Unpacking Stress at Work Part 1: Mismatched Expectations!

By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach, CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com

As a coach, many clients come to me because they are somewhat dissatisfied at work. Often they have been happy for years and a new structure or a new job in the firm has made them question if they should leave the team or even the firm.

It is rarely ever the tasks that make people wrestle with the big question of “Should I stay or should I go” as senior people find ways of navigating and delegating where appropriate. In fact people can love their tasks, the day to day of what they actually do, but hate their role.

How come? Simply put, because a role can consist of responsibilities that are not aligned with the appropriate authority to execute leaving people feeling like they cannot succeed on their mission. This can show up as having no formal authority around managing the people who have to deliver on a product or a behavior, or having no budget or resources to make the goal happen.

If you suspect you are there, ask yourself three questions:

  1. “Does this role have definitive responsibilities that require tangible results?”
  2. “Am I the type of person who needs to see tangible outcomes for my own well-being/sense of self? or for my formal reward or evaluation?”
  3. “In this role, will I have the ability to deliver part or all of the solution or product via myself and a team that I have control over in some way or another such as reporting line, resources and budget? What could stop this from running smoothly?”

If you say yes to needing to see tangible results, your job requires it and your current position gives you the ability to execute on your responsibilities such as call clients, sell them a product and let a qualified and competent team fulfill on the order (or even deliver it yourself), then my guess is, things are good unless you are a horrible boss (which is for another day).

However, if you say yes to the tangible results piece and your job has you taking on a nebulous or aspirational mission, without any team, budget or ability to infiltrate and change core aspects of the company or system, then you might feel the tension.

Lastly, maybe you do not need or have not been given formal responsibilities around tangible results and in this case then advocacy or influencer work tends not create such a rub organizationally or for the individual except when the individual has a high sense of tangible achievements for their own validation.

If you would like to work with a coach because you are experiencing any of the above and want to talk through your options and make a plan of action, Nicki Gilmour is taking on 5 new clients for summer only and you can book a free exploratory chat with her here.

Nicki is a qualified coach and holds a masters from Columbia University in Organizational Psychology and is the Founder of theglasshammer.com

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Should I stay or should I go? Are you thinking of leaving for the right reasons?

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Nicki Gilmour - Founder of The Glasshammer.comShould I stay in my job or leave to go to a new firm? This is often the question that brings people to coaching.

There is no simple answer to this, but there are ways to truly explore what is best for you.

I can break these down into three categories:

1. Systemic dysfunction – is there misalignment in the way people and processes meet? Is the culture and how work gets done around here, one of inconsistent management practices with no real support with process and policy to ensure good behaviors happen? Is leadership lacking? Is the mission unclear? Are you able to do your job the way you see fit?

2. You – your mental models, behaviors, reaction and actions.

3. Them – other people and their mental models, behaviors, reactions and actions.

It is only by looking at these factors that you can make an assessment of whether staying or leaving is best. You go with you to the next job so repeating patterns won’t bring you happiness or success if those patterns needs to be broken.

I am now taking up to 15 new coaching clients for Spring/Summer – if you are interested in signing up and working with me for 5 sessions, book in for an exploratory call to see if I can help you over the next 6-9 months so you can develop, grow, succeed and feel renewal at work.

Testimonials from mid to senior level professionals available.

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Equal Pay Day or Groundhog Day?

Nicki GilmourThis is a short column today in the aftermath of the flurry of a mixture of interesting and repetitive pieces on how white men still get paid (in aggregate) more for the same job done as other people ( aka women of varying creeds and non-white men) because they are white men.

Groundhog day? Same old, same old? Seems to be that way because the advice given yesterday is the same advice we have seen for the entire lifespan of theglasshammer (12 years and counting).

Now, we all know that many of our readers work in Wall Street and industries that feed from it, so at what point is this a non-issue? We work all the hours in the world available and we earn the big bucks, right? Yes, but even at this level and in this profession, the bias around just who you are born as body-wise does effect your paycheck and promotional track; if it wasn’t true, your executive committees and partners wouldn’t be sending me press releases for having 10-30% women on it. It would be anywhere between 50-100%. When companies get floated (IPO’ed) you see how much directors get paid – often shocking to see who gets paid the most overall and a clue is, it isn’t all the women, ever.

I have nothing to add as after seeing the same (non-) discussion happen for the full twelve years of running the glasshammer.com I can only share five pieces of advice:

1. Research and awareness seems to be changing nothing.

2. Instead of spending a day writing and reading about it, spend the day building your business and make money if you are in a revenue role.

3. Ask for as much money and bonus and equity as you can next time you change jobs as payment is definitely an art as well as a science, and on a scale (I see this very much as an executive coach, where you ask and you get it).

4. Ask for transparency where you can get it and by doing that, yes, work for good companies. But, ultimately, fight for your best deal.

5. Do not waste your time speaking with people who do not get it. They do not want to get it when they throw up arguments around parenting, maternity, etc. They merely want to maintain the patriarchy and status quo which makes us believe white men and their needs are worth more than the rest of us. This great study called “Still A Man’s Labor Market” measures the pay gap over time and therefore includes time off which results in women being paid anywhere from 30-70% less than men over time due to the gap. Therefore the 87% often quoted is when factors are equal such as same work hours, same job, same education, same ethnicity (which is a whole other topic as intersectionality drops wages further). Catalyst, the gender think tank, back in 2010 produced a great piece of work on “Pipeline’s Broken Promise” which is worth a look, still.

Last time I checked university degrees cost the same for both genders, and food, gas and housing does too.

Money talks.

Here is a round up of great articles from us over the years on this topic, in case you missed them, because if we do not learn and instead keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results, then we are plain crazy.

2008: Equal Pay Day Draws Attention to Wage Inequality
2012: The Wage Gap Explained
2012: He Said, She Said: Recalculating the Gender Wage Gap
2013: What to Do on Equal Pay Day

Solutions

2016: How Digital Could Deliver Workplace Gender Equality in 25 Years
2018: Hidden Truths About Making Gender Equality Possible for Ambitious Dual Career Couples
2018: Tips for Women on Negotiating Salary Now That Equal Pay is Mandated

Enjoy!

If you need a career/executive coach to get you to your next job and secure the best deal, work with us!

Nicki@thglasshammer.com – empowering women one at a time while fixing the systemic inequities, as that will take a while.

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Happy International Women’s Day 2019. Does Change Start Here?

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Nicki Gilmour

Celebrations and recognition of women and women specific issues are being highlighted today around the world and inside corporate offices. Celebrating and making people aware of amazing women and their accomplishments is excellent. Shedding light on social, economic or cultural issues that do not get enough attention is also great. Better to have it, than not have it for sure.

However, does change happen because of it? No, change requires more than a day of talking and a hashtag (which by the way is officially #balanceforbetter which hints at two things, balance of power, not just more balance for women)

But, when all is said and done, it is just a hashtag that means pretty much zero when it comes to actual behaviorial change or any action for anyone whatsoever. Now that we have named the elephant in the room on the sheer vacancy of going through the motions of pretense, perhaps we can talk real talk about change?

Awareness is the first step. But, only the first step in change.

How do we achieve parity. equality, equity or meritocracy?

I like the #biascorrect idea that Catalyst is motioning this IWD (International Women’s Day). Stereotypes limit us. Anyone who has ever been stereotyped will tell you that. Catalyst provide resources to address that bias and in this instance, convey that words matter.

What is less discussed, are the false positive stereotypes and head starts that many women and many men but not all, give to men as leaders and heads of teams, families, power structures generally. That is the balance of power piece we really need to discuss.

What can you do?

Recognize that you probably implicitly have bias. We all do. I coach people to examine their paradigms regularly, as your mental model is formed via your life experiences and their context. That means, you probably are operating off ideas that your family and society told you was the “way it is” and that way it was, was steeped in notions of one gender’s needs being met before others.

Socialization, not brain differences feed into cognitive process whereby we place evaluative meaning on everything. Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus. We are all from Earth. The backlash we are seeing is due to people trying to maintain a historically granted place of power and is not surprising. The protection of the patriarchy by women,  is to do with their socialization under men’s rules and women’s place in the structure of society so far, secure but secondary so fear on an unknown alternative prevents change and fuels racism, nationalism, and is why we see sexism by women against women.

We need to educate everyone on the benefits of equality and equity as the patriarchy is a system not a gender or a person and does not serve very many people other than the bad guys ( their reckoning is here, though) in this modern world.

It is only when we stop our bias cognitively, and make efforts to behaviorally change that we can be freed from false expectations around diversity parties, celebrations and hashtags actually changing anything. Stop asking the women to balance for better and start asking everyone to stop believing everything they think to be true. Test assumptions for best results.

Enjoy this satire piece in The NY Times today. I could not agree more.

Enjoy the day, however you spend it.

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Effective Networking for Female Professionals: The Old Girls Club?

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By Nicki Gilmour

It is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day this week (Friday 8th March, 2019) so tune in for hard hitting editorial on women’s advancement at work, like we do the other fifty weeks of the year also.

According to a new study published last month, women should be networking with other women as well as men if they want to land more prestigious and better paid jobs. This study of suggests women need a women-only inner circle and a larger, well-connected network generally. The study analyzed the peer networks and job placements of 728 students at leading university, representing two class years, from an MBA program in 2006 and 2007. All of the graduates landed leadership jobs, so the (well respected) researchers ranked the positions according to prestige and other factors. The subjects studied consisted of 542 were men and 186 women, which is roughly consistent with the researchers’ findings that women make up about a quarter of business school students nationwide. The conclusion being that a person’s network composition regarding gender split can predict the career success of women. Wired magazine broke down the study and talked to the study authors and interpreted the study with the main message being women and men who are connected to other well-connected peers across their social network do better. In addition, it is extrapolated that women thrive from “gender-specific private information and support.” And men do not need insider information to thrive and advance because, wait for it ‘work is built for them’. Words that interested me from the study’s lead author, Northwestern University data scientist, Brian Uzzi, he goes on to state,

“Quite frankly, most of the jobs are still male-dominated and therefore the kind of private information that’s so important to help women get ahead isn’t as important to men’s advancement,”

Despite Brain Uzzi being possible the leading network expert, a respected expert in social psychology with a very respectable body of work that no one can argue with and some really good advice, it is hard to accept that his conclusion from just final job outcome is the end of the story.

For me, it is very much the opening of the conversation around bias, gender stratification and gender roles, because people decide if the men and women of this study get hired and people negotiate offers for salaries. That is to say, a man and a woman could have made the same connection at the same networking mixer, but the man got hired.

But, if we take this study at face value, then we can conclude that this is not new news as we know women have to work twice as hard at networking just as they do with other areas.

Uzzi shares his opinion on how he feels women should behave via his interpretation only of the results,

“When it comes to networking, women need two things and men only need one, so for every one contact a man makes, a woman has to split her time between the contact that’s going to give her market information and the contact who’s going to give her private information. If you’ve got to split the time between the two, you’ve got to be very smart about the kinds of choices you make.”

It is not a revelation that women have to work harder or are given less credibility for the same thing, or are dinged for same traits. Nor is it a shock to most of you that you do get the scoop from other women, because it could be friendship or a deeper phenomenon involving “out group” dynamics. Call it what you will, because what is real that we pay the same money for those MBAs so we need a way to ensure we get the same Return on Investment as literally the next guy. And for the love of golf, do not ask us to play unless you want to and even then, you are not one of them.

A step backwards?

What this research does not talk about is what men can do to prevent women from having to make choices. You can be a good man yet not be a man who advocates for women to have equal pathways to success.

Then, #metoo comes along with the shouts of “not all men” which of course is entirely valid because we all know some really great caring men who understand consent and respect and where the lines of proper behavior lie. The problem with the “not all men” chant is that it can silence the nuance of useful conservation around “although you do not, but by virtue of a legacy power structure you probably could be you were inclined to, therefore how do we ensure the bad guys are stopped by a new structure so you do not ever have to feel lumped in with them, because you are in fact part of the solution”. Instead, out of fear many men have taken a step back from interacting with women at work. Not helpful. Just actually more indulgent of a privilege to withdraw of a historically dominant group instead of facing the work that has to be done. Some people do not have that privilege to say no without consequence.

Networking past the biases and fear

Most networking information is entirely based on men networking with men with male examples given as an argument for basing your connection on hobbies and passions. Herminia Ibarra’s work clearly delineates the differences between personal, operational and strategic networks and is worth a read.

In this era of strong gender roles still being perpetuated by most people, men and women alike (granted glimpses of hope around understanding the negative effects on boys as well as girls of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity), it no shock that men continue to network with each other in the way they have always known how, excited primal physical arousal states usually with sports and competition. Which is why we have to believe there are physiological differences without believing we are beholden to them. We all have the ability to disrupt our cognitive process with a behavior change. That goes for women too. Start with your own biases. How much do you do love the patriarchy? Odd question you might think, but really look at to what extent do you favor men and boy’s needs over those of women and girls? This question is not about whether you like men or whether you believe in raising strong daughters or whether your husband does the dishes. It is a question about your own value sets, deep, intrinsic ones that are probably buried in your unconscious and then how that affects your conscious and unconscious behaviors.

Why do you go to women for information and perhaps comfort but not for promotion, stretch projects and general greatness? Why do men get immediate credibility and do you give it freely while in parallel asking women to prove themselves?

As we enter the hoopla, ceremony and celebration of International Women’s Day, the question to ask yourself is where are you on this spectrum of consciously and unconsciously endorsing for men because they are men, because it’s a spectrum we are all on.

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Change Your Mindset To Change the World (and Your World)

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By Nicki Gilmour

As we close out our Black History Month coverage this week, and in a direct follow up to my Op-ed on mental constructs regarding Race and how to talk about racism.

I ask how can you ensure your network is not just full of people like you, who hold the same constructs and therefore everyone can easily have confirmation bias? Bad for business with potential ‘groupthink’ coming into play, and bad for personal growth.

I am going to ask you to check whether you walk the talk on having an inclusive network.

Does your network consist of people who look, think and act like you, in every way? I am here to ask what can you gain by broadening your horizons?

How can you ensure you are getting to know perspectives that are different from yours? Equally, how can you explore enough when you are getting to know someone, to find out if that person who do not look like, can actually be very similar? How can you not presume or make assumptions based on stereotypes? It is hard because you brain “goes” there and research from the fields of neuroscience and social science’s “ladder of inference” can be shared with you in one sentence here. Simply put, your brain tricks you into thinking you have seen this before and you know what this is about. Guess what? You don’t know what is coming next, whether it is your brain seeing four red cars and subliminally telling you the next car will be red. Or whether your brain tells you that leaders are always better if they are tall white men even if you don’t know the person himself but in concept only. Or you do know the person and you dismiss their flaws and give unearned credibility to them due to concepts.

My point is, appearances can be deceptive. We are all made up of complex identities, no one is simple or one dimensional and we all have a gender (male is a gender too), ethnicity (maybe we need a new word as it implies white protestant as a benchmark baseline ), orientation (straight is an orientation too), nationality, work position, parent or not parent status, even golfer or not golfer status. Most of us, have had some affiliation to a legacy or current dominant group. We can go through life like that, easily. I had very little perspective for example of what it meant to be a Catholic growing up in Belfast as my class and religion meant I was never really stopped by army or police or had to deal with thugs and gangs and any resemblance of poverty. Bombs yes, they were everywhere and random, but the everyday drag and bias of being in the minority and less powerful group in my society, no. Yet, my mindset was one of scarcity, fear, paranoia and being aware to this day of the so-called “other”. I am not saying I am freed 100% from my sectarian constructs – maybe 99%, but I know that i see parallels in the USA with race and that is why I know for sure that people can take the diversity journey and grow. As Maya Angelou said, “when you know better, you do better.”

So, where do you start?

Step 1: Take the time to understand your values because values are espoused versions of your implicit beliefs. Chances are you are running the same old program that was handed to you in childhood via your direct environment, family structures, institutions such as school and church/temple/mosque, and the overall society you were born into and whatever norms that group had in play.

Step 2: Write out every construct you have been told such as “Trust is earned” or “X, y, z is the way it is”. What do you tell yourself when you are in varying situations as who to hire for the project, who to cut from the project, and who to promote? What do you tell yourself when you are stressed at work and having less than optimal interactions?

Challenge the and every single line by asking yourself simple questions such ‘Do I believe this, truly?’ or an advanced version of this could be ‘How else can I look at this?’ or ‘Is this still working for me now?’ and “how is this actually something that was given to me by my father/mother/granny, and is not actually how i feel at this time?”

If you would like to work with me as a coach on personal and professional growth and renewal, with real insights for you, about behaviors and the context of the operating system you are in. Please book a free exploratory time with me. Life is too short to carry outdated constructs around. Grow! Whether it is individual, or organizational change, it does not happen without awareness as the starting point.

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Want to be an inclusive leader? Create psychological safety for your team

Several years ago diversity became diversity and inclusion with many putting emphasis on the inclusion part.

How can you walk the talk on being an inclusive leader of a high performing team? Because performance and team happiness is the reward of actually doing diversity right.

Why is creating psychological safety the answer?

Studies have been exploring the effects of psychological safety at work for several years now and Google more recently experimented the concept with something they call Project Aristotle. They discovered that just by having genius or two on the team, you are not going to get the best results. However, if you have a team environment where people can feel safe and heard and valued as themselves, then they can think and perform better and the result is productivity. There are many factors to high performing teams for sure but Google’s data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work. This certainly makes sense if you think about it. Women ( and anyone who does not fit the mold of the traditional legacy work persona /expert) can find space to connect with others talking work and/or any other topic of shared interest.

Where to start?

Tip 1: Recognize the belief system in your team. What is the norm for your team? What are the shared beliefs that you all have? How does that make it easy for people to express ideas outside of the belief set? Is cognitive or thought diversity rewarded or silenced? If an event happens, such as a code problem, then what are the thoughts and actions from this? What emotions are attached and how are they expressed? What happens then?

Tip 2: Social identity diversity- having all types of people on your team is a good start but let people talk, let them tell you about their lives. Find out that diversity is not about noah’s ark and not a collectable set of 2 of each “kind”. People have personalities, traits and behaviors that often not aligned with the stereotypes regarding gender, ethnicity and other identities that so commonly prevail. Let people tell you their interests and likes instead of you presuming who and what they are! You might just be surprised at the results. If people have anxiety over being themselves ( for example, an LGBT person cannot mention their significant other by name or pronoun due to fear of not being accepted equally) then they cannot engage fully in the team as trust is everything. Acceptance and trust are interrelated!

Tip 3: Studies show women are less confident than men. I wonder when people are going to connect the dots on this one. Granted, personality has some part to play but really If women are less confident, it is because culturally, whether its explicitly or implicitly, they have been messaged to not believe in themselves to an equal degree as their male counterparts or simply put others have not endorsed them to the same degree. It is a true fact women experience credibility tests multiple times per day from is that your plane seat to are you sure your budget is right. This tedx tells of a man who became a woman recounting the difference in treatment or we can look to the Heidi Rozen Stanford experiment. Or the 50 year long academic body of work Virginia Schein has done on “think manager, think male”. I have written about this every single day for 12 straight years so the glaring systemic and culture issues that remain unaddressed are getting a little tedious. So, as a leader you have to think about your role in ensuring the women on your team get heard. Tell them to ask, but listen when they do!

If it is done properly however, inclusion is the most powerful tool a leader or manager can have in their toolkit because it can provide something that is the basis for individual and team performance.

Need an executive coach? Work with me on the system and your part in it, why you behave like you do and how you shouldn’t believe all that you think! Email nicki@evolvedpeople.com for an exploratory (free) chat to see if coaching can help you be a better professional, manager or leader.

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Calling all African American Women Professionals – Visibility Matters

diversity-black-women-all-the-same

We believe visibility matters.

On the Eve of the Martin Luther King Junior Holiday, we wanted to put out a call for more amazing African American women to be profiled as part of Black History Month coming up in February.
If you are a black female professional or are a woman of color in financial services, tech, law of Fortune 1000 we want to hear from you.
We profile all types of people all year long so it is really Black History Month is a heritage celebration and we are totally cognizant around how a person chooses to identify as opposed to identities that we put upon people.
Language matters and we know that not every person of color identifies as ‘African American’ whether its an inaccurate mantel or just a choice, we want to tell stories that honor how you relate to your heritage ( if at all).
The latest trend is to consider people of color as ‘multicultural’ which is true for some people but not all and I believe it is a disservice to use catch all slogans and buzzwords that in the US are implicitly drawn along racial lines only. I have lived in 5 countries and grew up in a split identity nation ( Northern Ireland) yet am I considered multicultural? Yet again, a term that is not evenly applied can be equally helpful and yet a silo since it buries the real conversations that need to be had, in my opinion.
You, according to you, versus you according to them and the perceptual gap of who you are in actuality as opposed to who others believe you to be is everything.
All of us have been a recipient of stereotyping at some point and it is annoying and inaccurate to say the least and is shown to be detrimental to your career if you cannot individuate yourself beyond what people think you are due to your ethnicity, skin tone, gender, LGBT status etc.
We would love to tell your story, give you visibility and inspire others coming up the ranks with your personal pathway to professional success.
Happy MLK day- celebrate history, his legacy and beyond that, think about how your actions can contribute to progress, equality and equity among people.
Email Nicki@theglasshammer.com if you are interested in having your career profiled
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Happy New Year: Tell your story, pass on your wisdom

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Happy New Year 2019
Happy New Year from theglasshammer! Welcome 2019.

Instead of talking about New Year’s resolutions and the very interesting psychology behind them, I will ask you to simply take actions to help yourself and in turn, help others.

Firstly, tell your story. Although it might seem unremarkable to you, others might really be inspired to do more than they thought possible because you trail blazed for them. All of the women that we have profiled (over 1000) have had an amazing amount of experience and wisdom to share and since we are all different, it is always great to hear about different approaches to one’s career.

Secondly, pass on your wisdom and this can be formally as a mentor or a sponsor (by giving access to projects and people) or informally such as over a chat or a site like this one.

Thirdly, be yourself but know what that is exactly. You, according to you can be different to you, according to them. Work with a great coach (we offer coaching services, book an exploratory call here to see if there is a fit) to determine your behaviors, traits and skills and then how you are perceived in the social system you are operating in. How do you show up? What is your impact versus your intention on people and situations?

We are looking to you, the collective wisdom of the readership to contribute more this year. So if you would like to contribute with an op-ed, or a career article or be profiled, please let me know (write to nicki@glasshammer2.wpengine.com and put “editorial” in the title of the email).

As you know, we do not exist without sponsors, so if you would kindly ask your company to sponsor this site to show the organizational commitment and employer of choice commitment that they espouse to have, we would be very grateful.

Here is to a successful, happy, healthy, productive and stress-free 2019

Best Wishes
Nicki Gilmour
Founder and Publisher

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How To Achieve Growth and Renewal at Work and Life

By Nicki Gilmour

It is the holiday season and end of year.

Many of us are sprinting towards the finish line, busy with deadlines and projects that need to be cleared off our desk this week so that we can take a break over the next few weeks.

Taking a break is very helpful. But, how do you really use your break to feel renewal and even perhaps growth? I believe that learning from the good and the bad and having a growth mindset gives us what we need to be better, more effective and have more of everything we want.

These past few years, I have become very interested in neuroscience and how our conscious and unconscious mind works for us and against us. This has been in service of helping my coaching clients break life-long paradigms implicitly formed via constructs over time from birth which just don’t work for them. How we see things matters since we evaluate our options through that developed over time lens. For example, people who operate with a lens of loss will have a tougher time seeing the opportunity or gains in a situation and rather see what they don’t have or didn’t get. Opposite to that example, are people who have an over tuned mental model around aspiration as they will goal set around aspirations without a grounding on the resources and factors that are needed to get there.

It is the ability to be able to create and use strategic insight by literally conduct ongoing self-appraisal accurately, that allows you to know what strengths can be deployed to achieve your goals; real ones that matter. Goals that enable growth and renewal one thought, feeling and action at a time.

Here are some TEDx talks to enjoy over the holidays as a change of scene and some “off-task” time can be very good for the brain!

Happy Holidays to theglasshammer readers and if you wish to have an exploratory coaching call (at no charge) to see if coaching can help you, then email nicki@evolvedpeople.com

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