Remote Working Hacks: From And For Executive Moms

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When interviewing female executives for her first book, Pulitzer-winning career columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Joann Lublin, became intrigued by the strong representation of executive moms.

“I was surprised to observe that more than 80 percent of the women, irrespective of where they had landed in their jobs, had kids,” she recalls. “And when I looked at those who had become public company CEOs, the percentage was even higher.”

With a career focus on leadership and executive women, Lublin interviewed 86 prominent executive mothers for her recent book, Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life, to gain insight into juggling both managerial roles and families.

We spoke with her to glean insightful hacks from successful executives for managing the remote workplace, as it exists in 2021.

Not the Remote Office We Anticipated

While remote work is part of the solution towards gender equality, forced remote working in the COVID-19 context has been a curveball of mixed gendered impacts.

“I don’t think any working mother in America expected that the multiple roles that we were already playing—the first shift, the second shift, and what I call “the third shift,” the mental load—would all be exacerbated by the fact that now the kids would be stuck at home,” says Lublin, “and because we have gendered role expectations, mom would be seen as the primary teacher, caregiver, parent and all of the above.”

Lublin points out that mothers with children under 12 were nearly three times as likely as fathers to have left their jobs between February and August of 2020. As of November, research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reported that when it came to parents with children under five, “while nearly all fathers returned to the labor force, mothers regained virtually none of their lost ground”.

“The solutions have to be both personal and societal. On one hand, women have to stand up and insist that parenting is not a solo art. To the extent there are two parents in the home and they’re both working, this has to be a co-parenting arrangement,” says Lublin. “By the same token, they need to speak up and make their needs known to their employers, who in turn not only must trust their employees to get the work done while showing maximum flexibility, but also need to be checking in frequently with their employees.”

Here are six hacks for managing the 2021 remote working office:

 

Set Your Availability

Whether company or individual-driven, Lublin observes the trend and importance of setting hours when you are unreachable.

One Gen-X executive, who has been working remote for years, agreed 7-11 am as her protected hours with her company, reserved for her yoga, exercise and morning routine with her children.

This executive also began scheduling outside interruptions to her day (eg. home maintenance) only during the fringe hours when she would normally be on her commute.

Coordinate Your Co-Parenting

One executive and her husband were each starting their own companies, now both at home with their four and six year old children.

“They initially winged it. It all happened pretty suddenly and you think, we’ll just sort of take one day at a time,” says Lublin. “That was not working.”

The solution the two former Nike executives turned entrepreneurs found for successful co-parenting was to create a  spreadsheet each Sunday night, where they blocked off work engagements and agreed three-hour shifts of rotating parenting responsibilities for the week. While they also learned to allow for flexibility within a plan, this helped them to both dedicate time to family and their work endeavors.

Another way to manage the overall household, says Lublin, is to involve older children. One executive rewarded her teenage daughter for supporting her six year old in doing her schoolwork from home.

Embrace “Work-Life Sway”

Lublin addressed the elusive idea that is “work-life balance” in a chapter called “Manager Moms are not Acrobats” in her first book, Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.

“That quote came from an executive who strongly believed that this idea of work-life balance was an impossible ideal,” recalls Lublin, “that we could no more achieve work-life balance than we could stand on one leg for that wonderful yoga pose for 24/7.”

Early in her recent research, she came across work-life sway, an approach which encourages ebb and flow between life and work, immersing in whichever you are in right now.

“The idea of work-life sway is that when we have to be a 110% in the moment for work, we will give our all and then some,” says Lublin. “But if life invades or intrudes, if the water heater overflows or the toddler comes running and dumps the contents of her diaper on your lap, you won’t get flustered or totally fall apart or give yourself a guilt trip. You will sway to being present in the other part of your life. The whole concept here is to go with the flow.”

She cites an executive who left her office immediately when she received a video from her nanny of her daughter taking her first steps, and was then home in time to witness the second and third steps.

Release The Guilt

Lublin notes that Melanie Healy, now a Board Member, Investor and Strategic Advisor to many organizations, not only inspired the chapter title mentioned above, but also encouraged her to focus on ditching working mother guilt as “a complete and fruitless waste of our energy.”

If you sit down to eat dinner at 7pm with your children because the day was full until then, as an example, then celebrate that you’re sitting together for dinner rather than guilt yourself about the time.

Unlike many boomer moms, Healy did not hide the personal importance of her work, and instead involved her children in work decisions. She would share with them why a work trip was important to her as much as why their school and extracurricular events were important to her.

Another executive mother with young kids gave her children the power to invoke family time in the evening on demand.

Take Self-Care Time

“The book points out is that self-care is not selfish care,” says Lublin. “If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re going to burn out.”

From taking two hours to herself on a Sunday when the other parent has the kids to taking a sabbatical, executives found time for personal regeneration to prove essential, even when they resisted doing it.

After a sabbatical, one executive mother decided no longer to be CEO of her company, and instead became Chief Visionary Officer to reduce the amount of operational work she was involved in.

Leverage Job-Share or Reduced Schedule

Turning to personal experience, the first time she proposed a four-day work week with a 20% cut in pay and benefits at WSJ, Lublin was declined.

At that point, she had one child under four years old and was just back from maternity leave with her second. But later that year, WSJ published a front-page story about moms returning to work after maternity leave only to throw in the towel. Norman Pearlstine, Managing Editor at the time, reached out to her.

“I could really relate to that,” she told him. “You know, I’ve got two kids under four. I’m working full-time and I’m dying. I really can’t do it. It’s just too much.”

He invited her to re-propose her reduced schedule and not only did she receive the four-day week work, she also kept full pay and benefits—with the condition she could not work on Friday at all or the deal was off.

Not only did the reduced hours not diminish her productivity, as her bosses had trusted, but she was promoted to management a few years in. Her reduced schedule helped her effectiveness and set a newsroom precedent that allowed other women to job-share.

Lublin advocates that women consider job-sharing as a strategy for advancing in management.

Recognize that Parenting Builds Your Leadership

Lublin feels that parents learn delegation, multitasking and other skills that help them become better leaders. “I think women in particular are able to hone certain skills that make them more effective bosses,” she observes, “particularly, they learn the importance of being an empathetic listener.”

She reflects that being a highly successful reporter did not prepare her to be a successful boss, but parenting was complementary and did help.

“Having children before I moved into management taught me how important and how good it is to be a great mentor,” Lublin concludes. “To be a good human being is to give back and pay it forward.”

By Aimee Hansen

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Four Steps to Making Professional and Personal Life Change in 2021

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Nicki GilmourOur lives changed one year ago this week, in ways we could not have predicted. Most professional women lost the office, the commute and socialization with clients, coworkers and friends in New York City, London or wherever we live and work around the country and the world.

Cities emptied as many relocated to the countryside or the suburbs. Mothers took on 15+ more hours a week of domestic work and childcare, and some left work due to the strain. Others experienced a workforce reduction that cut across every sector in one way or another.

In an unprecedented year, many of us have felt shock, pain, loss and grief in different ways for different reasons. As most changes to our world endure, this brings another level of internal processing and feelings.

In a time where the external context has felt both uncertain and unfamiliar, many of us have felt more compelled towards reconnection with our center, our internal compass and our animating purpose—What do I value? What do I want to envision and create? Where do I want to focus my energy and attention?

These questions matters, now as much or more than ever. Here are four steps to support in the process of re-evaluation:

Step 1: Feel the feels.

Let yourself feel everything, but know that you are not your emotions, rather that you experience these emotions.

“Emotional Agility” is important. Being able to recognize and name how you feel and know that you can see it objectively, and not only experience it subjectively, means understanding that you are not the emotion.

Emotions are data that can help you understand what next steps are right for you. The amazing Dr. Susan David at Harvard has worked extensively on helping people understand that if we put our emotions to one side to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to deal with the world as it is, instead of as we wish it to be.

In her TedX talk, she recounts that over the years, when people say they don’t want to try something or they prefer to avoid disappointment or they want fear and shame to just go away, her humorous response is: “I understand, but you have dead people’s goals.”

David offers a free quiz to begin the journey of becoming more astute about your emotions, and her bestselling book is a great way to start getting in touch with your emotions as your guides.

“Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad,” she states. “Being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. It’s unkind and ineffective.”

Ignore the societal call for relentless positivity and keep it real, so you can be honest with yourself about how you feel. You will be happier for it and more guided towards genuine contentment and joy, because you listened to yourself.

Step 2: Take Care of Inner Business.

“Wherever you go, there you are” is the saying.

Who are you? Do you behaviors line up with what you say matters to you? Or, what are you committing to, instead? How do you show up for yourself?

In her excellent book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in her body of work on transitions, including during Covid (quick read here), Herminia Ibarra suggests that in the messy business of getting to where we want to go, we should consider not only our current selves but our future possible selves also.

“Possible selves are the ideas we all have about who we might want to become. Some are concrete and well-informed by experience; others are vague and fuzzy, nascent and untested,” writes Ibarra. “Some are realistic; others are pure fantasy. And, naturally, some appeal more to us than others.”

List your skills, your values and who you want to be. To self-assess your driving inner forces around recognition, fairness, and autonomy, for example, take the SCARF free quiz to see where you fall on the spectrum of these behavioral motivators.

Harvard’s longest running study on adult development suggests that while we say we want money and success, those who live the healthiest, happiest and longest actually share one essential experience —having deep human connection. That includes with ourselves.

Why not use the shake-up of this liminal time to shine an investigate light in the places where you have been on auto-pilot and check-in if you are still living in alignment with yourself, now?

Step 3: Commit to the Changes You Want to Make.

In this blurry time, I invite you to take stock as professional women to review what is working for you and what needs to simply change—in both your inner story and your outer physical world.

Change is hard and neuroscience and psychology shows us that we tend to stick with what we know through routines, even if the habits aren’t that useful to us anymore. Trying to live like we did before is pretty impossible, but being resilient and adaptable amidst whatever this new decade brings in our world is key.

It is the mental or even professional pivot, not the hanging on, that will empower you. Pivoting is something that we are all doing, whether it is small adjustments to how we work or a big transition into a new career altogether. Ibarra has always argued that we are all in transition at work, but we just don’t know it yet.

Businesses who have pivoted during the pandemic have seen the best results when they protect their core, while innovating slightly to meet needs of a changing customer. Company culture and brand purpose matters the most—who are you and what do you stand for?

If businesses are taking stock of these questions, take the same permission slip: Who are you, now? What do you value, now? Where do you wish to set your vision and put your energy, from now onwards?

Step 4: Elevate Your Development With a Coach.

I know this is going to sound strange, but as an executive and leadership coach, I effectively spend four to eight hours per day inside other people’s heads. Like in the movie Being John Malkovich, I become privy to the inner voices that we all have, and it is fascinating to witness the “truths” that we all tell ourselves.

We all have a bunch of constructs, albeit different ones, that make up our default operating system. Your brain, mostly your unconscious, is running the show and is building data models day and night via associative process. This comprises your worldview or mental model, literally the lens through which you experience your life—unless seen, challenged, disrupted and revisioned.

We’re often blind to what creates our limits and blocks. We all have goals, but we need to surface our subconscious gremlins, who are trying to thwart are best-laid plans for change by creating hidden competing agendas.

A great model for approaching this internal work by yourself is available in the book Immunity to Change, which really is a life-altering read that I have discussed at length here on the site. Imposter syndrome runs rampant with successful overachievers, and I have not met one client yet who doesn’t have some deep fear of failure, wobbly sense of worthiness, or hidden insecurity or shame.

But you don’t have to be beholden to these gremlins anymore, and you don’t have to overcome them alone, either.

You can do so much to clear the debris and make real change uninterrupted by your subconscious fears. Neuroscience research has now caught up with what social psychologists have been hypothesizing on for decades: The brain is high elastic or plastic and even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified.

Ibarra and others suggest that coaches are key to the process of making the changes you most hunger for: Firstly, in talking it all out. Secondly, in helping you make real and actionable plans. Thirdly, in acting as an accountability partner and advocate to be in your corner as you navigate the course to new territory.

Are you ready?

If you would like to work with Nicki Gilmour as your executive coach, she has some (daytime only) spots left or we have a cadre of vetted professional coaches available (some have evenings available). Please click here for an exploratory call.

Packages start at $799 for 2 sessions, 5 sessions for $1999 and ten sessions for $3,899.

by Nicki Gilmour, CEO and Founder, Evolved People (theglasshammer.com)

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Check-In: Let’s Put Self-Love On the Conversation Table.

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self loveWhile it’s now normalized to talk about self-care and self-worth in the discussion of our professional lives, it’s rare that we dare to talk about “self-love”.

Yet self-love is an internal orientation from which to envision and navigate our lives—be it personal or professional, and it is what fosters self-worth, self-respect and self-care.

So as we near Valentine’s Day, let’s invite self-love to join this conversation.

Is Self-Care Enough?

According to Psych Central, “self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional and physical health.”

But we often talk about self-care as a momentary respite from a hectic life in order to restore our energy, or a set practice we do before the day runs away from us.

“Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure,” writes Brianna West writes in Thought Catalog.

“Self-compassion is regarding yourself compassionately. Self-care, by contrast, is treating yourself compassionately,” writes Charlie Gilkey, “…Self-care without self-compassion discharges a debt, usually with suffering somewhere else.”

Self-care spa dates alone are no proxy for cultivating a state of self-love as your foundation for experiencing yourself and the world. Without self-love, superficial self-care can be the coping mechanism or distraction from living a reality that is painfully out of alignment with your needs, desires, meaning fulfillment or growth.

Self-Love Means Self-Valuation

“Self-love means finding peace within ourselves — resting comfortably within the depths of our being. We might find temporary respite by doing something to nurture ourselves,” writes John Amadeo, Ph.D. in Psychology Today, “But a deeper inner peace requires cultivating a certain way of being with ourselves — a warm and nurturing attitude toward what we experience inside.”

Self-love is by definition an ability to meet ourselves where we are, loving and accepting of this moment of “me” right now, right here. It asks us to create expansive change from a place of love and respect, rather than shame or fear.

“Self-love is not simply a state of feeling good. It is a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from actions that support our physical, psychological and spiritual growth,” writes Deborah Khoshaba Psy.D. “Self-love is dynamic; it grows through actions that mature us.

“When we act in ways that expand self-love in us,” Khoshaba continues, “we begin to accept much better our weaknesses as well as our strengths, have less need to explain away our short-comings, have compassion for ourselves as human beings struggling to find personal meaning, are more centered in our life purpose and values, and expect living fulfillment through our own efforts.”

As “actions that mature us,” self-care can include listening within with radical self-honesty. It can mean making the sometimes difficult, heart-aligned, self-discerned choices and changes that create a more integrated life.

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing,” West writes, pointing out that self-care often means doing the thing you least want to do — whether it’s figuring out your accounts or leaving the position or relationship or forgoing the immediacy of a compulsive habit to self-parent yourself into making the choices that nurture your growth.

“Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others,” writes Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., President & CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. “Self-love means not settling for less than you deserve.”

Increasing Heart and Mind Alignment

According to HeartMath Institute, which studies the effect of heart activity on brain function, the mind and the heart (which has its own neural network) are constantly in two-way communication.

The heart actually actually sends more signals to the brain, influencing both emotional processing and higher cognitive faculties, than the brain sends to the heart. Your brain is constantly responding to your heart.

A big part of self-love is coming into that place of acceptance and self-validation where your mind and heart are more aligned more often, and you create from this space.

When you’re out of alignment with the core pulse of your inner being, you may feel life is hard and that you’re stuck. You may feel disconnected with yourself and sense that something is generally off, no matter what you do.

You may often feel foggy and lack energy or animus or vision, like your personal meaning has drained of color. You may feel like you’re living an external reality that does not match, or no longer matches, who you feel you are inside, and your self-care is your attempt to cope.

Sometimes, you can be in a moment in life where your meaning-maker is in cyclical change: where what used to fulfill you no longer nourishes you the same and perhaps your personal evolution calls for something more.

However, when you are deeply honest with yourself, deeply accepting of yourself, and honoring and validating your needs while acting from personal alignment, you begin to feel less stress and more vitality. You do not block any emotion because emotions can provide data and feedback.

You feel a greater sense of wholeness and peace within yourself and connection to yourself, to others and to the world. You are more curious and more creative. You feel mentally and physically more solid and have greater resilience for accepting yourself even in your struggles.

Questions To Check-In With Your Heart:

– How open are you to feeling all of your emotional experience? Do you block, disallow, distract or escape from experiencing certain emotions? Can you accept yourself in both uncertainty and vulnerability? Do you practice bringing awareness to your emotions as information?

– Do you trust in yourself — and at least as much as you trust others? Do you listen to your own voice as the authority in your life? Are there areas in your life where you could gently build up more self-trust and inner accountability? Are you able to forgive yourself?

– Do you create the space to intentionally check-in with your heart? Do you slow down and get still enough to discern the signals of your own truth from the collective noise, or do you keep the wheels spinning so you can’t? What would you hear if you did?

– Do you self-validate your experience and your own needs? Are you compassionately aware of your needs and willing to take responsibility for them and clearly communicate them? Or do you invalidate, dismiss or disown them? Are you willing also to own and validate your inspirations and curiosities and desires for expression?

– Are you willing to listen to and even act upon the wisdom of your gut and heart? Or are you dismissive of internal callings or yearnings if they fall outside of your mental framework of what’s rational or realistic?

– How honest can you be with yourself? Are you attached to any concept or identity of yourself that inhibits your ability to know yourself more deeply and possibly, openly? What questions are you unwilling to ask yourself?

– Are you willing to say “no” from love? Have you created boundaries as a healthy container for honoring your values, your energy and your time? Are you willing to choose yourself?

– Do you know what you value? Are you willing to act in alignment from your values, even when it’s difficult? Do you live with intention and are able to make the choices that nurture your center and further your growth?

– Is what you are committing to, through where your energy and action goes, the same as what you want? Can you bring your habitual commitments into closer alignment with your desires?

– Are you still hustling to earn your sense of worth and value from others or do you claim it for yourself? Are you able to embrace growth opportunities or do you shrink at criticism? What is one area of your life where you might need to claim your worth and value?

We are all on a journey of cultivating self-love, and that journey impacts everything about not only how we show up in the world — in every facet of our lives — but also how we experience ourselves as we do so.

When it comes to enjoying that ride, cultivating self-love is probably the richest, most valuable, rewarding work we will ever do.

By Aimee Hansen

(Our “Heart” Coach)

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Your Negative Emotions Can Guide You to Value-Based Actions

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negative emotionsWhen we ignore, invalidate or suppress our negative emotions because we don’t want to feel them, or feel they are unacceptable, they do not go away.

“Effective leaders are mindful of their inner experiences but not caught in them. They know how to free up their internal resources and commit to actions that align with their values,” writes Dr. Susan David and Christina Congleton in Harvard Business Review. 

You Can’t Negate Negative Emotions

David, Harvard Medical School psychologist and author of the award-winning book, Emotional Agility, shares in her TED Talk that a third of us either judge ourselves for having “bad emotions” like sadness or anger or grief, or try to push these feelings down.

“Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger,” says David. “Psychologists call this amplification.”

Indeed, research indicates that fighting against thoughts on addiction only magnifies them, restraining thoughts can create more stress and suppressing negative emotions spawns more emotional eating than admitting the emotions are there. 

David and Congleton have found that executives and leaders can get “hooked by” negative emotions— buying into them, avoiding situations that evoke those feelings and limiting themselves. Or, by denying the negative thoughts and rationalizing them away, even pushing themselves into situations that aren’t aligned with their values. 

Ultimately, suppressing or “fixing” negative emotions often ends up in cycling through the same reoccurring trigger areas of challenge for years. 

The Benefits of Feeling What You Don’t Want to Feel

“The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic,” says David. “We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving.“

Positive emotions are simply those we tend to “find pleasurable to experience”—such as joy, satisfaction, love, serenity, interest or amusement. Whereas negative emotions are simply those we don’t find pleasurable to experience—such as fear, anger, disgust, sadness, rage, loneliness and annoyance. Neither of these definitions imply the effect of having the emotion is entirely positive or negative within us, just that we judge experiencing it as so.

Apparently, a 3:1 positive/negative emotional experience ratio is necessary for a sense of flourishing, but the balance plays a part.

“One idea in the study of emotion and its impact on psychological health is overdue for retirement: that negative emotions (like sadness or fear) are inherently bad or maladaptive for our psychological well-being, and positive emotions (like happiness or joy) are inherently good or adaptive,” writes June Gruber.

So-called negative emotions have an inherent value. Negative emotions can foster detailed and analytical thinking and less stereotypical thoughts. Feelings like sadness can increase focus and help us to learn from mistakes and assess social situations better.

Negative emotions can facilitate us to go deeper into self-understanding and empathy. Being willing to experience them can build emotional resilience. They help us to evaluate our experience and detect when an area of life feels off and needs our attention.

Experiencing and accepting emotions like anger and sadness are important to our mental health. Mindfulness training has been helpful in overcoming anxiety disorders, not because it eradicated negative feelings but it trained participants to accept them. 

Research has shown the ability to hold mixed emotions together at once precedes improvements in well-being, even if it’s unpleasant or difficult. Across a study of ten years, frequent experiences of mixed emotions were strongly associated with relatively good physical health and that increases in them weakened age-related health declines.

“We find that psychological well-being is not entirely determined by the presence of one type or kind of an emotion,” writes Gerber, “but rather an ability to experience a rich diversity of both positive and negative emotions.”

From Emotional Data to Values-Aligned Action

David urges us to realize that emotions are data that “contain flashing lights to things that we care about”—when we get clear on precisely what we are feeling and can respond by taking steps that are value-aligned.

“Emotions are data, they are not directives,” she caveats. “We can show up to and mine our emotions for their values without needing to listen to them.” Rather, we pay attention to how they point to what we value. 

David and Congleton suggest four practices derived from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), originally created by Dr. Steven C. Hayes.

Recognize You Are Stuck.

Recognize your own patterns. Where are you caught in rigid, repeating mental loops—your thoughts like a broken record inside that is insistent on replaying? Does the loop feel familiar from the past, like situations you’ve felt before that triggered and created similar contraction? These loops only deplete your mental resources. Notice if you often feel undervalued, for example.

Identify Thoughts and Feelings. 

Label your thoughts and emotions distinctively to create emotional distance and clarity of the emotional data. If you feel you have to be available all the time for work, then you can get perspective by stating “I’m having the thought that I have to be available all the time for work.” Then you can look at what you feel and want to do.

Rather than saying “I’m sad” and being drowned by the emotion, you can say “I’m noticing that I’m feeling sad,” and create enough space to look at the data. This is a mindfulness practice that can improve behavior, well-being and promote beneficial changes in the brain. 

Dr. Marsha Linehan, creator of dialectal behavior therapy, emphasizes that validating emotions requires accurate—observing and describing the event, thoughts and emotions, perhaps how it feels in your body—not interpretation or assumptions, which can invalidate and cause distrust in your internal experience.

“When he interrupted me for the second time, I felt anger and felt tightness and heat in my chest” is an observation. “I shouldn’t be so sensitive” is not.

Accept and Observe.

Rather than suppress or try to control your thoughts or emotions, even if you can’t rationally justify them or they don’t match how you think of yourself, allow them to be present. Breath ten deep breaths to check in. Rather than making them feel better, this is about making room for your raw emotions to reveal. What is going on internally and externally, and what is the energetic quality of your feelings? 

If you can get underneath the emotion, are they giving you a clear signal of something that matters, for which you could respond differently? 

Act in Alignment With Values. 

“You don’t get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort,” says David. “Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”

When you can treat your emotions as data, you can create choices of how you respond to them to act in a way that aligns with your values. 

Rather than be absorbed by or pulled into reaction by your emotions, you can be guided by your values, which is a primary focus of executive coaching. You can consider what actions will bring you closer to and further from them.

“When you take values-based actions, you will eventually arrive at a choice point,” tweets David. “Will you move toward your values and act like the person you wish to be, or will you move away from your values and act against them?”

By Aimee Hansen

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Interdependent Leadership: We Need More than Independent Leaders

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Interdependence“Human life is interdependent!” says Dr. Stephen Covey. “Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.”

As citizens of the Western patriarchal world that idealizes individualism, we are conditioned to strive for independence as the bastion of strength.

But as Covey touched on in the Maturity Continuum back in the classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, independence is not the ultimate arrival point.

Evolving from independence to interdependence is a pre-requisite of stepping into being a true leader and creating human fulfillment in all of our relationships.

Personal Development Journey to Interdependence

First of all, interdependence is neither dependence nor codependence. Only independent people can evolve to be and choose to be interdependent.

Our culture idealizes independence as the ultimate success, when it’s not. Consider the self-made man or do-it-yourself or the exalted lone hero’s journey.    

      Dependence (You)

When we become caught at the dependence state of maturation, we rely on others or the situation to meet our needs for safety and pleasure, to take care of us, and to take charge or create changes we want.

We abdicate responsibility for our lives to others to develop a victim mentality. It can be insidious, too.

As Dr. Michele Brennan writes, “Evidence of this is seen in individuals who cannot make decisions for themselves, they are afraid to speak their minds, or to advocate for themselves because they need someone to lead them.”

      Independence (I)

When we individuate towards independence, we take responsibility for the thoughts and actions required to meet our needs and wants as we’ve identified them. We are self-sufficient and self-reliant.

While we must arrive here to break our dependence, remaining as an island in an interconnected world is not the highest expression of success, consciousness or fulfillment.

Independence focuses only on your needs and desires, can quickly fall into scarcity mindset, and does not place supporting others and being supported as core.

At the independence mindset, we’re also prepared for others to lose so we can win. We’re more likely to feel others are in competition or detractive to our goals.

A recent meme emphasis has been “Ultra-independence is a trauma response”—and that could be seen as an individual, national and cultural wound.

      Interdependence (We)

Interdependence “comes with the self actualization that we are strong to stand on our own but we are wise enough to understand there is even greater strength in developing a community,” writes Brennan.

At the level of interdependence, we realize that our personal growth and fulfillment is not distinct from, or at odds with, lifting others up, but rather in accord with it.

As Michael Timms writes, “Interdependence is the understanding that your welfare and ultimate success is inextricably connected to the welfare and success of those around you.”

Beyond accountability for yourself, you take accountability for our inherent interdependence and your personal impact on the greater whole.

This is the “we” phase – as written in PM Today – “where the independent adult chooses to increase their circle of concern beyond themselves, to include ever widening groups of people.”

Individuals and organizations that come from this place view themselves as one part of a system of many interconnected parts, all impacting on each other.

How We See Ourselves and the World

Research shows that people with a self-construal as an independent entity will view internal attributes as core to who they are—their “traits, abilities, values and attitudes.”

Whereas people with an interdependent self-construal will view “close relationships, social roles and group members“ as central to their sense of self—personal meaning is contingent upon belonging to the interrelated whole.

Independence mindsets are overall associated with Western European and North American cultures and interdependence mindsets with East Asian and Latin American cultures.

When it comes to perceptual tendencies, people with independent mindsets pay more attention to the focal element of a scene (a bridge in a forest). People with interdependent mindsets pay attention to the context of the whole scene (forest with bridge).

In research, this means that a Westerner will notice small changes to the focal element (bridge) faster. Those from East Asian cultures will notice changes to the context faster (forest). The changes we don’t notice are called our change blindness.

Breaking from strict cultural divides, researchers found that it’s possible to nudge our perception to view the world more interdependently. Even by attuning to the interdependent pronouns “we” and “our” and “us” rather than “you” or “I” or “me” in articles, Westerners became more sensitive to detect the changes in the bigger picture.

The frames through which we think and think of ourselves impact how we perceive the world. The more we focus on our interconnection, the more attention we pay to context and the bigger picture.

Leading From Interdependence

Independent level leadership may refuse to take responsibility for problems or try to shoulder it all alone, may focus on being the solo hero, may raise executive salaries to exorbitant levels, may focus on the organizational win without considering the true ripple effect of the means.

“At best, independent people who choose not to progress to the next level of maturity will be valuable individual contributors,” according to The Ghannad Group, “and at worst, they will contribute to the counterproductive creation and maintenance of silos that prevent effective collaboration.”

“The moment you step from independence into interdependence in any capacity, you step into a leadership role,” wrote Covey.

Ghannad Group writes that “achieving interdependence requires intentionality and insight, courage and humility”—and embodying an interdependent, transformative leader mindset requires “abundance mentality”, “empathy and understanding”, and a “servant’s heart.”

At the interdependent leader level, you grow to adopt some of Covey’s approaches: Your philosophy of human interaction is win/win, seeing life as “cooperative not competitive”— seeking solutions and agreements that offer mutual benefit for all stakeholders concerned, because it’s always the most effective approach.

You seek to understand a situation before seeking to be understood and demonstrate real emotional intelligence. You foster synergistic group collaboration, which allows the collective whole to be greater than the sum of the independent parts and gives birth to new creativity and paradigms.

You seek solution-space for problems which are not your direct responsibility such as crisis, because they are impacting upon the whole.

Interdependent leaders come from a place of acceptance, curiosity and abundance mindset rather than judgement, fear and scarcity thinking.

You have confidence in “being enough” so that you can humbly call on the unique gifts and talents from everyone without judgment, raising everyone up as you rise in your leadership acumen to create the most synergistic, creative and expansive solutions.

You’re dependable, but it’s not about you. Being interdependent as a leader means the strength of knowing your own talents and embracing the vulnerability that nobody can be or do it all themselves.

We need each other and embracing the accountability of that interdependence is the most effective, fulfilling and mature path for humanity—and leadership.

By Aimee Hansen

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Great Listening Is Still A Two-Way Conversation

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With more of our interactions than ever happening in a virtual meeting room, are you truly listening? And if you are, at what level are you listening, as a leader?

Empathetic listening is an essential component of influential leadership—it fosters better connections, supportive relationships and increased commitment.

Not only does listening require a willingness to listen, but also understanding of both the spoken and unspoken messages, as well as active engagement with the speaker’s opinions and ideas.

If you’ve made a practice of simply not speaking while listening, or parroting back the speaker’s points, it’s time to redefine what good listening looks like.

Listening in a Zoom Office World

Previously, our multi-tasking technology was one of the distractions that made listening more difficult in the workplace. Now, technology has become the workplace itself.

As we conduct most of our group conversations online, we are more inclined than ever to zone out, whilst active listening is even more important to meeting cohesion.

According to Sarah Gershman in Harvard Business Review, President of Green Room Speakers, within a virtual meeting, we are especially subject to the “Ringelmann effect” – the bigger the group for a task, the less responsibility each person feels in making the effort a success and the less personal effort each exerts.

While this effect occurs in an in-person meeting too, the online office amplifies the tendencies to tune out and talk over each other. Whether leading the meeting, one of many participants or engaged in a one-on-one, your quality of listening still matters.

Strategies for doing your part in creating meeting cohesion include:

  • Before signing in, consider what value your participation holds for you and the group.
  • Reiterate previous points before introducing a new topic so others know they were heard.
  • Listen for and see themes raised by multiple speakers, asking reflective questions.
  • Note down peripheral thoughts that pop into your head, bring your attention back.
  • If you get distracted, acknowledge you lost the thread with a clarifying question.
Good Listening = A Conversation That Elevates

In Harvard Business Review, co-researchers Jack Zenger (CEO) and Joseph Folkman (President) of Zenger/Folkman, assert that good listening is not what most people think: simply not talking over others, making affirming facial expressions and sounds, and repeating back what was heard.

While it’s also not a ping-pong of contrasting viewpoints or oneupmanship stories, zipping your lips is not the golden standard of listening.

Rather, the researchers found that great listening experiences feel like an elevating conversation. The best listeners are more like “trampolines” than “sponges.”

“They are someone you can bounce ideas off of — and rather than absorbing your ideas and energy, they amplify, energize, and clarify your thinking,” writes Zenger and Folkman. “They make you feel better not merely passively absorbing, but by actively supporting. This lets you gain energy and height, just like someone jumping on a trampoline.”

Qualities of a Good Listening Experience

The researchers found these core components of good listening experiences.

Good Listening:

  • Becomes a dialogue: Exceptional listeners comprehend the speaker so well they can ask occasional constructive questions that carefully challenge assumptions that expand the conversation. So rather than being a one-way interaction, the listener enables the speaker to explore and share more.
  • Is supportive, permissive and builds self-esteem: Neither passive nor critical listening is enough. When a listener creates an environment that is safe for open discussion, regardless of the issue or differences, the speaker gains confidence and feels supported and positive about the experience of being heard.
  • Is cooperative, not competitive: In the best conversations, neither speaker nor listener becomes defensive as the conversation flows, even when assumptions are challenged. But if the listener highjacks the conversation to focus on making their own points or winning an argument rather than supporting exploration of the speaker’s viewpoints, the connection unravels.
  • Opens up the conversation with suggestions: While people often feel they aren’t listened to when the listener jumps to fix their problem through suggestions, the researchers also found that exceptional listeners do make suggestions—skillfully—- that “opened up alternative paths to consider.”
Leveling Up as a Listener

A good listener doesn’t have an agenda—instead, park your own needs, wants and self-concept. Mistake one can be to self-identify as a good listener. Instead, take ‘yourself’ out of the way.

You can skill up by asking yourself these questions, related to levels of listening, which may also lay the trust foundation for making suggestions:

  • Are you creating a safe environment to bring up complex and emotional discussions?
  • Are you clearing away distractions to help bring your focused attention to the conversation?
  • Are you seeking to understand the substance of what is shared, and clarifying with the speaker to confirm that you do?
  • Are you listening to the 80% of communication that comes from nonverbal cues such as posture, facial expressions, eyes, gestures, breathing, energy, tone? (even more challenging over a screen)
  • Are you grasping the emotions and feelings at play from the speaker’s perspective, and are you acknowledging without judging and validating them with empathy?
  • If doing all of the above, are you able to ask the questions that clarify assumptions and help the speaker to consider the topic in a way that is expansive?
Extra Tips From Listening Leaders

According to Enterprisers Project on being a better listener, CEO Chris Kachris of InAccel suggests to take a page from reflective parenting: “Don’t try to reject or beautify their concerns, their stress, and their worries. Don’t try to convince about your opinion without first understanding their worries.”

Dr. Bahiyyah Moon, president and chief data officer of Polis Institute, advises, “The most important rule of listening is the 3-1 ratio. Listen three times longer than you talk. The next rule is to ask more than you respond. Typically people have a comment after another person speaks. Great leaders follow up with questions.”

Ed Jaffe, founder of Demo Solutions, shares, “It is not just listening, it is trying to see the problem from the side of someone else, and understand why they are saying it. You do not have to validate the idea, but you must validate the person.”

“Listening is the key to asking the right questions” says Nicki Gilmour, the head coach of Evolved People Coaching and Founder of theglasshammer.com. “Tuning in to people requires hearing not just the content of what they are saying, but listening for the meta messages of what is really going on to help people identify what really matters.”

Ultimately, leveling up your listening can only create better connections, and enable you to become a more empathetic and expansive leader.

By Aimee Hansen 

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Want to Work Virtually? Now is the Time to Make it a Reality

work virtuallyMost of us have become incredibly comfortable within our own four walls over the past several months.
If you were someone who used to commute to an office every day, the first few weeks of the pandemic might have felt particularly unsettling as your routine was upended: No corridor chit chat where you found out what was really going on behind the scenes with a particular deal; no lunches with colleagues to get caught up on projects.

And then, you might have realized that you were able to plausibly replicate those experiences, making them work virtually, whether through video calls, Slack channels or a combination. In fact, you might have decided that working remotely would be an ideal option—not just for you but for your company as well.

If so, you’re not alone. In fact, a June Yahoo Finance – Harris poll found that 54% of respondents are currently working from home due to changes from COVID-19, and half of those believe it’s better than going to the workplace.

Many organizations are still encouraging their employees to work remotely, at least for the time being. But others are slowly starting to urge them back in the office, mistakenly believing it’s a necessity for productivity.

If you’re one who has seen the benefits of remote work over the past few months—or has always hoped to try a new flexible schedule—now is the time to seize on the opportunity. Here is your six-point plan to talk to your manager about formalizing a remote work plan.

1. Get the facts.

While companies pivoted to remote work because they had to, the truth is that a large number of jobs lend themselves to being done virtually—in fact, one analysis by the University of Chicago says that’s the case for 34% of U.S. jobs. Add to that the fact that a Gartner survey found that 82% of company leaders say they plan to allow at least some remote work going forward, and you can make a solid case that remote work is the wave of the future.

2. Prove your productivity.

No doubt you’ve been showing your worth to your company day in and day out during the pandemic, but now is the time to quantify those achievements. Start a document that highlights some of your biggest wins over the past few months, whether it was securing a new client (or keeping one from jumping ship), implementing new processes or even overseeing a remote intern.
While you want to make sure that your eventual contract specifies output in work product and goals, rather than hours, some managers still equate productivity with time worked. Track your hours for the next few weeks so that you can show your supervisor that you don’t see remote work as a chance to slack off. Again, you don’t want hours to be the ultimate metric, but it can help assuage concerns from a boss who still values face time as a measure of production.

3. Outline how your responsibilities can be managed remotely.

If you routinely collaborate with others, your supervisor might be concerned that a lack of face time can hamper your projects. Talk to key colleagues about how they feel about replacing in-person meetings with video calls or commit to coming into the office one day a week for an all-hands-on-deck meeting.
Find out how your supervisor wants to hear from you—whether it’s a quick check in at the beginning and end of the workday, or a detailed weekly progress report.
Prove you’ve done your homework and your plan is solid.

4. Document your work environment.

Women can be at a disadvantage when they request remote work because a supervisor might assume you will be shouldering the burden of extra domestic duties while at home. Couple that with the fact that many kids won’t be returning to a full-time classroom, and you need to make clear that your time working virtually will be spent doing exactly that, not overseeing school work.
Show your supervisor that you’ll have a private office where you can take professional video calls and agree on the hours you’ll be working. The onus is on you to check in frequently to allay any concerns your colleagues may have.

5. Offer a trial period.

Sometimes its’ easier for a boss to say “yes” if they know it’s only temporary. While you’ve already essentially been doing this for the past few months, they might have been looking forward to assembling the whole team. Offer to give it a try until the end of 2020, for example, and then the two of you can re-evaluate how it’s working on both sides. Remember that it’s a two-way street; you want to make sure you are getting the support you need and that you don’t feel your opportunities for advancement or to work on prime projects are being restricted by not being in the office.

6. End on a high note.

Ultimately you want to show your manager that your remote work is mutually beneficial. You don’t want to end the conversation from the positon of being a supplicant, or sacrificing salary or title for this new arrangement. If COVID-19 has shown anything, it’s that remote work can and does work. Use this new realization to approach your boss with a solid plan that documents your continued value—even in the virtual world.

by Cathie Ericson

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Six Ways Executive Coaching Can Improve Your Life

Improve Your Life

Coaching is often misunderstood. It is not consulting, as the objective of coaching is not teaching or giving advice, but to facilitate your ability to learn about yourself, unlock your own potential, and improve your life.

If you’ve advanced to the upper ranks of your profession, do you even need an executive coach? You got this far, right? Especially at the executive level, having a great coach can dramatically enhance both your leadership and your life. In these times when leading with empathy is a necessary trait, a coach can help you show up to your team with a profound and helpful way to navigate this insanely difficult year as a professional woman in financial services or anywhere.

What can an executive coach do for you? Here are 6 ways that professionally and personally, a coach can help you become the leader and the executive you want to, and need to be.

1. Own Your Leadership Strengths

Own and hone your abilities. Leadership is as learned and acquired as it is somewhat innate. Research regarding female twins explores how developmental experiences and genetics work in tandem to create female leaders. This work, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, has found that around 30% of factors that lead to women in leadership roles are genetically influenced. This research seems to find that some people are literally born for capacity to lead with executive capabilities inherently there. The other 70% has to do with direct experiences and family influences. Within that a large proportion of success is attributed to securing and occupying a leadership role in the first place or climbing the ladder.

Part of executive coaching is unearthing the natural leader you already are, including identifying your unique strengths and styles. This includes bringing into your awareness the inherent talents that you might not be aware of, or are not valuing enough.

If you are gifted at visioning future opportunities or quality listening or making unexpected connections, you might take that skill for granted. An executive coach can reflect back your unique aptitudes, validate them and help to leverage them more. A coach helps build self-assurance so you can be relaxed in your own skin as a leader.

2. Transition into Leadership Mindset

As you move up, it becomes necessary to re-orient your focus towards your leader role. Coaching will provide valuable “cold, hard truth” about your weaker areas that can be developed.

Part of moving up in an organization is letting go of your comfort zone (how you focused your attention and efforts before your current position).

Putting your head down and doing your own quality work was enough before, but now must evolve to motivating and inspiring others. Coaching can help you to develop a new set of responses and priorities at work.

3. Expand Your Self-Awareness

Executive coaching can help executives focus on self-awareness, so you can see both yourself and others more clearly. A coach helps you to pause and reflect on your unconscious thinking and to question your assumptions and beliefs.

When you dismantle core ways in which you are inhibiting yourself, your perception can widen to transform both your professional and personal life.

Most of us don’t see ourselves clearly, but self-awareness is highly correlated with effectiveness as a leader and with attracting followers. It includes being able to understand how you see yourself and the world, what biases you hold, what beliefs you possess and the impact you might have on others.

With your coach, you examine the way you think and process circumstances and how that creates outcomes. You might consider what thinking process led to a specific action and outcome, and how you could have perceived and responded differently.

You will question core limiting beliefs, often hidden from your conscious awareness, that keep you trapped in emotional cycles, self-sabotage or repeating “safe” behaviors that undermine your potential.

Coaching serves to elevate your emotional intelligence, which becomes more essential the higher you go, and affects your quality of presence, how you respond within a moment and perhaps what kind of skills you need to seek in those around you.

The more emotional intelligence you have, the higher you will go at work.

Research shows that some women have more emotional intelligence than men, if you are one of those women use it. If you are not, and there are many women who do not fit this stereotype, then work with a coach to develop it.

4. Enhance Quality of Relationships

Coaching helps you to gain a more accurate sense of how others perceive you as a leader, which can throw the light on challenge areas to affect better outcomes.

Over 70% of people have shared that coaching improves work performance, relationships and effective communication skills. It helps you to see others more clearly, and to see interpersonal issues between you and others more clearly.

Coaching can help you to examine your limited beliefs about others, especially those who aren’t like you, so you can form productive and rewarding relationships with a more diverse range of people.

5. Improve Focus and Decision-Making

Tony Robbins asks, “Are you majoring in minor things?”

Coaching helps to clarify your core personal and professional values, so you can structure and direct your attention in ways that create real fulfillment. A coach helps you discern between being busy and being effective, so you can better focus your precious energy.

A coach provides valuable external perspective on your strategic thinking and ideas – bringing new angles to consider, pointing out blindspots, giving validation, helping you to articulate your ideas more clearly and step-by-step and helping to navigate execution, even in making bolder moves.

A coach can challenge the assumptions that are limiting your progress. By providing a reflection on patterns or fears that hinder and obstruct your thinking, a coach can help you become more effective at decision-making.

6. Gain A Dedicated Ally

In the feminine version of the heroic journey, there is help along the road. A coach represents an ally that walks the path with you, always in your corner, supporting your development and achievement.

Whether it’s truth-talking on where you’re stuck or advocating for your gifts, a coach will be your confidante and champion in the leadership journey. A coach offers a detached perspective that helps to bring life into clarity, focus and often wider possibility.

As well as helping clarify what you want, outlining how to get there, and then helping navigate the path, your coach becomes your accountability partner along the road to your goals, reminding you of your intentions, where you want to go and why.

With the mental, emotional and strategic inspiration and support of coaching, the leadership road becomes a more personal and expansive journey than you may have ever imagined.

by Aimee Hansen

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There’s No Such Thing as a “Set” Career Path

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GS Returnship ProgramBy Sophie Jacob

Before the phrase “social distancing” became a part of our collective vocabularies, in-person interviews and orientation were part of the usual recruitment and new joiner process. Now, like everything else, joining a new company does not look quite like it used to – orientation is done virtually, and networking with fellow new joiners might not seem as simple. But while integrating into a new role virtually is a different experience, non-traditional beginnings can be a good thing.

Take Goldman Sachs’ Returnship® program for instance – founded in 2008, the program is an eight-week, paid program designed specifically for individuals who left the workforce for two or more years and are ready to return. The program aims to help talented professionals restart their careers after an extended absence from the workforce and provides access to training, networking and support from the firm’s senior leaders, as well as hands-on work experience with meaningful responsibilities in a variety of divisions across the firm.

Lori Taylor, a member of the Returnship Class of 2015, joined Goldman Sachs in the immersion program after a six-year hiatus from the workforce. After hitting the ground running in the Risk Division, Lori joined the firm full-time, and became the first Returnship Class member to be named managing director.

Read on for Lori’s unique perspective on integrating into Goldman Sachs quickly and efficiently, her best advice for making the most of a non-traditional career path, and how she stays in touch with other Returnship program alumni virtually.

Tell us about your career before Goldman Sachs and what drew you to the firm’s Returnship program.

Lori: After a decade-long career at GE Capital, I left work to focus on my family full-time. After six years, I wanted to explore going back to work. A friend of mine was an alumni of the program and told me about it.

When I was applying, I explained to friends and family that the program was a chance to learn about Goldman Sachs and see if it would be a good fit for me. The Returnship program was attractive because, of all the opportunities I had been looking into, it was the one that had the longest and best track record.

What were your favorite parts of the program?

Lori: I really appreciated the focus on networking. Coming in with a Returnship class made the transition smoother, and I’m still close with my Returnship colleagues today. The role I was placed in made a lot of sense for me, and returning to work in a position that I felt excited about showed me how much I missed this part of my life. It was like I had never left.

The program also does a great job of organizing panels and other forums for participants to hear from leaders at the firm; some of the advice I heard in those early days still resonates with me today. I continue to be involved with the Returnship program, and just recently participated in an event for the new class, with half of the class via video conference given diverse locations.

What did you find most surprising?

Lori: Probably how fast it went by! Once I hit the desk, the days flew by, I think in large part because right away I was given opportunities where I felt like I was really providing value.

The Returnship program allows the firm to access pockets of talent that we might not be able to get to otherwise – experienced hires with a range of professional and life experiences bring fresh perspectives that can help teams evaluate challenges through a new lens.

Can you tell us about the make-up of your class?

Lori: My class was comprised of people who had been out of the workforce for very different amounts of time and for various reasons – some colleagues had taken a two-year break, while others had been out of the workforce for closer to 20 years. We were a mostly female cohort, with one male colleague in our ranks.

You’re a trailblazer as the first program participant to be named managing director as a member of the Managing Director Class of 2019. Can you tell us about that journey?

Lori: I had worked in Credit Risk earlier in my career, so it was a natural fit for me. While the markets are constantly changing, the skills and tools we use to evaluate risk stay the same. I spent the last five years working hard, and I was fortunate enough to have mentors and supporters along the way who gave me opportunities to take on more and more responsibility and continue expanding my scope.

We’re welcoming new people to the firm remotely every week. Do you have any advice for them or for people wondering how to face the challenges of joining a new company under unique circumstances?

Lori: I’d say that there is no such thing as a “set” career path. My career certainly hasn’t been linear, and the fact that it has been non-traditional provides me with a different perspective and experience.

What might we not know about you?

Lori: I’m a twin! Also, I was inducted into the University of Vermont Athletic Hall of Fame for basketball – even though UVM is surrounded by mountains, I didn’t ski there until after my senior season, because I couldn’t risk an injury.

By Sophie Jacob

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How to Make Your Next Career Move During COVID-19

Next Career MoveNavigating change at work is applicable to everyone in their career right now. Working with an executive coach can help with adapting to the new environment of work from home and adjusting your mindset to deal with the changes that, due to a pandemic, seem to be here to stay for a while.

Executive-level jobs in the financial services and Fortune 500 are not exempt to disruption as the economic damage starts to take effect and it is very possible that companies will start slashing budgets and downsizing later this year.  So now, not later, is the time to prepare to make your next career move.

It won’t be the old-fashioned tap on the shoulder informing you that your team is being consolidated and there is no place for you.  The digital version of getting marched out of the building can provoke the same feelings of rejection, shame, anxiety and fear of what job to do next. If you are fired or made redundant, furloughed or re-org’ed out, then all is not lost. Instead, start with your own inner voice and control your psychology around what just happened, as self-talk and old fears and feelings can easily surface at this point. Your unconscious mind will enjoy slapping you with paradigms developed over a lifetime. These can take many forms; for those with imposter syndrome it could be “told you so, you didn’t belong there.” In the case of general self-worth concepts it could be the shame of “letting them down,” even though when I push my clients to further consider this internal message the “them” is mystical, general and undefined.

The best investigation you can do into your own constructs can be done using concepts from Lahey and Kegan’s work in Immunity to Change. This is a book I write about often and pursue with coaching clients to help them understand how to break out of implicit notions that your brain is quietly telling you.  These notions are working as the operating system beneath all the human apps or hacks that you think you are running for things like productivity and mastery in your life.

In times of potential trauma, such as job loss, you are faced with a choice of how to recover, as there are many emotions and thoughts involved with this type of situation. The best thing you can do is let go of any negative emotions such as anger or bitterness or shame. This is often easier said than done. Get perspective, as most likely this is not about you personally in these COVID-19 times. Use this event instead as reframe the change as an opportunity to understand what you enjoyed most, and least, about both the job itself and the company culture. This will help you figure out what is next for you professionally. If you have any kind of decent financial cushion, make a promise to yourself that you will not make rash decisions and instead take the time to reflect on what you really want to do.  That could come quickly if clarity happens, which is why a good coach can help you by supercharging you and your process. What do you need more of? Less of? How do you get what you want? This can be more satisfaction, more time, more flexibility, more money, a different title or even a complete pivot into a different career.

Not Furloughed or Fired but Ready for a Change

Even if things are steady at work it is okay to think about making a change, especially if your industry doesn’t look robust in terms of future sustainability or growth. See the writing on the wall regarding how your company is dealing with employees during COVID-19. Look for actions and behaviors. Are they laying off staff in other departments or teams? How are they doing it? Is there a voluntary severance program in place where the deal is lucrative? If so, perhaps it is worth talking to your manager about the future, specifically your future. This can be a courageous conversation to have so make sure you are in good standing with your boss as of course there is risk attached. If everything looks steady, find ways to ensure you make your value visible at all times. Working smarter not harder is the key here.

Take this time to think about what you want long term. In these exhausting times, it is easy to just survive the day and pour a cocktail on a Friday to celebrate getting through another week at work. Do an exercise of “flash forward” and picture yourself three years from now; what are you doing work-wise? Which firm are you in, if any, and what does your day-to-day look like? Start with the end in mind and start to think about the steps that could be taken to get there as Rome (or anything) was not built in a day. What skills do you need to develop? What connections do you need to make? What does starting the transition or pivot to a new job, career or industry look like? Herminia Ibarra’s fabulous book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader very much argues that we are all in transition, and we just might not know it yet. From this perspective, looking at networks and skills is a worthy action at all times. I highly endorse her work, and this is a consistent recommendation from me to my coaching clients across senior levels on Wall Street, tech, fintech, healthcare and pharma.

As gloomy as things might seem right now with the outlook for the economy and personal risks in going to work, it is ultimately an ideal time to figure out what you want and what works for you. Things will return to a normal of sorts, but who knows when? Think about the last time you interviewed for a job. You might have been in a different place in your life and it’s okay to acknowledge that everything has changed. Not least, you have a chance to think about your enhanced skillset. And surely all of our resilience muscles have increased, as we have been resourceful though quarantine, kids crawling in to zoom meetings and productivity despite lack of connectivity. You are better placed than ever to be the best executive version of yourself!

If you wish to have a complimentary, exploratory conversation to see if executive coaching with Nicki Gilmour or one of our associate coaches could help you navigate your career this year and beyond, then please select the time that works best for you from the link below.

Event: Exploratory Coaching chat – see full list of times

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