Maybe the worst thing that ever happened to you--wasn't.

 

REINVENTING YOU!

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future by Dorie Clark (HBR Press, 2017), reviewed by Steve Gladis, 2019.

1.     Overview. Most of us know we’re ready for a change long before we do it. Whether you want a promotion where you are, intend to switch to a new company, find a whole new industry, or even start your own company—this book will help you. It’s part storybook and part manual of instruction. Simple to read, story studded, full of easy-to-digest directions in sections like “Try This” and “Remember,” the book is well worth recommending to anyone in search of a new path and rebranding.

2.     Perceive Yourself.  Find out how others perceive you. Some techniques like hiring a coach or asking someone from HR to conduct a 360 is a good start. Asking peers, subordinates, your boss, and even clients what your strengths and challenges are can help. Try a personal focus group: Gather 10-15 people for feedback. Too awkward to conduct it yourself? Have another person conduct it. If you sit in, you only listen—no comments. Also, check out your online profile. Every potential new employer will!
3.     Find Strategic Passions. You may know you need a change, but finding your destination takes time and effort. Start by investigating new careers online. Find people in those industries and read about their career path to the position. Google them and read “about” on their websites, their blogs, LinkedIn or Twitter posts. Next, the informational interview is the king of finding your new job and career. To get career informational interviews, go to LinkedIn to see who might get you an intro.  Some tips: Be clear about your ask; Don’t overstay your welcome; Ask about a typical day; Get more names to talk to; Thank-You notes matter; Follow up and stay in touch.
4.     Test Drive Your Future. Once you have a handle on your new path, it’s time to take a test drive. First, make a list of the companies you’d like to work for, find out if you’re connected on LinkedIn, decide on what you might have to offer.  Then consider volunteering, apprenticing, and job shadowing. Volunteering: One way is to find the employer that almost always says yes to free talent—nonprofits. Volunteers are the backbone of nonprofits, so if you want to become a speechwriter, volunteer to write speeches and written content for a nonprofit. Apprenticing: Sometimes to start a new career path, you have to take a step back and restart. Offering to apprentice can be the beginning of a restart. Shadowing: If you really want to know what people do on an average day, follow them around—shadowing. If you’re selective and respectful, you can get people to help you, and you’ll learn a ton. Just remember that the path to rebranding isn’t straight, so be prepared for twists and turns.
5.     Leverage Skills. While volunteering will help you explore new vistas, you can also expand your skills while staying at your current job by moonlighting and even by going back to school. First, at your current job, find out how you can expand or re-focus your work. This is called job-crafting and a perfect way to renegotiate your position with your employer, especially if you show how it will help her/him. Second, consider a side-hustle in the field you would like to break into. Some people start right where they are, and others start a home business. Third, be very selective about graduate school. In all but the top 10 MBA programs, carefully consider the brand value and perhaps consider a one-week executive education program at a name school that’s targeted toward what you want really want to do—and way cheaper!
6.     Use Mentors. We all need guides to help us climb the right corporate ladder. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” is a famous Zen saying that’s true also about mentors. Once you feel the need, look around and there are many that have been there all along. And you’ll want to find one with relevant experience, to whom you’re willing to listen, who has your personal interest at heart, and genuinely wants to help. Start by making a list of 6 people you admire who might help. Decide on what kind of mentoring you want, how often you want to get it. Also offer your help—maybe you’re good at social media or have some technical talents they need. You may have more than one mentor for different aspects of your life.
7.     Match Skills to a New Future. Think about the skills you have now and how they can be used in a future position, and give yourself credit for important, but often overlooked, skills. For example, a stay-at-home mother who keeps the finances and the house afloat has critical organizational skills. Next, write down any professional skills you have—writing, speaking, leading. Provide concrete examples of each skill you mentioned. Think about any memorable skills you have—maybe you won a spelling bee in high school.
8.     Create Your Narrative. Once you’ve laid out your key talents, skills and uniqueness, it’s time to tell your story. Tell them about your journey, explaining the twists and turns along the way. The author suggests that you make connections between your past and present life. Find and connect the underlying themes of your life, and explain the value you will bring to this new position. Write down in a couple of sentences why you’re making the transition and rehearse saying it—first with friends, then people you meet, and finally with recruiters.
9.     Create Content. Build your portfolio. Use social media, blogs, and more to publish your philosophy and content for people to see. Create a video blog (vlog), a powerful way to frame your brand—think YouTube. Videos are 53 times more likely to hit the front page of a Google search! Podcasts are another way to extend your brand—what or who you want people to believe you represent. Schedule your social media (Hootsuite and Tweet-Deck).
10.  Launch Your New Brand. As you reintroduce yourself to the community, remember: You can take your current status with you. Professional athletes sell shaving cream based on that! Have someone scan your social media to see what image/message you’re sending. Think of all the unconscious nonverbal cues you send—diplomas on the wall, your formal or informal clothing—and make sure it matches the job. Have friends provide third-party validation. Branding/rebranding is a forever thing.

Harvard on TEAMS

1. Overview. HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams. The Harvard BusiessReview has gathered some of its best articles on teams into one convenient book. Authors and scholars like Hackman, Pentland and Katzenbach, Eisenhardt, and Amabile fill this volume with rich content for leaders seeking research-based guidance. For example, using high-end sensors, Sandy Pentland and his MIT colleagues describe accurately how great teams behave based on massive data tracking. Theresa Amabile uses hundreds of daily work diaries to help us understand that people just want to make progress toward a meaningful goal every day—the “progress principle.” And Kathleen Eisenhardt and colleagues teach us how to engage in constructive conflict to produce excellent results while preserving relationships. Here is a summary of several of the best articles in this volume.

2. The New Science of Building Great Teams (by Alex “Sandy” Pentland). What separates average from great teams? MIT researchers equipped over 2,500 people with sensor badges (like those ID badges people wear at work). MIT’s special high-tech badges collected copious interactive communication data, such as voice tone, position of speakers relative to each other, time spent talking and listening to each other—but not recording conversation. From this communication data, highly reliable patterns emerged that allowed researchers to make reliable predictions about effective team behavior. “Those communication patterns were as significant as all other factors—intelligence, personality, talent—combined.” The three key communication factors that impact on performance are energy, engagement, and exploration. Thus, in the best teams, members of the team: 

a. Talk about the same amount of time and in short bursts—no speeches!

b. Face each other and energetically gesture.

c. Connect with the team and each other individually. 

d. Carry on back-channel discussions within the team. 

e. Explore outside the team (conferences and meetings) and bring back new info to the team.  

3. Why Teams Don’t Work (Richard Hackman interview). Teams often underperform due to issues with coordination, competition, and motivation. Even excellent leaders often don’t produce great teams. To increase the chance of a great team:

a. Appoint and protect a deviant. A devil’s advocate (deviant) helps to keep the team from agreeing too much—becoming too homogeneous—a real danger to innovation. The deviant says what others might be thinking, but no one has the willingness to say. S/he must be protected and allowed to tell the truth to power and the team.

b. Keep the number of team members low. Hackman suggests no double digits, even no more than six members. Become ruthless about whom you allow on the team. ONLY the necessary few should be allowed. Don’t let politics or lack of courage of the leader get in the way of key selections. 

c. Set a compelling direction and purpose. People need to know the strategic direction—the why—of what they’re doing to have any chance at being aligned and successful. A compelling purpose with a single agenda needs to be the rule. 

d. Focus on group process. Forget guiding and correcting individual behavior. Rather, use a coach-approach and group process. Leaders need to know how to launch and assess team progress and outcomes.

e. Stabilize teams. Data shows that stable teams win more often—whether flying planes, conducting surgery, or running companies. Regular turnover destabilizes teams.

f. Engage a team coach. Leaders who receive executive coaching are not as effective as the entire team getting coaching—especially at the beginning, midpoint and end of a team project. 

4. The Power of Small Wins (Amabile and Kramer). When people make progress toward a meaningful goal every day, they stay engaged. These authors reviewed the daily work diaries of hundreds of knowledge workers and found that a positive inner work life made the difference between average and high-performing, engaged workers. And engaged employees and teams produce measurably more than others. The finding of this research is that when leaders help people make regular progress toward a goal, people feel empowered and motivated. The authors call this finding “the Progress Principle”—the single greatest motivator a leader can offer. In these diaries, best days were described with the word “progress” and on worst days, the word “setback” showed up.

5. How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight (Eisenhardt, Kahwajy, Bourgeois) Leaders want differences to be debated without having personal attacks. Thus, separating personalities from issues is critical. Constructive conflict in a high-speed economy will be critical in the future. So how to do it? Vigorous debate on the issues but little time name-calling and politicking. These steps will help: Focus on facts. Develop alternatives. Agree upon goals, not solutions. Inject humor. Maintain a balance of power. Resolve issues without demanding consensus.  

6. Virtuoso Teams (Fischer and Boynton). Successful virtuoso teams consist of top performers; intimate and intense relationships; strong communication systems, collaboration and conflict; assumptions that consumers are smart. The temptation is to settle for OK teams. The authors’ advice: DON’T. Ordinary teams produce ordinary results. With the right strategies, virtuoso teams produce high-end results. So, 1) Assemble stars. It’s an investment worth doing; 2) Build the group ego, not individual egos; 3) Make work a contact sport. Cause face to face contact/conflict that’s managed.;4) Respect the customer’s intelligence; 5. Herd the cats. Respect individualism and keep the team focus.  

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams by Harvard Business Press, 2013, reviewed by Steve Gladis, June 2018.

THRIVE, DON'T JUST SURVIVE

Thrive by Design: The Neuroscience that Drives High-Performance Cultures (Forbes Books, 2017), by Don Rheem, reviewed by Steve Gladis, June 2018.

Overview: As a species, humans are compelled to work together on teams. Survival as a species has always depended on teams; for example, early hunter-gatherers were only able to survive by taking down large animals or farming large areas with teams of people. In today’s high-pressure, competitive workplace, we require that same kind of connection and teamwork to survive and compete. As herd animals, we need to feel connected. The author concludes that a great job in the future will be more about how it feels than how much it pays. So, creating conditions that sustain motivation, provide meaning and instill trusted relationships will produce high-performance cultures. Thus valid, regular feedback and recognition of people on the team makes individuals and the team stronger and more high-performing.

1.      The Evolving Workplace.  We’ve moved from the Age of Compliance to the Age of Choice when it comes to talent. People now have many more options and control over their employment. As a result, many people seek not only career opportunities but meaning and purpose in their professions. My-way-or-the-highway leaders will suffer epic talent losses in the coming decades. Attachment theory indicates that we’re wired to connect as humans, and when attachment is absent, we feel isolated, fearful, and vulnerable. Having reliable, trusted resources at work supports a thriving culture. Leaders who provide a relational culture (values, mission, vision), not simply a “cool” culture, develop high-performance. Our limbic, early warning system provides survival instincts and overrides our conscious brain—control precedence. When employees are immersed in a toxic environment, their brains divert important resources from problem solving and innovation to here-and-now survival. Thus, they become worn down, are exhausted and burned out. Our brains ask two questions, especially at work: What’s next? And, How am I doing? Leaders who provide regular, positive, honest feedback develop high-performance cultures.

2.      Employee Engagement.  Leaders who deliver predictable, consistent, and fair behavior; provide clear mission, vision and values; and, offer regular feedback and recognition to employees will attract and retain key talent. And, employees who feel like they’re in a safe environment will thrive. Leaders may be of three types: 1) Traditional—top down, hierarchical; 2) Motivational and Charismatic; and, 3) Transformational, team focused and relational. Isolation diminishes the capacity of people. They need connections to colleagues to free up their mental resources to become more innovative. Disengaged employees pull down strong performers, not the other way around. Don’t let negative employees hijack the culture. Leaders must model the behavior they want. Positive leadership strategically moves cultures using a positive bias that supports employee well-being, productivity and engagement. High-performance teams have a 5:1 (positive to negative) ratio of interactions. Effective leaders offer 3 intentional gifts: Validation—recognizing worth of another; Recognition—praising performance, behavior, attitude; Feedback—monthly meetings to give each employee clarity, focus and offer two-way communication.

3.      The Accountable Leader.  Without accountability, high-performers get discouraged and progress stalls. Both individual and organizational obstacles lead to such stalls. Individual obstacles to accountability: Learned helplessness, victim mentality, and holding grudges. To thwart these obstacles, leaders need to listen, be vulnerable and invite employees to be part of the solution. Organizational obstacles to accountability: Poor priorities, silos, avoiding conflict. To counter such organizational obstacles, leaders who offer inclusive decision making as a group and have open and honest communication create high-performance organizations. The old accounting saying—what don’t get measured, don’t get done—holds true. Metrics make a difference. Measuring engagement is important and must be done well to ensure you’re measuring engagement, not satisfaction; it’s of sufficient length without being either superficial or taxing; and the metrics correlate to engagement principles.

4.      Culture of Engagement. There are 4 types of engagements at any company or organization.  1) Actively Engaged—these are your highest performers, who are in a calling. 2) Engaged—they have a positive mindset. 3) Somewhat Disengaged—these folks are ambivalent and have a wishy-washy commitment.  4) Actively Disengaged—these folks are checked out and toxic.  Leaders need to give employees a sense of safety, clear focus, and training to create better engagement. Determine the level of engagement by using a valid and reliable engagement instrument. Leadership needs to get the results and issue several key themes to employees to show they’ve been heard.                                                                                                                     

FINDING A NEW JOB--IT'S REAL WORK!

What Color is Your Parachute 2018: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career- Changers (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing Group, 2018) by Richard Bolles. Reviewed by Steve Gladis.

Overview: Updated annually since 1972, this classic stands up to the challenges of modern-day job seekers and career changers. In fact, it’s got so much information that it could overwhelm some readers. So, think of it as a reference book. The author enlightens us about how job seekers and organizations approach filling positions in exactly opposite ways; how the market has radically changed since the 2008 recession; how to interview for jobs; how to negotiate salaries; how to handle the psychological ups and downs of the job-hunting process; how to conduct a self-inventory; how to take charge of your career; and, even how to start your own business. There’s a reason that this book has been updated annually for decades—it works. A terrific manual with many useful PDFs available. 

1.      Things Have Changed: Since the 2008 recession, employers shifted from focusing on employees to focusing on profit. However, job seekers never got the message and continued to submit resumes and post on job boards, which don’t work well anymore. Today, employers want more certainty; so, they search on a hierarchy that starts with hiring known employees from within; next, with people who either have consulted for them or have been recommended by an insider—both which mitigate risk. Bad hires cost about $50K!  So, HR folks are not looking at online lists, and when they do, their job is to eliminate you from a huge pile—to get from 250 resumes to the 5 top candidates. Also, the length of time to find a job has increased dramatically. So, what previously took one month, now can take six months to land a job. And the higher the salary, the longer the time it takes. We’re turning over our jobs faster—in some job-seeker age brackets 32% of their jobs lasted less than a year, and 69%, lasted less than 5 years. Thus, part-time work is becoming far more prevalent, and roughly 50% of Fortune 500 employees will be part-timers. The best jobs today are in finance, sales and healthcare. Job hunting has become a normal way of life—people will go job hunting 17 times in their lives. And while online hunting is not as effective as it used to be, here’s a very good site for doing so:  www.livecareer.com/quintessential. The winners in this market are people who know how to get hired. 

2.      How to Get Hired: The author offers 17 Principles for getting hired. Here are just a few.

a.      Find a job that fits you. Don’t just try to force fit yourself into a job.

b.     Conduct a “Self Inventory.”  He uses the “flower experiment” which looks at your interests, personality as various petals of the flower. He claims that this approach results in success 84% of the time.

c.      Search for what you love: It’s not just about what you’re good at, but also what you love to do.

d.     Job hunts are also potential career changes. This is a great time to scan your history and rethink what you really want to do, not just what you can do.

e.      Target companies and organizations, not just jobs. Regardless of whether a company you admire has a job opening, pursue the organization.

f.       Especially target smaller companies of 100 people or less. These companies tend to be more flexible and open to discussion and options.

g.     Try to avoid HR. As mentioned, HR’s job is to be a gatekeeper. So, if you can find a way to get to the hiring manager, your chances increase.

h.     Submitting resumes is a necessary evil. However, conducting a self-inventory, working in association with people and coaches, and knocking on doors of companies you interested in are all more effective ways to tackle the search. 

3.      The Interview: One of the 17 Principles, the Interview, is critical.

a.      Practice interviewing with friends, fellow seekers.

b.     Conduct informational interviews of people who actually do the work you’re interested in—this serves as a reality check.

c.      Interview for jobs—this is the ultimate goal that all activities should focus on. In job interviews, here are the only 5 questions they care about:

                                                        i.      Why are you here? Explain your research—about what you know about our company and how your talents are a fit.

                                                      ii.      What can you do for us? Explain how you can solve our specific problems and tell stories about how you did it in the past.

                                                    iii.      What kind of person are you? Explain how you play well with others!

                                                    iv.      What are your distinguishing talents?  Explain why you’re different.

                                                      v.      Can we afford you? Explain parameters, flexibility, and don’t let money get in the way.

d.     Watch the time in an interview.

                                                        i.      Half and Half:  Don’t overtalk the interview. As best you can, try to make the interview a conversation. And research on effective conversations shows that when both get a chance to talk about the same amount, it feels like it’s been a good exchange.

                                                      ii.      20 to 2: Answers should take between 20 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the complexity of the question. But droning on can be a turn off.  However, answering in machine-gun fashion can feel awkward and unsatisfying as well.

                                                    iii.      Ask for the job. At the end of the interview you may want to ask: “Considering all that we have discussed here, can you offer me this job?” The author swears by this technique. I’m on the fence about it.

4.   

   Stick with it! It’s easy to get discouraged as the process takes more time than we ever wanted. The key is Don’t Stop—keep the process going. It’s really a full-time job.

5.      Job Hunting Links: Finally, here’s a link to some pretty cool PDFs on job hunting--http://content.randomhouse.com/assets/97803

ACT Before You Think!?

Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra (HBR Press, 2015), reviewed by Steve Gladis

Overview:  Act before you think!  Not exactly the advice we might give our kids, but sage advice that the author, Herminia Ibarra, offers her readers based on her myth-shattering research about career transition. Leaders need to act—experiment their way into leadership—and not overthink it. Social science research shows us that people change their minds only after changing their

behavior. We think of ourselves as writers, runners, lovers only after we’ve acted—written, run and loved. And becoming a leader from the outside in helps generate the author’s slogan: Outsight comes from action—by redefining your job, your network, yourself. Regarding leadership, we act like a leader when we offer new ideas, network with new people to reach goals, and make contributions beyond our expertise. To become a better lder, we must stretch. And, when we’re in transition, reflection should always follow action, not the other way around. By contrast, too much insight reflects on internal knowledge, past experience and thought—too much of which can get you stuck in the past. Rather, advancing your leadership emerges from your acts first, then your thoughts and reflections.

1.      The “Outsight Principle.” A rapidly changing world calls for an adaptive, do-it-yourself (DIY) transition. Not waiting for your organization to step up, but taking charge of your own leadership development makes sense. Called the “outsight principle,” the author’s revelation says that we need to act against habit and follow a three-pronged strategy: 1. Work on your job—try new ways at work; 2. Work on your network—meet new people; and, 3. Work on yourself--connect and engage with people in new ways.

2.      Redefine Your Job. We tend to stick with what we’re good at because it feels good—and we’re also lazy! Nearly 60% of leaders spend time in meetings—getting bogged down. Shifting from driving day-to-day results to becoming more strategic is how leaders advance.  But that shift isn’t easy, and we like easy—staying with who and what we know. Getting off the “dance floor” and onto the “balcony” forces managers to see their job in a more strategic way. To evolve, leaders must act as bridges between diverse groups, envision new ideas, engage with people and embody/become the change they want to see. To do these things, leaders need to get more involved in outside projects, carve out more time for strategic work, and communicate their purpose—their “why.”

3.      Network Across and Out. Getting strategic things done demands that leaders become better networked with stakeholders (both lateral and vertical) to sell ideas, identify trends, and compete for resources. To develop, leaders also need to know how to do new things (get new tasks done), which often requires help—coaching, mentoring, encouragement. Thus, expanding networks to more strategic levels and well beyond their current tactical levels makes sense.  In one study, managers rated external training (outside networking) as far more valuable than their boss in developing them as a leader—reinforcing the do-it-yourself (DIY) model of transition. Leaders need three kinds of networks: Personal (to develop yourself); operational (to get things done); and strategic (to get to the next level). And, leveraging between networks leads to synergy. Critical components of a good network are breadth (diverse), connectivity (links between groups), and dynamic (evolving).  But we tend to network with people who are like ourselves—an evolutionary instinct. In fact, at the beginning of any job interview, finding something in common with the interviewer dramatically increases the chances of getting to the next level. Thus, the more diverse, dynamic and wide a network, the better.

4.      Be More Playful with Your Self. Talk to any successful person and they’ve either felt or are feeling like a fraud. So common is this phenomenon that it’s been called “the imposter syndrome.” Often, we get trapped into this situation because when you step up to leadership, the position feels new, weird. Experimenting with new behaviors helps us role play as we adapt to new identities—which can feel less authentic. However, who we were in the past is not who we might become. Three ways to play/experiment:  draw from other leaders, focus on learning, and rewrite your story.

5.      Stepping Up. Evolving into the next-level leader is not a single event but a process over time.  Transition is never a linear, straightforward process—more a bunch of false starts and readjustments. It’s a lot like going to buy a pair of running shoes. You try them on, test drive them on a treadmill or around the store first. Who you are as a leader isn’t preconceived but conceived of testing, failing and trying again. According to Daniel Levinson, we go through transition (3 years) and stability periods (7 years). We tend to incrementally change in stability periods and make bigger changes in our transition phases. There are five stages when stepping into transition as a leader: 1. Disconfirmation—a gap between where you are and want to be; 2. Simple Addition—adding and testing out new roles and behaviors; 3. Complication—setbacks that happen along the transition; 4. Course Correction—reflection on new endeavors and impact; 5. Internalization—confirming your new identity and sticking with changes. Bottom Line: To become a leader, act first, then think and reflect on it. Change how you work, who you hang around with and how you express yourself. In his commencement speech at Stanford, Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots going forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” So, stepping out and trying/acting into leadership may not immediately make perfect sense, but one day it will form a coherent narrative if we stay true to our quest to become a better leader.

6.      More Good Stuff Inside: Check out these nuggets: The Outsight Graphic (p. 11); Is Your Work Environment Telling You It’s Time to Change (p.19); A Network Audit (p. 73); What’s Wrong with Your Network (p.102); The Big Questions (p. 102); Are you in a Career-Building Period or in a Career-Transitioning Period? (p. 179).