Lisa Orbé-Austin's Blog, page 4

How Employers Can Help Their Employees Better Cope During the Pandemic: Stress Reduction Training & Coaching

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, and millions have remained under quarantine, I have observed some unsettling trends in the virtual workplace.  Many employees are reporting working a lot more hours & feeling burned out, a fair number are struggling to juggle family responsibilities & work demands, and a large amount are experiencing sleep disruption, loneliness, & isolation.  Even as some states begin to open up, the reality is that remote work may be the new normal for a longer period of time than we imagined.  Twitter recently announced that its employees can work remotely permanently, which may signal the future for some workplaces. While some employees have discussed enjoying this virtual workplace, the undeniable fact is that a large portion of the workforce is feeling increased levels of stress.

As we celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month in May, I believe that employers can introduce some simple strategies to help their employees better cope with this new reality, in order to maintain good mental health. Some of those strategies are stress reduction training and coaching. I have recently had the opportunity to collaborate with some companies to provide stress reduction training & coaching, as a means of supporting their employees during this increasingly difficult time.  A brief group training followed by individual coaching can be effective tools in decreasing stress levels, and allowing employees to have a better experience under quarantine.  Unfortunately, we are not taught how to best manage stress, and for many, we may believe that it is just something we need to accept, and therefore, we don’t seek ways to reduce it.  Fortunately, that is not the case, you don’t have to accept high levels of stress, and you can, in fact, implement solutions to decrease your stress levels.

While the COVID-19 pandemic will result in more severe mental health challenges, especially for our essential workers who are experiencing a high degree of trauma & anxiety on a daily basis, which will require longer term mental health treatment, most employees can benefit from a shorter-term intervention like stress reduction training & coaching. Since stress and burnout can cause higher levels of absenteeism due to physical illness and can impact productivity & performance, it is critical for employers to leverage strategies to aid in their employees’ overall wellbeing.  The following are ways that stress reduction training and coaching can assist employees in using healthier coping strategies to improve their mental health & their work functioning:

Identification of Stress Levels–  when people say they are stressed, and a good amount do not admit to being so, most do not understand the intensity of their stress. By rating your stress level, on a range from 1 -10 (“1” being “not stressed at all” to “10”  being “severely stressed”), you can understand how to make progress in reducing your stress.  If you are typically operating at a stress level of 8, we would then want to explore how to decrease it to a 5 or 6, by developing a Stress Reduction Action Plan.
 Recognition of Stressors & Triggers-  when you say you are stressed, it might feel that everything is causing you stress.  In actuality, there tends to be 2-3 primary stressors (e.g. lack of separation between work & home, greater work demands, longer work hours, interpersonal conflict, being unable to leave your home), which cause you the most distress.  By recognizing these stressors and your triggers (e.g. an unplanned meeting, a new work demand), which can cause your stress levels to spike, you can develop a strategy to address them, in order to maintain lower stress levels.
Signs of Stress-sometimes we may not even realize how stressed we are, because we ignore or don’t truly understand the signs. Common signs of stress are irritability, sleep disruption, somatic complaints (e.g. headaches, upset stomach), withdrawal, and difficulty concentrating.  Once you know your signs of stress, it can enable you to take action to reduce it.
Stress Reduction Action Plan-once you have identified your stress level, primary stressors, and usual signs of stress, it is now time to develop a Stress Reduction Action Plan, which entails reflecting on & implementing the most effective stress reduction strategies for yourself.  Stress reduction coaching can help you to identify the best strategies for you. For some, it might mean developing a consistent exercise routine.  For others it may involve greater boundary & time management. And finally, for another portion of individuals, it can include improving your sleep hygiene, instituting a meditation practice, and socially connecting more actively with others.

We are all dealing with higher levels of stress, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but we may take that stress for granted, as it pertains to its impact on our general functioning. By providing stress management training & coaching, employers can provide a critical resource to help their employees manage the reality of working from home for a longer time period than expected, and for some, to deal with the anxiety of actually returning to the physical office space & the outside world.   We will be dealing with the mental health fallout of this pandemic for years to come, but in the shorter term, we need to consider strategies that will improve the mental wellness & functioning of employees such as stress reduction training & coaching.

The post How Employers Can Help Their Employees Better Cope During the Pandemic: Stress Reduction Training & Coaching appeared first on Dynamic Transitions LLP.

Making Black Lives Matter in the Workplace: How Organizations Can Contribute to True Racial Equity

In this moment, as brands, companies, government agencies, and academic institutions are struggling to show solidarity with the Black community in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, I demand that these organizations go beyond mere statements. I ask the following questions for them to consider and make these recommendations for them to implement:

How willing are you to truly cede power in your White-dominated leadership spaces (e.g. Board of Directors, C-Suite roles, President’s Cabinet, etc.)? It is no longer just about providing surface diversity training but making change NOW! It is always amazing that White leaders continue to show their anti-Blackness by claiming color-blindness in selecting leaders. And think nothing about maintaining White homogeneity on their leadership team. How do you actually justify an all White Board of Directors or a leadership team as simple meritocracy? This is White supremacy in action. For change to happen, it is not just about diversity training programs. It is about these White leaders stepping down, to make way for diverse leadership. Not in the future, but NOW!
How are you investing in truly creating anti-racist spaces? Do you actually have a Chief Diversity Officer who sits on the leadership team, with the same budget, staff, and power as the other C-Suite roles (e.g. CFO, COO, etc.)? Does that CDO actually have training in anti-racism practices & treats diversity, equity, and inclusion as a discipline on par with finance or marketing, rather than being a lawyer simply protecting the company from discrimination lawsuits? How much do you understand what anti-racism actually is? How is it infused into the culture?   How are you auditing your practices and policies to understand if they are anti-racist or continuing to sustain White supremacy & White cultural hegemony? As the economy lurches into a recession, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs & staff should not be the first things cut.  In fact, there should be more investment in racial equity programs and infrastructure.  There should be a full review of policies and practices (e.g. hiring, promotion, marketing) to identify how to increase anti-racist approaches to the work.  It is not about words, it is about long term financial investment.
 How do you recognize that hate speech from employees is not a freedom of speech issue, it is a racial tyranny issue? People who hold racist views, especially those with power, wish to claim freedom of speech rights (e.g. college professors), while creating unsafe spaces for Black people. If a professor espouses anti-Black sentiment, are we to believe it won’t impact his engagement with Black students and their ability to learn?  If a police officer is posting racist messages on Facebook or other social media platforms, are we to think that he won’t mistreat Black citizens?  There should be zero tolerance for racist rhetoric, hidden behind freedom of speech rights.  Such employees should not merely have sensitivity training or a suspension. They should be terminated for doing harm to Black students, employees, or citizens.  We are in 2020, and it is unconscionable for someone to say they do not understand how their words are racist and offensive.  And if that is in fact the case, they should not be able to have a role with power to negatively impact Black people. When two White male counter-protesters in NJ mocked the death of George Floyd by simulating someone kneeling on another person’s neck, how do you reconcile having such hateful people working for you?  FedEX did the right thing by immediately firing the employee involved.  Unfortunately, the NJ Department of Corrections did not, by just suspending the correctional officer involved.  The NJDOC will hide behind due process and union rights, which is the typical response, and is the valid legal course to take. However, there is no place in the fight for racial justice for such equivocation.  First, such an individual should be named as the investigation plays out, so people know who the racists are around them. And the investigation should be quick, and the officer terminated. What is even more troubling is that this officer was working in a youth facility.  And he thought nothing of hatefully mocking a man’s death, and saying, “Black Lives Matter to no one,” while children protesting witnessed such a traumatizing scene.
How are you working to advocate for Black employees, not in a tokenism type of way, but actually listening to them, and implementing practices & policies that reflect their needs? It is not just about a multitude of leadership training & pipeline programs, but actually facilitating advancement.  It is about measuring hiring, promotion, and leadership outcomes, and making changes accordingly. It is about reducing racial micro-aggressions at work (e.g. “Don’t be the angry Black woman, you should smile more in meetings” or “I don’t see color, I just choose the best candidates”), so that Black employees feel that they belong and can actually rise in your organization, especially in areas such as tech, corporate law, STEM, psychology, and finance, which have dismal track records of hiring & advancing Black employees.

Those who are committed to genuine systemic change are watching and know it is only the beginning of the fight for racial justice. When the protests subside, we will still be waiting to see if you actually effect change beyond mere words.  On which side of history will you be?

The post Making Black Lives Matter in the Workplace: How Organizations Can Contribute to True Racial Equity appeared first on Dynamic Transitions LLP.

Black Mental Wellness 2025: A Campaign to Make Black Lives Matter in Psychology

Happy Black Mental Health Awareness Month!  Despite all the pain, racial trauma, and microaggressions we continue to experience, we have managed to endure and to thrive.  In honor of this month, I am thrilled to announce the launch of the Black Wellness 2025 campaign, my effort to address the mental wellness of our community.  In this moment, as a psychologist and an executive coach, through education and engagement, I hope to highlight the need to decrease stigma around mental healthcare in the Black community and to enhance mental health outcomes in the next five years.  In addition to those objectives, some of the goals of the campaign will be:

1) Increase the percentage of Black psychologists in the US workforce– according to the American Psychological Association’s Center for Workforce Studies, the percentage of Black psychologists has remained depressingly low at 4% for over the last decade and was actually higher in 2009 (6%).  By identifying and addressing the institutional racism inherent in the field of psychology, the campaign will focus on how to exponentially increase the percentage of Black psychologists in the field, to make it more representative of the Black population as a whole (13.5%).

The reality is that the field of psychology is a privileged one, primarily designed for those with financial advantages, who have generational wealth to sustain the dearth of economic support from psychology doctoral programs, and the low pay typically provided during training, while pursuing a doctorate. For instance, as I completed my full time doctoral internship, one of the last steps before earning my doctorate, I was paid $22,000 at a site in New York City, barely above minimum wage. Remarkably, that salary was one of the highest paid internships at the time, with some sites offering $15,000 for the year. Sadly, these figures have not gone up markedly since I completed my internship close to 20 years ago.

It is no surprise that as we go up the psychology pipeline, the number of Black candidates shrinks dramatically. For far too long, the field of psychology has exploited doctoral student labor, because it is based on an outmoded Eurocentric, apprenticeship model, which easily leads to oppressive conditions and financial vulnerability. There needs to be new training models, with a much larger investment in diversifying the field. The pipeline programs developed by the American Psychological Association have clearly failed, and the reason is that they were not focused on transforming the system or addressing the structural racism which makes it difficult for Black psychology students to persevere and to pursue & complete doctorates at numbers commensurate with the Black population as a whole.

Since the typical doctoral program takes about 7 years to complete, for the campaign to be successful in the identified five year window, we must identify current Black masters students who might be interested in pursuing a doctorate, but are worried about its financial implications, and support them in doing so. We must also identify Black doctoral psychology students who have not been able to complete their degree, either due to not finishing their dissertation or other reasons (e.g. financial hardship, family responsibilities) and provide support to them as well. To increase the number of Black psychologists in the workforce by just 1%, we would need to identify 1,000 such candidates, while keeping the current numbers of Black psychologists in the workforce stable. Although it may seem daunting, it is imperative that we do so. Finally, we must have a much broader discussion about the structural racism perpetuated by the field of psychology and its programs, and how we can revolutionize them, to be more sustainably diverse, inclusive, and equitable, as it pertains to the needs of Black people and antiracist practice.

2) Institutionalize cultural competence training in psychology programs– part of the institutional, persistent racism in psychology is its failure to respond to current conditions and to continue to have outdated curricula.  Cultural competence/antiracist training should be a mandatory part of accreditation standards, and therefore, required in all psychology programs. The campaign will advocate for this reality. As a counseling psychologist, my program focused on multicultural counseling, and I was required to take courses in this area, but that is not the case with other training programs (e.g. clinical, developmental, etc.).

One of the reasons that there is such a high degree of mental health disparities as it pertains to Black people is due to the lack of cultural competence and the failure to amplify anti-racist practice in the field. For example, according to the Mental Health Association of America, African Americans are more diagnosed with schizophrenia and less often diagnosed with mood disorders, compared with White people with the same symptoms. They are also offered medication or therapy at lower rates than the general population. These legitimate concerns are what keep Black people from seeking mental healthcare to treat their needs.

Therefore, in addition to accreditation standards, cultural competence/anti-racism training should be included in all licensure requirements, to ensure that those who engage clinically with Black people, are not guided by unconscious bias in their diagnoses, do not commit racial micro-aggressions when engaging with clients, and are aware of their privilege & its impact on client care.

3) Improve access to affordable mental healthcare- one of the biggest barriers to African Americans seeking treatment in greater numbers is access to affordable mental healthcare. We must work to further strengthen the infrastructure through government support and innovative initiatives, which enable African Americans to find suitable providers to address their mental health needs.

In this moment, as we reflect upon all the ways that U.S. society has oppressed Black people and we are striving to address these historical inequities, I am dedicated to improving the quality of mental healthcare provided to Black people by targeting the field of psychology and its systems, which have neglected our needs since it founding. Now is the time to launch the Black Mental Wellness 2025 campaign, to support revolutionary efforts to demonstrate that Black Lives Matter always and everywhere. I look forward to being in partnership with all those who wish to bolster this campaign for long term change!

 

The post Black Mental Wellness 2025: A Campaign to Make Black Lives Matter in Psychology appeared first on Dynamic Transitions LLP.

Very happy to contribute to LinkedIn’s feature #youasked

Thanks for the invite Scott Olster!

Here’s the question:

“I’m in my mid-thirties. I’ve worked In technology since a very young age and I’m currently a senior director at a big corporation. I’ve become discouraged with the corporate environment. Now I’m planning to pursue a doctorate in psychology. But how do I uproot everything that I’ve come to understand, now later in my life, with more debt and more family responsibility?” — Chris, New York City-based marketing director

Hi Chris,

Congrats on beginning the process of finding a better fit for you! Like you suggested completing a doctorate in psychology is a major commitment and can take between 5-7 years. However, being a psychologist can be an amazing career choice because it is a versatile degree that provides you with many expertise to pursue and it’s incredibly rewarding to help improve other people’s lives proactively. I am not sure what discipline within psychology you would like to pursue, but to make my feedback more focused, I am going to assume counseling or clinical.

What I would suggest is asking yourself a few questions in your process of making this decision:

Why am I pursuing the doctorate specifically? Is there something that I want to do with the degree that cannot be done with a master’s level degree in social work or counseling? It can sometimes be very difficult to get into a doctoral program without a master degree and the masters degree can be a wonderful time to really test out the waters and decide if it should be a terminal degree for you.
Is my family onboard and are they fully aware of the impact to our family life in terms of my availability due to time demands of the program or changes to our financial situation?
What’s my timeline to prepare for applying? Applying for a doctoral program is a very different process than applying for other levels of higher education because the programs accept usually only a few students a year and expected you to demonstrate fit with the program and particular interests of the faculty. So you want to be prepared for the process.

Finally, I encourage you to make sure that you have looked why you want to pursue a doctorate in psychology. Is it a fit for your skills, values, interests, personality, lifestyle plan, etc.? It’s a big commitment and requires a lot of preparation to successfully be admitted so you want to make sure that you have made the decision knowing all the facts.

I wish you the absolute best! I would encourage you to find a mentor(s) or a career coach with expertise in this area to help you with the process. It will help facilitate a smoother, more successful process!

The post Very happy to contribute to LinkedIn’s feature #youasked appeared first on Dynamic Transitions LLP.

My Top Productivity Hack

Today, I have been asked to share with you my top productivity hack as a LinkedIn Top Voices honoree in Job Search and Careers.

About 10 years ago, a client introduced me to a task management system that changed my life, as well as that of so many of my clients.

You may have heard of it.

It’s the Pomodoro Technique – named after the little kitchen tomato clock. ‘Pomodoro’ means ‘tomato’ in Italian.

This is a technique that works really well if you have an overwhelming to-do list, if you are prone to procrastination or performance anxiety, or if you have ADD.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a technique that was devised to manage and prioritize task lists and handle them in small bite size chunks.

A Pomodoro is considered a 25-minute chunk of time during which you focus on only one task. You then take a 5-minute break where you do something enjoyable and non-task related. After 4 Pomodoro, you take at least a 30-minute break.

Here are the basics of how it works:

1. You create a Master List of all the things that you need to do.

2. You prioritize those items and rank order them.

3. You assign how many Pomodoro that you think it will take to complete the task

4. At the beginning of the day or the night before, you decide what tasks on your master list you will engage and how many Pomodoro you will complete.

5. Before completing your Pomodoro, you should minimize external distractions by making sure no one disrupts you – this could include being clear to others about not interrupting you during your Pomodoro, turning off your phone, or turning off notifications.

6. You minimize internal distractions by keeping a piece of paper and pen next to you while you work on your task. Any time a new to-do comes into your mind like ‘I have to call my mom,’ you write it on the list. During your break, you can decide whether you put it on your Master List or handle it during the break.

7. At the end of the day, you review your process and ask yourself the following questions and then adjust the process accordingly.

• Did I correctly estimate the time it takes to do tasks? Did you underestimate or overestimate?

• Did you overestimate or underestimate how many Pomodoro you could do? How did the amount of Pomodoro that you completed feel? Did you feel tired or have energy to do more?

• How did you deal with distractions? Could you impact the distractions in more effective ways?

If you want to read more, check out my favorite workbook on the topic – The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated by Staffan Noteberg.

Please share with me if you have ever used the Pomodoro Technique or if you have a productivity hack that you love and has worked for you.

The post My Top Productivity Hack appeared first on Dynamic Transitions LLP.

The Best Career Advice I Have Ever Received

Years ago during my postdoc, my supervisor and I were having a conversation about what are the integral factors to successfully making a career transition. She said something I will never forget. It was incredibly simple, but it felt so impactful and I would eventually use it in my own career life many times.

She said, “If you want to make a career change, you must DO something.” She was referring to the fact that sometimes we can get caught up in overanalyzing a situation, complaining about how bad things are at our current job, reading a ton of self-help books or articles, but we are not actually doing anything.

Now, her point was not to just do anything, it was to be strategic, but to get out of the contemplation phase as soon as possible because it can be paralyzing. Some of the strategic things you can do are start doing informational interviews, create a list of dream organizations you’d like to work for, dust off the resume and retool it, reach out to mentors for a cup of coffee and a chat. Do something that moves you one step forward.

My favorite piece of career advice that I am always pushing is be constantly building a strong professional community. For me, it is everything! If you have advocates in well-positioned places, transitioning is so much easier and quicker. The question I always get in return is ‘how do you do that?’ The response is layered, but the short answer is that it’s about really engaging people, caring about them and their careers, offering value to a relationship, being a connector.

It’s important to make sure that you have relationships with people with the power to hire. Research indicates that women tend to make more lateral contacts and have greater struggles building networks with leaders senior to them, which affects access. So, it is important to invest in being strategic about who is on your team and looking out for you.

What’s the best career advice that you have ever received? I am super curious and looking forward to hearing it.

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My Thoughts on the Top Trends for 2020 to Watch in Job Search and Career

Today, as part of LinkedIn Top Voices, I have been asked to share what top trends of 2020 I will be watching. I am typically less focused on trends and more focused on cultural shifts, especially because these are much more long lasting and have an impact on how we work, advance, or acquire new positions.

So, here are the 5 cultural shifts in job search and career that I have been paying attention to and reading about lately:

1. The Use of AI in Search 

AI can be involved in everything from screening resumes to actually interviewing candidates. Recently, my clients have been sharing more often that they have had to participate in “interviews” that were actually video recordings of questions with no human involvement, that were then scored by an algorithm to determine the candidates for the next round.

My interest in this cultural shift has been around how I can help my clients and others that I educate about search learn how to successfully navigate it. In addition, I am interested in looking at the bias inherent in a lot these cost cutting methods that are concerning and may have a significant effect in reducing diverse pipelines and workforces. AI has been touted as a way to reduce bias, but when diversity isn’t considered in developing the algorithm and the team developing the algorithms are not diverse – bias happens. For example, last year, Amazon scrapped their AI recruiting tool when it showed bias against women. The system penalized resumes that included the word “women’s” and downgraded graduates of all-women colleges. I think it’s something that we all need to be learning about and evaluating carefully.

2. The Move Away from the Career Ladder and toward the Career Web

The career ladder is the idea that you have to hold particular titles to acquire the next role in your field. There are some people who are saying the career ladder is dead and I don’t agree with that. It’s just changing.

It seems far more important today to make sure that you are acquiring the right skills and experience so that you can have options to pursue a variety of paths. This can then sometimes mean that you take a lateral role, but one that has a greater scope, rather than always thinking upwards on the ladder.

Being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none is not the goal here. The goal is to be able to not just have a career path A, but also A1, A2, A3. It’s actually to be able to take your skills/experience and be able to utilize them to position yourself in a variety of roles, usually within a specific domain.

3. The Impact of Short Job Life Cycles on Organizations, Hiring, Advancement and Team Cohesion

A recent Gallup poll found that only 29% of millennials are engaged in their jobs, which is lower than of other generations in the workplace. It also found that 60% of those polled were open to a new job, which was 15% higher than any other generation polled. I have also seen in my practice – really short job lifespans and the impact that it is having on the stability of departments, productivity, and cohesion. I am reading a lot about organizations’ plans to retain, grow, and deal with the churn. This particular trend or cultural shift is really fascinating and seemingly impactful to the job market and organizations in general, especially since the statistics in this area suggest that is can take 50-60% of an employee’s annual salary to find a direct replacement according to the Society for Human Resource Management (some other estimates have suggested that it can cost between 90-200% of salary) – I am sure a great deal of this is dependent on role, specialization, and level. But the point is that it’s expensive and time consuming to fill a position (Glassdoor).

4. The creation of individual contributor career paths especially in tech organizations, instead of default management advancement

I have been seeing this a lot more and it’s been very exciting, mostly in tech organization, but perhaps, and hopefully, this idea can be modeled in other organizations, especially when someone has technical expertise. Creating career paths for individual contributors allows employees, who are Subject Matter Experts (SME), to advance and increase in responsibilities, title/status, pay and influence, as solely an individual contributor. There is then no expectation for them to eventually manage. Management is typically the only path for advancement, but some employees are not interested in management and/or feel like it’s not a skill set they have or want to develop. This type of career pathing allows individual contributors (ICs) to really specialize, focus and get stronger in their area of expertise, which they often are quite passionate about. I have too often seen clients, who are superb ICs, be promoted to management as a reward, but it becomes a punishment because it takes them away from the work that they love and moves them towards work that they often despise.

5.  The addition of new roles to the C-Suite 

In particular, there are new voices at the chief executive level that are getting a voice at the table, which to me signals new opportunities for advancement in certain areas that before were much more limited.

In data science, big data, and other data heavy organizations, Chief Data Officer, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) roles have emerged – which clearly shows how integral managing the privacy of data has become an increasingly important focus, and also considers the voices of data orgs and the user experience at an organizationally strategic level.

Another shift has been the focus on the institutionalization of strategic level initiatives through roles like Chief Transformation Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Culture Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chief Growth Officer. These tend to be roles with cross-functional reach, aimed at promoting strategic initiatives across the organization.

There also has been a shift in human resources to think about the HR function in much more holistic ways and seeing more roles like Chief People Officer and Chief Learning Officer, which have responsibility for trends in HR data, culture and are responsible for legitimizing strategy and transformation, especially with regard to aspects like roles/responsibilities, titles, reorganizations, and learning & development plans.

As a part of LinkedIn Top Voices, I was asked to share my thoughts on the top trends in Job Search and Career for 2020. What are the trends that you will be paying attention to in the upcoming year? I’d love to add them to my list. #LinkedInTopVoices #BigIdeas2020 #Trends2020 #CareerAdviceThese are some of the trends and cultural shifts that I will be immersing myself in, and pondering the impact of during the coming year. I will be looking at how these shifts will need to alter the way that I think about and do my work.  I will also be considering ways in which I can contribute to eliminating, or reducing any of the negative impact of these trends through my consulting work.

Please share with me what trends in 2020 you will be keeping a watchful eye on – I want to know so I can add them to my list.

The post My Thoughts on the Top Trends for 2020 to Watch in Job Search and Career appeared first on Dynamic Transitions LLP.

What’s in a Name? An Origin Story

In the Shakespeare play where this phrase became iconic, Juliet tries to convey that a last name is meaningless and artificial to directly conveying information about a person.

In direct contrast, in my inaugural newsletter, I am going to share with you the meaning of the name of this newsletter and my practice, which is central to my driving mission and purpose as a psychologist and executive coach and will be integral to knowing what you find in this weekly newsletter.

Almost 15 years ago, I walked out on a job.

Literally, walked out…

No two weeks notice.

No other job.

No plan.

Not something that I would generally advise to any of my clients today, but I just needed to do this for myself.

How had I arrived at that moment?

After completing my PhD at Columbia University, I was incredibly burned out, lost, and unclear about what I had wanted for my professional future.

I’d lost my center.

So, I let serendipity be my guide and took anything I got or was offered.

After a set of generally poor career decisions, largely made out of need for perceived security, I ended up in a job that was not a great fit for me, with a boss who was a nightmare in almost every way imaginable – there were all the familiar culprits that make jobs a nightmare including being underpaid in comparison to my peers, long hours, no opportunities for advancement and awful bonuses like public humiliation and harassment.

When the final straw was wielded, in a meeting with all the senior leaders in my office, who were all women, my boss (a man) was asked about what the music was that was playing in the office and he responded that it was “music to soothe the savage breast.”

I cleared my office that weekend and then returned on that Monday to turn in my keys.

Despite knowing that I did the right thing, I was spinning in terror. I had been continuously employed since I was 12. When I quit, my boss in a rage threatened my future employment in any educational institution.

It was a scary time.

Not knowing what was next, my husband (who knew that detail work could often be a soothing and grounding place for me) asked me to consider working on developing a private practice with him.  Even though I had no interest in a practice because I was terrified of the risk and potential instability, I got very concrete and did what I needed to do to get everything together.

A couple of months later, we had to choose a business name and we wrestled with a bunch of straightforward and clinical names until one stuck.

I remember it like it was yesterday. We were walking from an event down 9th Avenue on the west side of NYC and brainstorming all kinds of names and then all of sudden one of us said what about —

Dynamic Transitions.

It captured everything we wanted to support in our practice

– it would be about—

change,

learning a process to transition,

supporting movement forward,

teaching people not to fear change,

new thoughts, behaviors, and feelings about change,

the forces that create progress within a system and a process,

and most importantly, empowering people to use their voice and to leverage their skills to craft their own futures and never feel trapped in their professional or personal lives.

The name felt so right and captured our vision for our practice.

And then the most amazing thing happened, right as we finished that discussion we got a sign.

We saw an art exhibit featuring the most beautiful, colorful, vibrant art that made us stop and smile to each other.

And then, we noticed the description of the exhibition and that the artists were children with disabilities. The name of the exhibit was “Dynamic Transitions.”

That was it for us!

So, this LinkedIn newsletter is similarly named because I will be sharing and discussing all the things that have been my mission for the last 15 years.

It will be about change and how to master it.

It will be about how to value yourself so that you make decisions that are backed by your visions.

It will be owning your professional life and living in it in an active, dynamic and engaged way.

I will be sharing with you all the things that I am thinking about in the realm of career – the issues that I am struggling with, reading about and presenting out in the world.

I look forward to being on this journey with you and I am hoping to connect and discuss these issues with you and the community that we develop.

 

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What is Impostor Syndrome? Where does it come from?

Do you have recognizable accomplishments in your field (e.g., degrees, roles, skills), yet find yourself feeling like it all feels fragile and it could all go away with one misstep, one mistake?

Do you fear being found out as a fraud or incompetent, that all those accomplishments and degrees might be revealed as having been gotten in some illegitimate way?

Do you overwork to cover up?

Is the performance anxiety around highly visible projects so intense that it causes you to procrastinate and sometimes even engage in self-sabotage?

Last spring, when our now editor approached us to write a book on Impostor Syndrome, we (my partner, Richard and I) were thrilled because this was a population we knew really well, and one of our favorites to work with. We were excited to share with others the techniques and strategies that had been successful in helping us eradicate Impostor Syndrome in our clients.

We spent much of the last year reading research, examining our own process and writing the book titled “Own Your Greatness.”  In this newsletter, I am going to be sharing some of these techniques and strategies.

People ask me a lot about the book and some people are very familiar with Impostor Syndrome and some are not. I’m often asked if I am writing about people like Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in ‘Catch Me If You Can,’ people, who are duplicitous and trying to deceive others into believing that they are experts in fields they have no experience, knowledge, or credentials. These are real impostors. People with Impostor Syndrome are actually the exact opposite of real impostors.

The term, Impostor Syndrome, was coined by two psychologists, Drs. Clance and Imes, in the late 1970s after spending years counseling highly accomplished professors, administrators ,and students, who were extremely concerned with being exposed as a fraud. They often attributed their success to extreme overwork or relationships that protected and/or elevated them. People with Impostor Syndrome struggle to internalize accomplishments.

Impostor Syndrome is not a psychological disorder and over 70% of people in the US report that they have experienced it at least once.

Typically, when people struggle with Impostor Syndrome, you see the following behaviors, thoughts or characteristics:

High level of achievement
Tendency to deny ability and attribute success to luck, mistake, overwork, or a result of a relationship
Discounting of praise, feeling fear and guilt about success
Fear of failure and being discovered as a fraud
Not feeling intelligent
Perfectionism
Overestimating others, while underestimating oneself
Not experiencing an internal feeling of success
Overworking or self-sabotage to cover the feelings of inadequacy

Some people wonder how Impostor Syndrome develops and there are usually 3 typically early experiences:

 You were the “smart” one in your family, but smart meant that things came easy. So, any time you had to work at anything it felt like proof that you weren’t smart.
You were the one who “works hard” in your family, which meant that things didn’t some easy to you. You came to believe that only through extreme hard work could you achieve anything.
You didn’t get a lot of support from parental or adult figures and your achievements were methods of survival. So, internalizing your accomplishments feels difficult because survival is always in the forefront of your mind.

Impostor Syndrome is conquerable. You don’t have to be plagued by the fears and insecurities about your fraudulence. The first step is acknowledging that you may struggle with it and figuring out how it may have come to be. I will continue to share in the newsletter some of the often surprising ways Impostor Syndrome can show up in our professional life and how to decrease its impact.

 

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Optimizing Your Performance Review

I have been thinking, coaching and speaking a lot about performance reviews in the last few weeks, which left me wanting to share with you some of the techniques that you can use to make the most of the performance review period.

Performance review gives us the perfect opportunity to capture our value add over the last 3, 6 or 12 months, but only if we see it as a dyadic process and do our part to prepare.

It can be really hard to invest in preparing for a review especially when you may feel like they haven’t served any purpose in the past or they feel perfunctory. It’s important, though, to see this as an opportunity for you, most importantly, to process and review where you are in your professional life and where you want to go. Even if the organization’s approach to the review dismisses its importance or sees it solely as a formality, it still becomes a chance for you to take a beat and figure out what you want.

It’s a great time, too, to work on internalizing and being proud of your accomplishments, even if no one else does, because your view and accurate assessment of them will be the difference between letting someone else dictate your career path and crafting your own journey. As you may have noted, it’s also a very important thing to take seriously if you have struggled with Impostor Syndrome.

What can you do to optimize your review time?

Keep a document of your wins

Be able to quantify impact (if you can) and discuss your losses.
With your wins, you want to be able to highlight the skills that demonstrate competency at the next level or role. It helps to bolster advancement discussions and show how you are achieving and contributing in ways above and beyond your current role.
In the case of your losses, you should be able to identify what you learned and potentially how you are already able to show a course correction (i.e., you have an example of how you did things differently next time and learned from the experience).

Review your career from the 360° view

How would you honestly assess this period? Were you engaged? Did you give it everything that you wanted to? If not, why not?
Are you satisfied with your experiences and opportunities in this role?
What do you want next for yourself professionally?
How is your career progressing toward your next goal?
Is your future at this current organization or somewhere else?
What’s your plan? Create a plan for at least the next step.

Know what you want out of the review conversation

How can you connect your own review of your career to this conversation?
Do you want to set the tone for a promotion?
Do you want to recover from a previously poor review?
Do you want a salary bump?
Do you want some other type of recognition or access?

Prepping for the review conversation can create more of a dyadic and dynamic process in the review, and gives you less of the experience of it being completely out of your control and feeling no influence or impact in the room.

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