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“Creating Successful Leaders”

Tag Archives: Career Coach Advice

August 14, 2013 Rethinking The Career Path: Stepping Stones, Not Ladders

So many today feel disillusioned with their jobs, and I think much of it can be attributed to thinking about the career path all wrong.

In an article on the Harvard Business Review blog, Nathaniel Koloc, CEO of ReWork, writes that “as many as 70% of working Americans were unfilled with their jobs,” according to a Gallop Poll conducted in 2013. The reason for this is a general sense of disconnection many feel between the work they do and the values they hold. What’s more, a lot of folks don’t see their career path progressing toward anything they find meaningful, and so, they settle for mediocrity as the norm.

This type of thinking can be detrimental, as it leads to boredom, apathy and the very unpleasant feeling of being helpless and stuck. It’s a cycle, too: when you feel stuck and then settle for mediocrity, you’re less motivated and inspired to take risks and chase after what you really want.

A way to rethink this is to challenge the traditional “career ladder” model of professional life. “Sure,” writes Koloc, “many people accept that the career ladder is broken, but most still attempt to increase the ‘slope’ of their career trajectory.” The idea that our careers are linear progressions is pretty deeply embedded in our society. We still assume, despite the rapidly-changing job environment, that our work will steadily move “up” in salary, stature and social impact. Then, when it doesn’t, we become discontent.

Our professional paths are much more like stepping stones laid out horizontally, not ladders. In other words, we have opportunities all around us we often don’t consider when we have the “ladder” mentality, which tells us that in order to be a good worker, we must always being looking up.

A great point Koloc makes is that our interests and passions change as we grow older, and thinking of your career path as a series of stones all around you fits much more aptly with this natural part of human growth. Are you interested in the very same things as you were ten years ago? Probably not, and even if you are, I’ll bet you’ve added a few more interests over the years. Koloc’s point, I think, is that because we change gears all the time as people, there’s no reason to cling onto the career ladder approach to jobs, because even if you get a promotion in the field you’ve been working in for years, your true passions may have shifted away from your work while you were busy on the ladder.

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July 31, 2013 Focus On Energy Management Over Time Management

It always hits me when I’m fuddling over a new computer program or playing phone tag with friends: all this technology is great, but half the time I feel more stressed, rushed and overburdened because of it. The days of Fax machines and pagers seems practically in the ancient past, right alongside the Pony Express and telegrams.

While I sometimes do feel we are too connected to our Iphones, I’m not one to bash all new technology. Most of it is amazing, exciting, and truly helpful. But you can’t deny that being plugged into the web on a constant basis definitely adds hours to your work day. Being out of the office no longer means you’re out of reach. It’s the reality of the workplace these days.

As a result, we find ourselves working longer and longer work weeks. The way we’ve been told to deal with this is to manage our time better, rearranging one’s schedule in such a way that makes ideal use of every waking minute.

But this neglects the heart of the issue: an individual’s energy levels. If longer and longer hours are a given, then at a certain point, no amount of schedule-shuffling will enable a person to stay on top of things. This leads to burnouts, stress and unhappiness that bleeds into personal lives.

Don’t focus on your time management–just assume you’ll be busy. Instead, take care of your energy levels throughout the day.

Authors Tony Swartz and Catherine McCarthy  have written a book on this, Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time

They point out that your time is finite, but your energy levels can be replenished if you attend to them closely. They offer a few ways for you to do this throughout the day:

  • Take a break every 90-120 minutes. Physically get up from your desk and get a brief change of scenery
  • Eat light meals and many snacks throughout the day, every couple hours
  • Dedicate time every day to focus on what you’re best at and what gives you a sense of fulfillment.

They also suggest that leaders pay attention to their employee’s energy needs:

“To effectively reengergize their workforces, organizations need to shift their emphasis from getting more out of people to investing more in them…”

  • Keep a room devoted for taking breaks and relaxing
  • Subsidize gym memberships
  • Encourage staff to move around every so often

And I’ll add a suggestion of my own for leaders:

  • Energy is directly related to feedback. Positive feedback energizes folks and helps them keep the momentum going. Negative feedback, if delivered well, can also motivate people to make improvements. The point is, I find that giving specific, frequent feedback is one of the best ways to help people manage their own energy levels

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July 19, 2013 The Agile Learner In The Ever-Changing World

I haven’t chosen to focus on learning agility now merely to say that being agile is a healthy and beneficial attitude to possess. While this is certainly true, I’ve decided to address this topic because there are plenty of studies that show how the global economy is here to stay, and that this new environment of constant innovation demands that leaders be willing and able to adapt.

I’ll give you some examples:

1. Global trade of goods and services will more than triple to $27 trillion by 2030, which tells us that the global economy is only increasing in scope

2. The Internet has radically impacted how we do business, beyond simply e-mailing people more frequently. According to an article from John Hopkins University Press, it “became a catalyst for new business models, strategies, and organizational structures,” which is to say, the Internet turned all business on its head and forced us to rework how we do things from the ground up.

3. The quantity of new information doubles every 2 years. This means that any worker, no matter the job, will need to be retrained as new developments (like the Internet) arrive. It also means that college freshmen will need to adapt once they graduate, as the skills they learned in school will most likely become outdated even in the few years’ time they were in school.

So, we know that when we talk about business, we are talking about something that works on a worldwide level and is constantly being reinvented to meet the requirements of new information and new technology.

It is for these reasons that being agile as a leader and learner is so vital to your success in today’s world. You cannot compete by sticking to one way of doing things anymore. Instead, you must internalize the practice of remaining agile as you encounter change.

What’s more, your performance in the past no longer carries as much weight as your potential for future growth and adaptability. Since the new normal is to be ever-changing, leaders evaluate you by how much you’re able to acutely perform under change. Learning agility, not past performance, is viewed as a key indicator of potential, because “fully 71% of high performers were not high potentials.”

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