Proactive professional development

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Jo VanEvery

The new #femlead Twitter chat looks promising. But there is only so much you can say in 140 characters. Something came up last week that I want to address here.

I agree with Alison’s point here, except for the “but”. In my view getting sponsored to do a leadership task/role/etc is one of the professional development things you might actively seek out.

Here are the steps:

1. Identify what opportunities you want

This is your career direction and it’s all about you. Only you care about this but it is important as a base for you to make decisions about what to say yes to and what to say no to.

2. Identify what you have to offer

This is important to whoever is going to appoint you to that role/position. What skills do you bring? What can you do for this committee/office/whatever?

2a. Identify intermediate steps

If you have skills gaps or need more experience to be able to take on that role, identify intermediate steps that will better equip you for that role in the future. This might be a course, mentorship, or a different role that gives you the experience you need.

3. Figure out how people get appointed to the role/position/committee you want

This is important. Is there an open call? Do people get nominated? Does it seem to be an informal process where people just get asked? Are there people have seem to have influence in whatever the process is?

You need to know this so you can figure out how you can insert yourself in this process. Ask around. Find out both the official process and the process behind the official process if you can. Your goal here is to learn how things really happen.

4. Prepare your case

This might be a formal application that you submit. Or, it might be a case you prepare so that someone else can nominate you. This is where you take the information in number 2 above and frame it to fit the process. You might present some of this informally to a potential sponsor. You might put it in writing for either an application or to give to your sponsor so they can nominate you. If you need references, you also want to make this case to your references so they can support your case well.

The important part

Under no circumstances should you wait around for someone to notice what a good fit you would be for a particular role/position/committee and sponsor you out of the goodness of their heart.

The people with the power and influence to do that are very busy. They aren’t spending a lot of time looking around for hidden gems. Prepare your case and go to them. Be polite and assertive. Ask for their help and advice. Make sure you tell them what you want and why you think you are well qualified.

Yes, sponsorship is the best way to secure challenging assignments and visibility, things that are key to getting promoted and advancing your career. But you need to take that first step to visibility yourself.

Posted in Career Planning | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

Volunteer before you’re drafted

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Jo VanEvery

If your level of frustration with your working hours is more about what you are doing in them than how many of them you are working, as I argued yesterday, how do you increase the proportion of your time spent doing things that are meaningful?

In the #femlead Twitter chat on Tuesday something came up that makes a lot of sense.

volunteer for what you want before you get drafted into what you don’t want! (@ProfessMoravec)

Too many people treat service as something that they just have to suck up. Take their turn. And then end up doing jobs that are not well suited to their skills and personality, which turn out to feel meaningless in at least one of the ways listed yesterday (worthless, pointless, trivial, futile).

Why not decide what your best contribution is and volunteer for the things that you would actually prefer to be spending your time doing?

It is often the case that when we are doing work that we enjoy and are good at, we are more efficient and effective, too. So you might even same some real time as well as reducing your frustration.

Posted in Work Habits | Comments Off

Is “number of hours” the right measure?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Jo VanEvery

Recently a client asked me to help her figure out how to work less. She is frustrated by the long hours, working weekends, and so on. She figures at this stage of her career she should be able to have a better balance.

As we worked together, it became clear to me that the number of hours worked in a week might be the wrong measure of the problem. If this is true, then the number of hours worked in a week might also be the wrong measure of the change.

The first step in fixing a problem is to correctly identify what the problem is.

Based on my work with this client and others, here are some things to think about if you think you have the same problem.

Do all long weeks feel the same?

What you are doing in those hours makes a difference.

A 60-hour work week that includes 3 hours of research feels a lot different than a 60-hour work week that includes 10 hours of research. Similarly, a 60-hour work week that involves 10-20 hours of meetings, dinners with job candidates, etc feels different than a 60-hour work week involving only 5 hours of meetings.

Work you find meaningless feels like it takes up a disproportionate amount of your time. Similarly, work you find meaningful needs to have a regular place in your week even if it is only a small place.

The folks over at Careers in Theory wrote a very useful post outlining 4 elements of meaninglessness

Elements of meaninglessness

  • Worthlessness — the activity lacks intrinsic merit. Is the activity worth doing for its own sake, even if it doesn’t lead to anything? Does it provide a reward merely from the doing? Does the performance of the activity satisfy some internal physiological, psychological or emotional need?
  • Pointlessness — the activity does not serve towards the fulfilment of a particular purpose. Does the activity result in the achievement of a goal? Even if it is drudgery, does it serve a purpose beyond personal satisfaction?
  • Triviality — the end doesn’t justify the means. Is the goal worth the effort? Are the losses incurred in conducting the activity more than the gains accrued from achieving the end result?
  • Futility — the ends are unachievable. Is what you want to achieve actually possible? Is success or failure out of your control or independent of your efforts?

I suspect there is a high correlation between the perceived meaninglessness of the activities that are filling up your workweek and the level of frustration you are feeling with your working hours.

Make time for meaningful work

I also suspect that your frustration may be due to the fact that the parts of your work that you find particularly meaningful are not getting enough time. In other words, you feel like you aren’t working enough at the same time that you feel like you are working too many hours.

If you can identify the work that isn’t getting the attention it deserves, you can start to fix that problem. Instead of letting this task be the one that drops off or gets your low-quality time, give it priority and let something else (something less meaningful) slide.

Watch for gremlins

I suspect you also have gremlins telling you that you can’t give something lower priority because someone else will punish you for it somehow. That what you find meaningful isn’t really important to anyone else. Or, that if you were a Real Academic™ you would be able to do all this without making any compromises.

Gremlins start a lot of sentences with “But…”

You might want to just take notes about all the things they are telling you. That way you can deal with their comments methodically. They often distort the truth, so ask yourself if what they are saying is really true and if there is any evidence to support it.

This is hard

All change is difficult. And slow.

I can help you figure out what your particular issue is and support you as you figure out what works for you to address it.

Posted in Work Habits | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Facing the unknown

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Jo VanEvery

You need a job.

You are about to finish whatever educational program you are in right now. Or, you are really unhappy with the job you have. Or, you can see that the company you work for is likely to lay people off or even go out of business.

The problem is you have no idea what is out there. Well, maybe you know about a couple of things. Things you are supposed to do with this degree. Or things other people seem to be doing. But for some reason those things either look unappealing or seem impossible to get.

How do I know this?

Because that’s how everyone feels when they come to this kind of a transition point in their life. Things look awful.

Facing the unknown is one of the scariest things you can do.

The only way I know of to make it less scary is to make it less unknown.

The fact that you don’t know what the possibilities are does not mean that there are no possibilities. It just means you don’t know what they are. You can find out.

You can find out what kinds of jobs exist. What those jobs involve. Whether you would like doing them. And what kinds of skills they require.

Of course then you are going to panic about how you get anyone to hire you. That means knowing a lot about what you can do, what conditions you do your best work in, and generally what you have to offer to an employer.

You’re probably forgetting some of the details. Or discounting some of your experiences as irrelevant.

Again, this is normal. Everyone does this.

Choosing Your Career Consciously is a 6-week course that helps you with both these things: figuring out what you have to offer, and figuring out where you might put those skills to use.

It starts next week, March 7, 2012. It costs $149 USD if you pay by tomorrow (February 29th).

Join us.

 

Posted in Career Planning | Tagged | Comments Off

3 interview questions

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Jo VanEvery

I recently came across this article in Forbes magazine. As you can imagine, it’s not something I read all the time.

The article is written for the normal sort of Forbes audience, which isn’t you. I wanted to draw it to your attention because it makes something really clear about the hiring process:

There are only 3 interview questions.

What they mean by that, is that every interview question is trying to get at one of 3 things. This applies to academic interviews, corporate interviews, non-profit interviews … any job you ever apply for.

The 3 questions are (from the Forbes article):

1.   Can you do the job?
2.  Will you love the job?
3.  Can we tolerate working with you?

Are you focusing on all 3 questions when you write your application materials and prepare for interviews? Or are you just focusing on the first one?

The Conscious Careers course helps you identify the elements necessary to address all 3 questions. We also give you tools to narrow down your job search to jobs that are a good match on all 3 criteria.

The next session of Conscious Careers starts March 7, 2012. If you register by February 29th, it is $149 USD. Click for more information and to register.

 

Posted in Career Planning | Tagged , , | Comments Off