Yesterday I talked about how we keep ourselves stuck in a rut by denying reality. Today I want to talk about another way we keep ourselves in the same patterns--compromising our vision of what could be.  Robert Fritz, in his excellent book, The Path of Least Resistance, says that the energy for creation comes from the tension between our vision for what we want and the reality of our situation. When the tension between vision and reality is low, we do not have sufficient energy to create something new. When we deny reality, as I discussed yesterday, we are reducing the tension in the situation. But we also reduce tension and the energy for creation when we compromise our vision.  I've found that co-workers, friends, family members, etc. are particularly good at helping us compromise our vision. They will tell us that we are not being "realistic," that our "expectations are too high," or that we need to learn to "compromise." Surrounded by this feedback, we will slowly whittle away at our creative vision for what we want in our careers or our personal lives. Eventually, it will be so close to the "reality" that we are denying, we will have lost all energy to make a change. And then we are stuck.  To remove ourselves from this place, we need to be clear and unwavering in our vision for what we want to create in our lives. We need to ask ourselves, "What Results Do I Want to Create? and must be unstinting in describing those results.  There are plenty of places we can compromise in our lives. Our vision for what we want to create is not one of those places. 

"Beta" is the experimental, developmental stage of a software package. It's the time during which you are experimenting with what does and doesn't work, learning about the capacities of the software, tweaking it, getting input on how to make it better, faster, more effective, more efficient. During the beta phase, you're looking at how the package can bring value to customers, getting feedback on how well it works and how to improve it.  There was a time when we could see our careers as a sort of "finished product." We could go into maintenance mode, resting on our laurels. At a minimum, we could be reasonably secure that if we kept doing what our companies asked us to do, we could count on some level of job security. Those days are gone.  In a world where companies and organizations are asking on a regular basis about the value you bring, we all live in perpetual beta mode. Every day we have to ask ourselves, how are we tweaking what we do? How are we developing the skills and knowledge we bring to the table? How are we creating value? Perpetual beta can be stressful, but it can also be exhilerating.  What are you doing to manage a career that's in perpetual beta? 

Yesterday I had the honor of facilitating the first class in a 6-month Leadership Academy. We had 18 men and women from a variety of backgrounds. Some are in their late 50s, others in their 30s. Some work in not-for-profits, while others work in for-profit companies. Some are small business owners. Most have been in leadership roles for at least a few years.  Our goal in this first class was to start talking about how we define leadership and what leadership goals people wanted to set for themselves. We used the VisualsSpeak Image sets to have some amazing conversations about what it means to be a leader.  What emerged from the stories and conversations we shared were three big questions that I think every leader needs to ask him/herself: Who am I as a leader?  This, of course is a fundamental question. As we first began to define leadership, it became clear what it means to be a leader is shaped by our experiences, our industry and occupation, our corporate culture and our own personality.  We  talked a lot about whether or not people perceived themselves as leaders--was it part of their identity? Sometimes we don't see ourselves as leaders because we have some idea of leadership that doesn't include the type of leader we may be. This is especially true for people who may be more facilitative, introverted or quiet in their leadership style. Figuring out the ways in which we lead and how these fit in with our identity is a foundational issue when we begin exploring ourselves as leaders.  Am I the leader I think I am? Several participants indicated that they had a particular view of themselves as leaders, but it was a view that they hadn't examined in awhile--if ever. Several also realized that maybe their view of themselves wasn't the view that others held of them. Asking this question gets at both other people's perceptions, as well as our own perceptions of ourselves that may not have been examined in awhile.  Am I the leader I want to be?  This is a question that invites the potential for change. It asks us to be more intentional about the kind of leader we want to be and then to act in alignment with that vision. For several people in our group, this was a major question they want to explore.  How would you answer these questions for yourself? What would your answers tell you about yourself as a leader? 

Professional development isn't just about the answers. It's also about questions. You can learn a lot from the questions you ask. They can tell you about patterns in your work and in your thinking about your work. They can point you in new directions or show you where you may be feeling stagnant. Questions are what drive and motivate us. But we have to notice the questions to do anything with them.  A Question Log can be a great way to begin your positive professional development journey. It is merely a log of the questions that occur to you during the day. Noticing and Logging Your Questions The first trick to keeping a Question Log is to get in the habit of noticing your questions. For many of us, questions zip through our brains without us even realizing them. Make it an intentional practice to notice the questions you are asking yourself. Or try stopping once an hour and reflecting on what questions occurred to you recently. Noticing your questions is a practice you may have to build.  To record your questions, I suggest getting a small notebook or a series of index cards to carry with you at all times. As questions occur, jot them down, along with the date.  Alternatively, you can use your Droid or iPhone. Send an email to yourself as questions come up. The question can go in the subject line and any additional notes or thoughts can go in the body of the email. You can organize these into a folder or Gmail label called "Questions."  Working with Your Questions Periodically (perhaps as one of your weekly rituals), review your questions. Look for patterns. Are you asking questions about particular people or particular aspects of your work?  Are you asking big questions or small ones?  Are they "negative questions," with a focus on problems, what isn't working and how you can get less of something in your life? Or are they positive questions that ask you to consider what is working and how you can get more of certain things?  What do your questions tell you about your concerns and fears?  What do they tell you about your hopes and dreams?  I've learned a lot from working with my questions. They tell me when I'm down in the weeds of a problem and maybe need to take a step back. They show me when I'm too focused on worrying and need to spend some time on reframing to look for opportunities and lessons. My questions also let me know when I need to make some changes. Sometimes these are small course corrections, but sometimes they are bigger, meatier changes.  I think we can get caught up in trying to find answers, so that we lose sight of how our questions can help us understand where we're at and what we need or want to do. The more we pay attention to our questions, the more comfortable we become with having them in our lives. In an uncertain world, this is a skill we need to cultivate. 

I have a friend who often talks to me about my "mean boss." She's appalled at how my boss is so demanding, pushing me to perfection, nitpicking and second-guessing me all the time. I make a decision, begin to implement, and my boss is ON me, reminding me constantly of all the little ways that I've screwed up in the past and will most likely fail in the future. As my friend points out, my boss never shuts up and, is frankly, a little maniacal and sadistic.  But here's the thing. I work for myself. My terrible boss is my own ego.  What's amazing is that behavior I would never accept from a real boss seems perfectly acceptable to me when it comes from inside my own head. Frankly, much of the time I take my inner boss's monologue for granted, accepting her unending stream of criticism as some sort of gospel.  I've talked with a lot of people whose inner boss wields way too much power in their lives. What's interesting is that many times when people are complaining about their real bosses, it turns out that it's their inner boss whose really controlling what they do.  It's their inner boss whose constantly criticizing and second-guessing. It's their inner boss who tells them that they must be perfect or else. Their inner boss doesn't want them to take a day off or to unplug from their computers and cell phones. It's their inner boss who is driving them into the ground.  Lately my inner boss has been getting a lot of pushback from me.  She's looking out for me, I know--her heart is in the right place--but she's killing me with her perfectionism and constant barrage of criticism.   What I've realized is that my innner boss is acting out of fear. And like most fearful people, she's focusing on the negative and what can go wrong. She's particularly good at making her fears seem real. She is also excellent at distracting me from questioning her by keeping up the non-stop barrage of worry and criticism.  But I've noticed her now. I see what she's doing and I'm asking a lot more questions. It also helps to picture her sitting in a chair in my office, nattering away. I know that I would never listen to a real person who kept up such a stream of negativity, so why should I listen to her all the time? Telling her to shut up has been tremendously satisfying.  Part of the professional development process to me is paying attention to our inner boss and separating out what our inner boss is pushing us to do from what we're getting from our external environment. Many times I think we believe that it's our work that's driving us into the ground. But on closer examination, we discover that it's our own expectations and our inner tyrant who are really the culprits.  So. . . are you your own worst boss? And what are you going to do about it? ________________________________________________________________________________________ Want priority registration for events, special discounts and other goodies? Then sign up for The Bamboo Project newsletter! If you sign up before January, 2012, you'll get my free "Looking Back/Looking Ahead" activities. Each day for 15 days, you'll receive an email with a specific question that can help you reflect on what you've learned in 2011 and get you started planning for 2012. It's a great way to jumpstart your career for the New Year!  

  One of the best ways to explore your career vision is by using visual tools. Many of us have tried writing or thinking our way to something new, with limited results. That's because our "verbal" brain is our "logical" brain--the side of us that is both visioning and criticizing that vision at the same time.  I wrote last week about compromising your vision. Your left brain excels at compromise. It is the "get real" part of your brain that is saying that you shouldn't expect to really get what you're visioning.  Your right brain--your more visual, intuitive brain--isn't limited by these notions. It just knows what it wants. It can go beyond words, which is what you need at the visioning stage.  Free Exploring Your Vision for Your Work Webinars For those of you who may be interested in trying out a visual tool for exploring your work vision, I'm going to be running two free online sessions on November 15 and November 29 from 8-9 p.m. (EST). Through the webinar, you'll have an opportunity to debrief on your career vision and talk about next steps. You'll also be eligible to receive a special discount on my upcoming events.   Here's how it will work.  1. Go to the VisualsSpeak Image Center and sign up to do the free "Exploring Your Vision for Work" Image session. You can do this anytime before the call-in session.  Note--you must be using the Firefox, Chrome or Safari browsers. You can download Firefox here and Chrome here--both for free. You can download a handout on using the Image Center here (PDF). Let me know if you run into problems.  2. Do the Image session, per the instructions you will receive once you sign up.   3. Print out your Image.  4. Register for one the webinar sessions:     November 15, 2011 November 29, 2011 5. Join us for the webinar on the appropriate date/time. Be sure to have your printed image, paper and pen and any questions you may want to ask!   ____________________________________________________________________________ Sign up for my newsletter! You'll get priority registration for events, discounts and other special "Members Only" stuff. 

I was talking with someone the other night who is considering a career change. It's a job she knows well, has done for awhile and is very talented at doing. This is part of what is making her itch for change--she's ready for new challenges, to take some risks.  As we talked, it became clear that she was feeling the weight of her work. It has become something she needs to escape, the sooner the better.  This sense that work is an anchor or a prison is common when we start thinking about new ventures. It's part of what drives us to begin our journey to something else. At the same time, this thinking can become a trap in itself.  When we want to escape something, we will do anything to get away. We aren't focusing on what we're running TOWARDS. Instead, we are just focused on getting the hell out of there. Anywhere seems better than where we're at right now.  When our job is a prison, all of our thinking is geared toward escaping that prison. Other options look better to us than they might otherwise simply because they are not the prison we are currently in. We find ourselves in fear and anxiety mode, acting from desperation, not inspiration.  To reach our real career goals, though, we need to shift our viewpoint. Rather than seeing our current job as a prison, we need to regard it as a home base. It is something we can do for now that can give us space to explore other possibilities. The fear and anxiety we feel when work is a prison dissipates, freeing us to form a vision of what we want to run TOWARDS, rather than what we are fleeing.  Often when we've been in a job for awhile, we have more flexibility. We are able to plan our time better and can give ourselves the opportunities to explore. We may have to get over our mean boss syndrome, but when we do, we find that our current jobs can be the constant we need.  If you find yourself thinking of a career transition because you want to escape the prison of your job, see what happens if you shift your thinking to viewing your current work as home base. Look at it as a circumstance that helps you develop and test your career vision, rather than as something you need to escape. You'll be amazed at what happens then. 

I am writing this on a MacBook Pro, listening to music on my iPod, which seems fitting, given that I am posting about Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs.  Certainly in the days following his death, there was much attention paid to Jobs' business acumen and success. But I'm far more moved and inspired by what Mona had to say about who he was as a man, as a person, trying to live his life as we all do. One aspect, in particular, stands out:  Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him. . .  His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still. . . .  He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man. What strikes me about Steve Jobs is that he achieved success not in spite of this intensely emotional core, but because of it.  Passion seems to have fueled him in all aspects of his life, both at home and in his work.  For many of us, "success" seems to come at a very high cost. We are asked to give up this intensely emotional and passionate side of ourselves in service to "corporate culture." Passion is sucked from us, I know. But if we are honest, we also know that we surrender our passion at the door. To be emotional at work is to be "unprofessional" in most workplaces. We give it up willingly in order to have what we believe is the safety and security of employment.  Yet it is this very emotional core that feeds our creativity and our ability to do great things. Without it, we are dried, dessicated husks, going through the motions of working and living. And, ironically, it is this lack of emotion that can make us less effective at what we do, bringing down upon us the very thing we fear.  There are many ways we could emulate Steve Jobs at work. The most valuable, it seems to me, is to cultivate our passion and emotional core. With it, we can achieve greatness. Without it, we go nowhere. _______________________________________________________________________________ Sign up for my newsletter! You'll get priority registration for events, discounts and other special "Members Only" stuff.  And if you sign up now, you'll also get 15 days of activities to help you reflect on 2011 and plan for 2012. 

An interesting article  in last week's Wall Street Journal by Peter Cappelli from the Wharton School on why companies can't find the employees they need:  With an abundance of workers to choose from, employers are demanding more of job candidates than ever before. They want prospective workers to be able to fill a role right away, without any training or ramp-up time. In other words, to get a job, you have to have that job already.  As Cappelli reports (and I've been saying for awhile now), companies aren't developing their employees anymore: Unfortunately, American companies don't seem to do training anymore. Data are hard to come by, but we know that apprenticeship programs have largely disappeared, along with management-training programs. And the amount of training that the average new hire gets in the first year or so could be measured in hours and counted on the fingers of one hand. Much of that includes what vendors do when they bring in new equipment: "Here's how to work this copier." The shortage of opportunities to learn on the job helps explain the phenomenon of people queueing up for unpaid internships, in some cases even paying to get access to a situation where they can work free to get access to valuable on-the-job experience. The Employment Contract Has Changed This is one of the fundamental ways in which the employment contract has changed that I'm not sure we've truly absorbed. Many of us are still living with the illusion that our companies will provide us with the development we need to maintain employment. But this is an illusion, a denial of reality.  Increasingly we see that the responsibility for development is falling to workers, who must monitor their industry and occupation to see what skills are in demand and then seek out the training and work opportunities that will help them develop those skills. Doing this is a skill in itself, requiring us to be much more aware of larger market forces beyond our own company and how these impact our own professional development.  We can't just pay attention to what is needed for us to be marketable within our own organizations. We must also pay attention to what the larger market is looking for. And we need to look at how our strengths intersect with that market.  I do a lot of work with people who have been laid off and one of the things that we consistently discover is that those who are out of work the longest also seem to be the people who paid the least amount of attention to their own ongoing development. Often this is because they were so focused on the work they were doing for their company, they had little time to think about themselves. Sadly, they were rewarded with a lay-off.  Other workers find that while they may have had access to training in their companies, this training was very company-specific, preparing them to be good employees of XYZ Company, but not for much of anything else.  I know that it's easy to trust in our organizations to provide us with the development opportunities we need, but for most of us, this is a dangerous and misplaced faith. It's also easy to get so caught up in the present work that we forget to pay attention to the future. This, too, is risky.  For us to be truly empowered and in control of our careers, we must first and foremost be actively managing our own professional development. We must be aware of what is going on around us and be preparing for new opportunities. There's a new reality we need to accept so we can plan accordingly.  

Yesterday I posted on a new reality  we need to accept--that we can't leave professional development up to our employers because they aren't providing it. This isn't true for everyone, of course. You need to evaluate your personal situation. So I thought it would be helpful to come up with some key questions to ask.  One word of caution--don't assume that because your organization talks about professional development and the importance of learning that this is actually happening. We can easily get caught up in thinking that we work for a company that values learning because we keep hearing about how much they value it. But then we look at the reality of the organization's actions, we realize that they aren't walking the talk. That's why you need a reality check.  Another thing to pay attention to is the type of training and development taking place. If the only learning you are able to get access to is very company-specific, this should be a red flag. This means that if you only take advantage of organizational learning you will not be preparing yourself for other opportunities outside of your organization. Look for learning that is transferable, that provides you with skills that can be used in other jobs and companies. Also look for learning that is "in demand" in your occupation or industry. What are the particular skills that will make you most marketable?  So here are some professional development reality check questions for you: 1.  What training and development opportunities are available through your company? Let's start with the basics. What formal learning and training is available through your company?  Does your organization provide development in transferable skills--skills you could use in other places? Is there a tuition remission/reimbursement program available? If so, what are the requirements? What training can you receive?  If your organization provides a way for you to develop skills that make you more marketable in the larger job market, then take advantage of those opportunities. If they don't, then you need to make those opportunities for yourself.  2.  What training or professional development has your company sent you to in the past 12 months? If the answer is "none," then you need to pay attention. If the training you've received is very company-specific--how to implement company policies and procedures, for example--you also need to pay attention. Neither one of these is going to keep you marketable.  3. What informal learning are you able to access through your organization? Much of organizational learning is on-the-job training. How does your company support these opportunities? Are you able to access social media at work so that you are able to tap into knowledge networks and skills training from outside of your organization? Can you easily connect with colleagues and other departments to share knowledge and information and develop new skills? If the focus is on "keep your head down and just do your job," then this is a problem.  4. What reflective practices does your company have in place? Reflective practice is about weaving opportunities into the organizational culture to learn from work experiences and projects. Does your company conduct After Action Reviews to learn from its experiences? Are there structures in place that allow you to ask questions like "Why is this happening?" and "What can we learn from this?" Are you encouraged to surface and learn from mistakes? If not, then these are practices you will have to incorporate for yourself.  5. What mentoring is available to you through your organization?  Some companies do have formal mentoring programs, but these are few and far between. If you work in an organization that provides mentoring, then see what you need to do to take advantage of it. If it doesn't, you may need to find a way to create an informal mentoring arrangement for yourself.  It's worth it to ask yourself these questions and to examine the reality of your particular situation. Don't fudge it and try to make it better (or worse) than it is. When you have a clear picture of how your organization supports your professional development, this gives you valuable information for your own planning. Use it to decide how you can develop yourself if your receiving little internal support for what you need.  ________________________________________________________________________ Want priority registration for events, special discounts and other goodies? Then sign up for The Bamboo Project newsletter! If you sign up before January, 2012, you'll get my free "Looking Back/Looking Ahead" activities. Each day for 15 days, you'll receive an email with a specific question that can help you reflect on what you've learned in 2011 and get you started planning for 2012. It's a great way to jumpstart your career for the New Year!