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staying true to who you are: your personality at work

May 19, 2013 by

 

Business group

Think of times when your work fit like a glove. Those times may have come in minutes, hours, or months. It was a time when you were in flow, feeling confident and competent. Now think about specific jobs where you awoke excited to arrive at work. Those times when you were intrigued by the possibilities waiting for you. Those times when you contributed to creating something special, be it a product or a service. And your colleagues became like family as you supported and cheered each other’s efforts.

On the other hand, there were those other jobs when the fit was not so comfortable. We’ve all had them. Something is off.  You are not doing your best. Your spirit is absent. You don’t feel like you are making a contribution. What led to these contrasting experiences?

Personality or temperament is often something we pay little attention to as we age. Our personalities seem fixed with little wiggle room. We may believe that we grow out of those various patterns we displayed as youngsters. Maybe we were called shy or a class clown or we loved to be in charge or we stayed in the background.

Back then people might have recommended we become different: be more of this or less of that. “Vivian is a smart girl, but she doesn’t speak up in class”. “Jack is too talkative and can’t sit still. He needs to calm down”. We weren’t accepted unconditionally for our personalities. We were instructed to change in order to become successful in life and work. What happened to those traits that we displayed early on? Do you still have them or are they covered over by a new facade?

Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain is currently receiving a great deal of buzz. According to Cain, one third to one half of people are introverts. But the American work world is especially constructed for extroverts and reveres them. So if you are an introvert, you may feel a lack of fit or success with your career.

Even obtaining a job can be difficult for an introvert. For example, often employment interviews are held with a group of applicants being questioned together. Or there may be a panel of interviewers with one applicant.

Introverts prefer one on one or small groups of people they know. They tend not to speak up forcefully or promote themselves. The danger in a group interview is that an introvert will hang back and become lost in the process. In panel interviews they might become overstimulated and distracted  by several interviewers and lack space to contemplate their responses.

Another trend in work environments is turning private offices into large open work spaces. Employees are encouraged to work in teams and bounce ideas off one another in a sometimes noisy free for all. But introverts prefer quiet and time alone to recharge and deliberate their solutions. An open office environment can squash their creative process.

Reviewing your work history, how well did your jobs fit your temperament? Could it be that an uncomfortable employment situation was highly impacted by a working environment that clashed with your style? Do you think you ever blew a job interview because you were unable to truly share who you are?

According to Cain, “Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race”. So being aware if you are an extrovert or an introvert is the first step to making good choices for yourself. If you aren’t sure where you fall, you can take assessments like the Myers Briggs or free tests online.

Where you are on the extrovert/introvert continuum has nothing to do with your intelligence or capability. It is only a way of operating in the world. Since an extrovert temperament is admired and rewarded, introverts may feel “less than” and try to become someone they are not.

An occasional stretch outside your comfort zone in order to accomplish goals is different from behaving as a fraud. Not being true to your authentic self is exhausting and ultimately harmful to your existence. Accepting who you are and placing yourself in situations that promote your strengths ensure a life well lived.

So what is a person to do?:

Determine where you fall on the introvert/extrovert continuum
Identify the strengths that come with your temperament
Decide which environments nurture you
Find ways to spend sufficient time in those environments
Ask if your current work fits you well enough so that you can be productive
Choose where you want to stretch and make changes as needed to get a better fit

Be yourself and see you on the path!

Filed Under: Career Transitions Tagged With: ,

Uncovering Your Answers to Life’s Questions

April 20, 2013 by

dart board

People are searching for answers in all the wrong places. When I teach Life Design or Pre-Retirement courses, attendees secretly want me to tell them what they should do next. However even if I had an answer, it wouldn’t be the right one for them.

Granted when we feel lost and confused, we want a fast answer. I used to believe that if I just had the right information, I could live problem free. I suspected there was one answer that was eluding me. If I read enough books or took enough courses or had enough degrees, I would have the solution. I even found a cartoon in The New Yorker that said: “the point is not finding the right answer, but learning to live without one”. You can imagine I didn’t find that funny.

So what answer are you hoping for? How will it impact your life? Many people get very uncertain around transitions. What’s next often becomes very murky.  For example, graduation from college…a leap into the real world. Or retirement…what will I do with my time now? Or the death of a spouse or partner…how do I go on alone?

The emotions raised around these huge questions pressure us for immediate answers. If we could just know what to do now, we’d feel better.  But it’s not always about doing something, it’s often about being.  Who will we become now in this new chapter?  How will we express our values, interests, and talents?

What if we didn’t press for the answer and just spent time in this new space? What if we took time to let go of the prior self and prepare room for the new?  It doesn’t help that friends and family often ask, “What will you do now?” They aren’t comfortable either with your change of identity, focus, and purpose. Perhaps we all get anxious around change, the unknown.

Rather than a dark tunnel facing us, what if we viewed this time as an opportunity for investigation, possibility, and curiosity? Unlike the desire for a cookbook to tell us what steps to take, life design is an inside job. You have to figure it out, you have to try it on, you have to make the hard choices. So how do we create a smorgasbord of options when we are in transition?

Imagine a dart board where you place images of activities that interest you. What if you throw the dart and try out whatever it lands on? No commitment, no pressure, just a trial.

Now work is not something you can try on, you say. Work is serious. You can’t take that lightly. What if you could? What if you could explore different careers? We did that when we were younger through internships, volunteering, and summer jobs. What can we make possible now?

Here are some steps to begin:

Luxuriate in the unknown. Dream, free associate
Draw, scribble, use clay to represent what’s coming to mind
Find pictures of people doing what intrigues you
Paste them to a pretend dart board
Throw the dart
Locate someone who does that activity
Interview them
Visit and shadow them as they work or play

Pay attention to your emotions and thoughts. Depending on the results, go deeper or throw the dart again.

Have fun and see you on the path.

“Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not look for the answers…At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day…Discipline yourself to attain it, but accept that which comes to you with deep trust…”

 Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

 

Filed Under: Career Transitions, Life Design

Get Your Oar in the Water: Carrying Out your Dreams

March 21, 2013 by

Paddling

As difficult as it is to believe now, a few weeks ago I was half way around the world, river rafting on the Seti River in Nepal.  This was an adventure my husband had dreamed of for years.  So he made it happen.

As we drifted down the river chanting “Om Mani Padme Hum”, our new friend Augie Troncale reminded us that it was time to put our oars in the water.  In this situation we weren’t going  to get very far without paddling, but how might this work when you aren’t on a body of water?  When do you recognize it’s time to get your oar in the water?

It seems there are times in life when we aren’t giving full effort.  We are drifting, letting life take us where it might and going through the motions.  Often we get in a familiar rhythm of going to work during the week and on weekends doing chores, recuperating, and maybe having some fun.

How do we know if we are satisfied with our existing lifestyle?  What gives us a clue as to how well our life is fitting our dreams or expectations?  We may be cautious and afraid of looking too closely at what’s going on.  We may become concerned with what we see and not know what to do about it.  Or not be ready to make a change.

The risk of not looking too closely or evaluating how we are living our lives is that we may get widely off course.  We may end up living someone else’s life:  a life that has been prescribed by our family, society, or friends/colleagues.  It could become a life that no longer looks like it belongs to us.  We may end up asking, “How did I get in this mess?”

What are the signs that you are way off track?  Do you feel it in your body with aches, pains and fatigue?  Do you feel it in your heart with a lack of commitment or excitement?  If you are honest with yourself, you know when you are really off course. Surely it’s common not to have 100% of what you want in your life.  But sometimes there comes a tipping point, when you know change is necessary.

Something significant is missing.  If you ask yourself what it is, you may find it involves your relationships, or your work, or your place in the world.  Often in midlife people take a breath from the rush of responsibilities and look around.  When they look around, they see one or more pieces missing.  It could be adventure, new opportunities, excitement, challenges, risk, or meaning.  Or you could look around and see things you want to get rid of.  These could be stress, deadlines, overwork, boredom, or confusion.

These kinds of turning points may have come before and you may have experience navigating them.  Or this could feel different…like all of a sudden you don’t know who you are or where you want to go next.  That uncertainty can be scary and exciting at the same time.  One reaction is to put the genie back in the bottle.  But if you do that, what is the consequence?  Will things improve on their own or will they have to get worse in order to get your attention?

One thing I know is that self assessment is easier if not done alone.  You are not the first person to be ready for a change.  If you speak up, you’ll find there are many others in your situation.  But often we stay quiet and try to muddle through alone.

What I learned on that river is that we needed a Captain to guide us and also several people with oars in the water.  We all pulled together and arrived at our destination.  It was enjoyable and a joint accomplishment.  We felt supported and grateful that we worked as a team.

So here are some steps you can take right now:

Do a personal check in
Ask, how well is my current life fitting?
What needs some adjustment?
If nothing changes, what will I lose?
Where can I start?
Who can I share this with?
When do I want to get my oar in the water?

Happy journeys and I’ll see you on the path.

Filed Under: Life Design Tagged With: ,

Step Three to Finding Your True Calling

February 19, 2013 by

woman climbing rock

Callings are expressed at work, at leisure, or by contributing to your community.  In addition to acting on a calling, you can “be” your calling.  A great resource to learn more is Gregg Levoy’s book Callings, Finding and Following an Authentic Life.  Levoy believes that “saying yes to the call puts you on a path that half of yourself doesn’t think makes a bit of sense, but the other half knows your life won’t make sense without”.

When you have completed Steps One and Two of Finding your True Calling (previous blogs), you will possess a preliminary vision and steps to take within ninety days to reach your goals.  You are also in action.  Fighting the inertia that keeps us stuck in the same old behaviors is challenging, but invigorating when you actually step out.

Think of the times you have procrastinated around acting on your dreams for days, months, even years.  The contrast between the disappointment that comes with procrastination and the enthusiasm that comes with action is amazing.  Which state would you prefer to live in?  “Callings keep surfacing until we deal with them” according to Levoy.  So when will you act?

If you haven’t taken your first step, here’s a tool to help.  It’s called the “Single Daily Action”.  Make a list of what you are procrastinating on and pick one task.  For 20 minutes a day, work on it.  Maybe you want to research training programs in your desired field, but you can’t get started.  Take a timer, set it for 20 minutes and get to work.  After 20 minutes, you can either stop or work longer.  Do it every day, until your goal is completed

Action doesn’t have to be huge, difficult, or sensational.  Action can be a first step, one that gets you in motion.  Often once we get started in change, we’ll be eager and enthused at first.  We wonder, why did I wait this long?  This isn’t as difficult as I thought.  I’m enjoying this.

But at some point, you usually hit a wall.  We all do, even people we admire.  Thomas Edison said, “I failed my way to success”.  Accomplished people aren’t stopped by their “failures”.  They learn and keep going.

We all need strategies to overcome our obstacles to progress.  What are your obstacles?  Common ones are fear, lack of information, low self-confidence, and lack of time.  What is the largest barrier standing in the way of your progress right now?

Let’s say lack of sufficient time is a barrier.  Frank is a very busy manager.  He cares greatly about his staff and the work they produce in human resources.  Even though Frank has advanced rapidly in his company, he feels something is missing.  He is an accomplished musician and yet has not played his guitar in years.  As a young man, Frank was in a band and loved singing and playing with his closest friends.  These days it’s all Frank can do to keep up with work and family responsibilities.  Frank dreams of playing in a band again.  What can he do?

We all have the same 24 hours in a day.  We cannot create more hours, but we can change how we use the hours we have.  Here are some strategies:

Start small
Eliminate and learn to say no
Focus on the payoff
Make this urgent
Tell others your plan

Frank went to work at eliminating his obstacles.  He decided to play his guitar for 30 minutes 3 times a week.  He carved out this time by not watching CNN and sports TV. Frank found that the joy he re-discovered by being creative gave him increased energy and clarity at work.  He was also having fun, so the payoffs motivated him to do more. While Frank had other activities that interested him, he made music the most urgent to pursue.  Finally, Frank started telling friends and colleagues of his hobby and was encouraged and introduced to like-minded musicians.  Who knows, a band may develop out of these associations.  If Frank finds music is not as important and fulfilling as he imagines, he is willing to re-assess.

As you create you own obstacle strategy, you will be prepared when challenges occur to your forward motion.  Remember these goals you have set reflect your plan for a satisfying life.  They are calling you to listen and act.

Enjoy and see you on the path!

 

Filed Under: Career Transitions, Life Design Tagged With: ,

Step Two to Finding Your True Calling

January 19, 2013 by

 

Seagull

Once you have a vision of where you want to be in the future, you are ready to take the next step.  Perhaps you’ve heard the story of someone walking into Baskin Robbins and telling the clerk, “I don’t want vanilla ice cream”.  OK, but what DO you want? Even though you are certain about what you don’t want, it is vital to take the risk to go after what you do.

Maybe your vision is solidly formed or just an inkling of what’s next.  It may come to you in images, phrases or sensations. Whatever floats into your consciousness is a message that gives you something to work with.  It’s like anything you have created from scratch:  a meal, a garden, a letter, or a piece of clothing.  You get started and it grows to express your desires.

What does your future vision tell you?  Tease out the theme of your calling.  Does it cry out for you to work more creatively or more independently or to deliver more impact in the world?  As you mature, the motivators that drive your direction begin to change. What was driving you five years ago, may no longer be relevant.  New interests and priorities are growing within you.  For example, it is noted that the desire to leave a legacy increases as we age.  We want to make a contribution.

Ask yourself which parts of your work/life need tweaking.  Where will you get most return for your effort?  What do you see when you close your eyes?  When I close my eyes, I see clouds representing various aspects of my life.  If you were to grab hold of one aspect of your life to change, where would you start?

Often we bite off more than we can handle and quickly give up in disappointment when results aren’t immediately forthcoming.  Instead if you were to take one aspect of your work or life and turn the dial 5-10 degrees toward your desired vision, how would that be?  Often small changes allow us to luxuriate in a new space and decide if that’s the direction we are truly seeking.

Claudia is someone who loves the outdoors and being active.  When she studied horticulture in college, she spent months on farms both in Texas and South America. After 20 years progressing in her career, Claudia is now the vice president of product development for an international food corporation.  Claudia spends her time in a C-suite on teleconference calls and in meetings all week.  In fact her work is so demanding that she rarely leaves before dark and often takes work home on the weekends.  Claudia’s connection with nature and the environment is severely lacking.

Claudia craves a change, but is confused where to begin.  Step two in finding your true calling is putting a stake in the ground and taking the first steps.  Where you go and how fast are dictated by your interests and motivation.  How important is this change in direction for you?  How urgent?

If you are ready for action now, write 1-3 goals for the next 90 days.  According to Caroline Adams Miller in her book Creating Your Best Life, it’s important that your goals be viewed not as tasks, but as something attractive to undertake.  Choose goals that are:

Approach vs avoidance goals
Not too easy, but just beyond your fingertips
Specific and Measurable
Tied to your values
Leveraged

Remembering the Nike ad, “Just Do It, it is imperative that we act on our dreams.  The more we think, the more we find reasons to stall.  Taking the first step with joy and curiosity will get your wheels turning toward a life that better fits you.

Create your own Board of Advisors to hold you accountable in your efforts.  Tell others what you are changing and allow them to cheer you on.

Take a chance and I’ll see you on the path!

Filed Under: Career Transitions, Life Design Tagged With:

Step One to Finding Your True Calling

December 19, 2012 by

It’s my pleasure to welcome you to my way of staying in touch. This is my first blog entry and I hope we will be spending much time together.

Inuksuk

If you are here, it’s because you share a love of growth and adventure. I’ve chosen to use the Inuksuk image as a symbol of your time on the path. The Inuksuk points the way, protecting you from getting lost as you move ahead. While there are many paths for different times in our lives, there are ways to figure out if your current one is authentic for this particular time.

Taking risks to begin a new path can be overwhelming and scary. We usually appreciate the familiar, the status quo. When what we have and who we are is no longer working as before, the courageous look ahead and make a commitment to try something else.

The people I work with are often part way out the door of one life and wondering what’s next. You’ve probably experienced those times when you lack investment in your current work, relationship or lifestyle. I remind people that it’s much easier to know what you don’t want than what you do.

People are hungry to discover what’s best for them, but the process can be messy. William Bridges of Transitions calls this in-between time the “neutral zone”, when you’ve left one chapter and haven’t found the next. It is similar to the trapeze artist who has let go of one swing and hasn’t yet grabbed onto the other.

The thrill that comes from finding a great fit in career and in life makes all the hard work and uncertainty worth the effort. So I encourage you to take the first step.

This year I participated in a coach training program based on the book Becoming a Life Change Artist by Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan. One exercise to increase focus and clarity is to make a collage representation of your current life by pasting images, words and objects to a poster board. When completed, you can take a photo of that Current Life Collage.

Then think ahead toward the horizon of your future life. What is different there? What’s important to include and eliminate? When you have a vision of what’s desired, make another collage of how life looks in one, two or five years. Take a photo of this Future Collage.

My clients find this vision board provides a structure for where changes need to be made. Continue to use a collage as a living guidepost which develops as your desires do. Just like with clothing, we have to try on many options before we are pleased with the results. Our interests and ambitions continually change as we grow and develop.

Feel free to send me the photos of your collages and notes on what they express. Stretch yourself more by creating an original mantra for your future, like “the best is yet to come” or “I can do anything”. Find ways to stretch and surprise yourself.

See you on the path!

Filed Under: Career Transitions, Life Design Tagged With: , ,
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