Helene Lerner's Blog, page 109

What to do When You Don't Get the Promotion You Want

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While the argument could be made that it’s no longer just a man’s world, many women have experienced being passed over for a promotion, one which was given to a male coworker who may not necessarily have more or better qualifications. What do you do when you’ve experienced this?
Before letting your excitement get the better of you, take a step back and a deep breath before you rant (er, speak) to your supervisor. Give yourself time to process that the promotion you had been hoping for is not yours.

Allow yourself to feel your feelings. It’s natural for situations like these to cause anger, sadness, and frustration. Give yourself time to cry in your soup, vent to friends, and wallow a little bit. If you’re one to take the wallowing too far, give yourself a time frame in which you will then start picking yourself up by the bootstraps (and you must do this, if you want to be on track for the next promotion!). One other bit of advice--even if you are on friendly terms with your coworkers, save the conversations about being overlooked for the promotion for another time, place, and audience. Don’t discuss it at work-as the “walls may have ears”--and keep it off all social media.

Avoid the urge to expose the promoted employee’s lack of qualifications. Even if you may feel that your male counterpart was not “deserving” of the promotion, avoid pointing out all the ways in which his work is inferior to yours. While it may be true, this will only make you look like a “sore loser” and can cause tension at the office.

Reflect, Observe, and Identify Areas for Growth. Reflect. Now that some of the strong feelings have been worked out of your system, start to reflect. While your work may be stellar, how proactive were you in obtaining recognition for your efforts? The research shows that men are far more likely to toot their own horns--a Salary.com survey stated that 55% of women feel uncomfortable about negotiating for better pay, whereas only 39% of men reported feelings of apprehension. Women may fear that talking to a supervisor about their accomplishments is boastful behavior. However, you may have heard the popular phrase, “You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you ask for.” Reflect and take a hard look at whether you even made “the ask.” What could you have done differently to make yourself top contender for the job? This has little to do with your actual abilities and more to do with presenting yourself and your accomplishments to key decision-makers.

Observe. Take a look at your male counterpart in action. What characteristics does he possess that may have put him at the top of your supervisor’s list for the promotion? Think beyond what is necessary for the job and instead develop a list of the attributes that are favored by the organization, the ones that are really ingrained in its culture, attitudes, and philosophies. Are your own qualities in line with those attitudes and beliefs? (Note: now is a good time to identify whether you want to conform to those attitudes or if you should be looking for a better fit.)

Identify areas for growth. Is there a skill in which you could improve, which would further your chances at obtaining a promotion next time around? What professional development opportunities are afforded to you? What conferences might you be able to attend or committees in which you could participate? These are additional opportunities for you to shine and gain recognition.
If all else fails, schedule a meeting with your supervisor

Once you’ve done everything outlined above, if you still feel you were unjustly passed over for a promotion, consider scheduling a meeting with your supervisor. My advice would be to first ask what the criteria were for the selection process. Make sure you’ve actually met the criteria. You may want to follow that up with asking about your male counterpart’s performance--what stands out in their minds and how you might emulate that.

One of my most poignant sessions with a client was one in which he told me of a time he sat down with a supervisor after seeing a colleague consistently exceed sales quotas. He asked what this high performer was doing that was different from the others, and put those practices into action himself. Before long, he was also exceeding his quota. His focus was on building himself up rather than finding a way to pull his colleague down. Use this as an opportunity to get yourself higher.

During the course of your conversation, if the answers you receive confirm that you were unjustly looked over  for the promotion, ask about the protocol for submitting a formal complaint. 
Log all accomplishments

Going forward, make sure to keep a running list of all your accomplishments at the company. Use the list during your next performance review--don’t be shy about your contributions! Good luck!

How to Keep Focused When You'd Rather be on Vacation

[image error]As the summer months quickly approach, it may be tempting to take a vacation from your daily grind--whether you are looking for a job, starting a business, writing a novel, or working from home.  While I’m of the mindset that taking time out to rest, rejuvenate, and bask in the summer sun (at least a little bit) is essential, it is also important to keep up the momentum-- especially if you are new to job searching or have recently taken on a less structured schedule. So what can you do?

Mark your calendar. One thing that has worked really well for me is to make use of a calendar app, complete with reminder alarms. I take inventory of the tasks I want (or need) to complete and how much time I expect them to take, then block out the time on my calendar. This works not just for the mundane chores but the fun stuff, too! You want to strike a good balance. By setting reminder alarms, I give myself a definitive start and end time for each activity. If a task is not complete, I can make a minor adjustment to that day’s schedule or just set aside more time for the task tomorrow. The other reason I like using a calendar is I can refer back to it as a quick reminder of what I have accomplished thus far!

But who’s keeping track? If keeping track of your activities on a calendar is not enough to hold yourself accountable, it’s usually a sign that you’ll need to take things a step further. Consider getting an “accountability buddy”--someone with whom you can check in, whether daily or weekly, and affirm that you completed the tasks to which you committed. When you have someone to “answer to," it makes you more committed to get the job done.

If all your friends have decided to take the summer off (and are tempting you to do the same), consider using a resource like Stickk.com which will allow you to select a goal, set your stakes, and have a systematic way to report on whether you have successfully completed your goal. There are several other accountability trackers you can choose from--take a look and find the one that best meets your needs.

Conduct a simple cost-benefit analysis. Sure, the very term does not scream “fun," but take a simple-yet-powerful look at the “cost” of vegging out for the summer. If you are job searching, for each day that you remain jobless consider how much money is not going into your retirement account. If your goal is to have a book published, imagine how much revenue you are leaving behind each day that your manuscript goes unfinished. Freelancers or solopreneurs who need to take on new clients in order to get to the next level- give a “value” to your days at the beach and see if the benefit outweighs the loss of potential revenue.

But can’t I do it all at once? You sure can try! I find this to work well at summer festivals, barbecues, parties--anything social where you can engage in in-depth conversation. Have your fun, but also create goals that you can accomplish while out and about. You certainly don’t want to aggressively sell your business/book/service or announce your job search at a social event. However, some form of “what do you do?” tends to be a typical conversation starter. Another option that has become popular is “what are you excited about lately?” Listen closely. Ask questions. Discover the other person’s needs. Come to the conversation with a genuine interest in learning about a problem your fellow event-goer has and identifying a solution for him or her. That solution may or may not involve a service that you can currently provide, but perhaps you can share a resource that would be helpful. By having a sincere desire to assist you can effortlessly develop a relationship which, somewhere down the line can lead to a big win for you!

Don’t beat yourself up if you bite off more than you can chew. While I don’t recommend indulging in rewards if you’ve been loafing around instead of checking off your to-do list, there certainly is the possibility that you overscheduled yourself. Before you get disappointed in yourself, figure out the “whys” and “hows” behind your unfinished tasks. Reflect: what are your “time wasting” activities, during which part of the day are you most productive, what did you put off, did you give yourself a reasonable amount of time to complete your tasks, did you have interruptions? By taking inventory, you can coordinate the next day’s schedule in a way that will work more optimally for you.

Celebrate your little victories. When you have a goal, it’s always important to provide a means for acknowledging your efforts and rewarding yourself for a job well done. Set aside your time for celebration, and go back to your to-do list feeling refreshed and accomplished!
 
Victoria Crispo, Career Coach, Career Services USA
 

Futurist Edie Weiner on New Transformations, Part 5

We recently spoke with prominent futurist Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown. She laid out for us some of her fascinating insights about the five most important social shifts she predicts will take place over the coming years. We are posting them as a series each day this week. We shared her thoughts on the first shift having to do with the economy. The second shift she discussed with us involves 10 new value propositions that Edie says will become increasingly important--click here and here to read about them. The third and fourth shifts relate to brain imaging. Today, we're sharing the final shift.

Point number five has to do with the legacy we leave for future generations. There are certain words that we attach values to that we think are wonderful, like leadership, innovation, imagination. And the point that I want to make is that these are neutral words. In terms of leadership, there are Mother Theresas and there are Adolph Hitlers. In terms of innovation, there is Scotch tape and there are financial instruments that bring down the entire financial, global network. And the same is true of imagination. There are the Walt Disneys of the world and the Gene Roddenberrys, but there are also the guys who walk into the a movie theater and shoots a lot of people because he imagines himself to be a supervillian.

What we have to understand is that, on the negative side of the ledger, negative leadership, negative innovation, negative imagination have no barriers at all. It doesn’t have to obey politics, laws, regulations, budgets, time constraints, bureaucracy, it just is. On the positive side of the ledger, positive leadership, innovation and imagination has to obey all of this. So I really believe in the end that if we have a legacy to leave, all of us, it’s to create 10 times more positive imagination than there is negative because without that, we’re going to leave the future with the belief that the future is very bleak and very dark, that between climate change and cyber terrorism and water shortages and wars and refugees and famine, that it’s all so bleak. So we have a responsibility to feed positive imagination, that’s how we create our future, it comes from our imagination.

How to Keep Moving Through Fear and Worry

We asked you what topics you wanted to see in our videos, and you gave us great feedback. Here's one on LETTING GO OF FEAR AND WORRY. Please share it with your friends.

Video Editor--Chloe Motisi

Futurist Edie Weiner on New Transformations, Part 4

We recently spoke with prominent futurist Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown. She laid out for us some of her fascinating insights about the five most important social shifts she predicts will take place over the coming years. We are posting them as a series each day this week. We shared her thoughts on the first shift having to do with the economy. The second shift she discussed with us involves 10 new value propositions that Edie says will become increasingly important--click here and here to read about them. Today, we're sharing the third and fourth shifts.

The third shift has to do with brain gender. One of the things that we know from brain imaging and brain mapping is that the male brain and the female brain are fundamentally distinct from each other physiologically. In a nutshell, we all begin with a female brain. Within five to six weeks after conception, the male embryo is coded to produce a much higher dose of testosterone, which washes through the system. And the male goes on to develop a much more specialized brain with different kinds of functions. The female brain goes on to develop 10 to 20 million more connections in the corpus callosum, between the left and the right hempishpheres, so it becomes a much more integrated brain. And the second time that that differentiation occurs is in adolescence.

When you look at fMRI imaging and you give a male a problem to solve, only the part of the brain that specializes in solving that kind of problem is lit up. The rest of the brain is very quiet, which makes it a very efficient brain. If you put a female brain under an fMRI and you give a female a problem to solve, you’ll see lights, bells and whistles happening all over the brain. So the female brain is very effective because it’s taking into account everything. These are two very different paths of problem solving and the thing to understand is that effectiveness is no good without efficiency, and efficiency is no good without effectiveness. We need both.

This brings us to the fourth point, which is an an "Edieism." You’re not going to find this in the science, but it’s based on my observations over 45 years of professional work and all the people that I know and situations I’ve been in. If you think about an x-axis on a graph of testosterone distribution, all the way out on the right you have no testosterone and all the way on the left is very high. Then you have two bell-shaped curves that come down to the center in the middle of that x line but never hit it because there’s a huge cross-over population of male and female. All the way on the right, you have women who have little or no testosterone (and having no testosterone is actually a deadly disease).

The very low-testosterone women tend to be lovely, they care about others, but they sometimes can’t balance a checkbook or read a map to save their lives. Then, if you go all the way to the left, you have extreme, high testosterone, raging high, and those are your criminials and terrorists. Because they have little empathy or sympathy, it’s all abstract. And in the middle you have cross-over. As you come down towards the middle, you have women who have higher testosterone, who tend to be the neurosurgeons, the rocket scientists, and even the sculptresses because it’s very spatial. And coming down toward the middle on the left-hand side are the men who are lower testosterone, and they tend to be your social workers, your ministers. So what one of my observations has been, from a personal and professional perspective, that for a long-term relationship to work, it’s important for both parties to be equidistant from the center.

 

 

Are You Really "too Sensitive?" Make it Work for You

Helene recently spoke with coach and author Cheryl Richardson. Here are some of her insights about the benefits of being highly sensitive, and how to use it to your advantage.

Helene: Many of us, especially women, are labeled as “over-sensitive.” What are the advantages of being sensitive?

Cheryl: Being sensitive means being highly perceptive of your environment, being in tune energetically with yourself and those around you. For example, I was in a board meeting recently with about 20 men and one other woman. Because I’m sensitive, I had a pretty good idea of what was going on with each of them, and when they spoke, they confirmed what I had picked up on. That meant I was able to tailor my communication style for each of them and connect in a more effective way.

It can also mean being physically sensitive and knowing what needs to be done to make yourself and others comfortable, whether it’s adjusting the lighting or buying the perfect set of sheets.

Helene: How can sensitive people handle those who may not have their best interest at heart?

Cheryl: You need to first build a relationship with your sensitivity and stop seeing it as a liability. I recently had a coaching session with a woman who had been called into a meeting with a colleague who had very harshly fired off all the areas where she performed “poorly.” She knew that removing herself from the situation was the best way to protect herself, so she did what she could to end the meeting as quickly as possible. Know yourself. Address the situation with the other person and set appropriate boundaries. An easy way to do this is to put a sign on your desk that says, “drama free zone” or “gossip free zone.” You'd be amazed by how your co-workers respond.

Helene: What can sensitive people do to protect themselves in harsh work environments?

Cheryl: If your sensitivity makes you physically uncomfortable in your work space, make sure you have natural light or purchase bulbs that simulate natural light. Add plants to your space and avoid media sources that seduce you with frightening or negative stories. Make sure you take a walk every day to get fresh air. And know it might be best to seek out a different situation. Many sensitive women try desperately to stay in places that aren't right for them. I can assure you, there is a work environment somewhere that is begging for your sensitivity, talents and skills.

 

Make Sensitivity Work for You, Starting Today

Helene recently spoke with coach and author Cheryl Richardson. Here are some of her insights about the benefits of being highly sensitive, and how to use it to your advantage.

Helene: Many of us, especially women, are labeled as “over-sensitive.” What are the advantages of being sensitive?

Cheryl: Being sensitive means being highly perceptive of your environment, being in tune energetically with yourself and those around you. For example, I was in a board meeting recently with about 20 men and one other woman. Because I’m sensitive, I had a pretty good idea of what was going on with each of them, and when they spoke, they confirmed what I had picked up on. That meant I was able to tailor my communication style for each of them and connect in a more effective way.

It can also mean being physically sensitive and knowing what needs to be done to make yourself and others comfortable, whether it’s adjusting the lighting or buying the perfect set of sheets.

Helene: How can sensitive people handle those who may not have their best interest at heart?

Cheryl: You need to first build a relationship with your sensitivity and stop seeing it as a liability. I recently had a coaching session with a woman who had been called into a meeting with a colleague who had very harshly fired off all the areas where she performed “poorly.” She knew that removing herself from the situation was the best way to protect herself, so she did what she could to end the meeting as quickly as possible. Know yourself. Address the situation with the other person and set appropriate boundaries. An easy way to do this is to put a sign on your desk that says, “drama free zone” or “gossip free zone.” You'd be amazed by how your co-workers respond.

Helene: What can sensitive people do to protect themselves in harsh work environments?

Cheryl: If your sensitivity makes you physically uncomfortable in your work space, make sure you have natural light or purchase bulbs that simulate natural light. Add plants to your space and avoid media sources that seduce you with frightening or negative stories. Make sure you take a walk every day to get fresh air. And know it might be best to seek out a different situation. Many sensitive women try desperately to stay in places that aren't right for them. I can assure you, there is a work environment somewhere that is begging for your sensitivity, talents and skills.

 

Futurist Edie Weiner on New Transformations, Part 3

We recently spoke with prominent futurist Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown. She laid out for us some of her fascinating insights about the five most important social shifts she predicts will take place over the coming years. We are posting them as a series each day this week. We shared her thoughts on the first shift having to do with the economy. The second shift she discussed with us involves 10 new value propositions that Edie says will become increasingly important. Today, we're sharing her take on the final seven of those. Click here for the first three.

Cyberspace. What we have now is just a tiny tip of the iceberg. We’re going to be developing whole, virtual immersion technology possibilities. In Asia, young people are already spending a lot of time in virtual worlds and gaming environments.When it comes to education, through virtual reality gaming technology, you could become a white blood corpuscle and you could swim through the bloodstream fighting off all kinds of invading bacteria and viruses and learn more about immunity in 10 minutes having fun than any brilliant professor could teach you in 10 hours. And you can live in ancient civilization, you don’t need to take anthropology or archaeology. So I think what we’re going to see over the next 10 years is the slow death of education and the rapid rise of learning, and those are two completely different things. Virtual reality is tricking the brain into believing that it’s somewhere else doing something else in real time. So if you actually believe that you own a Ferrari and you're racing it through the streets of Monte Carlo, are you? Philosophically, the answer could very well be yes, and if that’s the case, what does it mean for Ferrari? What does it mean for the travel bureau of Monte Carlo? What does it mean for the airlines? There are new industries that are going to grow up as the old ones get challenged and die.

Time-space. This is the leveraging of time and space. Time is becoming so economically valuable at this point. The definition of a luxury is, what is in short supply that you want more of. And when you ask people that, their answer is time. So that’s going to become an important business in so many ways.

Design space. Design is becoming one of the most important differentiators to be leveraged. And design thinking is becoming a whole new area of study and will be employed in so many aspects of the world of the future, not just physical design. Everything is about design. Everything we do, see, touch, smell, know, experience, it’s all about design. And a lot of solutions to the problems we have will come out of design thinking.

Green-to-blue space. People understand what “green” means, but there’s actually a spectrum of doing green, being green, and then blue. Doing green is now the price of just doing business--you’re supposed to recycle, for example. Being green means you leave the slightest possible negative footprint, whether that’s carbon use or water or whatever. That’s difficult to do for existing businesses, it’s easier for startups. But the really exciting stuff is coming out of blue, which is putting back more than was there for the first place. There’s an entrepreneur I met a few years back who takes blighted, polluted, abandoned industrial properties in inner-city environments and plants sunflower seeds. He creates beautiful sunflower fields. The real estate prices go up around these properties, he employs people to cut the sunflowers and sell them in markets. And so he’s very blue, he’s putting back a lot more than there was.

Storage space. First of all, we’re running out of room to put all of our junk.The private storage space is one of the fastest growing businesses ever. And we have to think about how we’re going to store data--we’re moving into a world where the amount of data is staggering. Some companies are looking at holographic, 3D chips to store data. We have to figure out how we’re going to store the electronic waste on the planet. Electronics is the most polluting industry we’ve ever had—we throw out perfectly good products because a new model is out. We also have to figure out how we’re going to store nuclear waste.

Play space. Play is going to become increasingly important over the next five to 10 years. We know how important it is for learning, and for our own wellbeing and health. We know how important it is to solving the biggest problems that we face. “Gameification,” using game mechanics, is going to be very big. This is basically applying game theory mechanics to things that are not fun, or shouldn’t be. So for example, whether it’s brain surgery, rescuing people from an earthquake, figuring out a math problem or solving how we’re going to get water to someplace. It can all be done through gameification.

Inter-space. This is basically using the idea of the Internet for matter. So you’re going to hear more about the “matter net.” You’ve heard about things Amazon delivering packages by drones. It involves moving matter around, as opposed to just information, and all of the connectedness that’s taking place. It's the Internet of things--everything will eventually be talking to everything and we won’t even be involved in it.

How to Keep Your Skills Sharp Between Jobs

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If you’ve been job searching lately, you’re probably all too aware that looking for work can itself be a job. Time consuming as it may be, however, there are some things you can do to keep your skills fresh and make yourself more marketable.

Explore your interests. Now is the time to explore your options and interests, be recognized for your skills, and contribute to your neighborhood or community. Get involved in a club or organization that is in line with your hobbies: a chess club, dog-walkers’ group, book club, mom’s group, or fashion swap. Take it a step further by organizing your own group. This will allow you to freshen up skills such as leadership, time management, and organization (all skills that employers seek in potential candidates).

Volunteer. You can also use this time to volunteer. Consider options at an animal shelter, museum, local farm, or performing arts space. Consider not only your interests but your skills and the type of job you are seeking. Be strategic about where and how you volunteer your time. Remember that by volunteering, you are giving employees who currently work at the organization a firsthand look at your abilities and passions. As a result, there is greater potential for your volunteer work to segue to a full-time position.

Start a blog. If you like to write and can carve out a niche market, this could be a great opportunity for you to start a living, ongoing testament of your writing skills as well as a forum for presenting yourself as an “expert” in the topic area. In addition to that, you’ll be gaining a whole new set of skills that can be quite appealing to a hiring manager.

Share your expertise. Provide expertise to a friend who is starting a business. Whether your experience is in bookkeeping, marketing, or social media, giving a friend a helping hand is a great way to keep your skills fresh and gain a recommendation. You can also include the experience on your resume as a consulting gig. If you’re on LinkedIn (and you should be!) ask for a recommendation the attests to the quality of your work.

Victoria Crispo, Career Coach, Career Services USA

Futurist Edie Weiner on New Transformations, Part 2

We recently spoke with prominent futurist Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown. She laid out for us some of her fascinating insights about the five most important social shifts she predicts will take place over the coming years. We will be posting them as a series each day this week. Yesterday, we shared her thoughts on the first shift having to do with the economy. The second shift she discussed with us involves 10 new value propositions that Edie says will become increasingly important. Today, we're sharing Edie's take on the first three.

This is the second point I'd like to talk about. There are 10 new value propositions that we are seeing ahead. They are all about the altered dimensionality of space in one way or another. We're talking about inner space, outer space, micro-space, cyber-space, time-space, design space, green-to-blue space, storage space, play space and inter-space.

Inner space is about mapping the brain and figuring out what makes living things tick. It's plants, it's animals, it's the earth, but we'll focus for a moment on the human brain. There has been so much brain imaging over the past couple of decades and it's increasing at an exponential rate. Some of the things that we're finding out are very important.

We know that every individual has a unique brain. We have been deprived in school of an understanding about our senses because we've been taught that there are five senses. But the fact is that we also have a sense of motion, a sense of height, a sense of time, a sense of balance, a sense of direction, and these are all senses that we don't study, we're not taught about. And what's also important is that you can never repeat the same experience twice, the way that our senses interact with each other, everything we see and do is unique to that particular experience.

So we really have tens of thousands of senses. And with 30,000 messages coming at us every day, how something gets our attention--the science of attention--is extremely important. You're going to hear more about this in terms of marketing, as they map our brains, trying to figure out what will really attach itself to our attention.

Next, we’ll move on to outer space. The exploration of deep space is going to give us an understanding of the light spectrum that is going to change so much of our conception of frequencies and vibrations and the implications of that are going to be profound. And space tourism will become more prevalent—Richard Branson's already preparing for this.

Then in terms of micro-space, there’s an acronym, BAANGFUEL. It stands for bits, atoms, antimatter, neurons, genes, frequencies, and ultra and infraspectral energy and light. The next five to 10 years will deliver us combinations and re-combinations of those things. So the materials that we will have and create over the next decade will far exceed anything we ever thought we could do with materials science.

A lot of us have heard of 3D printing, but there’s also 4D printing, which means that over time, whatever it is that you’ve printed can change. You might add water, or maybe it’s just a matter of the item changing over time. So you can print something very small and send it up into space and it can become a huge part of the space station. Now they’re talking about knitting in printing, which is where there are many robotic arms printing at the same time, fusing everything that they’re printing. So there’s potentially the ability to print human parts, to print food, to print houses, to print anything.