by Dana Theus | Apr 29, 2020 | Change Management, Coaching Advice, Work-Life Blend
July 2021 update: Rereading this with the Delta variant running around and vaccination rates slow around the world, I’m amazed at our optimism almost a year ago. That said, the advice is still solid. – Dana
I had a terrific client call today about “the new normal” and how we both hope it’s NEW. It started when my client laughed while telling me that all the media popping up recently about turning the economy back on was giving her anxiety and stress. It turns out that five weeks in, she’s kind of getting used to working at home 100% of the time. She’s trained the kids when not to bug her and is spending more time with them than ever before. So she finds the idea of going back to “normal” literally terrifying!
While I’ve already waxed philosophical about what the future holds in the new normal, I enjoyed this client call because, while there are certainly stresses and strains in adjusting to working at home, many of my clients are discovering what I’ve enjoyed about working at home for almost two decades. Whether it’s the 10-yard commute, the ability to truly walk away from work to clear your head or simply the ability to spend more unstructured time with yourself and your family…. There are many benefits that come from a closer blend to work and life. And whether you’re finding yourself, like my client, enjoying the current normal, or missing the old one terribly, I encourage you to be thoughtful and intentional about how to ease elements of normal back into your life.
Even if “the new normal” will eventually rebalance itself once again between home and work in the months ahead, and even IF it could go back to being exactly as it was before (which it can’t and won’t), this long break is giving you a rare gift of choice.
A choice is a terrible thing to waste. <=click to tweet
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by Dana Theus | Apr 27, 2020 | Commentary
One thing is clear listening to the news these days, whether we get back to normal sooner or later, “normal” won’t be normal for a while. Scott Gotlieb, former FDA Commissioner captured for me what to prepare for: the 80% economy. In the 80% Covid-19 economy, there will be no massively packed parades, sports events, conferences and entertainment gatherings. We’ll spend more time at home than any of us remember. What we used to spend on these things will go elsewhere.
So some INpower strategies to think about living and leading in the 80%, COVID-19 economy.
Getting Your Head Around the 80% COVID-19 Economy
The 80% economy, just like we’re experiencing today, will shift everything into a new balance. In the last few weeks, investments of money, time and energy of all kinds have flooded online and into isolation, sucking support from some activities and businesses and flooding it to others.
If you happen to be in a position of plenty for the moment, many of your colleagues, employees, customers and friends will not be. For some, their suffering will only grow, and their ability to contribute to you, with their focus, time and purchases will come under strain.
If you’re in one of the harder hit positions, your work, employees, customers and colleagues have already begun the response to the hard new reality. You may experience fear and anxiety and working to rebalance it with hope.
Many of us have instinctively adjusted to the reality of the rebalancing, but most of us are unconsciously acting as though this is a short-term constriction. We want normal to return so we imagine the future to look something like normal. It is not. Over months and even years, the rebalancing of the 80% COVID-19 economy will affect us in new, hard to predict, ways.
What this means for you, your family and your business, of course, is probably still becoming fuzzily clear to you, as it is for all of us. While I don’t know what the future really looks like, I know that when we adjust by aligning to the following principles, the future will be easier to live and lead in.
INNOVATION: Less Will Have to Be More
While this seems obvious on its face, we’ll only find our way in the 80% economy when we’ve truly accepted the principle that reaching our objectives isn’t possible by reducing or reallocating, we must reinvent. We must solve the puzzle of achieving our core objectives in dramatically new ways. We must imagine new ways to mobilize the resources we have to find the most executable path to where we want to be. If your mission is to:
True innovation is one part creativity and one part discipline. You must throw the box away. And you must demand realism and excellence in both conceiving of, and executing, a new path forward.
Not sure how to begin? Get a blank piece of paper. Put your core mission on the right. Put your actual resources and capabilities on the left. Draw a new line between them.
If your mission is only to make money–reconsider your mission. The world needs more from you. Find a way to make money and grow your soul at the same time. There’s always a way..
COMPASSION: Helping Others With Our Hearts and Minds
We’re used to helping each other in ways that usually boil down to action. What can we do for them? What can we give them? We pay our employees. We have one-on-ones and meetings with our customers and colleagues. We send things to our customers. We build a playground or deliver a meal for volunteer day. We contribute money to those in need. We buy our kids video games. In many ways, all these actions take on even greater significance in the 80% COVID-19 economy.
And we will take fewer actions like this than we did before. The reduction in social time, commuting and interaction will, whether we want it or not, give us a little time back in our days. And with that time, comes the possibility of more mental and emotional energy, if we allow it in. This is true whether you’re out of work, or slammed with even more work. It’s true whether you’re on the top or the bottom of the leadership ladder. It’s a new fact of life for all of us.
Being able to spend less physical energy with other people does not mean their need, or our own, is any smaller. It’s probably larger. Especially for people who live alone, or with children requiring more parental entertainment, the new balance brings new needs for relationship. And even so, without spending so much of our energy socially, we can reallocate some of that energy to acts of compassion and mindfulness. We can choose to spend it:
- On ourselves and those we love.
- Getting to know our customers better.
- Coaching and mentoring our employees.
- Rebalancing how we prioritize our stakeholders.
- Learning the value of things we can give without doing anything at all.
Not sure what you have to give without doing anything? Ask your heart and let it guide you.
LETTING GO: Only What Matters, Matters
Making room for new ways of being and doing, like those outlined above, means dumping the leftover assets, investments, assumptions, beliefs and emotions that no longer promise a return in the 80% economy. This always sounds easier than it is, because we’ve all made huge investments of money, time, expectation and energy in the stuff we need to dump.
It’s like getting on the life raft with only what you can take with you. Especially when you have to dump closely-held dreams and numbers off your balance sheet, whether in the form of prospective income or sunk costs, this hurts. A lot.
And yet, dump them we must. No one will get away without dumping something. So prepare for the discomfort and pain. Accept and lean into it when it’s time comes. Bear your pain and help others bear theirs. Be prepared to dump:
- Financial assets.
- Future investments.
- Travel plans.
- Years of retirement.
- Employees.
- Dreams.
- Busyness.
- Excuses.
Dumping hurts. And choosing to let go so you can clear the path to what matters most is cleansing.
Choose the cleanse. Let go over whatever you must, without dumping that which matters most. Let it all go with compassion, for yourself and for everyone else affected. Do what you can to ease the pain for everyone along the way, and dump that which you can’t take forward.
Not sure how to let go? Give it to someone else, rather than letting it go to waste.
Succeed on your own terms.
Tap your most Authentic Feminine Leadership Style.
FREE Executive Coach consultation with Dana Theus
TRANSFORMATION: Wanting the Future You Have
No butterfly ever came into being without a fuzzy little caterpillar dissolving into goo. I’m pretty sure that caterpillar wasn’t too happy about its future, and yet today it flies. And it does so by allowing its most core and life-giving DNA to do its job without resistance.
In our daily business life, this analogy will work on many levels. What is the most life-giving “DNA” in your job, your team, your company or yourself? How can you find it and give it room to grow into what it must become?
You begin by being willing to innovate and let go with compassion, but how do you actually DO the thing that will transform your life and your business? It starts by letting go, stripping it all bare and finding the bones of the thing. In your:
- Self, the bones are in your purpose, passions and gifts.
- Family and community, the bones are in the people and your love for, and commitment to, them.
- Career, the bones are in your purpose, talents and skills.
- Team, the bones are in your collective purpose, talents and skills.
- Company, the bones are in your mission, culture and employees.
Focus on the bones and then build yourself and others around you back up in ways responsive to the new environment. Talk to others, your family, your employees and your customers, about what their needs will be in the 80% economy. Build yourself back up to provide that thing, even if it looks different than those other things you dumped and cleansed yourself of. Be ready to look different when you’re up and going.
There will be some point in the days ahead where the discomfort, anxiety, worry and fear part just enough to give you a glimpse of what could be in your future. When you see it, be prepared for your heart to lift. All you must do in that moment is let your heart lift. Allow yourself to imagine a positive future and become the person, the business, the leader it demands of you. That’s how you win the game of the 80% COVID-19 economy.
by Dana Theus | Dec 30, 2019 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Insights & Inspiration
When I was 28, I discovered that my favorite day of the year was New Year’s Day. And every year since I’ve had my best year ever.
As a habit, I don’t overindulge in party mode on the Eve so the Day is mine to do with as I please. Especially before we all carried a world of possibilities in our pocket, New Year’s Day was simply the quietest day of the year. No one expected anything from me. When the kids came along, they were still busy with their presents, and it gave me the option to just BE.
One New Years Day early on I sat down and made a list of everything good that had happened the year before. Then I started with a blank sheet of paper and wrote down the things I wanted to accomplish in the coming year. I put the lists aside and pretty much forgot about them as January started up with a whoosh.
A year later, on the next New Years Day I remembered my list building exercise and pulled out that same notebook to write a new list. There was my old list. And dang if I hadn’t accomplished everything on that first list. Some things hadn’t turned out quite like I expected (e.g., a hoped-for promotion turned into a completely new job at a new company), but I was pretty much gobsmacked. My wishes had come true!
So I wrote my lists again. And again.
Year after year I’ve been putting my past behind me and envisioning success with intention. And year after year I have refined the process, taught it to my clients and used this essential method of managing my own focus to achieve pretty much everything I’ve wanted.
I’ve also learned that you don’t have to wait until January 1st to get a fresh start. (more…)
by Dana Theus | May 22, 2019 | Communicating With Confidence, Personal Branding
Dear Dana, I always thought I was an ok public speaker but my boss recently asked me to cover for him at a large conference, where I think there will be over 100 people in the room and I am suddenly losing sleep. The biggest group I’ve ever spoken to is 20 people! Can you give me some tips for good speech delivery? I know you’ll tell me to take a deep breath, but I’ve already done that and I’m still freaking out. Help! – Nervous in Nevada
Dear Nervous,
Congratulations! I know you’re uncomfortable, but this is actually a golden opportunity for you to take your personal brand up a notch! Not everyone has the chance to speak to larger groups like this and the confidence your boss is showing in you is not to be dismissed. If he believes you can do it, then you can too!
I find working with people on public speaking strategies awesome because it gives me a chance to help them bolster their internal voice of confidence, which pays off beyond the speaking opportunity itself. Here are the three tips I give my clients who aren’t content with “good” speech delivery and want to shoot for “great” speech delivery! (more…)
by Dana Theus | Apr 24, 2019 | Career Development, Corporate Culture, Personal Branding
Personal branding has been a thing now for over a decade, yet too many people still feel invisible where they work. How can that be with a wash of social feeds broadcasting us 24/7? Before social media, people had personal brands and called them “professional reputations.” I think it’s because many people now think of building their reputations strictly in social media terms. This is a mistake that can leave them with no actual reputation in their companies. So here are some old fashioned, but highly useful, personal branding tips for the modern age.
In many ways, now is the perfect time to focus on building your personal brand reputation outside of social media since organizations are evolving to make it easier than ever to succeed without positional power and authority. I recently came across the infographic below which demonstrates many ways in which organizations are becoming more networked, less hierarchical and more driven by purpose. Click on the infographic below to learn more about modern organizational leadership cultures from BK Publishing:
In a more modern organization, it can be easier to align your personal brand with success, but you still need to be intentional if you’re going to end up with the reputation you want. And if your organization is still at the primitive end of the evolutionary scale, you’ll have to work harder to stand out as an evolved employee.
Personal brand tips inside organizations
There are two primary reasons to intentionally build your personal brand reputation where you work today: new opportunities and building relationships that can pay off in the future – even at other companies. (more…)
by Dana Theus | Apr 10, 2019 | Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement
As a leader you’re not supposed to tell your employees what to do. Instead you’re supposed to “engage” them. You’re supposed to motivate them and empower them and create a work culture that plugs them in, contributing to the health of the business. But how do you do that? What are the best engagement ideas for employees?
Employee engagement has been all the rage in organizational development circles, ever since Gallup first reported that engagement was at a record low (26% in 2000 and at an all-time high of 34% in 2018!). Since low employee engagement is correlated with all kinds of negative outcomes for business, and high engagement relates to competitive advantage especially in growth companies, managers have been told to develop and implement engagement ideas for employees. If you’re a manager, you know this is easier said than done. The vast majority of employees are unengaged for a reason, and even though you’re “the boss,” you’re statistically likely to be unengaged too.
Recently, I’ve watched two of my clients – leaders of growing organizations – turn the employee engagement problem on its head, and they’ve done it in a surprising way. They made it about themselves and their employees, both. This sounds counter-intuitive so let me explain, and show you how you, too, can make the effort to engage employees more about yourself. (more…)
by Dana Theus | Mar 27, 2019 | Blog, Career Development, Coaching Advice, Communicating With Confidence, Dear Dana (Workplace Advice), InPower Women Blog, Women in Leadership
Dear Dana, What do they mean when they say I should be more “confident”? I recently had a boss tell me that if I want to get ahead I need to express “confidence leadership style.” I think I am confident but I keep getting this advice in order to further my career. My girlfriend says she gets the same advice, but I’m so much more confident than she is – I think:) I don’t get it. What should I do differently so people can see how confident I am? – Confidently Female in Connecticut
In all the years I’ve been coaching women on getting ahead, I’ve found the “confident leadership style” advice to women as perplexing as you. I think it’s because people who don’t know how to express more specific advice fall back on “confidence” to express what they observe as the differentiator between successful leaders and those who don’t fit the leadership stereotype. (more…)
by Dana Theus | Feb 5, 2019 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Dear Dana (Workplace Advice)
Welcome to “Dear Dana”, my occasional column to give you career and workplace advice/coaching. Please write in and tell me about a career challenge or frustration you’re facing at the office! Today we’re answering a question about interviewing for a job you don’t want. – Dana Theus, Executive & Career Coach
Dear Dana, I’ve been thinking of looking for a job since I’ve been at my current employer for a while now and I don’t think my career is going anywhere here. But I haven’t updated my resume or really gotten serious about it. We’re pretty busy and it’s distracting. Anyway, a few people outside work know I’m not happy and one texted me about a possible job in her firm. I don’t think I want to work for the company, and the job isn’t exactly what I’m interested in, but maybe I should do it anyway? I keep thinking maybe it would help me get myself more serious about a job search so I’m tempted for that reason but my partner keeps telling me interviewing for a job you don’t want is a bad idea. What do you think? – Ambivalent in Denver
Dear Ambivalent,
You’re right to ask yourself if it’s a good idea to waste anyone’s time interviewing for a job don’t want. Preparing for a job interview takes some focus. Scheduling and participating in an interview also take time for everyone involved. As with many options to spend your time and energy, there can be pros and cons: (more…)
by Guest Author | Nov 28, 2018 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Dear Dana (Workplace Advice)
Welcome to “Dear Dana”, our occasional column to give you career and workplace advice/coaching. We posted this at the beginning of the year, but since I’m getting more questions about timing for a job search now, I thought I’d post it again. Year-end is the perfect time to start getting ready for a New Year’s job search! – Dana Theus
Dear Dana: I heard that most companies do most of their hiring in January. Is that true? Is it worth trying to do a difficult job search (like changing careers) later in the year? – Thinking in Toledo Dear Thinking, Happy New Year! I received your note just before the holiday and decided to publish my answer as new year advice to anyone setting their intention on a new position this year. Please note that this is general advice, and best time for your job search, dear reader, can be dramatically different based on many factors specific to industry, geography and (most importantly) your future employer. However, if you’re looking to the year ahead and trying to decide when might be a good time to prioritize job seeking on your schedule, take these general truths into account:
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by Guest Author | Oct 11, 2018 | Across Generations, Coaching Advice, Communicating With Confidence, InPower Women Blog, Leadership
Do you ever feel like an imposter? Like someone will figure out you aren’t up to the job you have? Guess what? The Imposter Syndrome is a thing. And it’s a thing all kinds of leaders learn to deal with and overcome. Women. Men. Even people like you who are in exactly the right place at the right time to overcome it. Mitch shows us we’re not alone. – InPower Editors
By Mitch Shephard
For years there has been one question that I ask my executive clients when they take on a new role or a high-stakes challenge in their business. I have found the answer to this question gets people to feel “real” faster than most any other question I ask: What kinds of things have been running through your head and heart when you are driving to work in the morning?
I paint the extremes to get their realness-juices flowing. I give them the range of things that they MIGHT be feeling/thinking. I say to them (with some levity)… on the one extreme you might feel like a complete imposter— like you have no business leading this team. You may find yourself thinking: I simply don’t know this business well enough…I’m not sure I can pull this off…I’m not sure I deserve this job…It is only a matter of time before people discover that I am unfit for this role or someone else would be better at it than I am. You get the idea. Their laughter is telling—this is a very real, very common experience. Then I say, on your best days—you might feel confident, energized and unstoppable. You are certain that you are the right person for this role and this is the right time for you to be in it! You are excited to share your vision and you feel a level of ease in the way you are leading and connecting with others. You know you are uniquely qualified for the job. You feel confident, clear and focused.
I am yet to find anyone who doesn’t relate to this continuum of thoughts and emotions—they get it. They really get it. It is such a real moment to see full-grown, experienced, highly- respected leaders admit that they doubt themselves. And now, I get it. I bet you get it too. (more…)
