Leadership and Learning

Posts Tagged ‘Career’

The subjective perception of time is fascinating. After all, it objectively ticks away one reliable second at a time. There is no deviation. The atomic clock rules.

Yet, there are times when time seems to slow down. We sit at a long traffic light, ensure a boring speech, clean out a basement – we might feel like, “How long has this been going on?” and be surprised it was just a few minutes.

On the other hand, it is good to know there are at least two things that happen really fast — shockingly fast — so you can be prepared. The first is brief and personal; the second relates to you and your career.

Kids leaving home happens fast. I remember bringing my daughter Emma home from the hospital after birth, and in a blink, she is headed off to college. As my colleague Scott Boozer would say, “Yay!” We are thrilled for her, and (we think) we’re all ready. We’ll see about that with some experiential learning in the drive back from drop-off, and yes, we know it is uncool for parents to linger or get all emotional.

Here’s the other thing that happens really fast: your career.

We go to work day by day, navigating the terrain as best we can, getting a promotion here or there, an assignment to here or there. We do what we do, and the days roll into weeks, the weeks into months and then “Wow! I’ve been here 5 years!” What happened?”

That turns into a decade faster than the first 5 years took, and then amazing things start to happen. People start talking about retirement more, the little ones go to college (see above) and start their careers, you notice the retirement account and wonder about how your lifestyle will be. There are more and more retirement parties, the people in your office get younger and younger (and gosh, certainly dress and behave differently than you do!).

It all flies by. In a blink, and maybe before you know what happened, your career is over.

What was your plan? What was your vision for your working life? To get by? To make the mortgage?

Only you can figure out the vision for you. This means the mental picture of the future you want. HR will not tell you, neither will your boss. It’s yours.

It’s good to know what it is that you want, because the clock is ticking. It feels like it is speeding up.

Who are you?

Are you an individual, who has made choices around career, relationships and where to live?

Or are you your job, relationships and location?

It sounds like a silly or trick question, but let me share with you a line I heard delivering a leadership development program at one government agency.

We had shown a video that highlighted leaders’ ability to evoke possibility and outstanding performance from those they are leading. Much of the video stressed the emotional connections and deeper communication with people that helps unlock possibility.

I suppose the person who delivered the line I am about to share had not really thought about that way of leading, or felt unable to lead in that way. (Hey, that’s the work.) In any case, here is what he said.

“But we’re a bunch of lawyers! We’re not like that!”

I believe what he meant was that in his role, these kinds of leadership behaviors were not mainstream, or conventional. Never mind that they work better. It was just hard to see the change, given the context, especially culturally, in which he worked.

I submit this is really over-identifying with a role, career or job.

What works for you? What individuality do you bring to where you work?

Are you your job? Or are you you?

Many people are skeptical of miracles. They think they know “how things are,” and that they have a good grip on reality. They have little truck with the possibility of an event that would defy all expectations.

All I can say in response to this nonsense is that I saw a miracle yesterday, and I’d like to describe it to you.

In order to understand this miracle, we first need a little background.

To localize it, think of someone you know who is really stuck in his or her ways. This is a person who has been doing the same thing over and over for years, maybe decades, and you see no prospect of change.

(Of course, this person isn’t you.)

When you think of this person, you probably have a whole set of beliefs and opinions around the potential for change. Think of the following stock statements that you have already heard:

* “He/she will never change.”

* “That’s just the way he/she is.”

* “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

* “Why go to training? Nothing will change.”

The list goes on. Implicit in each of the statements is an imbedded notion that it would be a miracle if this person woke up one day, came in to work, and did something really different.

As soon as we confuse our pre-conceived notions, even assumptions, with reality, then we are off the hook for trying to help in any way. Our internal resistance to providing feedback to others, our failure to provide coaching when it may be needed, our fear of broaching a difficult issue is often defended on the grounds that “nothing’s going to change, anyway. It would be a miracle.”

Sorry to tell, but this view is wrong, and miracles happen. Here’s what I saw:

The meeting was called to discuss planning for an enormous training event starting in a few months. The person in charge of the whole event, and the team, had already been through a couple these events Predictably, lessons had been learned.

One of these was that the project manager was often needed in three places at once. Running here and there, with a cell phone glued to her ear, she put out fires, answered questions, handled problems and kept the client happy.

Now, being in three places at once really is a miracle, and I’m not advocating trying it.

As the meeting opened to prepare for the next conference, I observed something happen in the project manager. I could tell there was some hesitance, even discomfort. But she plunged ahead. She said, in effect, that she had learned a lot in the last conferences, and probably the biggest realization she had come to was that she had to delegate more. Given the need for her to be available to the client, she wanted to ask each of us to take greater responsibility for our areas of focus, to really “own” those from start to finish, letting her know if we needed help.

Some insight into the project manager: I have noticed in working with her over the years that relationships and harmony are very important to her. She would prefer to not upset people, and for everyone to get along.

For her to ask others to do more, she was taking a risk. After all, in many project teams, the load-balancing of work can be a delicate or explosive issue. Particularly if relationships are not positive, conflict can result as work is moved “from one plate to another.” As works demands accelerate pretty much everywhere, this is a real issue.

I looked around the room as the project manager made her request and saw instant acceptance. My sense was that not only did the team intellectually understand the reality the project manager was presenting, they also felt connected her in a constructive working relationship. There were “yeses” all around, and we moved on with a new understanding and operating rules.

For everyone who says people can’t change, I submit exhibit A. I watched someone take a new step, take a risk, and develop a capability in the process. She really transitioned into a project executive function in that move. I suspect that having taken this step, she will be a little more comfortable next time to make a request when it needs to be made.

I talked with the project manager afterwards and shared my own perspective of what had happened. She agreed with the interpretation, and said she would not have been able to make this request a year ago. Working with a coach had made the difference for her.

Last spring, I attended a pre-college planning session at my daughter’s high school, and decried in a blog the counselor’s reference to “a little personality test” as essentially a throwaway adjunct to the real stuff of standardized academic testing.

I’m pleased to report that in the latest of these pre-college sessions, the counselor this time – a different one — talked about the importance of the young adults creating a real plan for college, which is linked to their vision of their best-fit career, which is ultimately grounded in, yes, you guessed it, the personality tests.

These are evidently the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory, two great assessments of the self.

The battle to get people to see the importance of understanding the self, and not just how to do more, better, faster and cheaper, is a long one. Many organizations just want more of the same.

But when people take responsibility – and it’s a very big responsibility — for figuring out where they are going to do their best work, then new and better things can start to happen.

My father, John, was a career counselor, and he told me something many years ago that I will never forget. It chilled me then, and whenever I tell this story to groups there is an immediate reaction.

It’s a story, and it takes the form of someone about to retire coming in to talk to my Dad:

“John, can we talk?

“It’s a funny thing. I’m retiring next month, and it’s hard to believe. It seems kind of like a long time ago, and also like just yesterday, that I was in college and didn’t really know what to major in, so I majored in business (or English, or history, etc.).

“I graduated and didn’t really know what to do with my degree, but there was an opening down at XYZ Co., so I took it, because I had bills to pay.

“It wasn’t a bad job, and I enjoyed being on my own, having a little bit of money. I met Jane then, and we started going out, got engaged, and then married. More responsibility now.

“Jane started having babies. More responsibility, and a promotion, and then the move out to Ohio. Another promotion, the kids were growing up, and then got near college age. One more promotion. Jane and I had our 25th anniversary. The kids graduated and moved on. Empty Nesters, and I retire next month John and it’s a funny thing because I never really meant to do this work.”

My father said, “You don’t want to know how many times I’ve heard this.”

There was a popular ad campaign that said “Life comes at you fast.”

I say we measure time in seconds today, like when you cross the urban intersection and the seconds count down. Every second counts.

And yet, there is a large clock in your life that you never actually see. It’s called the clock of your life (and career). We are periodically shocked by the passage of time – an anniversary, our 10th, 20th or 30th year working somewhere. The kids leaving home. This big clock really makes its presence known at times, but it’s usually invisible, ticking away quietly in the background while we organize our day-to-day lives (often in minutes and even seconds).

One of the biggest decisions a leader – and anyone else, really – has to make is how to spend this big unit of time called a lifespan or career. Leaders who haven’t really chosen what they want and need to do can hardly expect others to be excited by working with them, in a climate of unknowing, lack of commitment and indecision.

You get one shot, with this thing called your life.

Take it.

Because that clock keeps ticking.