The Left Turn, hosted by Malcolm Eadie, interviews people from all walks of life who have had unusual career changes and explores their experiences and stories to uncover useful insights and inspiration to anyone contemplating their own career Left Turn. As host of the podcast, i've had a number of my own Left Turns over the last 20 years - from lawyer into wine sales into beer marketing, into architecture and construction and now pursuing organisational coaching and leadership development - I'm curious to know what makes people change careers, how they deal with the challenges along the way, and seize the opportunities that are there when you make a leap.

This week's Left Turn guest is Paul Winnister, a combat pilot turned transformation and change expert who also has his own consultancy helping develop corporate leaders.

Paul spent 15 years in the British RAF learning how to lead teams in the life or death pressure situations of combat missions during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Paul clearly thrived in the camaraderie and culture of the RAF, so when he decided that it was time to find a new career challenge, the shift into corporate life was not an easy one. Paul is very open and honest about those personal challenges, and how he navigated his way through his loss of identity when he was no longer a pilot.

Paul talks expansively about his subject matter expertise, which is leading under pressure, but also reveals what he has learned about humility and curiosity being two of the key traits that have helped him succeed across his career changes, and how being a generalist rather than a specialist brings important advantages to managing complex and unambiguous situations - like a change in career.

Welcome to the first episode of the Left Turn - a podcast about career change conversations. In this episode I talk to Taylor Ng, an American who started her post college career in the competitive world of investment banking before deciding to pick up her tennis racquet again and join the even more competitive world of women's professional tennis tour....just before COVID started.

Taylor shares how her love for tennis as a youngster, among a raft of other sports, propelled her to being an All-American Ivy league champion while at Dartmouth College, before using her economics and social anthropology double major (what a combo!) to take up an internship in investment banking. Coming to end of a successful 2 year internship at the bank, she decided it was now or never to give professional tennis a red hot go. After successfully climbing the rankings and winning singles titles in Mexico and Finland, Taylor talks about the uncertainty of life on the road, where best laid plans can be thrown in the air depending on whether you win or lose. After 4 years on the road, she has recently decided to make her next move and is studying software engineering and working out where that career path might take her.

Taylor reveals her "character" strengths she's leveraged across her careers so far, how important building and maintaining networks has been to supporting her career goals, and how its often "sliding doors" moments that can lead to new opportunities - you've just got to be ready to take them when they come.