Step-by-Step

I’ve always hated to be asked, when you were little what did you want to be when you grew up.  For one thing, that was a lonnnnnggggg time ago, and second, I never thought about it.  Same thing at work: where do you want to be in 5 years?  Alive, happy, successful, not broke, not ill, not much else comes to mind.

Thinking back over the patterns in my life, the pattern of taking things just a step at a time is what I see.  When I got divorced at 21 I just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.  I was heartbroken and humiliated, but I knew I had to move forward even if it was just with little steps.  I decided not to go back to college because it seemed to me at the time like a step backwards.  It was important for me to move forward – to lean into my life.

I never had a big career plan, I just took the next opportunity that seemed right to me at the time.  I even moved to LA in 1985 not knowing anyone, but it was the right thing to do at that time, and I didn’t have any doubts.  When I got laid off 7 years later, it was an easy decision to move back to Seattle.

When I got laid off again in 2009 I had to decide whether to look for another corporate job or start my own coaching business.  Finding another corporate job would have been the comfortable, familiar route, but I had already decided I wanted to be a professional coach.  I wanted to stop doing all the ‘corporate’ stuff and move forward in a career that expresses who I’ve always been as person.  Like Michelangelo, I chipped away at the marble until the statue appeared.

Thinking back over these scenarios I see a pattern.  I haven’t forced big leaps, I’ve just made decisions when I’ve come to a crossroads and always with the intent of moving forward even when it was scary.

Sometimes a client will describe their career as being an escalator that they stepped on out of college, and they’ve just passively ridden along ever since.  Now they don’t like where they’ve ended up and want a career makeover.  What’s missing for them is an overall vision of the direction they want to take. 

The women’s magazines lately have featured a theme of reinvention and makeovers.  The thought is tempting:  sit in a chair for 2 hours and let someone else give me new hair, makeup and clothing and I’ll be a new me.  Or spend 10 days on a structured eating, exercise and journaling program, and I’ll be reinvented at the end.  Tempting.  I’d like to snap my fingers and be different, but I know it doesn’t work like that, at least not for me.  That’s just not how I’m wired. 

I’m a ‘one foot in front of the other’ person.  What works for me is to have a vision of the overall direction I want to go, and then just move forward one step at a time. The progress seems glacial until you look back over a span of time.  I have some friends who set goals and then focus all their energy on meeting them, but they sometimes lack that higher-level vision of where they want their lives to go.  It’s like they’re running wind sprints all the time. 

Make a list of the big change points and crossroads in your life.  Think about the patterns and recurring themes.  What insights do you get?  What lessons are you being given the chance to learn, over and over again?  Do you think you ‘should be’ one way, but when you look back over your life, do you see someone different?  Instead of feeling bad or inadequate, try working with how you’re wired.  You don’t have to settle for status quo, but move forward and approach changes in a way that works for you and works with who you are.

Value Your Self

Do you see the value in yourself? Or should I say your self?

People come to me as a career coach for a variety of reasons – they’re having performance issues at work and need to figure out how to dig themselves out, they want a power-packed resume so they can find a new job, they want to identify their dream job because the path they’re on isn’t where they want to be anymore. 

People start out seeking coaching around their jobs and career, but after a few sessions (how many depends on the person), the wall between ‘career’ and ‘life’ begins to crumble.  Work/life balance?  Is there such a thing?  Issues at work but nowhere else in your life?  Not likely, although they may appear different on the surface.   Career is easy to talk about.  It’s at arm’s length, held at a distance as a separate entity.  People sometimes even speak about themselves at work as if it were a different person.  Over time, they begin to see that it’s not.

If you want to make a change in your career, whether it’s to improve and grow in your current job or find a new one, the first step is to explore and understand how you create value at work.  How do you do that voodoo that you do so well?  Everyone seems to start at the same point.  We think about what we do but totally overlook the value of our contributions and accomplishments to our team, our projects, our customers, our company.  People often say to me, I don’t think about that – I just do my work. 

If you don’t recognize and appreciate the value of your work, no one else will either.  It’s the classic fairy tale.  Are you hoping Prince/Princess Charming (aka your boss) will see the jewel you really are through your humble, ash-covered exterior?  It wasn’t a true story when you were a kid, and it’s not a true story today.  If you need to dwell in that land of make-believe, read romance novels.  In the real world you don’t have to brag, you don’t have to take credit for work you didn’t do or for work done by your team.  But to truly thrive at work, you need to ‘own’ your accomplishments and the contributions you make.  Stand proud in your space and find joy in being you.

It’s a journey and oftentimes I start by working with clients to update their resume even if they aren’t looking for another job.  Just the process of talking about their work history, and discovering how to express strengths and accomplishments by recapping results delivered begins to unlock a new self image.  I remember when I first took the StrengthsFinder assessment and sat down with my team to review my top five talent themes.  I had this epiphany:  I didn’t need to be good at everything, and I was OK with things that aren’t natural talents for me because, dang, I’m really good at what I’m good at.  Stepping into your own space can lead to a powerful shift.  It’s like letting the genie out of the bottle.  That genie, by the way, can help make your dreams come true.

So to make changes in your career, whether you change jobs or not, start with identifying and appreciating your strengths, accomplishments, and the unique ways you create results and therefore value.   To make changes in your life, let that wall between your work self and the rest of you come down and follow the same path.  Identify and appreciate your strengths, accomplishments, and the unique ways you create value for your family, your loved ones, your friends, your community, and anyone else who touches your life.  Let the genie out of the bottle and see the value in your self. 

I’d love to support you on this journey.  Let’s start with talking about your career.  Who knows where it will lead – perhaps to the life of your dreams.

Ode to Steve Jobs

My MacBook, iPhone, an iPod are sad today mourning the loss of Steve Jobs. So am I. The media reminds us that we’ve lost a great visionary who was an inspiration to people all over the world even outside the technology industry.

As I read these wonderful tributes, they seem incomplete.  No…I don’t need the details of his personal life, although I’m sure some magazine will dig those up to make a profit.  While Steve Jobs may have been an extraordinary visionary, he must have also been extraordinary in many other ways to be able to bring his visions to life. 

To have a vision is one thing – a wonderful thing – but you need more than creativity.  It needs a foundational purpose that will inspire others to adopt it as their own, and this will fuel the fire for doing the hard work needed to make that vision a reality. 

I know so many people who have great ideas and grand visions, but their ideas aren’t grounded in a purpose other than to boost their bank balance and ego.  I saw a sign on a church down the street:  Heart is happiest when it beats for others.  Purpose provides the fuel, and when the purpose is ‘other’ centered, the foundation is rock solid.  Steve Jobs had a sense of purpose to make daily lives better.  In my opinion this formed the foundation for his visionary thinking and gave his creativity a target.

His communication and presentation skills were also extremely strong.  When he spoke, people were mesmerized.  I read a book on the techniques he used to craft and present his message.  The key was simplicity (and tons of editing).  He understood his vision so well that he was able to condense it down to its core and then communicate it in simple terms so others could not only understand it, but were inspired to follow.  When the vision is yours, that’s easier to do. 

In my corporate job I had to listen to a lot of presentations.  I could always tell when someone was presenting other people’s ideas or content or were presenting to an audience who didn’t share a common vision.  Their message was often muddled.  They needed to dwell on details and complexity in an effort to sound like they knew what they were talking about or to compensate for a lack of shared vision.  It was usually a disaster.

Having ideas is fun!  But if you aren’t ready, willing, and able to do the hard work to take those ideas and turn them into reality, they just stay inside your head.  As often happens, someone else will have a similar idea, but they will do the hard work to make it happen, and poof!  Your great idea is making someone else’s dreams come true. 

We’re bombarded with stories of fast and easy money.  I’m so sick of it!  (That’s a rant I’ll save for another post.)  If you want a great example of someone who had an idea out of the blue and put in the hard work to make it happen, check out April Morris’ story.  Express Effects Cosmetics  I met April at the Dream University conference I attended a couple of weeks ago, and I’m now a big fan.  She had an idea while in her car one day – I wonder if you could add an appetite suppressant to lip gloss to help people lose weight.  It took her years to turn that idea into a product, THINgloss^®, but she was driven by the underlying purpose to create a better life for her two kids.  She leveraged her strengths so she could change careers, which enabled her to fund her prototype, went back to school to become an herbalogist so she could work with chemists to develop the prototype, and then started marketing.  She now has success beyond her wildest dreams.

Do you have an idea that’s burning a hole in your head?  Check to make sure it’s driven by an other-centered purpose, clarify your vision so you can communicate it clearly so others will be inspired to join you, and make sure you’re ready, willing, and able to do the hard work.  Who knows, you could become your own version of Steve Jobs.