Helene Lerner's Blog, page 189

Career Coach: Coaching Yourself 101

I recently watched an interview with Rory McIlroy, one of the world's top professional golfers. I'm sure it won't surprise you to know that Rory has a coach—one who helps him not only with the physical aspects of the sport, but also with the psychological aspects of winning. In sports, the right coach can make all the difference, but coaching isn't just for athletes! Most - if not all - of us can benefit from receiving some guidance on our careers and our lives.

But what if you don’t have the budget for a coach (and your company won't pay for one)? Easy. Become your own coach! If you're up for the job, here are three insights to get you started.

Define your goals. A good coach begins by helping you identify your priorities. What do you want to achieve (or become) in the next 6-12 months, and why? Your first assignment is to develop a crystal-clear understanding of your desired ends. Take a look at each area of your life - health, relationships, finances, recreation, career - set some life-altering goals.

Establish accountability. Coaching is effective because it reminds you what reaching your goals will mean to you. It also gives you someone that will hold your feet to the fire - in a good way! - when you begin to entertain reasons why you can’t make good on your word. How do you build accountability when your coach is, well, you? Find a trusted friend or coworker to share your goal with and update periodically on your progress. Your primary accountability should be to yourself, but a little extra support can go a long way.

Stretch yourself. To reach your version of success, you have to stretch yourself. We can’t cling to our current beliefs and behaviors and expect anything to change. What are you doing to challenge yourself on a regular basis? When is the last time you took a risk? Coaching yourself means demanding more of yourself, even if you risk making mistakes along the way. Only by pushing yourself can you discover how far you can go.

The bottom line? Not having a coach doesn’t let you off the hook when it comes to self-development, growth and transformation. You can be your own coach. Look at your goals, build an accountability system, and add one goal that you don't think is quite so realistic—just to prove yourself wrong. What are you waiting for? As any good coach will tell you, the best time to start is now.

—Alan Allard, Career Coach

Dare to Know: Dr. Patty Ann Tublin's Work-Life Imbalance

“Family planning” is often seen as the exclusive province of aspiring mothers, but for relationship expert Dr. Patty Ann Tublin, it’s a universal (and necessary) career move. “Women need to write a family plan that complements rather than competes with their business plan,” the mother of four explains of her preventative approach to work-life balance. “The idea that the two will be even all the time is false. We need to come to terms with things that are at odds with one another.”

That’s not to say that the idea of "family" can be confined to motherhood. In fact, Patty is adamant that a happy marriage - with or without children - is equally dependent on hammering out a cohesive vision. “Making a family plan ensures that you and your spouse are traveling on the same path—that you are creating similar long- and short-term goals,” she says. “The key variable is your partner, and the questions are different for every couple. An entrepreneur will need to have a different conversation than an individual who is working for a company.”

While planning can go a long way toward minimizing both inner and domestic conflict, mindset is the most important factor at play. “It comes down to having boundaries and being present,” asserts Patty, drawing on personal experience as well as professional expertise. “The times when I felt like I was falling short were the times when I was doing it all at once. After I had my first child, my husband told me, ‘Make your decision—work or don’t work, but don’t ever apologize.’ That was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten.”

For more from Dr. Patty Ann Tublin, visit her website or check out her best-selling book.

Career Coach: The "Why" Behind Your Worth

I have three questions for you today:

Would you like a raise?
Have you been thinking about asking for a raise?
If you asked for a raise, would you get it?

Now that those three questions are out of the way, forget about them. Instead, ponder the real question at hand: Why should your boss give you a raise?

“You've got to be kidding me!" you might be thinking. "I haven’t  had a raise in two years. I’ve taken on additional responsibilities and done a good job. It's only fair.” Okay, let’s go with that. Put yourself in your boss’s shoes for a minute or two, and see how convincing that reasoning is to you.

The fact is, it doesn’t matter what you think your company should pay you—not really. You aren’t the one who chooses your salary. That honor belongs to your boss (or someone above him or her). If you want a raise, you have to think from that person's perspective—and that person is unlikely to throw more money in your direction without a good reason.

You may indeed be worth more than you are currently being paid. But unless you are able to influence the decision maker, nothing is likely to change. Your worth will ultimately be determined by someone other than you. Does the person who holds the power really know what you do and how well you do it? How do you know that they know?

For every ten employees who believe that they deserve a raise, only one can honestly speak to a boss's opinion of their performance. What about you? What are you worth, who knows it, and how do you know they know it? Once you can answer these questions, you are that much closer to getting your raise.

—Alan Allard, Career Coach

Career Coach: Are We a Team Yet?

In the now-classic book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,  Dr. Stephen Covey popularizes the terms "dependent-independent-interdependent" as they appy to behavior and relationships. Let’s take a look at each of these terms from a team perspective. Where do you fit in?

The Dependent Team Member. "Dependent Roberta" has a lot of value to offer her team...but she doesn’t believe that. She constantly compares herself to others, always finding herself inferior. Instead of taking initiative, she waits for her boss or her team members to give her direction. She is afraid to make decisions, fretting over what will happen if something goes wrong.

The Solution: Roberta lacks self-worth and self-confidence, and she finds it hard to own her talent and success. She needs to identify and own her strengths while progressively taking steps to become more independent.

The Independent Team Member. "Independent Jackie" takes initiative, solves problems, and completes her projects...as a lone wolf, not a member of the pack. She is competent, but comes across as somewhat aloof. She thinks in terms of competition rather than collaboration, and she rarely shares any credit.

The Solution: While Jackie is a strong performer, her tendency to overestimate her talent and devalue the contributions of her team make her an ill fit for a supervisor or manager position. She needs to develop a different kind of confidence—one that allows her to not only give to her team, but also accept what they can give her.

The Interdependent Team Member. "Interdependent Sheila" doesn’t do good work...she does great work, because she brings out the best in others and allows them to help her shine. She freely shares her ideas without worrying that someone else might get the credit. She is quick to listen to and implement smart ideas and suggestions, no matter where they come from—she is confident in her skills, but knows that two heads are better than one.

In short, Sheila owns her talent and successes while recognizing and celebrating yours.This is the sweet spot—if you are here, congratulations!  If not, decide today to take steps to get there. In order to do well at work, you have to work well with others.

—Alan Allard, Career Coach

Dare to Do: Step Out of the Strobe Light

Nothing says “party time” quite like a strobe light. A staple of dance halls and cosmic bowling alleys, the strobe casts a magical spell on anyone who enters its field of glory. The strobe can give you whiter teeth, a more vacant mind, and downright formidable dance moves. The strobe can make that guy whose elbow bends backwards the most popular guy in the room.

Sure, life under the strobe is grand...for about five minutes. Then you realize that all you're consuming are refracted parts of a whole. It’s all stimulation and no satisfaction—no constancy from one moment to the next; nothing but darkness and disorientation between each fleeting high. The party is one big illusion, but your needs are as real as ever.

Your head starts to spin. Your mouth runs dry. You ask for some water. “WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" comes the cheerfully indifferent response. You try to mime a gesture of pouring and drinking, but your efforts are mistaken for one more wacky dance move. The strobe doesn’t lend itself to a cohesive plan or a forward motion. The strobe just makes it more entertaining to stay stuck.

We’re often tempted to fill our free time with mindless distractions—with easy living that doesn’t actually replenish our reserves. A hard day’s work and a hard day's night can reward in equal measure, but only when we also engage in meaningful forms of repose. We all must eventually step off of the dance floor, and when we do, harsh fluorescents needn’t be our only other option. There is room in between for the soft glow of a desk lamp and the raw simplicity of natural light—for skill building and thoughtful reflection in addition to parties and reality TV.

Go ahead, revel in the blithe pulse of the strobe light. Just don’t get lost in a stream of haphazard motion without a beginning or an end. We ought to give our downtime the same thought we give our careers—to ensure that we are rebuilding the other parts of ourselves that require care. Breaks filled with all play and no push can be tempting, but in practice, a nonstop party reads more like a nightmare than a dream. When you blind yourself to other ways of recharging, you’re more likely than ever to extinguish your own glow.

—Emma Aubry Roberts

Career Coach: The Never Complain Rule

If I asked you to identify one person in your office whom everyone would label "The Complainer,” I bet you could do it faster than you can text or tweet. This person has something to say about the room temperature, the coffee, the work load—probably even about you from time to time. For better or worse, this person has earned their reputation.

You're probably not "The Complainer" at your office. But before you pat yourself on the back, think a little harder about how you communicate with your boss, your colleagues, and, well, everyone else. You probably complain more than you'd like to admit—especially around those with whom you feel safest and most comfortable. Our friends and confidantes are the people we most frequently subject to that squeaky complaint faucet.

If you are nodding your head sheepishly, decide today that you will resist the urge. Call it the Never Complain Rule—you may not hit your goal all the time, but any improvement will pay off. After all, complaining is an easy way out. It turns us into victims rather than professionals. When faced with unpleasant or challenging situations, we can complain, or we can provide solutions—and I think we all know which one we'd rather hear from someone else. Make up your mind to honor the Never Complain Rule at work. And if you're really ambitious, make up your mind to take it home.

—Alan Allard, Career Coach

Dare to Know: Anne Cleveland Dives In Head First

“I’ve been swimming since before I could walk!” jokes Anne Cleveland of her childhood in the beach town of La Jolla, California. As a teenager, she began participating in the annual La Jolla Rough Water Swim, an event hosted by English Channel swimming legend Florence Chadwick. “I was totally entranced by her stories,” Anne recalls. “I made up my mind then that I would swim the English Channel when I grew up.” But competitive swimming in 1970 was not what it is today, especially for women—so despite being less than two seconds from qualifying for the Olympic trials, Anne let her aquatic dreams go.

When Anne turned 40, she found herself suddenly single and in need of a change. She treated herself to a weekend at Rancho La Puerta, an overnight spa and fitness resort. It was there that Anne took her first yoga class. “I realized I had an opportunity to be myself—to be the best that I could be,” she recalls. Anne began practicing yoga regularly, rediscovering her sense of self and her long-forgotten passion for swimming along the way. “Swimming gave me a chance to do something I was naturally good at,” Anne says. “It felt so good to succeed at something simply because I enjoyed doing it.” Six years later, Anne achieved her lifelong dream of swimming the English Channel.

Anne has since completed five successful channel swims. She has crossed the Maui Channel and the Catalina Channel – the latter of which took place under extreme weather conditions – in addition to conquering her beloved English Channel several times over. At the time of her English Channel two-way, an exhausting round trip of nearly fifty miles, Anne became the seventeenth and oldest person to complete the course (a record that was later broken by her friend Elizabeth Fry). That swim proved particularly difficult, and Anne called upon yoga to help her stay in the moment. “I would manage my mind and think, Okay, I’m fine right now, I’m swimming right now,” she recalls. “It felt like I swam to hell and back inside myself. But I did it by staying present and keeping myself positive.” In 2010, Anne was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame for her achievements.

Anne is now a yoga teacher. She also coaches and mentors other swimmers, many of whom compete on the elite level—Mallory Mead, Elizabeth Schlicher, and Pat Gallant-Charette (the oldest woman to swim the Catalina Channel) are just a few of her clients. “I didn’t really set out to be a coach or teacher,” Anne says. “But you get to the point where you have something to share, and it just becomes who you are and what you do.” Despite juggling a busy schedule of swimming, posing, and teaching, Anne still finds time to attend the La Jolla Rough Water Swim. This time, however, “it’s me handing out the awards,” she says with a smile. This California dreamer has come full circle.

Photo by Royal Photographer of Monaco
Headshot by Kris Moore

Career Coach: The Science of Success

What determines how you feel about your job—the job itself, or the attitude you bring to it?

Trick question! In all fairness, both are important, and both affect us. Having said that, most people would agree that that the mindset with which we approach our work is critical, and we can’t talk about mindset without talking about the mind itself. Recent discoveries in neuroscience show that we have more control over how the brain functions than we had originally thought. In fact, they've coined a saying: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

Okay, you say, but what does that mean for my brain at work? Well, you and your job have two things in common: positive and negatives. Your brain doesn’t get to choose which one it focuses on, but you do—and your selection will shape how you feel about your job. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I get to choose which brain I take to work. After all, if you were the boss, wouldn't you prefer to reward the happier, more positive employee?

There isn’t a job, teammate, or company who is perfect, and a negative attitude will only put your career at risk. Fortunately, the brain is malleable, and a quality called neuroplasticity gives us the capacity to grow new neural connections. If your immediate reaction to that is too late or sounds like a lot of work, I'd say that's a pretty good indication that you've got some rewiring to do. Start firing off different neurons before your neurons get you fired.

—Alan Allard, Career Coach

The High Cost of Playing It Safe

I think it is fear and a  sense of "false safety" that keeps us thinking small.

But there is a high cost to playing it safe.  We lose our passion for life, little by little, and it is difficult getting up in the morning to start your day.

Stepping out and taking calculated risks requires a leap of faith.  Yes, you are jumping into the unknown, but not arbitrarily. I wrote a book Smart Women Take Risks, and the risks I talk about are calculated ones.  No one is saying, "Jump into a pool where there is no water." But when things line up, and you know from your head and your heart sense it's right to leap, you need to!

Actually, there is a way to determine if a risk is worth taking. Add up the pluses and the minuses--which column has more. Look at where you are on your life cycle, personally and professionally, and see if taking the risk in any way would compromise what you believe in. http://amzn.to/D9t6G

Here's to stepping out into a bigger life.

 

(Re)charging Ahead

We asked you to show us how you recharge, and boy, did you deliver! We'll try not to envy your exotic travels and instead applaud the fact that so many of you are taking time for yourselves. Take a look at how two of our women cut loose on two totally different continents.

After a long week of teaching English in northern Peru, I spend my weekends reading and lazing around in hammocks! —Janalee F.

Enjoying the last night of a much-needed four-day vacation in Venice. Here I am on the Academia bridge. —Chenice C.

Whether relaxation means boarding a plane or simply drawing a hot bath, indulge yourself in whatever helps you recharge. Have a great weekend!