Category: Career

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Career Libby

Nice to Meet You!

I just had my ten year work anniversary…what?! Out of that decade, almost 7 of those years have been spent working from home. I go into the office occasionally, but not on any regular kind of basis. This arrangement works well for getting my job done, as well as doing what I need to for my family. When I do go in, I see the people I need to see, and my office friends that I don’t necessarily need to see but want to see. I also see a whole host of people that are completely new to me…and me to them! (You should see some of our stare-down-face-offs in the elevator; we’re on high alert here in the Nation’s Capital – “see something, say something”.) I’m a friendly sort and usually end up being the first to say hello and identify myself. I typically get one of two reactions: a blank stare and a “nice to meet you” or a wide-eyed “oooohhh…nice to meet you.” I’m not sure which is worse: not being known at all or being known by reputation. I’m not saying my reputation isn’t earned (love me or hate me, I think, are my two general camps), but it’s disturbing when it somehow follows you like a ghost. I mean, catch me in action before you make a judgment, people!

In that spirit, I’d like to offer a bit of advice for people working remotely. Face-to-face relationship building becomes more important than ever – whenever possible, show your face! Meet a colleague for coffee, go in and pick your boss’ brain for an hour, attend a non-mandatory meeting. And maybe a smidge of advice for you office folks working with colleagues who are outside the office? Try to involve your faceless co-workers in non-traditional ways – share a bit of office gossip in a virtual water-cooler situation or maybe try to meet them on their own turf for a post-work happy hour drink. I’ve had many opportunities to build a relationship with folks over the phone or email that was been strengthened with just one short, informal interaction (and there are some folks I would prefer to ONLY have a virtual relationship with!!). Whichever side of the equation you sit on, it’s important to put a face to a name, actions with a reputation, the personal with the virtual. To be fully satisfied with being a teleworker, it is important to become fully vested in both the status AND the people. I’m hoping this recipe allows me to embrace my semi-anonymity for the next ten years!

-Libby Bingham

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Career Karen

Seeing Is Believing?

Karen SeeingisBelievingYou’ve heard the phrase “Seeing is believing.” Well, that’s not necessarily how I live my life. And frankly, I don’t really want to live my life that way.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t discredit it. “Seeing is believing” plays an important role. For example, to truly give someone your trust, they need to earn it. Therefore, seeing them being trustworthy will create a strong foundation for believing they are trustworthy.

Yes, there are areas in our lives that require us to see before we believe.

What I’m referring to is more so about the confidence to not hold back.

My perception of “seeing is believing” limits the wonder of the “what if.”

“Seeing is believing” means I limit my confidence in the impossible, the unfathomable, the unattainable. I limit my worldview to only what is guaranteed. No risk whatsoever??? No way. Can’t. Won’t. Don’t want to.

That would be like sucking every ounce of my passion out of my body!

“Believing is seeing.” Now that’s a sentence I can buy into!

It’s one thing to believe because the proof and facts are presented to you. Sure, anyone can do that! That’s easy.

Show me a meat lovers pizza and, trust me; I’ll believe it’s delicious! Show me a song that’s been already composed by a brilliant musician; yes indeed I’ll believe it’s beautiful music.Show me a winning game plan for an innovative idea; I’ll believe it will succeed.Show me how to improve my golf swing with guaranteed results; yes, I’ll believe you and do what you say.

But to believe in something which requests you to imagine, to visualize, to ignite curiosity, to ponder, to wonder, to stimulate opportunity, to provoke longing, to welcome the “what if” – this excites me! This tells me to broaden my perspective; to listen carefully; to observe intently and to think outside my existing perceptions.

To believe, that I may see, welcomes vision. To believe, that I may see, invites possibility, hope and forward motion. Fantastic!

How does this apply to you? “Karen, it all sounds so nebulous and philosophical. Where’s the meat of it, KT!”

Ok, invisible Cyber Voice – here’s the crux…

I’ll believe it when I see it! – I’ve said that phrase. Many times. But…I don’t like me when I talk that way. I sound like a skeptic. I sound defensive, reactive, guarded and cynical.   Feels like I just nailed up a fence; established boundaries; set up stipulations. Why? Why say it in the first place? Why not engage and explore the conversation? Why so quick to dismiss the notion? What happened for me to react that way? What went wrong for me to now hold this presupposition?

I see it because I believe it! Zowie! Just writing that phrase stirs me up! The confidence! The relentless commitment to not wilt when challenged! To get back up and keep running when you trip over the hurdles! To not buckle when odds are against you! To not quit when the feat seems too great to overcome!

I see it because I believe it! I sound like I’m healthy and don’t carry old baggage around. Life gives us hard knocks, sure. But I don’t want those hard knocks to define me. They are part of my story, sure. But every hard moment ends up being a true gift. It either grows your character or jades your soul.

I’d rather look a fool for seeing because I believe, than to limit my world to believing only if I see.

-Karen Thrall

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Career Gabriel

You’re Never Too Old to Learn

The other day I was unwinding with friends at another friend’s apartment. Amidst the beer and cigarette smoke, an interesting conversation commenced concerning workers’ value and how being able to accurately present one’s value is a critical skill.

This well-spoken and intelligent friend of mine is Conway. Two years my junior, he attends GW and interns with a very well respected think tank here in the District of Columbia. He focuses on economics and global markets, so you can imagine he would be the one to lead such a discussion. We starting talking about the all the hundreds of customers I had seen try on shoes at the retail store where I work. He then began to quantify the number of people with whom I had tried shoes on, the number of hours spent with different types of customers, and how these experiences helped hone my skills to sell a product. Reading people’s personalities and choosing which shoes to bring down to them based on this does take some skill and experience. By placing these statistics next to amount of dollars sold, my value as an employee can be calculated and assessed. This all may have been some buzzed logic conjured up by Conway to make me feel great about myself at that moment, but nonetheless, I still think that there’s a great lesson to be learned.

A firm handshake won’t cut it anymore. Knowing what you’re capable of constitutes as essential knowledge, but knowing how to show that to others is absolutely necessary. So even though I’m two years older than Conway, he was able to teach me a critical lesson in being successful in any aspect of life in our short five minute conversation. And for those to whom this isn’t news, maybe this can serve just as a friendly reminder! Here’s to progress.

– Gabriel Oigbokie

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Career Libby

Be Prepared

No matter what you think of them, the Boy Scouts have a really kick-ass motto: Be Prepared. In my personal life, I’m probably less prepared than most – I’m constantly running out of milk, TP, not having child care plans for snow days… But at work? That’s a different story. I am usually at the top of my game, with planning and preparation as my two most important tools.

Being unprepared is not pretty. This applies to pretty much everything: not reading background documents, not anticipating the right number of people at a meeting, not practicing presentation remarks or even not making contingencies for bad weather. Preparation is more than half the battle – if you want to be considered a professional, you have to prepare. That means reading up on your industry, staying abreast of trends (management, education, technology, etc.), maintaining and building your network and learning how not to be reactionary. Keep on top of your work and you won’t be caught off guard. If you are doing a presentation, don’t wing it – read the materials, practice speaking in front of a mirror or with others, anticipate questions and be ready to answer them. Sure, things happen that you don’t see coming, but if you’re prepared, you can roll with the punches and still do what needs to be done. As a professional, you are not working in a vacuum – what you do or don’t do affects other people’s work. Consider how preparation can affect your reputation. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forces out there…be prepared to have it work in your favor!

-Libby Bingham

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Career Libby

What I Want to Be When I Grow-Up

My boss just recently told me that she is retiring after many years in teaching and over three decades in association management. We talked a bit about what she’s going to do once she doesn’t have to come to the office on a regular basis and she mentioned spending more time with family and friends, exercising, theater and the like. But the thing that sticks with me most is that she wants to live abroad in impoverished areas and teach little kids. Now, she’s got a pretty cushy deal right now: a big corner office, travel to resorts for meetings, teleworking, etc. To hear her talk about leaving it all behind and getting down in the trenches kind of threw me – I mean, that’s pretty cool. It also got me thinking, what the heck do I want to do when I grow-up?

I think this is a thought process much longer and complicated than I could (or should!) put in a blog post, but it’s definitely worth putting out there…if you could stop doing what you’re doing and do something else, what would it be? Certainly there are practical considerations – I’m never going to be a figure-skater or a whale biologist – but barring those (and a few others), there are a lot of possibilities. My boss went back to her roots as a school teacher…unfortunately, my roots are in food service and I don’t think I want to go back, but could I go forward? Could I finally work as a park ranger or red carpet security agent? Maybe, maybe not, but if I start thinking – and doing – now instead of waiting until I retire, maybe I can spend more time doing things that are closer to my heart and get closer to what Catherine talked about in “Loving What You Do.” I realize now that my boss’ plans are not just her own, but mine as well – she has created for me an opportunity for self-reflection and reshaping the direction of my own career trajectory…thanks, Anne. Now, excuse me while I search for open mic nights at my local pub…

-Libby Bingham

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Career On the Job

StrengthsFinder

A team I’m currently working with is using Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 skills assessment and I’m lucky enough to be taking part in it. I’ve participated in a number of assessments before and used a couple with my own teams, specifically the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Enneagram personality types assessment. MBTI is probably the most well-known assessment in the circles I travel and along with that, probably the one that most people roll their eyes at as well. There is often not much time between getting the results and hearing, “Oh, that’s your ENTJ talking,” or “No kidding you’re an introvert.”

And as misunderstood as these assessments can be, I do still think there’s great value in taking the time to learn about yourself and the people you work with. If these types of assessment offer nothing else, they remind us that we all process information differently and approach the world with unique worldviews, and there is great value in those reminders. However, if you’re open to learning more, each assessment can offer more valuable insights on you and your teams.

What’s interesting to me about the StrengthsFinder is that it’s focused less on personality and more on – as the name would suggest – your skills and strengths. In our professional and personal lives, we seem to focus much more on our weaknesses and how we can improve those, and that’s often a recipe for failed New Year’s resolutions, feelings of inadequacy and plain frustration. The philosophy behind the StrengthsFinder is that if we focus on our strengths instead, we can build teams and partnerships with others who possess complementary strengths to our own, rather than looking to be all things within ourselves. It’s a fascinating concept to me, and one that makes a lot of sense. If we spent more time focusing on what we are good at rather than where we fall short, I suspect we’d open ourselves up to a lot more possibilities.

And just in case you’re curious, my top 5 themes are empathy, relator, communication, responsibility and developer, which seemed about right to me.

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Career

What’s Your Story?

Being authentic can be harder than it sounds. Herminia Ibarra recently published The Authenticity Paradox in the Harvard Business Review, which outlined how being authentic can backfire, despite being one of today’s most sought-after leadership qualities. Authenticity shouldn’t be viewed as permission to stay cozy in your comfort zone. Ibarra argues that when we are adjusting to new situations we should give ourselves permission to try on different variations of our own style to find one that works best given the new reality. We can still be authentic in these variations because we are not trying to become something we are not; we’re just tapping into a different set of strengths that may have been dormant or less developed. Ibarra details three steps to help find your “adaptively authentic way of leading,” but the one I find the most interesting is not sticking to your story.

The premise is that our personal narratives may be keeping us from growing and moving forward since they’re rooted in our past rather than telling the story about where we could go – what we’re capable of doing, given the chance. I think about my own career history and the story it tells. For some, my resume may look a little scattered since I’m not clearly one thing in one profession – I’m not an engineer, a teacher or a network specialist. However, I look at my time in banking, associations, retail and consulting and it’s very clear to me that one of the things I am is a customer service specialist. Whether it’s service to external or internal clients, I have always prided myself on being among the best. And that’s part of the narrative I need to make sure I’m telling, but it’s rooted more in what I’ve done than where I want to go. Adjusting my narrative to talk about the ways I can bring out the best in people is what I want to emphasize at this point in my career and that’s something I’ll be thinking about moving forward. What are the stories you’re telling about yourself?

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Career

Different Lenses

Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Essay from December 12th caught my attention. Women at Work: A Guide for Men may seem like it’s a few decades too late, but I found it interesting on the heels of few different conversations that have found their way into my life at the moment. For a current client project, we’re focusing on engaging half of the staff, plus one. While obviously we’d like to engage more than that, the thinking is that if we’ve got a majority (even the minimal majority of 50% plus 1) of the staff on board, change will be inevitable. Not wholly unrelated is the UN Women’s campaign HeforShe, a solidarity movement for gender equality, based on the idea that gender equality shouldn’t be a women’s issue led only by women. We’ll need the majority of the world to make real change, and that includes men.

When looking at change, be it behavior in an organization or discrimination of any kind, it makes sense that the change will be more successful with more people involved. We spend a lot of time focusing on women mentoring women, and let me be clear – I think there is tremendous value in that. That doesn’t mean, however, that men can’t also play a role in helping women up the career ladder. Managers and those at the top of the ladder are responsible for helping to cultivate the next generation of leaders, regardless of gender. I think to pretend we all approach things the same, however, is naïve and anything we can do to understand the lens of others is time well-spent – gender, generational, socio-economic, cultural, and so on. Whose shoes can you walk in for a bit to adjust your own lens?

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Career

Tools for Change

I was working with a team a while back and we were focusing on how to strengthen their organization and make it an extraordinary place to work. Dozens of ideas were thrown around – ideas about the physical space, ways the staff could work together and program improvements the organization could make. They outlined how they might be able to get to this extraordinary level and what they’d need to get there. And while the rest of the brainstorming focused on technologies, training and structure, one person took a different approach. He suggested that they already had what they needed, but would have to nurture these things: nimbleness, humility, camaraderie, sense of humor, time and patience.

His observation stopped me in my tracks. He is, of course, right, but how many times do we blow right past these tools? Change and growth are not only much harder if you overlook human nature and our behaviors, but it’s also a whole lot less fun. People who are adaptable, humble, funny and patient are far more enjoyable to be around than their counterparts who lack those traits. And to make any real change, you need a group of people to be out there with you or supporting you. How are you using your humility, patience and sense of humor to strengthen your life?

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Career

Loving What You Do

Several months ago, I was getting a massage with a new person and she was terrific. I told her so, and her response blew me away. She simply said “Thank you. I really enjoy what I do, and it’s nice to know that comes across.” That simple interaction has changed the way I view what I do. Not all of us are lucky enough to love what we do, so that in and of itself was notable. Though as a fortunate soul who has had a number of jobs I’ve really liked, I’ve always struggled with compliments on my work. I’m quick to give all the credit to others, dismiss my accomplishments as no big deal or quickly turn focus back to my conversation partner. However, since this reaction earlier on this year, I have totally stolen my massage therapist’s response and have been using it ever since. I thought hers was such a beautiful way to accept the compliment while at the same time, acknowledging that the customer allows us the opportunity to do something we love. Since that conversation, I am now more conscious of being grateful for the people who allow me to do the work I love – my clients. Being invited into someone’s life – however long the interaction may be – is a true gift. Who allows you to do what you love? And does your joy for what you do show? At least most of the time (let’s be honest – we all have those days)?