by Dana Theus | Jan 10, 2024 | Coaching Advice, Personal Mastery
I no longer believe in ToDo lists. I sometimes use them to help clear my mind of stuff that’s in the way of important thoughts, BUT, I have found that in being productive, in running effective meetings and even in moving projects along a diffuse and choppy timeline, lists of 5, 7 or 10 things are not nearly as effective as
A
Single
Well-crafted
Intention.
How Do You Set A Leadership Intention?
For this quick-read I’ve listed the 5 step process I use in setting useful intentions at the end of this post.
Weed Whackers Can’t Lead
Why Intentions? At several points in my career, I’ve been a project manager – an in-the-weeds type sweating over the impossible-to-keep-current-MS-Project-sheet. Project management is a great way of thinking because it forces you to look into the future and identify dependencies and critical path that will tank your effort unless you clear the way for them. But it also teaches you to create more lists, more often, in more minute detail than are really necessary unless you’re building a rocketship or complex software.
What I’ve learned building complex software (no space adventures for me, sadly) is that creating lists will quickly lead you into the weeds and if the leader is in the weeds, who’s looking for signs of a forest fire or how to handle success?
After all those MSProject-building years, here’s how I now manage projects – with this simple intention:
The project succeeds and everything that needs to get out of the way for that to happen – does.
As a leader (no longer a project manager) I set this as MY goal. Other people can keep the detail lists if they need to; my job is to make sure we get across the goal line.
We run our meetings according to this intention. Many go something like this:
“First item, what’s mostly likely to interrupt our dog’s inevitable success this week at catching the bus?”
“George forgot to open the gate.”
“Ah, George. Someone go wake him up. What else is in the way?”
And so on until all the things threatening our success simply work themselves loose and we can focus on where to get driving lessons for the poor dog who’s about to face a major challenge.
Letting Go Of the Details
I know a lot of folks are uncomfortable releasing the details – as am I when the details seem overwhelming. I still jot lists, but my goal is to toss that piece of paper out as quickly as I can after accomplishing it. I don’t use them to lead. Here’s two reasons I let them go:
- People don’t want leaders who are too good at the weeds. I could go on forever on this subject, but since Google did exhaustive research on the subject as they data mined “How To Build A Better Manager”, you can read all about it in the NY Times.
- If you set your intention well, the important details will find you. One beautiful thing about being human is that – despite the frequent occurrence of forgetting where you left your keys– the brain forgets nothing that the heart wants to accomplish. And it really wants to accomplish intentions; so amazing things get remembered when you’re focused on an intention.
The 5 Ways to Set A Leadership Intention That Will Stick
You can write lists to help your brain remember later when it’s important, but don’t get caught up in the lists. Trust your brain to accomplish what your heart intends and the vast majority of the time, it will.
Ok. So I promised you a list of things that will let you get rid of lists and focus on single, powerful intentions.
- Empty your mind. Write the stupid list so your brain stops shoving unimportant crap at you. You can probably throw it away once you’ve written it. If your brain is clear it’s done it’s job.
- Take a moment to imagine what success feels like when your project, company, meeting, __________ is crazy successful. What’s your emotional state? How do you celebrate? What is no longer keeping you up at night and which project gremlins are finally at peace? (Hint: take a moment ahead of time to feel the peace, it will help you through the dark times.) What new problems do you face? What new opportunities? Now describe it as though it exists today – this is your intention (write it down).
- See the path between where you are now and where success lies, clear, uncluttered and open. Know that things will try to encroach on the path and try to mess it up, but know that you will see them coming and fix whatever conditions are necessary to ensure they don’t interrupt success. Know you’ll accept any adjustments they will help you make and simply keep going. If you see any already crowding too close, jot them down and deal with them immediately (throw the jotted list away asap once it’s dealt with).
- Commit to yourself to achieve your intention. Feel free to declare this to others as well. In allowing others to bear witness to your commitment, you give it power.
- Remember your intention. You wrote it down, right? Remind yourself of it often – at the beginning of every day, meeting, project review, whatever frequency makes sense. You’ll be surprised what details just come to you at the exact time you can deal with them most effectively. Don’t question it, just be glad your intention is working and get down to doing the work.
This basic intention-setting process works on anything, not just business and leadership challenges, but weekend errands lists and vacation scheduling as well.
Try it and report back. And if you do this already, share! How does intention-setting simplify your business? Allow you to lead from a less frazzled, more centered place? Has it ever worked more or less miraculously than you expected? Hoped? Planned? What’s the biggest project you ever succeeded with by setting intention?
Women Healing Our Broken Relationships with Power
Check out InPower Women – rewriting the historical narrative on women and power.
Together we’re reconnecting to our own power–today!
by Dana Theus | Jan 6, 2024 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Leadership
Back in the old days, companies did branding and people did leading. Not so today. Now-a-days if you want to get into, or stay in, leadership and other positions of influence you must have personal branding. In our overwhelmed world, brands – both personal and commercial – consolidate the information consumers, clients and hiring committees need to know about us and our products into intuitively understandable packages that are memorable and valuable (or not). To make things more confusing, because commercial branding is more important in our noisy marketplace, leaders who never needed to know anything about branding before – CFOs and VPs of Engineering for example – today must be conversant in how branding effects their careers as well as companies.
If you’re not careful in the all this brand happiness, you might accidentally start trying to brand yourself like a bar of soap or brand your company’s bar of soap like a personality. While there’s a little value in both those approaches, beware the differences or you’ll drive away two markets at once.
What do Personal Branding and Commercial Branding Have In Common?
Even in the olden times, we had “personal branding” but it was called something else; it was called “reputation.” Products and companies have reputations too, and in this truism is the common ground between our professional identities and the widgets and thingamajigs we work so hard to profit from.
Branding can be hard to grasp because it doesn’t have it’s own line item in the financials. Even though you can do market research to try to quantify its equity, it’s still hard to prove a brand’s value because you can’t scientifically test the alternative to your brand (i.e., your market value without your brand/reputation.) All very wishy-washy, but in the valuation business at least, there are multiples for brand equity and several public indices for trying to quantify it.
The wishy-washiness is unavoidable, however, because the fact is, you don’t control your brand equity, your audience does. At the end of the day, a brand isn’t what you mean it to be, it’s what those who interact with it believe, feel and experience when they deal with the branded thing (you and the soap). All you control is what that you present to them.
This is the key to all branding, tall and small. Brands are successful when they stand for something meaningful to their audience and are consistent in this meaning. They have soul, which makes them trustworthy and believable.
That’s it. That’s the secret sauce. Learn this and you and your soap will profit from a strong brand.
How is your personal branding different from your soap’s brand?
To stop at that commonality would be to make the mistake too many leaders do. Having spent over fifteen years in marketing, and branded any number of commercial products and services, I can tell you that the most frequent branding mistake executives make is to equate their logo with their brand. Soap sales go south and the CEO starts casting about for a new logo and new messaging, crying, “the market just doesn’t understand us.” She or he turns to the marketing chief and tosses some money on the table to hire a big firm to come up with a magic color splotch, a new soap box and a new web site. Sometimes this is too little, too late. Quite often, the market understands better than the leadership that the soap has lost its way. It’s lost its meaning and its soul.
And why shouldn’t it? Soap has no soul. A product’s only meaning is the meaning we give it. A company, a product, a business doesn’t have a soul. But people do. People choose what we stand for and what our businesses and products stand for as well. Aligned in what we stand for, we collectively give power to our brands, through the culture we create with our many decisions and our personal behavior. Misaligned, we throw money at color splotches and deprive the people who give meaning to the brand the chance to be associated with something powerful and bigger than themselves.
The difference between you and the soap you sell is that you choose what you stand for. The soap can only ever be the soap. You, by contrast, can and will be many things through the course of your life and your career. You can and will stand for many things. Good leaders know this, and good companies want this in their leaders. They want their leaders to stand for something more than soap.
The question is, what do you stand for and do you take that stand consciously and consistently? How does your soul lead you in leading your company? How does your most fundamental uniqueness contribute meaning to your life and your business? These are hard questions to answer even for the most self-aware (and the best leaders are self-aware!) I encourage you to contemplate this until you can take a considered stand for yourself and for your soap. I invite you to take the personal leadership journey into your most authentic self, and emerge with the clarity that allows you to craft your personal brand so that it becomes the power behind your success, no matter how many brands of soap you stand for over the course of your career.
This article originally appeared in Smartblogs on Leadership.
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
Personal Brand Coaching
Free Webinar
How do you attract opportunities to you before you have to go looking for them? The solution is simple–
find meaning in your work, target your next opportunity with intention and
share your “true you” personal brand story with everyone you meet!
We’ll show you how.
by Guest Author | Jan 4, 2024 | Career Development, InPower Women Blog, Leadership
Many times the voice in our head holds us back. So it is quite often the voice in our head that needs to give us permission to move forward. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or not, Elizabeth’s advice will give you permission to do this more often! – InPower Editors
Don’t stand in the way of your own success. Give yourself permission to succeed in exactly the ways you want. – Click to Tweet
What if the only thing holding you back from experiencing the life and building the business of your dreams is yourself?
In general, women tend to struggle with more of a “confidence gap“ than men. Learning to have an ownership mindset and understanding how to communicate in an effective, factual way can help you feel confident and empowered at work. But when you own your own business, the only person to manage up to is yourself. Sometimes that can pose the most difficult challenge because you can only advance to a level that your mind perceives is possible. Once you expand your view of what you perceive as possible, you need to give yourself permission to believe that these possibilities exist for you.
As a woman business owner for over eight years, I’ve seen for myself and others that we need to give ourselves permission in these three key areas to move forward.
Permission to Be You
Being a woman in business puts you in a delicate situation. In my experience, you need to work very hard to give yourself permission to act and build your business in manner that’s congruent with who you are as a person. Don’t typecast yourself. I have an enormous amount of respect for many women business owners who focus on only serving women, who share their personal lives extensively — baby photos and all — and talk about things like channeling your inner goddess. But frankly, that’s just not me. My business serves both men and women. I keep my private relationships private. And I don’t focus on “feminine energy.”
On the other hand, I’m far from the stereotypical hard-driving, high-growth, VC-funded tech entrepreneur who lives by analytics and sleeps in the office. I own a primarily service-based business, focus on a sustainable lifestyle and believe that emotions — both my own and those of my audience — play a critical role in how effective my business is.
Give yourself permission not to fit a mold of what a “female entrepreneur” should or shouldn’t be, and allow your brand to grow accordingly. Unapologetically be yourself, and you will have the greatest capacity to thrive as an entrepreneur.
Permission to Pivot
Just because a direction was right for you or your business in the past doesn’t mean that you need to keep doing the same thing now. It’s natural to evolve and change over time and for your business to do so based on changing market demands, personal growth and emerging opportunities.
If you don’t like your business’s direction, shift it. You’re the boss. You don’t need to wait for someone to give you permission to serve a new market, develop a new product or service or reinvent your company entirely.
I lean into the risk when I’m considering a new direction. While in this phase, I continue to work with my existing clients but shift my business development focus to acquiring clients for the new potential product or service. If I can and I like how the process develops, I build up that new part of my business and either keep the other parts at a maintenance level or let them naturally drop off. By taking this approach, I can explore new areas of growth without a huge financial risk if an endeavor doesn’t end up as I expected.
Give yourself permission to explore the viability of your ideas. Remain open to pursuing them if you receive great results. Let them go if you don’t.
Permission to Be Happy
As an entrepreneur, if you’re not happy, something is wrong. You have the primary responsibility to redirect the course of your business. Sometimes that looks like making space in your schedule for essential wellness activities such as sleep, exercise and relaxation. Other times, it looks like a complete overhaul of the way that your business operates.
Just because you built something, someone wants you to do something, or you can make money doing something, doesn’t mean that you can or should move forward. Every business goes through some stressful seasons. But if you begin to dread or resent your company on a regular basis, it’s time to figure out what needs to change and shift. Also if you really, really love what you’ve created and it’s working, you don’t need to change what you’re doing just because others perceive something else as “successful.” For example, I love living in the Midwest. Although I appreciate my network on the coasts, I don’t have a desire to move to these epicenters because that would have a negative impact on my health and happiness.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you want to build a high-growth, fast-track business in Silicon Valley, go for it! Just because you’ll find a larger number of men at the table doesn’t mean that you’re in the wrong place. You should do what allows you to fulfill your potential. Find the people, places and business opportunities that not only produce a dopamine rush of initial excitement but also end up leaving you satisfied and fulfilled at the end of the day.
Consider this permission granted to be YOU; with a business as big or small, as local or as international, as focused or as diverse as you want. No one but you can define the scope of what’s possible and no one but you can dare to believe that you can make it there.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.
Originally posted on The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC)
About author: Elizabeth Grace Saunders is the founder and CEO of Real Life E®, a time coaching and training company, and the author of “The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: How to Achieve More Success With Less Stress.”
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
Personal Brand Coaching
Free Webinar
How do you attract opportunities to you before you have to go looking for them? The solution is simple–
find meaning in your work, target your next opportunity with intention and
share your “true you” personal brand story with everyone you meet!
We’ll show you how.
by Andria | Jan 2, 2024 | Coaching Advice, Personal Mastery
I’m a list maker. There’s something very gratifying for me to be able to cross things off my “list”. They’re done. Finished. It feels good and satisfying. I’m sure those of you who are list-makers can relate. But what about the task list that never ends? The one that just keeps getting bigger and becomes overwhelming? Do you have one of those? Tackling the never ending to do list can be quite a feat – even for someone like me who gets so much satisfaction from “getting things done”.
How do you successfully get through that never-ending task list? Is it even possible?
Many of my clients are high achieving, high performing women who have not one but many never-ending ‘to-do’ lists. Sometimes these lists can become overwhelming, to the point where they are avoided, and then become an even bigger source of stress for my clients. What I typically hear them say is “If I can just get through this pile of things to do, then I’d feel better” or “If I can just plow through this list, then my mind would rest and I’d feel at peace”, or “When this to-do list is complete, I’ll take a day off”. What they often discover is that approaching the list from that perspective usually doesn’t work because the to-do list never ends. We know this is true. Busyness never ends. There will always be “things to do” on top of the things we already have to do. Waiting for the to-do list to be complete to feel better or feel at peace or take the day off turns into a never-ending waiting game. What my clients also discover is that dealing with your to-do list or feelings of overwhelm or excessive busyness from the opposite approach is what helps tackle the tasks on the list successfully – even those that seem to never end.
What the opposite approach means is to first, stop and take a breath
Allow yourself space to rest and feel at peace before tackling the list. Take the day off first and then work on the big pile of things on your desk. When you feel overwhelmed to the point of avoiding what you have to “do”, it’s a big sign that you need a break. But those signs are typically ignored – we think we need to push ourselves and plow through the list and THEN we’ll feel at ease. When you push through from the place of overwhelm and exhaustion, you don’t get much done. Why? Because you’re tired. You need a break. You need to allow yourself the space to recharge and restore yourself. Doing this not only makes the task list look less ominous but also helps you actually be productive when you’re working on it.
Giving yourself the time to be at peace, to take a break and feel rested allows you to have more energy and be a 100 times more productive than if you just “plowed through”. I know the tendency is to plow through the never-ending to-dos. It’s my tendency too but it almost never works. I encourage you to do the opposite. The next time you feel overwhelmed by your task list and find yourself saying things like “I’ll schedule the day off when I finish this project” or “Once I get though all this I’ll feel better”, do the opposite. Step away from the list. Take the day off. Go for a 20-minute walk outside and breathe in the fresh air. Recharge yourself, bring yourself peace, and then tackle the to-do list. Just try it and see what happens.
Worklife Reset for an Energized, Authentic Personal Brand
Workbook & Toolkit
Feeling like you need to hit the reset button on your job, career or business?
This uplifting 8-step process will help you find meaning, motivation and momentum in your career and work
by Andria | Dec 30, 2023 | Career Development, People Skills
One of the first leadership and management lessons most of us learn is how to delegate – and battle that old “control” instinct. Why is it first? Because leaders don’t scale unless they delegate well and you have to scale if you’re going to have a big impact. Andria has some great advice for managing the control demons in today’s post. – InPower Editors
One of the great opportunities of leadership is the delegation of tasks to others, which not only frees up your time to be more strategic but also develops those employees to whom you’ve delegated. Although it is a great opportunity for all leaders, I think it can be especially challenging for women. Truth be told, we like to be in control… Both in and outside of our leadership roles, we like to get things done and done our way. However, as we grow in leadership positions and take on more and more responsibility, we must let go of this control and learn how to delegate, not only for our success but also for the growth and success of those who work for us.
One of the great opportunities of leadership is the delegation of tasks to others, which not only frees up your time to be more strategic but also develops those employees to whom you’ve delegated.
Delegating means letting go of a fair amount of, if not all of, the control associated with the way tasks are completed. I find this to be a struggle for many of the leaders I coach as well as for me! As the owner of my business, I find that letting go of tasks and delegating to others can be quite a challenge at times. What if they don’t do it right? What if they don’t get it done on time? What if they upset the clients? If I let them, these “what if’s” can go on forever. I have tortured myself through many of them.
Three key ways to ease these concerns about delegating
These not only work well for me but for many other leaders too.
- You want a high degree of confidence in the people you delegate to; therefore, be diligent in the selection of those who work for and with you.
- You want a consistent number of updates and status checks can help ease some concern about delegated tasks. Personally, I need more updates and status checks early in the relationship. Once I get to know the individuals and their work ethic, and our relationship develops, the amount of check-ins decrease. You may find you always want the same amount of status updates regardless of how mature the relationship is; the key is to implement what works for you to increase your comfort level with delegating.
- It helps to alter “what if” comments from negative to positive. So, instead of thinking, “what if they don’t do it right?” think, “what if they do it better than I ever could?” Or, “what if this works out better than I thought?” That mindset shift helps you expect the best as opposed to expecting things to go wrong. Does this mean things never go wrong? Of course not, but it sets up an environment that is more expectant of success than if you kept thinking of all the possible ways things could go wrong.
The main idea is to focus on ways you can be comfortable delegating to those on your team. Develop the necessary relationships with team members so your degree of comfort is constantly increasing; therefore enabling the amount of delegation and “letting go of control” to increase. And, while you are relinquishing your control to others, you’re also shifting you mindset to look for and anticipate the best results.
Although this is not always easy for leaders, learning how to delegate and let go of control is necessary and highly beneficial for all. It not only enables you, as a leader, to focus on more strategic issues but it motivates the workforce to take on more responsibility and fosters more employee development.
What else do you do (or could you do) to foster more delegation on your team?
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
Guide to Women in Leadership
Organizations with women in their executive suites regularly out-perform others. Yet rising female executives (and their mentors) are frustrated at how hard it is to break through the glass ceiling. In this extensive guide, Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel into higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
by Paula | Dec 29, 2023 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, People Skills
Burnout is a work-related process of chronic stress and disengagement and has been called the occupational hazard of the 21st century. The formula for job burnout is simple: too many job demands, too few job resources, and not enough recovery or time to re-charge your batteries. Burnout impacts just about every type of industry and has been shown to effect quality of care and customer service, job satisfaction, attrition and turnover, and in healthcare, patient satisfaction.
Good leadership, whether in the form of an inspiring manager, getting regular feedback, or simply knowing that your leader has your back, can help prevent burnout. According to a new study, we now know that the opposite is also true. Bad leaders aren’t just toxic to an organization — they drive burnout and decrease job satisfaction.
As part of a regular survey process Mayo Clinic uses to foster a cohesive organization, 2,813 physicians and scientists provided a detailed evaluation of the leadership qualities of their direct supervisor. The respondents were asked to numerically rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the following statements about their immediate supervisor:
** Holds career development conversations with me
** Inspires me to do my best
** Empowers me to do my job
** Is interested in my opinion
** Encourages employees to suggest ideas for improvement
** Treats me with respect and dignity
** Provides helpful feedback and coaching on my performance
** Recognizes me for a job well done
** Keeps me informed about changes taking place at Mayo Clinic
** Encourages me to develop my talents and skills
** I would recommend working for (name of immediate supervisor)
** Overall, how satisfied are you with (name of immediate supervisor)
What the study found was that for each 1-point increase in composite leadership score, there was a commensurate 3.3% decrease in likelihood of burnout and a 9.0% increase in the likelihood of job satisfaction. Think about how that translates into bottom line dollars — less attrition and turnover, higher patient/client satisfaction scores, and a reduced instance of errors.
I personally think that companies across industries should implement the same type of survey system so that managers can be held accountable and get the coaching they need to change bad practices.
It always surprises me how long an organization will tolerate a bad manager, because based on this list, being a good manager shouldn’t be that hard. Bad managers drive burnout and dissatisfaction which not only impacts the bottom line, but also the engagement and well-being levels of the people the organization relies on to grow the business.
Leaders need to be educated about the impact burnout has in an organization. With the right training and coaching, ineffective managers can build the five dimensions of effective leadership cited in the study: inform, engage, inspire, develop, and recognize.
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
Worklife Reset for an Energized, Authentic Personal Brand
Workbook & Toolkit
Feeling like you need to hit the reset button on your job, career or business?
This uplifting 8-step process will help you find meaning, motivation and momentum in your career and work
by Dana Theus | Dec 28, 2023 | Change Management, Diversity, Emotional Intelligence at Work
As I’ve begun to explore the interpersonal dynamics of workplace discrimination more closely, I have gone back to update my own understanding of workforce diversity data and what it tells us about the the demographic makeup of the modern workforce. I have been disappointed to find that the racial and gender statistics of leadership don’t look much better than they did 10 years ago, when I first began this work. However, it’s interesting to me that even though the numbers haven’t changed significantly, the discussion about diversity in the workforce has evolved pretty significantly.
Perhaps the discussion has shifted because we have invented new ways to measure bias, or because we are discovering more granular ways to define distinctions between groups, or because more people are unwilling to tolerate, and keep open secrets about, discrimination.
It’s probably all of these factors put together. As a result, the definition of diversity has expanded so that today there are almost as many forms of diversity as there are people, when you include the many combinations of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual preference, religion, age and thinking/personality style that any one person can embody.
Now that everyone (including the formerly thought-to-be majority classes) can be segmented into a distinct minority group capable of being biased against, then “workforce diversity” has evolved beyond being a workplace issue, affecting a few distinct groups, and has truly become a social justice and human rights issue that impacts everyone.
Changes in the definitions and discussions around workforce diversity
We see any problem through the lens we look through, which is why the skin color and gender expression our eyes show us when we look at each other became the original framework for the homogeny vs. diversity issue in society and in the workplace. Racial and gender demographics have historically formed the bedrock of our workforce diversity discussions, and the policies that they produced have tended to address these same demographics, i.e., how many people of color and women do we have in leadership and in our employee base? (more…)
by Dana Theus | Dec 26, 2023 | Career Development, Coaching Advice, Dear Dana (Workplace Advice)
Welcome to “Dear Dana”, our regular 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’s topic is career planning! – Dana Theus
Dear Dana: You wrote a post about how white collar workers are losing jobs to AI-enhanced software. I’ve heard alot about factory jobs going away to robots but not jobs on Wall Street. I’m a systems tester for a small custom software firm but I wear a lot of hats, including documentation and web programming. Since I read your post I’ve started reading more about how testing is being automated with higher-end systems. My boss seems totally oblivious. I showed him a couple of articles and he shrugged and said he’s seen it before and I should just keep my head down and do my job (in so many words.) I’ve been thinking of leaving this company anyway and now I definitely don’t feel like they are going to be at the leading edge of the changes happening in my industry. There aren’t a lot of tech jobs in my area though and I don’t really want to move. Got any advice? — Stuck (way) outside of Sacramento
Dear Stuck,
Thanks for writing in with your inquiry. I don’t think you’re alone in sensing big changes coming that might overwhelm your company, and you with it. I’ve watched this space for a while and I’m truly amazed at the speed at which tech changes are starting to ripple through all industry sectors, including tech itself!
It sounds to me like you have three distinct issues you’re grappling with:
- Deciding to stay with your current employer
- Deciding to focus on systems testing or stay a generalist in IT/software development
- Deciding to optimize for your geography or your career
Let me address each of these issues individually, as I think they raise different questions worth considering.
1. Should you stay with your current employer?
Traditionally, employees assume their employers know what they’re doing and will be around for a while. We tend to focus a lot on how we’re treated to decide whether we want to leave or not. And we should pay attention to whether our employer values us! But this isn’t the only reason to stay or leave a company.
Disruption (digital and otherwise) is not only becoming common, it seems to be speeding up. The time frames between major economic disruptions is collapsing. Think of the time spans businesses have had in which to adjust between the following revolutions: agricultural, industrial, internet, mobile, genetic, artificial intelligence. The last four on that list have occurred in fewer than two decades, in my children’s lifetime.
Though the era we’re in always seems most volatile, businesses in every market regularly go bust and are always affected by economic and global trends. Even if a company doesn’t go out of business, every organization is subject to dramatic change without much warning to the employees and even a lot of the managers. Many employees find this hard to believe, but company owners and boards tend to hold these kinds of difficult decisions very close, in part to keep anxiety at a minimum until they can decide what to do, until it’s too late for employees to prepare and the resultant decisions too-often blindside us.
I once worked as a Vice President for a startup that got a ton of funding. Then one day the executives were called into the conference room by our CEO and told that our funding was in the form of stock options, which had just tanked, thanks to the 9/11 bombings and we had to let 40% of our workforce go in the next nine days. To say that we were shocked would be an understatement, and it was the beginning of a very dark time for the company, which stayed afloat, but only by trimming even more in the ensuing years and changing its business model completely (I was long gone). I have a client now that’s at the top of its industry and really forward thinking. They just merged with another industry leader in their space and had a big lay off. They’re now starting to hire again as they see how the organizations are merging. I even have a client who was blindsided by a layoff from a government job she thought was for life.
You should always be preparing yourself for the job you want to have 2-3 years from now.
In other words, you just never know how secure your employment is and you can’t assume your company will take care of you in a volatile market. It’s best to always be prepared for your next move to some extent. Given that the average job tenure is under five years anyway, this means that you should always be preparing for the job you expect to have 2-3 years from now.
My advice to you is to start reading up on the industry your company operates in to stay aware of trends. How will digital disruption affect your company or your customers? Is the industry growing or shrinking? How conversant in these trends are your managers? The owner? Do they seem to have plans to address them? If you seem more on top of things than your managers, that’s a bad sign. You can also ask more about the company’s financial health. Is it growing consistently? Are the contracts long-term? Are salaries regularly increasing? Are they making investments that will grow the company? If the answers to these questions are all “yes” then that’s a good sign, but if they’re all “no,” dig deeper.
The final line of questioning to pursue with respect to your employer is whether you can see yourself being happy in a job there for the next few years. Even if you don’t feel like you have to start a job search right now, it’s a good idea to explore your own work-life vision and regularly engage in career planning so you know what you need your job to be adding to your life in the years ahead. Every job comes with some headaches, but as soon as it fails to give you the things most important to you — experience, fun, good co-workers, interesting problems to solve, financial security, feelings of accomplishment — it’s time to consider your next move. This is a very personal decision, and too many of us wait until something goes horribly wrong to plan our next steps. Don’t wait! Learn to read the signs that it’s time to go early so you can make a smooth transition on your own terms. Your boss’ disinterest in AI might be one of those early signs. Dig deeper and see if you can find more — or not!
2. Should you specialize?
You say you wear a lot of hats, and in small companies this is pretty typical, and not necessarily a bad thing. I have had many generalist jobs that I enjoyed because no two days were ever the same. However, it’s pretty tough to turn a generalist job into a long-term career strategy if your goals include increasing income or higher levels of leadership. For these things, it’s a good idea to spend a chunk of your career specializing in an area that you enjoy and has the potential to grow in importance in the job market. Once you excel in such a specialty and begin to rise to higher levels of leadership you can begin to generalize more in a management and leadership capacity. You didn’t mention your age, but this can be a factor for many people, too. It’s common to be a generalist in your 20’s and again in your mid 40’s and onwards, but many people find that their 30’s is a great time to get to know a particular field very well.
Career misery is harder to climb out of than career boredom.
While it’s good to research which job categories have the most growth and opportunity in the future, I wouldn’t stop there. Too many people choose a job category because it looks good on paper, but if it doesn’t feel good to you, don’t do it. If you’re going to specialize, you need to enjoy it or you’ll burn out and hit career crisis that can threaten other things in your life. Making a career change is very possible – and becoming more common – but it’s not easy especially if you’re miserable when you do it. Misery is harder to climb out of than boredom. The bottom line is that working is hard work so you want to do something that keeps you engaged and interested. Of the hats you wear, which one interests you the most long-term when you think about specializing in it?
As for your area of systems and software testing, I would think that career field will continue to be mission-critical for a lot of tech firms, but as with many job categories, the work itself may change. As automation and artificial-intelligence become more prominent aspects of technology platforms many programmers and systems developers will have to migrate just as the factory workers did to become “bot technicians” and team leaders who can manage teams made up of both humans and technology systems. It’s pointless to try to out-tech the machines so those who survive and thrive will become experts at changing and adapting to an increasingly automated workplace.
Should #leaders manage differently when they have bots on their team? <– Click To Tweet
When a bot can produce a team’s dashboard and highlight areas for focus before the team meeting more effectively than any of the team’s humans, the bot will effectively become a team member. More and more, managers and leaders in every industry and job category will need to manage teams made up of humans and machines and guide them through rapid change. The ones who are proficient in change leadership and human dynamics will excel because they keep the humans focused and efficient alongside machines that don’t get distracted by office politics and interpersonal conflict. So even as you brush up on your tech skills to learn to play with bots, don’t forget to invest in your soft skills too!
3. Should you optimize for your geography or your career?
You mention that you don’t want to move but find your area isn’t a tech hotbed. I don’t really have any specific advice for you here except to recommend you research jobs nearby, far away and in cyberspace (virtual) equally so you have a good understanding of your options. It’s always an eye-opener to discover options you didn’t realize existed (nearby or elsewhere) and it’s much easier to make a hard decision when you’re looking at information instead of when you’re relying on untested assumptions. I also recommend doing this research comprehensively, meaning that you should research your interests and options along many dimensions, geography being only one. There’s also your career interests, work-life-family needs, lifestyle and financial requirements, your personal strengths and growth desires and what companies in different industries and geographies have to offer you.
Be sure to include close family members in the discussion appropriately. I had one client who was surprised to find that his wife actually wanted to relocate when he’s been assuming she didn’t. The conversation about his job opportunities opened up a whole new line of discussion for their marriage and prompted her to consider a career change, too. Of course, you need to balance your needs against the needs of others, and that’s a very personal decision but it’s much easier if you’ve discussed the issues with those others first.
If you’re considering quitting a full time job to work virtually on contract, be sure to research the pros and cons of this. When you go contract, you’re taking on a different kind of risk, and different costs, than when you’re employed and you need to plan appropriately. I recommend that you moonlight a bit in the gig world before you quit to go full time.
Worklife Reset for an Energized, Authentic Personal Brand
Workbook & Toolkit
Feeling like you need to hit the reset button on your job, career or business?
This uplifting 8-step process will help you find meaning, motivation and momentum in your career and work
by Jennifer Miller | Dec 23, 2023 | Emotional Intelligence at Work, Employee Engagement, Innovation
As a business leader, you want to stay on top of the latest trends in employee development and retention. The rapidly evolving human capital management (“HCM”) field is full of innovation and change, and there are some great ideas out there you can adapt to your own team’s development. But since it can be time-consuming to wade through the many blog posts, trade journals and YouTube videos dedicated to the topic, much less attend a conference, I’m going to make it easy for you.
In my role as a freelance writer covering all matters of people in the workplace, I have access to the foremost thinkers on the topic of HCM. These are the researchers, consultants, and analysts that work alongside leaders like you to learn how to bring out the best in people and create engaging, thriving workplace environments.
Here’s a round-up of recent trends in the HCM space, according my latest interviews with noted experts in the field.
Harness technology to create a more human workplace
Counter-intuitive as it may seem, technology can play a role in bringing humanity back to the workplace. Workplace futurist Jeanne Meister studies emerging trends that affect the modern office. Meister, who is the founder of the HR Advisory firm Future Workplace reports that we need to think of technology as augmenting our jobs rather than replacing us. She uses the example of “artificial intelligence” (AI), which is being touted as the next emerging tech trend to impact the way we work. To help us frame the way we view AI at work, Meister advocates for a language shift. “Instead of ‘AI’, let’s call it ‘IA’—‘intelligence augmentation’,” suggests Meister. This reversal of the letters puts the “human” back into the equation because it acknowledges that people are still part of the decision-making process, even if technology plays an ever-increasing role. “Our job [as leaders] is to look at how technology is enhancing job roles and plan for what new skills and new jobs will be created because of it,” says Meister.
Make Compassion a leadership competency
I’ve seen a noted uptick in usage of the word “compassion” in my business reading. The book Awakening Compassion at Work by Monica Worline and Jane Dutton released earlier this year is a good example. According to a survey of more than 35,000 leaders conducted by consulting firm Potential Project, 91% said that compassion is very important for leadership and 80% would like to enhance their compassion, but do not know how. “Compassion is clearly a hugely ignored skill in leadership training, and that’s why we are now focusing on it as one of three core leadership qualities,” says Rasmus Hougaard, Potential Project’s Managing Director. (The other two are mindfulness and selflessness.) Some companies are even putting compassion front and center with their job titles. For example, Cory Custer of the Seattle-based wealth management firm Brighton Jones recently left his role as Director of Learning and Development to take a newly created role of Director of Compassion. “The change was part of a broader initiative to establish compassion as one of our core values and then ensure that we have someone who is dedicated on helping the organization put compassion into action,” Custer told me in an email. “What we want—and likely every business leader wants—is for our employees, our clients, and everyone we come into contact with, to be happy. We think compassion is the surest way to do that,” writes Custer.
Personalize learning and development
The workforce continues to expect interfaces at work that mirror their technology experiences at home. This expectation plays out in the learning and development field in the way that employees gain access to their learning. Gone are the days when “training” is dictated primarily by either one’s manager or the training department. Instead, employees will drive their own learning, by accessing what learning and development analyst Josh Bersin calls, learning “channels” or “playlists.” Bersin heads up Deloitte’s “Bersin by Deloitte” HCM advisory business unit. On Bersin’s personal blog, he observes that the training and development function will be a hybrid of playlists curated by employees, which will “become dynamic, user-generated programs, available alongside formally developed programs built by L&D or other professionals.” I talked earlier this summer with Bersin, and he told me that most L&D professionals are “jazzed” by these developments. “Learning professionals are highly educated and are typically very excited by the advancements in technology,” noted Bersin. The challenge, he adds, is sorting through the rapidly-changing offerings by vendors to determine what will align best with their companies’ current LMS systems.
Leverage design thinking in human systems development
Design thinking—a problem-solving methodology that focuses on creating solutions centered around the needs of a “user” or customer—is making headway in the HR and L&D worlds. Design thinking goes beyond simply thinking of “what do our employees want,” to “how can we design an overall experience that best meets employee and business needs?” From recruiting, to onboarding, to off-ramping employees, all facets of the employee life cycle are open for design tweaking. Tamra Chandler, founder of the consulting group Peoplefirm, has built design thinking into one of her company’s core offerings, which is a five-step methodology designed to help companies reboot their performance management process. Step two in the process is what Chandler calls, the “Sketch” phase, where ideas are “sketched in” before any firm decisions are made. “This is the part of the process where we get clear on the company’s design principles. We can ask ourselves, ‘Are we making the right choices to support the design we have in mind?’” This focus on the overall design of an HR system or practice provides a framework for decision-making.
DIY Team Creation
Employees expect to create their own destinies at work. This desire is starting to emerge in the way in which decisions play out in the creation of teams. Cecile Alper-Leroux is vice president of human capital management innovation for Ultimate Software. She cites research commissioned by her company that revealed two-thirds of employees want a say in creating their own work teams. There’s even a move afoot in which entire teams are kept intact and moved around the organization to capitalize on groups that work well together. “We have seen some organizations say, ‘Why not move intact teams?’ We know how important it is to trust your colleagues, so why break up the team if it’s not broken?” says Alper-Leroux. Start up firm Elevator is tapping into this trend by offering a platform for people to assemble their “dream team” online and then apply as a group to companies that have openings for projects.
As these five emerging HCM trends illustrate, new models in talent management and employee engagement have departed from traditional forms of employee development approaches. This means that there’s a new frontier in developing people—one that will require leaders to exercise their creativity and personal power. Are you ready to lead in this new world?
Women Healing Our Broken Relationships with Power
Check out InPower Women – rewriting the historical narrative on women and power.
Together we’re reconnecting to our own power–today!
by Dana Theus | Dec 21, 2023 | Emotional Intelligence at Work, Insights & Inspiration
How do you plan to lighten your soul in the new year? Do you look forward to a new year with anticipation and hope? Or is it more like dread? My clients often tell me that even if they’re excited about the challenges on the horizon in the coming year, they’re overwhelmed with what’s currently on their plate.
This kind of “accomplishments clutter” isn’t so different from the actual jumble of old stuff currently cluttering up your closet. And just like your closet, when you clean up your thoughts about all you’ve accomplished, experience gratitude for it and then let it go, your soul lightens and you immediately gain more energy for what lies ahead. When it comes to starting off the new year properly, this is the key missing element and the reason so many New Year’s resolutions come to nothing. Want to give your New Year’s hopes and dreams a little boost? Start by putting this year’s stuff to bed so you have a clean slate to start anew when the calendar flips to January.
Before you jump into planning for the upcoming year, give some thought to how the last 12 months have shaped up for you–and shaped you! Your New Year planning always goes better when you start from a clean slate, but it’s surprising how seldom we take the time to clean the slate! Yet, this is exactly the step that will lighten your soul!
Here is a very simple formula you can use to help you clean the slate for the year ahead. I started doing this about 15 years ago and now I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s a key part of my New Year’s celebrations.
FIRST: Look Back And Give Yourself Credit
Take the time to remember what went right! There’s nothing more challenging than starting from a negative all-the-stuff-that-didn’t-happen viewpoint. So start by identifying the things that went well and give yourself credit for having helped create them.
SECOND: Learn From Your Success
When things go right it’s important to try to understand why. Even when it seems like it was “just luck” there are usually patterns you can learn from. Become a student of good luck, best practices and accomplishment and you’ll find yourself achieving more in the future.
THIRD: Preserve Important Things Still To Be Done
After analyzing success, look at what’s left and pull out the things that are still important and should continue to be on your plate as you move forward. Try to choose the fewest number of things to take forward with you.
FOURTH: Lighten Your Soul and Let Go Of Stuff That No Longer Matters
This step may be the secret to cleaning your slate. Take the time to look at all the things that didn’t get accomplished, that aren’t important enough to keep on your plate moving forward and Let.Them.Go.
This process will help you anytime you need to start fresh, but it’s especially important to do at the beginning of a new year. You can do it separately for work and for life, or combine the list into the work-life blend that you live. There’s no wrong way to do it, just do it!
Are you intrigued by the idea of “clearing the decks” to help you achieve more in the upcoming year? I created a Year in Review Workbook that digs more deeply into the practice of starting the new year off with a clean slate. It’s available when your join InPower’s Coaching Community, which offers unlimited access to events, career transition guidance, leadership development lessons and online discussion boards. In the community we’ll also be exploring this theme more in the months ahead, so why don’t you join us and lighten your soul with a little boost of fresh energy!
Women Healing Our Broken Relationships with Power
Check out InPower Women – rewriting the historical narrative on women and power.
Together we’re reconnecting to our own power–today!
