or better position yourself to achieve your goals by clarifying context or impact?
(For example: sending a concise recap of a key decision you owned, naming trade-offs you managed, or aligning with your manager on what success should look like going forward.)
🕒 Please reflect on this prompt for 15 minutes before your Circle discussion.
🌟 Member Spotlight
Congrats to Cynthia G. for landing two promotions which she negotiated with help of Career Mama! On top of that, she recently successfully led a team of 7 through an innovation sprint and was asked to be the clinical co-lead on a program.
Cynthia shared that "the circles, discussions and workshops through career mama have helped me to be more comfortable feeling my accomplishments, which has made it easier to highlight the impact that I've had in my new company." As a result, Cynthia said “I was comfortable asking for this opportunity even when I had started in this job only a few months before”.🙌 Way to go Cynthia!
This month focused on leading with clearer priorities and protecting your time and energy. In January, we’ll build on that foundation by helping you shape the narrative for the year ahead.
Happy holidays! ✨
Wishing you moments of rest, presence, and beautiful time with your family. Look forward to next year together! ♥️
Cheers,
Shivani & team
