Career Shift Blog
by Rachel B. Garrett
Your Career Report Card
Every January and February, I work with clients to assess their current situation.
I ask the question, “How’s work working for you?”
The gut response is often…”I’m not sure...”
So we get more specific by answering the following questions - allowing my clients to get honest with themselves about what’s working, what’s not, and what actions they need to take next.
Every January and February, I work with clients to assess their current situation.
I ask the question, “How’s work working for you?”
The gut response is often…”I’m not sure...”
So we get more specific by answering the following questions - allowing my clients to get honest with themselves about what’s working, what’s not, and what actions they need to take next.
Growth:
Have you identified what you’d like to learn in your role?
And/or what would you like to learn in your career in general in the next year?
Are you on track to take on projects, attend workshops or participate in programs to help you get there?
What are your biggest obstacles to going after the growth you want?
What are you doing about those obstacles?
Energy:
What percentage of the time in your role are you feeling sparky, fully alive, in flow?
What are those things that make you feel sparky in your role?
Is there a way to do more of them or spend more time on them?
What are the things that are currently draining you in your role?
Is there a way to do less of them?
What would your work feel like if you could do more of the sparky things and less of draining tasks?
Life Fit:
Is your work aligned with your values?
What are your top life priorities right now? (Money you need to make, flexibility you need, etc.)?
Is your work in sync with your priorities?
Are you able to spend time with family and friends?
Do you have time for creative projects or the things that bring you joy?
Set aside some uninterrupted time to reflect on your own answers. And then, without judging any past decisions or current desires, ask yourself - how’s it really going? What grade would you give your current work situation? And if it’s a C or below…what do you want to do next?
Reach out to me at rachel@rachelbgarrett.com let me know what showed up for you and where you want to go from here!
Summer Intentions, The Beach And Beyond
Over the summer months, many of us continue in business as usual mode with the same routines—reacting to our email and our calendars set by others’ agendas. We move along in our white pants and sunglasses, with one or two weeks of vacation thrown in for good measure. We often begin September feeling like summer came and went without much remarkable to differentiate it from the rest of our year, save some sweaty commutes and a couple of lovely beach days. Now with summer nearly half over (yes, startling, I know!), I’ve had some time to reflect and ask myself:
What am I planning to accomplish during this naturally slower paced time of year?
Am I tracking toward achieving those goals?
What will success look like? Will I feel I hit the mark as I regroup over Labor Day Weekend?
After I drop my girls off at day camp at 9 am, I wipe my brow and focus on these things that will make my summer months stand out as a short window of time with a big impact.
1. Networking
Contrary to popular belief—summer is a fantastic time to reach out to former colleagues, contacts in your field, companies you’re interested in joining long-term—anyone who’s been on your “grab coffee or drinks” list for awhile. And if you don’t have that list, start creating it when you have some down-time (like right now!). The office has a natural slow-down feel while people collectively take vacation—allowing you to have more space to set up fun meetings to connect. Summer also brings out a more relaxed and open tone to these conversations that may not happen at other times of year.
2. Planning
September through the end of the year is career and corporate crunch time. We’re tasked to: make or beat annual revenue, achieve or exceed professional development goals, spend all the money we were too busy or hesitant to spend throughout the year, and do everything we said we would do in January. By taking some of your summer hours to rework the plan, adjust the monthly targets and get creative about how to re-invest those extra dollars—you are setting yourself up for a fall where you can actually enjoy the changing of the leaves and get excited about the kids going back to school.
3. Big Projects
You want to learn a new skill? Take a class. You want to write a short story? Block out the hours and write your first draft. You want to de-clutter the kids’ rooms while they’re at camp (very hypothetical, of course)? Get out those garbage bags and go to town. Choose one or two projects that you want to accomplish over the summer. They should be your top priority projects, the kind that when you visualize completing them—you get a physical feeling of relief. If you have ten big projects on your list for summer—go back and edit. Schedule the others for later in the year so you don’t simply cross them off the list. The goal here is not to make your summer chaotic and overwhelming—it’s to get something big and high priority accomplished so you feel like you took a leap in an area that’s meaningful to you.
4. Vacation Strategy
I have already had my fair number of client calls this summer WHILE my clients were on vacation. They’re often doing some work while they’re out, but in most cases—not an overwhelming amount. Ironically, the fact that they’re not completely disconnected is stressing them out more than the work itself. For people with intense careers that they love, I like to flip the idea of vacation on its head and ask: What are the things you want to do this week that will make it feel like vacation? The answers may be read a novel, spend time with family, grill and eat dinner outside. Completely disconnecting may not be on the list—and that’s ok. Schedule those vacation gems in your days first and then if you need to check email once a day and take a couple of calls—make sure those things don’t interfere with your vacation gems. You get to create what a vacation means to you and once you do, you can use YOUR design as your go to approach.
Most importantly—to make summer feel like a standout player in your year—make the most of these months by peppering your schedule with those summer-specific things that bring you joy. Outdoor movies and music. Rooftop bars with old friends. Playing hooky on a slow day without meetings. And of course, the beach. The beach. The beach.
Working Parents' Guide To Surviving The School Year's End
At the end of last May, a meteor came crashing down from the sky with a laser-focused target—my Google Calendar. I was as shocked by it's arrival as I had been each of the 6 years my kids have been attending school. Why do I continue to be caught off guard EACH year by the flurry of end of school events? The endless picnics, parties, dance recitals, yoga performances (What? Ok—it's Brooklyn), last field trips and random days off (I'm sorry—Clerical Day?). For working parents who are constantly battling the image of their kid being the only one "without a grownup" at these events—it's enough to make you want to give up altogether. And beyond the made-up (but realistic and dramatic) image brewing in your head, there are the actual tears. The tears that are part of the meltdown your child has when she finds out you can't make it to her recorder recital scheduled for TOMORROW that you learned about TODAY and you are leading a talk that's been on the calendar for a month. Those tears, followed by your tears because this whole thing is just not going well.
After dealing with the fallout of the meteor—yet again—I vowed to make it my last year of walking into the fire unprepared. Here are the steps I took to restore sanity when it seemed like the odds were not in my favor.
1. Get organized!
This year, I put a planning date on the calendar with my husband about six weeks before the meteor hit. We walked through all of the dates where we would need extra childcare coverage by tapping family and additional sitters, as well as scheduling a day or two off work for each of us. All end of year activities that we knew about (which were not many at this point) went on the Google Calendar. The planning gave us the feeling that we were in control—and that we could coordinate our work obligations AND give our girls a fun end of year experience.
2. Build in buffer
You know that guy with whom you've been trying to meet, but you've rescheduled 3 times already? Don't schedule that meeting right now. Don't schedule that lunch or that coffee or those drinks. Don't make this the time you're going to take your business to the next level or take on that senior level presentation. You're not doing those things right now. You're creating buffer in your schedule so when last minute things come up—as they might—you have more flexibility to work from home or to cancel meetings that will be lower stakes. If you don't have the kind of role, job or business you can tone down in this way—you can reach out to more flexible family members or friends who may be able to be on standby during this time and/or commit to be your child's grownup at one or two of the events.
3. Be proactive with teachers
You're going to need to be "that parent"—the one that emails the teachers to find out what the end of school events will be IN ADVANCE. Explain to them why you're asking. Appeal to them by saying you're trying to get more organized around year-end events so as a working parent—there can be fewer tears and less guilt!
4. Get the kids' buy-in
Once you have a handle on the 80% of events that are planned, call a family meeting. Explain to your kids that it's VERY important to you to go to some of these events and that because you work—you won't be able to attend them all. Work together to choose which events are the most important to each child and do your best to attend those. Explain that there may be some events that come up last minute and you probably won't be able to make it to those. If you've lined up flexible family members on standby for last-minute events, you can choose to either mention that or play it by ear as those opportunities present themselves.
5. Give yourself a break
Remember, no plan is perfect and Google Calendar can't protect you from the meteor. You're doing your best to orchestrate a plan where you continue to make your kids feel heard—and at the same time—do your job, run your business—save the world (or keep trying!). If the river of tears is unavoidable, remember—the guilt is a choice. You're not going to get it all right and that's part of being human. In the face of the tears, remind yourself that you're doing your best, you're learning and you're getting it right a lot of the time—which in the end is what you want your kids to learn for themselves. Who better to teach them than you?
This is a work in progress. Learn from your experience this year and opportunities to optimize could be right around the corner. Back to school meteor prep, anyone?
Employers: Here's How To Support Women
Photo Credit: Anthony Quintano
One day before International Women's Day and a planned women's strike, a bronze statue of a Fearless Girl appeared daring Wall Street's famous Charging Bull. She was fierce. She was bold. She was in charge. I shared her photo with my two daughters who instantly fell in love and kinship with this bronze girl who represented hope for them and their futures. The statue was perfectly placed in its temporary home by State Street Global Advisers to raise awareness of gender inequity on corporate boards. "Today, we are calling on companies to take concrete steps to increase gender diversity on their boards, and have issued clear guidance to help them begin to take action," State Street Global Advisors CEO Ron O'Hanley said in a statement.
While this beautifully executed awareness campaign is one step in a larger movement to support women moving into senior leadership roles across the workforce, in my work on the ground with women leaders individually and within organizations, I continue to see a disconnect between words and actions. Employers want to help. They're putting new policies in place, but they're stuck in cultures that are slow to understand the levers that can make an impact and deliver on changes once they're understood.
Based on the trends I see in my work with women, what makes them consciously choose to stay in junior and mid-level roles and what drives them to opt-out of the workforce altogether, I've highlighted five focus areas where employers can further support their female workforce and create cultures that are amenable to women rising to leadership roles within organizations.
1. Support self-promotion and the development of personal brands
The high achieving women I see aced their academic lives. They graduated with honors from prestigious schools. In essence, they followed the rules. As many of us have learned, following the rules and doing good work is not what drives success in the workplace. It's part of it, sure, but there's something else that generally speaking—men do naturally and women loathe: self-promotion. Self-promotion has become my anthem when I speak of women in leadership. See my 5 Commandments Of Self-Promotion. It is imperative to plant the seeds of your great work early and often if you want to build a personal brand within and outside of your organization. In order to do this, employers can provide and support opportunities for emerging women leaders to attend conferences, speak on panels and present their work within the organization. Public speaking is a key component to most senior roles. Gaining practice and comfort with it early in a career, as well as leveraging the exposure of presenting as an expert, can become a solid infrastructure for success.
2. Focus on long-term professional development
Many of the women I coach are hungry to learn new skills and are ready for new opportunities, but they fear having long-term growth conversations with their leaders. This leaves them to either stay too long in a role or begin to look elsewhere, which can be daunting when they have some flexibility in a company after a long tenure. Often times when they do have these conversations, they feel as if they've hit a brick wall. Many employers are focused on the needs of the here and now, the business goals of the current role—which makes sense given the intensive demands placed on organizations and leaders to perform. But—this approach produces creative stagnation and drives employee engagement to plummet. It does not prompt employees to want to grow within their organizations and it negates any vision they may have to rise to senior ranks. While I work with my clients to become leaders and drivers of their own careers, the culture of their companies plays a critical role in supporting this kind of thinking and growth mentality. People evolve and want to focus on their strengths and interests. Skilled leaders open the door to ongoing growth conversations and they think outside of their own project needs to include what's best for the employee overall.
3. Take Unconscious Bias seriously
This one keeps me up at night. Often when women begin to advocate for themselves, speak up in meetings, provide feedback, act with the authority their titles should command, [insert any leadership quality here]—they are met with resistance, stereotypes and a backlash that would not be received by male leaders at their level. Women can build up their inner strength and confidence with a coach like me, but if they continue to hit walls within their companies, change will not be possible. Organizations like Google and Facebook are leading the way with "Unconscious Bias" trainings that are not only available to their organizations, but also publicly available so that other organizations can learn and implement a similar approach. As with any corporate culture shift, there must be senior leadership awareness and buy-in that bias is currently an issue and that it must be addressed with training and accountability for every employee.
4. Create open communication about work-life balance
Find out what's important to your employee. Maybe it's being home for a family dinner and getting back online when the kids go to bed. Perhaps it's a no 9 am meetings rule. (Most working mom's have moved mountains at home and then added a commute on top of it to make a 9 am meeting). Or maybe it's the ability to completely go offline over the weekend. It's different for everyone, so it's important for employees to feel safe enough to discuss what makes life manageable and dare I say meaningful with their leaders so that they can come up with a plan that works for both parties.
5. Build cultures where mistakes are possible
One of the biggest trends I see holding my clients back is perfectionism. The need to double, triple and quadruple check every minute detail can be the killer of both creativity and productivity. While I'm a proponent of high quality work, I see many women setting unattainable expectations for not only themselves but also their direct reports. These out of reach standards can lead to a hesitance in delegating tasks, keeping women leaders handling more junior level assignments instead of focusing on strategic initiatives that will keep them on the rising track. When employers create cultures that allow humans to be humans, flaws and all—employees have the space to move beyond the pressure and the perfectionism that keeps them running in place.
While I work alongside many other coaches, organizational development professionals, writers, women's networking organizations and leadership institutes (and the list goes on…) in this march toward gender equality, there's a world of difference employers can make even beyond the longer Parental Leave policies they're beginning to implement. Parental leave is important, but it can't and it shouldn't be the only topic of conversation when it comes to a gender disparity in leadership. In kick-starting discussion around the above five points, you can make a difference. It may take a permanent installation of a fierce little girl challenging a bull that is five times her size to continue to make the point, but that's where we're at right now. So hands on hips, ladies, and let's do this thing.