The Bamboo Project

Do You Want to Do the Hard Work of Knowing Yourself?

This morning I ran across an excellent post by Penelope Trunk on New Ways to Find a New Job. She began with what I think is probably the most important piece of career advice I could ever give you:

When you see someone who has a career you want, it’s a safe bet that they spent the majority of their career clearly defining themselves and then differentiating themselves from all the other people who defined themselves the same way.

Self-knowledge is a huge career tool, but most people find it onerous and try to skip it. The problem with skipping over self-knowledge is that people hit a career ceiling, not because someone put it on top of them – we put it on top of ourselves by not knowing who we are.

A few points here. . . . 

First, most people see developing knowledge of themselves, their strengths, etc. as a difficult job that they'd rather avoid. Sometimes they want to avoid it because they just don't want to know the answers. But more often they see it as somehow "frivolous," less important than the tasks at hand. Knowing yourself is seen as so much navel-gazing when there's more important work to be done. 

But as Penelope points out, when you skip the self-knowledge step, you run into all of these self-imposed limits. You try to do work for which you are not well-suited, to fit your round self into that square hole. Or you are completely unaware of the beliefs you have about yourself and your capacities, so you continually undershoot and let opportunities pass you by because you're afraid to own your awesomeness.  

When I begin career counseling with people, I always start with the self-knowledge piece and find that most of the time, this is where people resist me the most. They want to start talking about what jobs interest them or what the market is looking for. They don't want to go inside and do the difficult work of figuring out what they have to offer and where their passions are. 

The other piece that is important in what Penelope says is the idea that we have to differentiate ourselves from the thousands of other people who do what we do. We are all unique snowflakes, but the problem is we don't take the time to really look at the ways in which we are unique. We keep focusing on our snowflake qualities and all other people see is that we're snow, like everyone else. 

It's only through doing the ongoing and arduous work of looking at who we REALLY are that we are able to appreciate, refine and put out into the world those qualities that make each of us different. We have to keep asking ourselves, "what is unique about how I do what I do? How can I build on that?" 

Self-knowledge is a critical component of career and professional development, but it's something that most of us shy away from doing. Then we are disappointed when we do not progress in our careers as we'd like to.  If we want to find success, we have to be willing to take a good hard look at ourselves on a regular basis. Self-knowledge is the key to finding the right work and to making ourselves uniquely suited to do that work. 

Are you ready to buckle down and know yourself? 

Changing Joyfully

Change is hard--or so we believe. But what if it isn't? What if we just make it that way because that's what we believe? 

Yesterday I was reading this post by Megan Thom who writes about how burnt out she was in her work. Until she had an epiphany that for change to happen she must make it joyful and bring to it her authentic self:

In my burnt-out, disappointed and thoughtful state, I resolved that henceforth all activism I engaged in would involve at least one of my favourite activities: growing food, cooking food, eating food, bicycling and singing. All of these activities are inherently change-making in that they all have positive effects on our ecological, social and emotional environments. All of these activities are also fun. I figured that if I focused on these fun activities I would be both an effective agent of change and also a happy person. In fact, I would argue that one cannot be the former without also being the latter.

One of the things I tell people when they are exploring their next career moves is to "follow the energy." By this I mean to stay alert to those activities and interactions that feel inspiring, engaging, joyful and fun. Identifying these moments and then intentionally bringing more of them into your work is one of the basic activities of career exploration and change. 

What I'm finding, though, is that we have a hard time with this. Somehow if it doesn't feel like "work"--that is, if it doesn't feel like a struggle and a challenge and something we have to make ourselves do--then we dismiss it.  And asking someone to purposely bring more joy and fun to what they do? Let's just say I spend a lot of time trying to talk people into believing that this isn't "frivolous" or "impossible." 

I understand this because by nature, I am not playful. I am more serious than I'd like to be and have a tendency to see the struggle, not the joy. But I'm realizing more and more that for change to happen and for work to have real meaning to me, I need to find the joy--to find how I can bring fun and play and my best self to what I do. I need to do this not only for me, but also for the people I work with. If I think that change is hard and act accordingly, then how will they be able to see it another way themselves? 

So lately I'm asking myself, what would happen if I saw change as easy and joyful? How would changing this frame change for me what is possible? How would it change the tools I use and the ways that I interact with people? How could I build joy and play and fun into what I do and how can I help others find that joy and play in themselves?

Right now these are questions for me. The answers are still hidden. But they feel like worthwhile questions to explore. While change can be hard in the sense that we are transforming habits and ingained behaviors, one thing I've learned is that I cannot beat myself up in order to transform. Real change only happens when we act from inspiration, not desperation, when we use joy and fun to motivate ourselves to move in a different direction. 

How can you change joyfully? How can you tap into what most deeply engages and interests you to transform your life and career? I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments on this. 

 

More on Getting Out of the Stuck Rut

Last week I wrote about how to diagnose and treat your career stuck. This morning I was catching up on my Google Reader and came across this article on 10 Psychnological Keys to Job Satisfaction that I think offers some additional information for our use.  

First, here are the 10 keys:

1. Little hassles
2. Perception of fair pay
3. Achievment
4. Feedback
5. Complexity and Variety
6. Control
7. Organizational Support
8. Work/Home overflow
9. Job "Honeymoons and Hangovers"
10. How easily satisfied are you?

To use them, I would suggest taking a look at your current career situation and getting a better understanding of how one or more of these factors may be playing into your job satisfaction. This can give you specific information to focus on in devising experiments to get yourself out of the stuck rut. 

For example, in looking at your situation, you may find that you're dealing with a combination of minimal variety, a sense that you aren't really achieving anything that matters and a lack of control over your work and/or your work environment. Armed with this knowledge, you can start to look for experiments you might be able to run that will help you move in a more positive direction. This is where I think that the Total Leadership model can be very helpful. 

Getting specific can also help you focus your experiments in the places likely to give you the most "bang for your buck." You can be more purposeful and intentional in your actions. This can go a long way toward getting rid of the stuck. 

Build Your Career on Three Hopeful Trends

As I dive ever deeper into the rabbit hole of what I call Positive Professional Development, I keep thinking about how to harness what's positive in our lives, rather than spending so much time with the negative. How do you increase the awesome? 

Today I was reading this blog post on hopeful trends for 2012 and it got me thinking about how to build a career on hopeful trends--what would it look like if we did that? 

A few ideas that came to mind. . . 

• Start (or Join) a Worker Co-Op--Worker co-ops are companies owned by their employees and we're seeing a rise in their numbers.  According to this article, "some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.”

• Engage in Social Enterprise--"A social enterprise is an organization or venture that achieves its primary social or environmental mission using business methods. The social needs addressed by social enterprises and the business models they use are as diverse as human ingenuity. Social enterprises build a more just, sustainable world by applying market-based strategies to today's social problems."

• Think Local/Sustainable--This PBS documentary popped up in my Netflix recommendations the other night and it's a fantastic description of the kind of economy we could be building that focuses on creating vibrant local/sustainable communities. It transforms your sense of what's possible and how work coud fit into that. (As a side note, it also has great info on time-banking, which is a way for us to share our talents in a sort of barter arrangement. I love time-banking values, too. )

I know there must be more, but these are the three that come to mind for me.  

What other hopeful trends can we look to for building our careers? 

Diagnosing and Treating "Stuck"

Last night I did an Image Center session with a friend who is going through my Getting Unstuck course. I had her do two images--one that shows where she is now and one that shows where she'd like to be. 

Here's the image for where she is now:

And here's the image for where she wants to be:

It wasn't hard to figure out why she feels stuck. She has too much going on! That first image is just an explosion, radiating out from the explosion of fireworks in the middle. She's being pulled in 50 different directions and has a hard time putting focus into just a few of the most important places. 

Working with my friend reminded me that being stuck comes in two different varieties and that it can be helpful to know which is your personal brand of "stuckness." 

Diagnosing Your "Stuck"

In my experience, there are two distinct types of "stuck"--the stuckness of the over-thinker and the stuckness of the over-doer. 

Are You An Over-Thinker?

The first type of stuck is the muddy slog of inertia that is the domain of the over-thinker. Often (but not always) these are the introverts who are naturally drawn to thinking before acting.

When these people are stuck, it's because they are so busy worrying about making the "right" move, they make no moves at all. They are the perfectionists and the worriers, the people who need to do just one more piece of research or talk to just one more person before they feel comfortable making their next move. But somehow they never actually move. They are stuck in the reflection part of the Act/Reflect cycle. 

Or Are You an Over-Doer? 

The other version of "stuck" is where my friend is at. It's the obsessive do-er's type of stuck. These are often the more extroverted types who thrive on activity and being in the outer world. 

In this brand of stuckness, I find people who are constantly moving, taking no time to reflect on what they are doing or why. Action is what counts and they have a hard time creating the space for reflection so that their actions are more intentional and in alignment with what they want. These people are stuck in the action part of Act/Reflect. 

When you're stuck, it's helpful to try to figure out which camp you fall into because treating your stuckness will depend on whether you're an over-thinker or  an over-doer. Your stuckness is really an imbalance in the Act/Reflect cycle. 

Treating Your "Stuck"

 While both over-thinkers and over-doers can benefit from doing some de-cluttering, moving out of stuck is essentially a different process for each type. The over-thinkers need more action and the over-doers need more reflection. 

Over-Thinkers

If you're an over-thinker, then the way to get out of "stuck" is by bringing more action into your life. Over-thinkers need to make a commitment to just doing things, rather than thinking about doing something. And that action cannot be doing one more bit of research or asking one more person what you should do. It has to be action that is in alignment with your vision of where you want to go and that is designed to actually move you in that direction. You need to experiment with different identities and trust the mess that comes with action. You have to let go of the need to do things perfectly and just embrace doing anything at all. 

Over-Doers

Over-doers have a different task. You need to create space for yourself for more reflection so you can be more intentional about what you are doing and why you are doing it. You may need to start saying "no" more often and streamlining your life to make room for more thinking. Try incorporating some reflection rituals  to create a reflection habit. Your task is to put some real intention and focus behind your actions, rather than being caught in an endless loop of mindless activity that doesn't really go anywhere. Embrace your power to do, but put some mindfulness behind it. 

 

Being "stuck" is really about imbalance--choosing either reflection or action at the expense of the other part of the cycle. To get unstuck,  you have to restore balance to the cycle of Act/Reflect. Knowing your own tendencies towards one or the other can help you quickly figure out how to get moving when you find yourself stuck in one place.  

The next time you feel stuck, consider whether your stuckness is a result of over-thinking or over-doing and then look at what you can do to restore the balance. 

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If you need help getting unstuck, you might want to try one of my Career Clarity Image Center session packages. We can explore what's keeping you stuck, where you want to go and how you can get there. 

 

Be a Career Inspiration, Not a Cautionary Tale

Throughout my working life, I've encountered people who made me think, "Kill me if I ever start acting and thinking that way." Generally these are people who are bitter and angry about their work, or who are so disengaged as to be practically dead. While I most notice those people who are aggressive about their career unhappiness, there are plenty of other people who simply disappear, I guess hoping to escape notice as their souls slowly shrivel up. 

At times, I've felt myself start to go down that road of deep unhappiness and pessimism. I see mostly problems, not possibilities and I focus on the suck, not the awesome. When my snark quotient goes way up and I find myself complaining constantly, I know that an attitude change is in order. 

As I continue on my journey to be more mindful and to engage in positive professional development, I find myself wanting to be more of a career inspiration, rather than a cautionary tale. I don't want people to walk away from interactions with me and think, "Please don't let me turn out that way. . . " 

In that vein, these 18 Ways to Inspire Everyone Around You gave me some good food for thought. Some of my favorites:

• Be authentic and true to yourself.
• Express your enthusiasm.
• Care about people. 
• Make people feel good about themselves. 
• Articulate what everyone else is thinking. 
• Share lessons from your successes and failures.
• Help people heal--instead of judging people by their past, stand by them and help repair their future. 

These aren't always easy for me to do, but I'm committed to the idea of being the inspiration I want to see in the world. 

How do you inspire others? What has inspired you? 

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Are you looking for a way to get support and more accountability in achieving your career goals? I'm running a bi-weekly Virtual Career Clarity Circle starting on February 27 that may be just what you need. Details and sign-up information are here. 

Try for Direction, Not Destination

“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”

                          -Buddhist Proverb

Conventional career wisdom advises that we should spend time knowing exactly where want to go and then take steps to get there. This wisdom assumes that there is some clear destination (a job) with a clear path of preparation that will take us to that destination. Our goal, then, is to figure out which destination feels best to us and then to follow the path toward that destination.

This wisdom is outdated though. It doesn't work for the majority of people and it doesn't work for the world we now live in. 

When jobs were fixed quantities and career paths were clearly defined, then figuring out what you wanted to be when you grew up and preparing for that job made sense. But we now live in a world where careers are increasingly fluid and jobs are becoming more amorphous, as much about "other duties as assigned" as the other tasks that appear in a job description.

Work is moving fast and we can't anticipate where the next opportunities will be. The paths are becoming less and less clear and the destinations can vanish almost as soon as we arrive at them. I know tons of people who prepared for specific jobs, only to find that then they were finished with their preparation, the jobs were gone. It's like preparing for a trip, traveling to your dream city and then finding that you're blocked at the entrance and can't get in. Or that the city has vanished altogether. 

I've also found that focusing too rigidily on a particular career destination--a specific job--can be paralyzing for many people. They become fixated on picking the "right" path and doing all the "right" things to follow that path. They take endless career assessments and beat themselves up over their inability to decide where they want to go. They become less able to imagine other possibilities because their minds go round and round on the same well-worn grooves of what they might do.

The problem is, they have made themselves so fearful of making the "wrong" move, they don't move at all! They remain frozen in place, trying ot make up their minds about where they should go. But real career growth only occurs when we start taking steps towards what we want. We need the experiences to tell us what does and doesn't work for us. Each of these experiences helps us make micro-adjustments in the path we are on. We move or we stand still. Those are our two choices. 

Direction-Based Career Planning

We need a new notion of career planning, one that focuses on direction more than destination. "Direction-based career planning" means: 

• We know our gifts and the skills we want to use and we work on developing those skills. We build on our strengths, not necessarily with any particular job in mind. Developing ourselves in the direction of what we love and what we're good at is the essence of "direction-based planning." 

• We are alert to opportunities where we can use our skills in different contexts. We are creative and flexible and open. We create our own jobs. 

• We do not wait for a destination to reveal itself to us before we move forward. This is a sure road to paralysis. Instead, we take daily steps in the direction we want to go. We give ourselves what we want more of, knowing that this is moving us toward the work that we want to do, even when the destination itself is unclear. 

• We "fail forward," being willing to experiment and try things out, recognizing that it's the experiences themselves and what we learn from them that will propel us forward. Even if things don't work out in that particular moment, it's OK because it's all taking us in the general direction we want to go. 

 Although I think destination can be a good thing for some jobs and some people, I think that for many of us, direction is the best way for us to move forward. We need to let go of having a fixed destination before we can start the journey. We need to just figure out the basic direction we want to go in and start walking. . . 

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Feeling stuck? I'm running another 7-Day Getting Unstuck session starting February 27. Details and sign-up information are here.

 

Are You Living Your Own Dream or Helping Someone Else Live Theirs?

I was emailing with a graduate of my Getting Unstuck course about her ongoing progress since the class ended and we were discussing the issue of living our dreams. What came up is the tension between staying on our own path of exploration and discovery and getting involved in helping others realize their dreams. This is a tension I see all the time, especially with people who are "helper" types, constantly on the look-out for ways to nurture and support the people around them.

This is what happens. As we work to implement our vision for our careers, we inevitably meet and connect with people who are working on their own career dreams. Sometimes in those connections, we will find people whose dreams intersect with our own; they are pursuing a path that is similar to ours or they need our help to create their dreams. 

For people who like to support and help others, this is often a difficult moment. They see someone who could use their help and they are drawn to "fix" things or to own more of the other person's career dream than is healthy or necessary. They begin focusing on ways to help their fellow traveler and they lose focus on what they want to explore and make happen in their own lives. 

If helping another person realize their career dreams also makes your dreams come true, then by all means, go for it. You have found a situation where you can help each other travel on the same path. 

Often this is not the case though. Helping someone on their path is merely a distraction from us following our own. Sometimes it is even a convenient excuse for not creating our career vision--we are so busy being helping and nurturing other people, how could we possibly have time for our own dreams? 

One thing I think we need to examine as part of ongoing professional development is the extent to which we may be expending energy and creativity on behalf of other people in our lives. How much of how we are living our lives is in support of someone else's goals, rather than a healthy expression of our own? This includes putting all of our energy into the goals of the company or organization where we work, rather than into our own development. 

This is not to say that we should be selfish, looking out only for ourselves. But we need to seek balance, making sure that we are not sacrificing what we want in order to support everyone else. 

The next time you're feeling stuck or unhappy in your career, take a look at how you may be supporting other people's dreams at the expense of your own. Try to find a way to get more balance and to take back your own vision. It can work wonders, I've found.  

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Are you looking for a way to get support and more accountability in achieving your career goals? I'm running a bi-weekly Virtual Career Clarity Circle starting on February 27 that may be just what you need. Details and sign-up information are here. 

The Power of Positive Peers

Although we don't discuss it much, one of the most powerful influences on our personal and professional development is our peer groups. The people with whom we engage in regular conversations and interactions shape the questions that we ask, the problems that we see, how we approach our work and our sense of identity as professionals.

One thing I've been paying more attention to in the past year is the quality of my peer circles and the impact that my professional colleagues have on me. I started noticing that some people were really energizing and inspiring to be around, while other people tended to pull me down into the suck. Some people exposed me to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new questions and a focus on the awesome, while others seemed to see only the same old problems and no real solutions. 

Since I started paying attention to my professional peer networks, I've started becoming more intentional about my connections. I've begun limiting the amount of time I spend engaging with people who can only focus on what sucks and have been actively seeking to expand my connections to people who want to work on creating what's awesome. This has had a profoundly positive influence on my work and my thinking.

What I've realized, though, is that if we are not consciously thinking about what is going on with our peer networks, it's very easy to be pulled into a negative orbit. This is especially problematic if we are in a negative workplace and the majority of our professional interactions are with our co-workers. It becomes mission critical for us to find and connect with people who have a more positive perspective--those who want to work on building the awesome. 

For me, connecting with positive peers has been a two-step process. First is noticing the influence that different people have on me. I pay attention to how I feel when I interact with them. Do I leave an interaction feeling excited and energized and ready to follow-up on something we've discussed? That's a person I want to connect to more. 

The second thing I've been doing is looking for new people who share the qualities of those people who are currently in my network that have proven to be positive influences. Typically this means people who are curious, creative, focused on positive questions rather than on "problems," and who want to make a real difference. If I see people like this in a LinkedIn Group or some other on-line network, I try to make a special effort to reach out to them. I'm also intentionally looking for these connections in face-to-face interactions and purposely seeking them out to connect. I even tell them WHY I want to connect--because I see and value these qualities, which automatically improves the connection. 

Throughout all of this, I've also tried to be more aware of how I am connecting to other people--am I being the change I'm looking for in my world? This shift has forced me to look at the ways in which I'm negative, problem-focused, uninspiring, etc. I have had to look at how I can shift my own habits of interaction to be a positive peer, rather than a negative one. 

This process of forming positive peer networks and looking at my own actions as a peer has been one of the more important professional development practices I've engaged in this year. 

How are you forming the connections that are going to be most supportive for you? And how are you looking at your own behavior in this process? 

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Feeling stuck? I'm running another 7-Day Getting Unstuck session starting February 27. Details and sign-up information are here.

 

3 Tips for Increasing the Awesome at Work

Last week I wrote about increasing the awesome vs. decreasing the suck and how I think that the only way to decrease what sucks is by focusing on what's awesome. Since then I've been thinking a lot about how to increase the awesome in my work life--what is it that we can do to bring the awesome? 

Here are three tips I came up with from noticing my own practice. . . 

1. Tune into the emotions of Awesome. 

The surest route to the Awesome, I'm finding, is to tune into my emotions. Whenever I feel curious, inspired, energized, hopeful, engaged, connected, and/or like I'm having fun, I know I'm accessing the Awesome. When I feel unmotivated, frustrated, irritated or apathetic, I'm most definitely living in the Suck. 

Each day I'm trying to begin with attuning myself to the feelings I want to have during my work day, reminding myself about the feelings of the Awesome. I also set the intention of trying to notice my Awesome emotions throughout my day, acknowledging them to myself and others.

It's been especially interesting to acknowledge a shift in energy to other people. They immediately know what I'm talking about and become even more energized, tuning into their own emotions of the Awesome and wanting more of that. I'm trying to be more purposeful in in doing this, as I find that this acknowledgement increases my chances of having Awesome converations (see below). 

2. Ask Awesome Questions

In the past 6 months, I've become increasingly interested in the power of questions to move me and the people I work with toward the Awesome. I'm firmly convinced that the questions we ask are at least as important as the answers. And I've found that asking Awesome questions actually is part of what increases our connection to and feelings of the Awesome. 

Some of the questions that have been working for me:

• Why do I care about this situation? This reconnects me to purpose which connects me to Awesome. 

• What possibilities and learning do I see? Seeing challenges and problems leads me to the Suck. When I look at possibilities and learning, I find the Awesome.

• What do I want more of? When I tune into the emotions of the Awesome, I also notice what I'm doing at the time. Who am I with? What is happening? If possible, I will try to tune into the moment when the energy shifts from the Suck to the Awesome. Then I try to figure out how I can get more of whatever it was that created the Awesome. How can I inject it going forward? 

• If success was completely guaranteed, what bold steps would I take? This may be the surest route to the Awesome. Usually I find that what is keeping me in the Suck isn't that I don't know what to do. It's that I'm afraid to do it. Or at least to try. So asking this question leads me to take the bold steps. . . most of the time. 

I've also been trying to find the "big questions" underneath the smaller ones. What is the REAL quest that I am on? I look for the forest, not the trees and often this leads me back to the Awesome. 

3. Have Awesome Conversations

Although the Awesome can sometimes be a solitary pursuit, most of the time it is not. Even if I'm going to do the work alone, having the right conversations can help me better articulate my vision of the Awesome. They can also help me connect to people and resources that help make the Awesome happen. 

This year is my year of conversation and I'm finding that the more I seek out and lean into creating Awesome conversations, the better I feel and the better my work is. 

To me, the hallmark of an Awesome conversation is that it generates Awesome emotions. If I'm feeling the energy of inspiration, hope, and possibility, then I know I'm having a conversation that will lead to the Awesome. If I'm feeling like I want to stab my own eye out, I know I'm mired in a conversation that supports the Suck. 

Awesome conversations mean that I'm talking about what really matters. I'm engaging with the Awesome questions and I'm noticing and acknowledging the awesome emotions. Most importantly, I'm acting as a host, creating a space for the Awesomeness to occur, being open to what happens and giving up my pre-conceived ideas of how things should go. 

I have found that some people are more amenable to the Awesome conversation than others. While I believe that everyone wants to have Awesome conversations, I'm not as skillful as I'd like to be in drawing people into those if they aren't at least halfway there. That's actually one of the areas I want to work on--how to help people who are really stuck in the Suck to find and access the Awesome. 

 

So these are my 3 tips for increasing the Awesome. What are you doing to increase the Awesome at work?