Brittany N. Cole is the CEO and founder of Career Thrivers, a top 10 leadership development firm (Manage HR) that has impacted more than 130,000 leaders across 103 organizations. Cole is a CNN guest expert, USA Today contributor, bestselling author of Thrive Through It, TEDx speaker, LinkedIn Top Voice, and Harvard Kennedy School graduate.
Her work focuses on leadership branding, organizational development, and the future of the AI-era workforce.
Cole sat down with TWA to share her advice about how to prioritize strategic work, build relationships, and develop leadership skills that position early-career professionals—especially in evolving industries like energy—for advancement in an AI-driven workforce.
TWA: You've identified overperforming without direction as one of the biggest mistakes recent grads make in their first 90 days of employment. What does that look like in practice, and how can recent grads avoid it?
Brittany N. Cole (BC): In practice, it looks like the employee who says yes to every request, stays late every night, volunteers for every project, and assumes that sheer effort will translate into recognition. The intention is good. The outcome is not. What typically happens is the new hire becomes known for being busy rather than being strategic. They spread themselves across too many priorities, deliver inconsistent quality, and burn out before they have built the relationships that actually drive career growth.
The fix is not to do less. It is to do the right things with clarity. In the first 90 days, a new grad should have an explicit conversation with their manager about what success looks like in this role over the next 30, 60, and 90 days. Ask directly: ‘What are the two or three outcomes that would make you confident you made the right hire?’ Then align your effort against those outcomes. Consistency, clear communication, and delivering on the things that matter to your manager will always outperform unfocused hustle.
TWA: What are subtle signs that a new employee is focusing on the wrong priorities early on?
BC: The most common sign is when the employee is producing a lot of output but cannot articulate why it matters. If you are completing tasks but cannot connect them to a business outcome, a team goal, or your manager's priorities, you are likely optimizing for activity instead of impact.
Other signs include spending most of your time on solo work without building relationships across the team, waiting for instructions rather than proactively asking questions about the broader business, and measuring your own performance by hours worked rather than problems solved. Another subtle indicator is when colleagues appreciate your helpfulness, but leadership does not yet know your name. That means you are building a reputation for being useful rather than for being valuable, and those are two very different trajectories.
TWA: Beyond doing assigned tasks well, what are 2–3 concrete ways a recent grad can demonstrate strategic value?
BC: First, learn the business beyond your role. Understand how your department connects to revenue, to the customer, and to the organization's strategic priorities. When you can speak about your work in the context of business outcomes, you immediately differentiate yourself from peers who only talk about tasks.
Second, build relationships outside of your immediate team within the first 90 days. Identify two or three people in other departments and schedule informal conversations. Ask them what their team is working on and what challenges they are facing. This gives you a wider view of the organization and positions you as someone who thinks beyond their own function. It also builds the internal network that will be essential for your long-term advancement.
Third, document your contributions and share them proactively. Do not wait for your manager to notice what you have done. Provide brief, regular updates on what you are working on, what you have completed, and what you are learning. This is not self-promotion. It is professional communication, and it is the habit that separates professionals who advance quickly from those who stay invisible.
TWA: What are simple daily or weekly habits that build credibility fastest in corporate environments?
BC: Three habits will compound faster than anything else. First, document everything you accomplish. Keep a running record of projects completed, problems solved, and feedback received. This becomes your evidence when promotion conversations happen, and it will happen sooner than you think.
Second, ask for feedback regularly. Do not wait for your annual review. After completing a meaningful project or milestone, ask your manager one simple question: ‘What is one thing I could do differently next time?’ This signals maturity, accelerates your learning curve, and builds trust with leadership because it shows you are invested in your own growth.
Third, reflect every Friday. Spend 10 minutes asking yourself what you learned this week and what you want to do differently next week. The professionals who grow fastest are not the smartest. They are the most reflective. Reflection is how you compound experience, and in today's workforce, your experience is your most valuable career asset.
TWA: The energy sector is evolving rapidly. What leadership skills will be most critical for petroleum engineers over the next 5–10 years?
BC: The energy sector is experiencing the same structural shift that every industry is facing: AI is commoditizing technical knowledge while the value of human judgment, adaptability, and leadership is increasing. For petroleum engineers specifically, three leadership skills will be critical.
First, the ability to lead through ambiguity. The energy transition, regulatory changes, and AI integration mean that the next decade will require engineers who can make sound decisions without complete information. That is a leadership skill, not a technical one, and it is one that no algorithm can replicate.
Second, cross-functional communication. Engineers who can translate technical complexity into strategic business language will be disproportionately valued. The ability to sit in a room with finance, operations, legal, and executive leadership and make your work understood and actionable is what separates a senior contributor from a future leader.
Third, what I call leadership branding, which is the ability to position yourself and your expertise so that the right people know what you bring to the table. In a sector undergoing rapid transformation, the engineers who will lead are not just the most technically skilled. They are the ones who are visible, trusted, and known for their ability to lead people and projects through change. Technical competence gets you hired. Leadership branding gets you promoted.
TWA: How can graduates entering traditional industries position themselves to lead through change and innovation?
BC: By recognizing that the rules of career advancement have fundamentally changed. For decades, traditional industries rewarded tenure and technical mastery. You put in the years, you learned the systems, and you moved up. That model is eroding. AI is compressing the value of pure technical knowledge, and organizations are increasingly looking for leaders who can integrate technology, manage diverse teams, and drive strategic outcomes, not just execute processes.
Graduates entering traditional industries should do three things. First, become fluent in how AI and automation are reshaping your specific sector. You do not need to be a technologist, but you need to understand what is changing and what is not. Second, invest early in building relationships with people outside your technical silo. The professionals who lead through change are the ones with networks that span functions, geographies, and levels of seniority. Third, start building your leadership brand from day one. Do not wait until you are a senior engineer to think about how you are perceived. The gap between your impact and your visibility is the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
TWA: How does your advice apply specifically to petroleum engineering graduates entering the workforce?
BC: Everything I have described applies directly, and arguably with more urgency, to petroleum engineering graduates. This is a sector where technical excellence has historically been the primary differentiator. But as AI takes on more of the analytical, modeling, and data-intensive work that has defined engineering careers, the graduates who stand out will be the ones who bring something AI cannot: the ability to lead teams through uncertainty, communicate across disciplines, and make judgment calls in high-stakes environments.
Petroleum engineering graduates also have a unique advantage. The problem-solving discipline, the systems thinking, and the ability to operate under pressure that engineering programs instill are exactly the kinds of human capabilities that increase in value as AI handles more routine work. The key is learning to articulate that value. Most engineers are trained to show their work through data. The future will require you to also show your work through story, through relationships, and through a leadership brand that makes clear not just what you can calculate, but what you can lead.
For any professional looking to assess where they stand, Career Thrivers offers a free 3-minute Leadership Brand Assessment at scoremyleadershipbrand.com. It measures the gap between your impact and your visibility and provides a personalized report on how to close it.
