Tag: Career

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On the Job

Ignite: What Selling Shoes Taught Me

For the past few days, I’ve been in Detroit attending the ASAE Annual Meeting. The meeting itself is a great gathering of association executives from all over the country and a wonderful chance to see some faces I’ve missed. But this year was different for me in that I spoke at an educational session called Ignite. Ignite sessions are a number of speakers grouped together talking about entirely unrelated topics, but all using the same format. Each speaker gets 5 minutes and 20 PowerPoint slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. It’s a fascinating format. I’ve attended a number of these sessions over the years and it’s a great opportunity to get a glimpse into people’s lives. The sessions are typically personal in nature and tell some sort of story – lessons learned, inspiration and even some incredibly moving personal stories about love and loss.

I’ve been presenting for a long time and I can say with all certainly that this is the hardest type of presentation to give. Five minutes flies by and the timing of the slides requires a ton of practice. There’s very little room for error, though thankfully, the audience (typically at least 300 people at this meeting) is supportive, encouraging and forgiving. It was a unique experience and I’m honored to have been a part of it. My co-presenters this year talked about a wide variety of topics and some of my favorites included lessons learned after beating cancer, coming from Poland to rural Missouri as a high school exchange student and the power of music. I chose to honor John Fluevog and talk about what I learned while selling shoes at his extraordinary company and I wanted to share a bit with you (be kind…I only had 5 minutes!).

  1. Do what you expect, not what others expect. Making a career move from association management into retail management seemed like a crazy idea to most people. But in talking with the folks at Fluevog, we all agreed it was just a crazy enough idea to work. And while I got a lot of funny looks and reactions from some professional contacts, it never occurred to me to not pursue it.
  2. Be yourself. This is a big one and John himself talks about the importance of authenticity all the time. When you’re comfortable and being yourself, others will be comfortable and be themselves around you. This is the sweet spot where the magic happens.
  3. Build your team. One of the most memorable things John ever said to me was that the DC store was my store and the team there needed to be my team and work with me. This was coming from the founder of this company, and I was pretty sure it was his store. His permission was a huge vote of confidence and changed the way I thought about managing people. John thought enough of me and trusted me to build a team he’d be proud of. And I’m happy to say I think we accomplished that. Some of my favorite people are in my life now because we were on that team together.
  4. Celebrate and have fun. We get caught up in the day to day and we often forget this part. My team genuinely enjoyed each other and were always rooting for one another both at work and outside of work. We celebrated store accomplishments, birthdays, graduations, and important life milestones. Celebrating and enjoying each other is critical for any team’s success.

And while not a quote from John himself, I think this Amy Poehler quote sums up what resonated most with me – do work you are proud of with your talented friends. Thanks for letting me share some of my story here. 🙂

Categories
Career Libby

Time to Move On

My brother is a commercial diver by trade (helmets not tanks). He has been diving for almost twenty years and working for the same company for the past seven. Last week he just up and quit. He was reluctant to tell my parents and me and my husband about it, feeling it was an irresponsible move, but he did finally tell us. Here’s our collective take on things:

  1. Always do your best. This is something instilled in both my brother and me from birth and the message is usually delivered as, “Don’t do a half-assed job.” When whatever your co-workers or company is doing impedes your ability to do your best, it’s time to move on.
  2. You can’t change other people. You can only change yourself and how you receive other people’s interactions with you. If you’ve done all you can to adapt to the inane behavior of others and they continue to encroach on your sanity, it’s time to move on.
  3. Safety is no accident. This is true no matter what, but when you’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean responsible for the lives of a five man crew, it transforms from catch phrase to survival tactic. My brother would never be considered lackadaisical, whimsical or frivolous. If he asks you to do something on his boat, you do it or risk an injury to yourself or others. If you’re working with people who do not value your health and well-being, it’s time to move on.
  4. Loyalty is a tricky thing. Loyalty is something you want in a business environment – some level of trust and comfort allows people to settle in and do their best work. It is helpful when building a team and growing an enterprise. But it must also be paired with buckling down, looking out for the company interests and a subordinated ego. If your boss chooses a slacker crony over your hard work and productivity, it’s time to move on.
  5. Your reputation will proceed you. If you work hard, do your best, act in the best interests of the company, and behave like a brand ambassador at all times, people notice you. And if you’re one of the few people behaving this way in your organization, they will notice you even more. If your principles are being compromised, it’s time to move on.

When you have a tried and true work ethic, when you have spent years gaining experience and expertise, when you have treated all your co-workers – those both above and below you in the organization chart – with respect, you can move on. Something else will come along. It would be ideal to have something planned before making a move, but life doesn’t always work like that. Though if you behave in such a way that people want to be associated with you, you won’t have any worries when you finally say, “Enough is enough. It’s time to move on.”

(P.S. Within a week of quitting his job, my brother got a new full-time job, a part-time job AND an offer for a seasonal job. He’s fine and we’re all very proud.)

– Libby Bingham

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Career Libby

Making the Pitch

Last week, I was asked to present an idea about moving a beloved face-to-face (f2f) program to an online format. I was actually quite nervous about it, but my boss assured me that it was a casual situation and I only needed to talk for five minutes. Here’s what I learned:

  1. It is a fantastic opportunity to be able to present my idea to decision makers before spending a lot of time on a written proposal. That isn’t to say I didn’t do a lot of homework beforehand but since it was verbal, I didn’t worry about typos!
  2. Five minutes is not enough time! It is important NOT to rush through your pitch. If people are going to be green or red lighting your project, you need to present them with all the relevant information for them to make that decision. For me – taking an existing program and radically changing it – it was important to give them some history, an idea of my level of involvement and expertise, and an understanding that I’d thought through the majority of angles and considerations. While this took more time upfront, it allowed them to focus on the whole picture rather than the details that can make things sticky moving forward.
  3. No matter how well you know the subject matter, smart people can add value. Even not-so-smart people have their contributions to make! By talking through an idea out loud and with the necessity of answering questions right then and there, you can be assured (or not) of the soundness of what you’re trying to do, and make it even better.
  4. The small stuff does matter…at least in an implementation phase. Being aware of what other stakeholders are concerned about (How will this affect me?) up front, leads to more diplomatic approaches when sharing information. Indeed, they can be presented as opportunities and can get people excited about change, even if it encroaches upon their comfort zone.
  5. Be open-minded. It’s hard to distance yourself from a project that you’ve worked long and hard on, and when people offer criticism or question the value, it can be hurtful – if you let it. But if you approach it from the viewpoint of thinking through all the angles before investing time and money, you are less likely to personalize it and more likely to be successful. Assume people want to help you, not impede you!

I am not a fan of process when it comes to innovation (too many rules!), but having an arrangement where open, honest and constructive questions and feedback can be shared at a very early stage, can lead to much sounder outcomes. If you make the pitch the right way, you may find yourself with a lot more support than you ever thought possible.

What will you pitch today?

– Libby Bingham

Categories
Book Reports

Lean In

I’ve gotten sloppy again in my reading. I’ve been spending this summer focusing on working out, taking care of myself and keeping more connected with those people who inspire me and feed my soul. And while I certainly don’t regret any of those choices, it does mean I’ve spent less time reading. But like so many patterns in my life, travel means reading and a recent trip back home to Minnesota was no exception. I had a chance to catch up on some books I’ve been excited about (and purchasing a few more to add to my ever-growing pile. I better get on that!).

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of those books was Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. I know I’m a little late to the party (I usually am when it comes to books – and new technologies if we’re being honest), but I had also put this one off for a bit after reading about the passing of Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg. I knew one of the chapters of her book outlined the importance of having an equal partner, and the cruelty of her partner being taken away from her in such an unexpected way after preparing for a lifetime together seemed like it might be more than I could handle. It’s always hard to hear about the passing of another’s loved one, but his passing in what seemed to be the prime of their lives together seems incredibly unfair (I know, I know…life is never fair. But sometimes it seems exceptionally unfair.).

That said, I’m glad I decided to read the book anyway. Obviously I don’t know her at all, but after reading her book, I’m interested in learning more about her. I want to listen to her TEDTalks and read more interviews with her. The titles of her chapters reflect the sort of advice I’ve found helpful in my life and can always use more of. What’s interesting about Sandberg is that she weaves together her own experiences with countless studies and mountains of research. Early on in her writing, she admits to being most comfortable with science and less comfortable sharing her own experiences, but I think we can all relate to that. Science is facts, and you can’t argue with facts, while our opinions and our experience leave us vulnerable to others’ judgments. And while the facts certainly help strengthen her case, it’s Sandberg’s willingness to share of herself through her stories that makes this book so readable. She comes across as the smart, funny and honest big sister, cousin or friend we’d all like to have in our corner. And we know we’d be fiercely loyal to her in return. Her words are simple, though powerful reminders of what we need to do for ourselves and others to lift us all up. We need to sit at the table, seek and speak our truth, and most importantly, talk about it.

I’m already making a mental list of the people to whom I need to recommend or buy this book for – assuming they’re a little behind the times like I am. That to me is always the most powerful indicator of a good story – one I can’t wait to share with others. And assuming you’re more on top of it than I am, I’d love to hear your take on her story as well!

Categories
Career

The Good About Pain Points

Pain points – we all have them. We have them in our personal and professional lives, and our companies and organizations have them, too. In the past week, I’ve come across two unique takes on addressing company pain points. The first was this Forbes article on pain letters. Don’t worry – they’re much less scary than they sound (and they’re very smart!).

The basic premise is that rather than telling a prospective employer about yourself through your resume and traditional cover letter, you flip the focus to one of their pain points and then share how you can help. Not only does it provide a nice introduction to yourself, but more than that, it tells your potential employer that you do your research and understand where they’re coming from. Who doesn’t like to be presented with a solution rather than a sales pitch? This was the first time I’ve heard about this particular form of cover letter and it certainly makes a lot of sense to me

So with that rattling around in my head, I’m also reading Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. I’m really enjoying it, and will share more in a future book report post, but I was struck by a story she told that reminded me of the pain letter. Shortly after she started her job as Facebook’s COO, Sandberg talks about an acquaintance, Lori Goler, who called her and said she wanted to work with her. Rather than go through her own skills and ask Sandberg what openings may be a good fit, Goler asked Sandberg what her biggest business problem was at the moment and whether or not she thought Goler could help fix it. The way that Sandberg tells the story, the approach was so novel and so helpful, her “jaw hit the floor.” She needed help with recruiting new talent and while Goler didn’t necessarily have that exact background, she had skills that were transferable enough that they thought it could work. And it did – exceptionally well. I’ll let you read the book to learn more.

I can’t stop thinking about the notion of pain points as a starting place. What would happen if we stopped selling ourselves first and started with understanding someone else’s pain points? How much further could we go, and how much faster? What untapped capacity could we find within ourselves that we didn’t know existed? Rather than thinking of ourselves as one particular skill set, what if we identified problems and then were able to figure out how we could help? What teams could we build and what amazing things could we accomplish? These are the things that will continue to rattle around in my head for quite some time, and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to help someone with their pain point.

Categories
Awesomeness in the World Karen

Be Present with Confidence

Karen Confidence
Photo credit: Maja Petrih

My good friend of 12 years, Nathan Rooke, is an innovator, businessman, family man, humanitarian, philanthropist, and dreamer. Once a year, we would meet for lunch and catch up on our lives and our news. It was effortless to spend time with him. He’s a soaker of information. He listens with curiosity. He’s kind and encouraging. He’s also a thinker and a strategist and whatever he sets his mind to, he will only pursue it one way: with excellence. We would share both business and personal stories. We would talk about our dreams and aspirations. We would speak openly of our challenges. And with each visit, I would walk away inspired and grateful for his friendship. It’s not quantity that grows friendships; it’s quality. One of my favorite things about Nathan is how wonderfully present and engaging he is.

What happens when we are present? We are confident. We speak with confidence. We walk with confidence. We engage with confidence. When you are present, you carry a presence about you. This presence is what draws people to you.

Everyone has a presence. Yes, everyone. How do you present yourself, right now, today? Choose your presence. And stay true to it.  (“How do I do that, KT?”)

Well, you can start your day like this “Today I choose to be present with everyone I come into contact with. Everyone matters today. I will show humans that I am present. They will see it in the way I look into their eyes. They will feel it in the warmth of my kind smile. They will know it through my kind words. They will experience me simply being the best me. All I know is, when I am present, I exude a presence that positively impacts others.”

Please don’t ask me to contextualize this for you. You decide. You choose. What are your favorite yous? Live you – today.

How well do you engage in the moment, with the people standing in front of you? How easily distracted are you from what is presently happening in your current environment?

As a business leader, there are added benefits to being present with your presence. To list a few off the top of my head: camaraderie with your colleagues; happy staff who feel valued; heightened productivity; and teamwork in daily operations. When we are not vying for position, and we are content with our present place, our authority increases. Authority is the permission to ‘be’ who we are in the position we are entrusted with.

When we are engaging, we activate our inner-confidence. With inner-confidence is the contentment that, who we are, right now, is perfectly perfect. With this peaceful assurance, we can humbly walk in authority. What do I mean by authority, since there are many definitions? The one I am referring to is the power to influence others, especially because of one’s commanding presence.

Who would have thought that the simplicity of being present can magnify our confidence; our confidence enlarges our presence; our presence expands our authority; our authority heightens our influence; and our influence increases our impact.

The times I am most inspired by people are in conversations that emerge because we are effortlessly present. In these moments, gold nuggets transpire and my day is doused with inspiration.

To those I have been in contact with either serendipitously, momentarily, seasonally, or lifelong journeyers: thank you for being present with me. You have no idea the type of impact you have when you share your presence with me. Thank you for choosing to be present with your presence. Don’t stop. It created a magic between us that can only be manifested through your inner-confidence. To the ones I have not yet met or not yet come into contact with: I look forward to encountering your presence.

World renown author, Wayne Dyer, writes, “Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.”

– Karen Thrall

*also published on www.karenthrall.com

Categories
Career Inside My Head

Choices

I’ve been thinking about choices a lot lately.

Scratch that. I’ve always thought a lot about choices. Probably because I’ve never been very good at making decisions, since ultimately, choosing one thing means not choosing another. That’s the part I have a hard time with. I’m pretty good about knowing what I don‘t want, but there are so many interesting possibilities out there that it’s really hard to narrow down what I do want.

In high school, I ran myself into the ground because I couldn’t choose – I was one of a handful of kids who got permission to be on the swim team and participate in the fall musical. I juggled track practice and the spring play. But let’s be clear, here – I was fine at all these things. Not great, but fine. It wasn’t like I was a huge talent and the show wouldn’t go on without me (was Villager #2 really critical to the plot?). But as fine as I was, I really liked all these things. I wanted to be a part of them and enjoyed having these experiences in my life.

I don’t have trouble letting go of things I’ve tried that have no interest for me (softball, the flute, Girl Scouts). I enjoyed all these things just fine, but they didn’t hold my interest long-term. In college, I knew I wasn’t going to be an engineer or a math professor, so I dutifully completed my math and science requirements and moved on. But I couldn’t narrow down my interest in the liberal arts, so I double majored in communications and political science and minored in business administration. And now as an adult professional, I’ve finally settled on consulting as my career so I can work with lots of different people and organizations.

Clearly, I have trouble choosing.

A friend recently shared this blog post, Work-Life Balance is Absolutely Bogus by Deirde Maloney. And while I don’t necessarily think I have trouble with work-life balance specifically, the first truth she asserts is that there’s no such thing as having it all. Maloney writes:

The idea that we can “have it all” if we just get better at time-management or set some boundaries is a fallacy. When we try to squeeze our never-ending list of activities (and relationships) into a given day, our time and energy run out. We wind up doing a bunch of things partway. Which means we do some things well and some things … not-so-well.

I’d like to think I’ve gotten a little better about life balance since running myself into the ground in my high school days, but Maloney’s words ring true to me – trying to squeeze it all in means that quality of work and the quality of the time spent suffer. We have to make choices about what we want to do well and there’s just no way to get around that. And that’s just the reminder I need when I start to think about all the things I might be missing out on. It’s probably not a coincidence that the one sport in which I excelled was skiing and I devoted myself fully to that sport for the entire season. So as I think through the choices I make, I need to stop thinking about what I might be missing and start thinking about what I want to do well and let that guide me.

What do you want to do well?

Categories
Career Karen

Receive the Truth About Your Business

So, you’re in leadership. You have weighty responsibilities. People look to you for solutions and successful outcomes. Currently, you’re somewhat concerned. You’re looking at the outgoing and incoming dollars, and you’re not sure about the best plan to execute. What’s next? How do you make sure this next phase is more successful than the previous two years?

Before making any more decisions, receive the truth about your business.

Galileo once said, “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

Stick to what you know is true. Don’t waiver. If your business is going through some challenges, it might be time for you to rediscover the truth about your business.

I remember a story that John Fluevog shared with me.  It was in the late 90’s and he was in the throws of big business changes. One day the light went on: “Focus on what I know to be true. I know how to design great shoes.”  By focusing on the facts and truth of his business, he then exploded into big success. At that point, he went from a small local business to an internationally known luxury footwear company. What is the truth about your business? Put your energy there.

John Fluevog also shared with me, “I picked the one thing I knew how to do and let all else go, especially the things I could not change. I focused on the one thing that made the business stand out. I did not follow a trend. I opened myself up and had the boldness to do the things that came to me or, another way to put it, I followed my heart. I lost the fear of following trends and trusted my heart. The product I did then, 15 years ago, saved my company. It was way out of step with the current trends but it gave the company a strong identity and it is still selling today. It has to be said that the style was also not accepted by mainstream fashion and remained a cult item. Which was and still is perfect for my company.  By letting go of what the rest of the fashion industry did, I saved my company.  I let go of fear and followed my inward voice.” 

Discovering the truth of your organization will make it easier for you, your team and your customers to understand why they want to sign up! What do I mean by receive the truth? First, by receiving the truth for yourself, you’ll be able to effortlessly give the truth away. For example, I can only exhale breath if I first inhale it. I can only give an apple, if I have one in my hand. I can only sell a great product, if I unwaveringly know I have a great product. I can only share the truth of my extraordinary business, by first confidently believing it is truly extraordinary. Do you know why you’re extraordinary? What do you know to be true? Receive the truth first, and then share it.

By the way, Galileo is esteemed as one of the greatest scientists of all time.  Might be a good idea if we pay attention to what he said.

– Karen Thrall

*also posted on www.karenthrall.com

Categories
On the Job

Celebrating: It’s Serious Work

Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to be part of an amazing team celebration. This is a group I’ve been facilitating and they’ve accomplished some amazing work over the past year. It’s a smallish team of a dozen or so folks who have worked closely together on beginning to shift their organizational culture. And I say beginning not because they weren’t effective or didn’t finish what they started, but because culture work is a long, long, long road (did I mention it’s a long process?). It was a great group, though that’s not to say we didn’t have our bumps and bruises along the way. Culture gets to the very thing we all hold near and dear – our values. And conversations about our values and what we value in the world are incredibly personal. They can’t be anything else, especially if they’re honest. But through those bumps and bruises, this team got to know one another in a way that they hadn’t had the chance to before. The result was incredible – a high-performing team who worked made significant progress and genuinely enjoyed each other.

When it came time for us to wrap up our work together, we had a couple things we needed to do. One, we wanted to review our work from the past year and make sure we’re setting up the next iteration of the team for success. Two, we wanted to take stock of exactly what we had accomplished and the impact it had. Often times, you can’t see the progress you’ve made while you’re in the middle of it, but once you stop to look back as see how far you’ve come, it’s incredible. And finally, in the middle of sharing advice and taking a look at what we’d done, we really needed to celebrate. I believe celebrating is both the most important component to a team’s progress and the most often overlooked step. And with this team, it was simple. The team really valued each other, which made planning the celebration easy.

We had a more formal wrap-up meeting the office, but then we got off campus for a good ol’ fashioned happy hour celebration. While happy hour is usually fun, this one was special. This was a group of people who were not just willing, but excited, to spend their Friday night together. After a long week in the office, this team valued each other so much that once the work week was officially done, they still chose to spend their time together.And that’s amazing to me. I feel honored to have been a part of this team and they’ll always have a special place in my heart for that very reason.

Celebrations don’t have to be big and elaborate to be meaningful. Celebrating can be a hand-written note, a cup of coffee, a small gathering of friends or an end of the week happy hour. What’s most important is that you make the time for that celebration, whatever it may be. What do you need to celebrate today?

Categories
On the Job

The Power of One Word

Earlier this week, Libby and I taught a course on facilitation for the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). It was a great group of engaged and thoughtful participants. If you’ve read any of my posts, you know my favorite part of all the sessions I do are the gems from the attendees – the power that comes from a group of people willing to share their thoughts and experience is truly amazing. And this session was no exception. While we were sharing tips and tricks, one of the attendees shared her one word exercise. It’s simple and can be used at any point during a meeting: each attendee shares one word to sum up their thoughts. It can be a feeling about where the project is, an item to suggest for the next agenda, a thought on the how the meeting went…you get the idea.

I love this tool. I used to volunteer for a suicide hotline and in the training of new listeners (that’s what the hotline volunteers were called), we focused heavily on empathy and feelings, and this was one of the tools we used. At the end of each training session (and some of them were pretty intense, as you can imagine), each listener had to share one feeling word to sum up where they were in the process. We heard a lot of nervous, anxious, apprehensive, excited, overwhelmed and so on. It helped us as trainers get a sense of where the trainees were in their journey, and it also helped us all practice using feeling words. Having to select only one word really made us all focus. We all had a lot of reactions, thoughts and feelings during a session, but being forced to narrow it down to one word really made you think. Very often, I was energized by the team in the room and the commitment they’d made to be there. I was hopeful for our community, given the number of people who chose to spend their time this way. And I was grateful to be a part of it all.

Bring reminded of that exercise earlier this week has reinvigorated me and put me into a different head space. What’s the one word I want to describe my day today? This meeting? This interaction? How do I want to feel about where I’m at? How I’ve spent my time? And what can I do to influence the one word people would say about their interaction with me? These are powerful questions and I encourage you to take the one word challenge. What do you want your one word to be?