Tag Archive for: development

You Might Not Be Having the Conversation You Think You are Having

Two Happy Business women outside the office talking to each other.

By Aimee Hansen

You’re not half as good at listening as you think you are.

What’s your first inclination? Dismiss the suggestion? Defend yourself? Conjure up anecdotes supporting just how attentive and caring and compassionate of a listener you truly are?

Would you be proving the accusation true? Most of us aren’t nearly as good of conversationalists as we perceive ourselves to be. In fact, some of the things we think make us great conversationalists might hinder our ability to listen to and support others.

In her book, “We Need to Talk: How To Have Conversations that Matter,” award-winning journalist and author Celeste Headlee, asserts that “conversation may be one of the most fundamental skills we can learn and improve upon.”

Bad communication not only harms our ability to relate to each other. It’s also expensive for business. Cognisco has found that poor communications cost business $37 billion a year.

While good communication, Headlee points out, is profitable: “Companies with leaders who are great communicators have nearly 50 percent higher returns than companies with unexceptional communicators at the helm.”

Here’s a touch of what she highlights in her collection of studies and work and why it matters for relationships of all sorts:

Five ways you might be compromising conversation:

1) You’re not actually having conversations.

Given the choice, over 65% of JPMorgan Chase employees dumped their voice mail in 2015. In 2014, only 6% of Coco-Cola employees kept theirs.

While we’ve culturally shifted to text and e-mails for reasons ranging from speed to control to record-keeping to habit, Headlee writes that research has shown “we are more likely to get our message across through conversation – either in person or on the phone – than we are using a written message.” A 2012 McKinsey study showed that a more selective and intentional use of e-mail would increase productivity by up to 30 percent.

Research summation across 73 studies found that empathy has been in decline over the past thirty years, but especially since 2000. Sitting in front of someone, or hearing the subtle intonations in his or her voice, can build empathy and understanding in a way that bridges gaps and “connects” us again as human beings.

2) You’re keeping your device at the ready.

It turns out that even having a phone on the table during a conversation – regardless of whether you ignore it – has a negative impact on the perception of the connection shared. A British study paired strangers at a table to chat, half the time placing a phone on a nearby table and half the time not. The researchers found that when a cell phone was present in the room (without being touched by either party), the participants reported a lower quality of connection, as well as lower empathy and trust levels for their conversation partner.

We are increasingly lacking real presence in conversations, which mindfulness practices helps us to address.

3) You’re banking on your intellect.

Headlee shares that being smart and articulate doesn’t make you a good conversationalist. In fact, “the smarter you are, the worse you may be.”

“I thought that because I was articulate, I was also good in conversations. But that’s absolutely not true,” Headlee writes. “Being a good talker doesn’t make you a good listener, and being smart might make you a terrible listener.” In fact, it does make you more susceptible to bias.

Headlee says we often fall into what Daniel Kahneman, author of “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, calls System 1 thinking, which is “quick, intuitive, and relies heavily on patterns we’ve learned after years of experience”. It simplifies by relying on assumptions or mental short-cuts, but short-cuts aren’t always right and are often more emotionally reactive than we realize.

She also points out that “a good conversation requires its participants to use their IQ and their EQ.” Too often we meet vulnerability of emotional sharing with a rational response, which does nothing to support someone who is sharing feelings.

Headlee gives the example of a person sharing vulnerably about his pending divorce and you throw out data on the percentage of marriages that end in divorce in an attempt to suggest it’s normal and okay. It doesn’t help provide the emotional support requested.

“Approaching emotional problems with logic is a strategy that is doomed to failure,” Headlee writes. Assuming you get it without really listening can be another.

4) You’re not transparent in expectations.

One of Headlee’s tips is to “explain what you want and what you expect, and be honest.” She asserts that it puts the other person at more ease when we are transparent about what we hope for from a discussion – and it makes you get clearer on that yourself.

She gives this example from her experience: “I’ve called you in to give you an official reprimand. But that’s as severe as this gets. You’re in no danger of being fired. I want to start this discussion by saying how valuable you are to me and the company. My goal is to help you succeed and make you aware of some issues that might be holding you back.”

It’s also important to be transparent with yourself about your own feelings, before you go into conversation, checking in on what you’re really bringing into the talk.

5) You are dropping out at the first hint of disagreement.

“What bothers me is that we don’t talk to each other but at each other,” writes Headlee. “and we usually don’t listen.”

Western countries are becoming unreadily polarized. A 2016 study found that “most Americans now believe people who disagree with one another demonize one another so aggressively that it’s impossible to find common ground.”

This is exasperated by the “halo and horns effect”, she writes: When we approve of one thing about a person, we generally judge everything about them more positively. When we disapprove of something particular, we’re more likely to judge them negatively in many other ways. We all make incorrect assumptions due to bias.

We are less and less willing to connect with people we disagree with, but Headlee asserts, “the need to have difficult conversations has never been greater” and on top of that, “there is no topic so volatile that it can’t be spoken of.”

“Listening to someone doesn’t mean agreeing with them,” she writes. “The purpose of listening is to understand, not to endorse.”

Despite different opinions, we need to bridge through our humanity, being able to empathize with the other person, including cultivating the ability “to see other individuals who face daily challenges that are equal to mine”.

Disagreement can’t be the end of discussion. It needs to be a basis for it.

“It only takes one good conversation to change your understanding of someone else’s world, your world and the world at large,” writes Headlee.

What Makes for Good Conversation?

Headlee raises ten strategies for sharing better conversations, and they all involve taking stock of your role in co-creating the conversation.

One example is becoming aware of our habitual compassion to switch the conversation back into our control and make it about ourselves, even when it seems like we’re “listening” – what Sociologist Charles Derber calls “conversational narcissism”.

In the Huffington Post, Headlee shares how she attempted to comfort a grieving friend by sharing in the experience of losing a father, but actually what she achieved was to turn the conversation around to herself in a way that made her more comfortable with the topic area and detracted from her friend’s pain and need for support in her grief.

Rather than support what the person is saying to us by seeking more insight into their experience, we’ll often shift and relate it back to our own. Because our minds seek convergent information, we’ll scan and find an experience that’s comparable and begin to mentally overlay that on rather than simply listen, which also means we may distort what is being shared with us.

Another behavior we can become aware of is unnecessary and harmful repetition, especially when it comes to negative feedback. Headlee points out that the chances of remembering something increases for you when you repeat it, but not necessarily for the listener. It usually just serves to create aggravation and can even prompt people to lessen their attention.
Those are just a couple examples of many ways we can improve our conversation skills in a profound way.

Overall, thinking we are great listeners or conversationalists doesn’t at all mean we are.

Like many things, however, we can train ourselves to improve through awareness, and dramatically elevate the true quality and effectiveness of the conversations we share.

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Why We Must Bring Mindfulness To Leadership

thought-leadership

By Aimee Hansen

Leadership today is not crying out for people who are destined to be great. It’s crying out for people who are dedicated to being present.

We don’t need bigger beacons to admire at the top, but human beings who can connect and be here now.

According to Gallup, 85% of employees are not engaged or actively disengaged at work. Forbes found that more employees (65%) would rather see their bosses fired than receive a raise. Research reveals a massive chasm between leaders’ self-perception and how their employees see them. One McKinsey study found that 86% of leaders rated themselves as inspiring, but a Gallup survey found 82% of employees see their leaders as uninspiring.

“Around three years ago, we started to see more and more leaders today being overwhelmed, being always on, not being able to keep up,” says Jacqueline Carter, partner and North American Director of Potential Project and co-author of “The Mind of the Leader – How to Lead Yourself, Your People and Your Organization for Extraordinary Results.

“This is equally evidenced by research that shows what we’re calling ‘a real crisis in leadership,” says Carter. In partnership with HBR press, her organization conducted interviews with 250 C-suite executive interviews, assessed 35,000 leaders and reviewed previous studies.

Leadership Begins in the Mind, and With You

“An unmindful leader is someone who is distracted all the time, who has a hard time getting things done, probably not very calm, maybe stressed,” says Carter. Mindfulness develops the ability to say: “Okay, no matter how chaotic it is out there in the external reality, I can maintain a sense of focus and of discipline and of calm in my internal reality.”

But most leaders don’t feel that way.

“The Mind of the Leader” research found that 73% of leaders feel unmindful most of the time and 67% of leaders feel their minds are simply cluttered. Attention itself has been touted as the world’s scarcest resource in the book, “The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business.”

“If we don’t have the ability to understand and lead our own mind, we’re certainly not able to be effective for ourselves,” notes Carter, let alone able to understand our people or the “collective minds of the organization” so that we may lead effectively.

Three Steps to Start Your Own Mindfulness Practice

1) Start a 10 minute guided practice with this app: Research shows that after 14 days, 10 minutes a day, you can actually see the impact of feeling a little more focused, more calm, more clear-minded.

2) Take stock of distractions: Carter advises to take stock of what keeps you from being focused (eg phone on in meetings). Minimize the amount of habits that distract you and create scattered feelings, tension or stress to increase your focus.

3) Stop the multi-tasking: According to Carter, multi-tasking is a myth (the brain conclusively shows we can’t give real attention to two things at once, we just flit between). We can reduce our stress levels by not scattering our attention.

When it Comes to Effectiveness, Mindfulness is a No-Brainer

Mindfulness practice cultivates self-awareness, which is a foundation of good leadership. Mindfulness has been associated with benefits such as enhanced focus and better task performance, enhanced work-life balance, more creativity and innovation, better decision making and problem-solving, more ethical decision making, increased job satisfaction, fewer sick days and more retention.

On a personal level, mindfulness can bring better sleep, enhanced attention, decreased stress, reduced cellular aging, increased emotional intelligence, and also benefits for the immune system, brain, heart and blood pressure.

What is also required, according to Carter, “is not letting our egoistic tendencies drive our behaviors” while “bringing more compassion and kindness into our work places, for strategic reasons, not just because it sounds like a nice idea.”

Why Leaders Need to Watch Their Ego

The research found that when we rise in leadership, it’s incredibly difficult not to develop a big ego. Leaders are listened to, surrounding with people who praise them, paid more and maybe have the fancy corner office.

“There’s all these subtle things that tell the brain, basically, you’re important,” says Carter. “And ego naturally grows.” So, rising into leadership has a tendency towards corrupting our behavior to be ego-driven.

For example, Carter points out, “One of the things about having a big ego is that we’re more susceptible to confirmation bias. We want to see things through the lens of the way we want to see things.”

Mindfulness practice is a way of training your mind to break unconscious biases, to affect how you relate and respond – to stay open, fluid and and respond rather than react.

“We know that we are emotional beings as opposed to rational beings. Too many programs that focus on unconscious bias appeal to our rational approach: ‘Okay, I understand diversity is good’. But we also understand that doesn’t change our behaviors,” asserts Carter. “If we all knew the right thing to do and that enabled us to do it, we’d all be exercising, we’d all be eating well.”

“It’s the same thing with unconscious bias,” says Carter. “The motivation needs to be there, which is the awareness piece, but we also need to train ourselves to be able to overcome those biases that are so unconscious they’re much more difficult to tap into.”

Mindfulness Cultivates Presence and Self-Care

“When somebody is more centered and more grounded (not about being arrogant) but has a strong sense of themselves, you feel that, and you respect them more,” says Carter. “It’s easier for people to listen to those people, because they draw people in.”

The more we cultivate presence, according to Carter, the more we can overcome the cultural addiction to action. More presence means less hustle.

“Being more mindful enables you to set more boundaries, and that was true for all the leaders we spoke to, but certainly the female senior leaders…” says Carter. “It’s a combination of being able to be mindful about what you can do and what you can’t do, and be okay with the fact that you may let people down, but you need to be able to take care of yourself.”

Presence helps us discern what is necessary, what we can put our focus on effectively, and what we can accept and release from our control.

“In our research, it was amazing to see how basically the higher you got in an organization, the higher the level of the executives, they all took time to exercise, they slept well, even despite ridiculous travel schedules and ridiculous scopes of jobs,” says Carter. “It was really clear that if you don’t start taking good care of yourself and setting good boundaries and saying no at an earlier level of your leadership journey, you’re gonna burn out.”

“Presence Pays”

Research shows a direct correlation between a leaders’ mindfulness and the well-being and performance of their people.

“Human beings know when people aren’t present with us,” says Carter. It’s un-motivating, inefficient and costly.

“When you look at how distracted people are, at turnover rates, lack of engagement, you can make a pretty strong business case that being present with people, being kind to people, being about others not about ourselves, it’s not just nice to have,” said Carter. “It’s pretty critical to be successful in business today…we look at it as ‘presence pays’.”

“What we’ve found in our experience of training people to be more present is it actually saves time because if I know that I’m heard, I’ll stop talking. My message got across,” says Carter. When we don’t feel heard, we’ll keep trying to be – we’ll keep on talking.

Presence can be as simple as sticking around for a real answer to “how are you?”. On the contrary, “if you go to a meeting, and half the people are on their devices, you should just get up and leave. Seriously,” says Carter. “You’re wasting your time because of lack of presence.”

Presence, paired with compassion, creates a sense of meaningfulness and connection, and that matters when in inspiring others and earning their trust. Research has shown that a lack of trust ultimately erodes performance and the bottom line.

“We are wired to want to fit in and want to feel valued. And when feel heard, when we feel like we matter, and when we then are able to connect with other human beings, it enables collaboration, it enables the right conversations to happen, including tough conversations,” says Carter. “If I give you feedback and I’m distracted, that’s gonna be horrible for you. But if I give you feedback because I really care about you and I really want you to get this didn’t work out well, you can completely receive that. It’s the power of presence to be able to have both tough conversations as well as nice, engaging moments of meeting effectiveness.”

The Lone Leadership Ideal Is Dead

“What has been an iconic idea for a long time of a single, solitary leader – the great leader theory – is really dead.” says Carter. “The pace of change that all of us are experiencing regardless of what industry we’re in – the disruption, the distraction, the pressure – is just too complex and too much for any one individual to have all the answers.”

Nobody, and especially Millennials, want “some great person (often some ‘great man’) on a pedestal they don’t connect with,” said Carter.

Meaning, purpose and connection is what most of us want.

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Why Women Are Crucial in Design and Tech

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Women-working-on-a-computerGuest contributed by Sara Wachter-Boettcher

I was chatting with a woman at a tech conference a while back about sexism in the industry. She rolled her eyes: “Oh, have I got a story for you.” A couple years ago, she was working at a large company’s Silicon Valley innovation center. She was excited. Her company was partnering with a fashion brand to produce a new “fashion-forward” women’s smartwatch, and she would be leading the design research. But when she walked into the kickoff meeting, her stomach sank: she was the only woman at the table.

While the men droned on about their wives, using them as proxies for the “female market,” she hatched a research plan to find out what women actually wanted from a smartwatch. More than a thousand respondents later, she brought her results back to the group. The top insight: women really wanted their smartwatch to help them discreetly keep an eye on things during meetings. But the men wouldn’t listen: women want apps for shopping, not work.

“I felt like I was in an episode of Mad Men,” she told me.

Eventually, the project stalled, and the brand brought in a celebrity to design the smartwatch. It flopped. “It wasn’t based on needs; it was based on stereotypes,” she said.

Her story is over the top, but it’s not rare. While writing my new book,Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech, I saw plenty of products that left women out (like Apple’s Heath app, which didn’t bother to include a period tracker for a full year after it launched). The companies behind those products? Mostly male.

Meanwhile, I also found loads of research confirming what I’d long felt: that diverse teams perform better because they spur new thinking rather than encourage people to rely on the same stale perspectives. As a result, they’re more likely to develop innovative product ideas, and less likely to rally around incorrect assumptions.

That’s why we need more women—and people of color, and LGTBQ people, and people with different abilities, and so much more—working on design and tech at every step of the process, from deciding what to make in the first place to testing products before they go to market.

But as the smartwatch researcher found out, it’s not easy being a woman in tech: we’re routinely passed over for funding, pushed out by harassment, and even subjected to demoralizing pseudoscience claiming we’re just not as good as men.

So how do you create a thriving career, do your part to change the system, and avoid burning out in the process? Here’s what I’ve learned during my career, and in my research talking with dozens of women across the industry.

Make “microchanges” that matter

Diógenes Brito didn’t mean for it to be a big deal when he used a brown hand for a new graphic at Slack, the group-chat platform. But it was—because people of color so rarely see their skin tones reflected in the world (just think about all the so-called “flesh-colored” Band-Aids on the market). “It may seem like a small thing,” tweeted Kaya Thomas, a college student studying computer science. “But when you see graphics over and over excluding your skin color, it matters.”

Seemingly minute design or tech choices—like including women in photos depicting technical teams or removing unnecessary binary gender questions from forms—can make a big difference to users, and can even make a company’s culture more aware and inclusive over time. And since they’re small—as small as depicting a brown hand in an illustration—they’re the kind of thing you can often slip in without getting pushback.

Oh, and Kaya Thomas? She graduated in May. Now she’s an engineer at—you guessed it—Slack, where I’m sure she’ll shake things up even further.

See what others have missed

You know how dating apps used to be cesspools of unsolicited porn? Yeah, okay, so that’s still largely true. But now there are tons of women-run apps offering an alternative. There’s Bumble, of course, founded by ex-Tinder exec Whitney Wolfe. Disillusioned by harassment (including from one of her fellow Tinder founders), Wolfe set out to solve some of heterosexual online dating’s endemic flaws by doing something no one had thought of before: only allowing women to make the first move.

Or, there’s Coffee Meets Bagel, designed as an alternative to “swiping your life away.” Frustrated by the constant ghosting of other apps, the founders—sisters Arum, Dawoon, and Soo Kang—designed their product to give users fewer, better matches each day, and to discourage flakiness by only showing women a short list of men who’d already liked them.

While none of the new women-run dating apps is perfect (for example, many still don’t serve the LGBTQ community very well), they’re all exploring new ground—ground traditional male-run apps never would have considered.

Serve the underserved

Tech has also enabled a bevvy of new fashion startups, and some of the most exciting examples are in a space that used to be a dead zone: plus sizes. Today, loads of women are helming companies that—finally—are focused on combining on-trend and luxury pieces with more inclusive sizing options.

One particularly innovative option? Universal Standard’s “Universal Fit Liberty” policy where customers can exchange a product within a year if their size goes up or down.

While getting funding for a fledgling business still isn’t easy, the world is starting to wake up to the fact that designing for women isn’t a niche case. It’s an underserved audience­­­—one that controls most of the purchasing decisions in the United States, and that’s increasingly fickle about where it spends its money. The more we push for inclusion—and stand up to all the sexists, bad bosses, and other toxic influences out there—the more opportunities we’ll have to make sure that the tech products of the future serve all of us.

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Developing Mental Complexity Will Help You at Work (and Life)

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By Nicki GilmourNicki Gilmour

The world is increasingly complex and can be quite confusing these days. How do you ensure you have the guts, glory, stamina and agility to survive all this change?

Mental complexity is the answer according Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey in their book “Immunity to change”. This is my personal favorite book right now for two reasons; I am writing a paper on behavioral change and also am grateful for the change I have personally experienced from committing to examining paradigms that no longer serve me.

This work can take the guise of coaching but touches on all aspects of your existence and is a vehicle for a happy sustainable life in my opinion.

Kegan and Lahey talk about how we tend to be in one of 3 “minds” or mindsets when it comes to our mental complexity levels and this has nothing to do with IQ.

So, level one is a “socialized mind” and is where the majority of people operate. Certainly, junior and middle managers can be successful here as part of being here requires following, caring what people think of you and generally towing the line be it within a corporation, culture or even a religion. People here are good team players. But, what does one lose by seeing life though this lens? If you do not fit with what the norm is, you might find yourself feeling inadequate and uncomfortable or undeserving in some way.

At work, you may be at the mercy of the effects of politics and feeling not aligned (and in society too). You will fight yourself to get aligned and reduce your cognitive dissonance. At what cost?

The next “mind” is the “Self-authoring” mind which with this increased mental complexity, you can relegate others opinions (and even your own opinions) to an appropriate place where they can be referenced within a bigger system than your own direct value set. Therefore, outliers from yourself and others will not consume you, and instead give you the power to bed the author of our own reality. You get to direct the movie in your head.

I can personally attest when I stared to think with this self-authoring mindset it was growth. It changed my life and I see it work well for my coaching clients and when (if) they get there then I can honestly say the ball is in their court which usually results in happier choices and happiness with choices made as well as robust future decision making ability.

This is particularly good for people who have set high standards for themselves or seek approval from others. This level of processing information will move you from having subjective feelings and suffering the emotional fallout from them to seeing things more objectively and in perspective.

By learning to look at as well as through certain lenses, you can evolve and as Kegan and Lahey put it “ not be forever captive of one’s own theory, system, script, framework or ideology”. Then, you can start to be in the zone of the “Self-transforming mind” where expansiveness around what you see and hear at work is not uniquely filtered to meet your informational needs. In plain English, you can  make meaning on a big picture level and not feel the anxiety around how it effects you which if you are in the socialized mind, will trigger you and make you take it personally. You can care and not be consumed by caring. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

So, how do you build mental complexity to thrive at work and in a crazy world? Tune in next week to find out more….

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Why You Need to Continue Learning – and How to Do It

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Guest Contributed by Sarah Landrum
 
The brain is one of the many muscles in your body that needs regular exercise, and fitting consistent exercise into a busy schedule is a challenge for most working adults. While it may be difficult to find time for physical or mental fitness, it’s well worth the effort. shutterstock_287191085
 
Benefits of Continual Learning
 
Continued learning offers many benefits, for both your cognitive abilities and your chances of advancing in your career.
 
1. Maintain High Performance
 
Just as well-made luxury vehicles need proper fuel to operate at their peak, you need to fuel the intellectual part of yourself with information and unique challenges. 
 
When you’re a part of a high-performing organization or team, it’s not enough to be smart or a hard worker. Everyone around you is bright and dedicated to their job. Those are basic requirements for being a part of the team. In order to differentiate yourself, you must bring value on an ongoing basis.
 
By staying current with trends, skills and research in your area of expertise, you will be better positioned to offer insights and come up with innovations that can advance your company.
 
People with great ideas and a track record for success get noticed as well as rewarded. What you learn from a course or workshop could be the impetus for your next contribution that will get you noticed as a key contributor to the organization. Positive recognition is one way to help you get a raise or promotion. 
 
2. Keep Your Brain Healthy
 
Research has found that brain cells form new connections every time you learn new information. Strengthening those connections by practicing new skills can do positive things for your cognitive ability. 
 
In fact, the brain keeps changing through learning, even when a skill is mastered. The capacity of the brain to change with learning is called brain plasticity. Complex thinking promotes plasticity.
 
How to Make Learning Happen
 
Even though you’re busy, there are ways to fit learning opportunities into your day. The payoff will be well worth the effort.
 
1. Set Your Own Pace
 
Develop a list of learning goals based on what skills you’d like to develop or interests you have and focus on them during nonworking hours. One of the advantages of technology is that you can learn when and where it’s convenient for you, which is the beauty of online courses. A research study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that in the United States, 92 million adults are enrolled in an educational program. 
 
Having flexibility in your learning path is important for professionals who are already balancing demanding work schedules and personal commitments.
 
If you’re planning to use learning as a way to advance your career, online learning is a great place to start. Think about what skills you need to gain or grow to move to the next level, then set a target for when you’d like to gain knowledge in that area.
 
2. Take Advantage of Corporate Programs
 
Many companies reserve a portion of their budget to support the ongoing development of their employees. This can take the form of tuition reimbursement, sponsorship for nondegree programs, conferences and/or memberships to professional organizations. Companies spent $130 billion worldwide on corporate training in 2014.
 
Identify the area you want to develop and present it to your manager. You should determine how it will help you in your current position, help you contribute to the success of the company or help prepare you to take on additional responsibilities. 
 
It’s easy for a manager to agree to an investment when they have a clear understanding of the return.
 
Also, look into what resources are available in-house. Does your company have a learning catalog where you can choose online or in-person courses? Is there a learning and organizational development team that creates content for employees to get in-depth understanding on a topic? Is there a person who is in the position you aspire to who could mentor you?
 
Explore all possibilities for learning channels so you can find a good fit to help you achieve your goals.
 
The opinions and views of guest contributions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
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Develop Yourself

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People around a laptopIf you wait for your employer, you might be waiting a long time.

Recently, over glasses of wine, it came up that many of my friends felt like they weren’t being developed by their companies.

“They think we don’t care about career development because they think we don’t care about our careers because we’re millennials. Millennials…such an HR term,” complained one of my friends, who is a consultant.

“At least if they decided to develop you, you’d be getting applicable skills,” said another friend, who leads corporate training programs and is questioning her career. “I want to change my career and I’m not sure how.”

“The only kind of development we get is access to a series of boring webinars that we have to watch in the HR conference room,” said another friend in a tech company. “I fell asleep during the last one.”

Why are companies not developing their employees?
  • Maybe they think you don’t care.
  • Maybe they don’t care.
  • Maybe they think they are developing you, but don’t know how.
  • Maybe they’re too busy.
  • Maybe they’re only focused on developing their favorite star employees, and don’t have time for everyone else.
  • Maybe someone in the HR department or in management doesn’t like you.
  • Maybe they only develop men, and not women (in which case, you might have a lawsuit on your hands, or need to look for a new job).

It sucks to stay at a job and not be developed. If you are at a job for a number of years, you should need to update resume every six months with new skills, projects, tasks, and reports. If you don’t find yourself doing that, well, you have an issue. I find myself regularly logging into LinkedIn to post my latest presentations, updated skills, and reports.

So you’re not being developed. Or maybe you want a new career, and don’t want to bother focusing on being developed in your current organization/role. Here are some tips on how you can develop yourself. Ultimately, you’re the one who cares most about your career, so you should be the one taking charge of it.

  1. Look at your career in the long term. Where can you go? Where do you want to go? Where could you possibly go? If you really need help, contact a career counselor. Your alumni or career services office of your former university might be able to assist you with resume revision, career counseling, and networking opportunities.
  2. Do you want to/Are you willing to live someplace else? This might open up or limit your options, depending. If you need to or want to move, voice this to your organization to see how this may change your career. Affiliate yourself with local professional organizations (even if it’s just online) to connect and network.
  3. Don’t get bogged down by negativity. Yes, maybe you hate your job, or your career, or your boss, or your HR department. But stop complaining about them and wishing they would all just quit or go away won’t help you. Accept that things are the way they are. Try to change them – by looking for a new job, and until that happens, focus on developing yourself.
  4. Are there any industry/professional associations you could be affiliated with? Join them. Even if opportunities are lacking in your organization, externally you could find mentors, training programs, networking opportunities, conferences, grants, and workshops crucial to developing your skills and career. See how you could be involved – volunteer for events, offer to give presentations, see how you can contribute and be a part of growing your skills and your career.
  5. How can you further your education? Whether it’s getting a master’s degree, enrolling in a certificate program, or taking a weekend course that could develop your skills and career further, never stop learning. Check in with your HR department for reimbursement policies and any class recommendations they have.
  6. Ask for more at work –from new people. Maybe you’re limited in how you can develop in your department. Talk to your colleagues from other departments, and see if you can help them with any projects, and develop new skills. Maybe HR has some ideas about how you can assist with staffing gaps. Offer to do presentations – public speaking skills are very important (even if you hate it!).
  7. Improve your people management skills. Schedule one-on-ones with direct reports to check in and see how you can help them more. Ask if there are ways you can improve and help them. If you don’t have anyone to manage, ask if you can. If there are no opportunities, create an internship program to give you much-needed people management skills. When working across teams and when managing projects, show off your skills and leadership talent.
  8. Work on general development skills. Maybe you’re a solo librarian at a large law firm, and they’re not interested in funding classes for you on improving search strategy or copyright updates. See if they will stand behind you as you take classes on managing staff, time management, productivity, budgeting, and career management. It’s always a good idea to have a few ideas of your own picked out, but check in to see if your managers and/or HR department have any ideas of your own.
  9. Are there language skills you can develop?Learning a new language is always a great thing to do – it challenges your mind, it’s fun, it’s a great connect with people, it helps when you travel, and it’s a great thing to add to your resume. Check out if your job will pay for it, and/or if they will let you take classes on company time. I initially began studying Spanish because of my own personal interests, and have since read reports/articles in Spanish for work, answered information requests in Spanish, and fact-checked a report in Spanish. Check out reviews of local language schools, or your local colleges, and join Meetup groups as a way to practice further.
  10. Start an Internship/Volunteer. If you really want a new career, don’t jump ship before experiencing it for yourself. I will never thank my mother enough for forcing me to be a candystriper when I was in high school after I said I wanted to be a physical therapist. Working at a hospital quickly made me realize that while I loved helping people, I didn’t want a career in the medical field. I volunteered another six years, and loved it, but knew it wasn’t a lifelong career for me. Bonus for internships: you might make some great connections for a future career.
  11. Find mentors, inside and out. The most unlikely person in your organization can turn out to be a great mentor, and maybe even ultimately, a sponsor to help advance your career internally. Mentors can give you great advice on how to take your career going forward, which new skills to focus on, how to build new skills, organizations to join, opportunities to pursue, how to navigate career politics, and just serve as a sounding board. Can’t find a mentor? Be your own!
  12. Don’t just find a mentor – be a mentor. Mentor someone just starting out their career, or even a student in the field. Former mentees of mine still email me for advice, years later. It makes me feel good that I’ve made a difference in their careers.
  13. Update your resume and LinkedIn page all the time. Even if you’re not looking for a job, you should be always be regularly updating. A friend who unexpectedly lost her job when her company shut down their North American headquarters office told me, “The worst thing is that now I’m trying to remember everything I did for the last six years.” Also, should you suddenly decide to update everything on your LinkedIn profile at once, this could be a bit suspicious to your coworkers/managers. I use LinkedIn as a place to find and promote my speaking engagements and articles, so I constantly update my profile.
  14. Actually use LinkedIn. A biologist friend recently confided in me, “I don’t really see the purpose of LinkedIn.” Use it to see if any of your friends have connections at your dream companies; use it to stay connected to former classmates and those in your field. Join relevant groups; they’re great for asking questions and getting a fresh outsider response.
  15. Connect with recruiters. If you’re looking for work, connect with a recruiter. Make sure they know exactly what you are looking for so they can make the most of their time and your time. They should also be aware of your latest skills.
  16. Even if you don’t want to leave, check out other jobs in your field. What are the required skills and experience? What can you work on? What should you focus on developing? Where are your gaps? During a check-in with your manager, ask to fill in some of those gaps.
  17. Network with a purpose. Most of us find networking awkward – standing there, clumsily unsure of how to start conversations. Ahead of time, create goals: think about what you want to accomplish at a networking event. Create an elevator pitch. I like to go into networking events with some questions. “What’s new in your office?” “How do you handle stress with your job?” “What’s your favorite thing about your job?” You can talk about what you do, and mention what kind of opportunities you are seeking. I was offered a speaking engagement after updating an acquaintance about the speaking I had been doing.

Really, when it comes down to it, developing your career is your responsibility. It would be great if your employer would help you, and really, any good employer will, but if it’s not happening, you need to make it happen. Develop yourself: it’s the best thing you can do for your career.

Writers bio:
Cheryl Yanek is a writer currently traveling around India, where she is also studying yoga. She regularly writes on career issues, ultrarunning, feminism, pregnancy, yoga, food, and wine. She has been published in many places including Skirt Collective, Trail Runner, The Huffington Post,  Ultrarunning, Manifest-Station, Thought Catalog, and New York Wine Events. She is also the Race Director of the Burning Man Ultramarathon.

 

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