In career development, we talk a lot about "transferable skills." These are skills that are not occupation-specific, but that can be used in a variety of jobs--skills like writing, planning, managing your time, etc. The nature and quality of your transferable skills are key to creating a thriving career because they help you bridge occupations and industries, allowing you to move more easily into new opportunities or to create opportunities for yourself. When people decide  that they need to make a career change, we are usually looking at how they can use their transferable skills. And when jobs in a particular industry begins to dry up, strong transferable skills can help people move more easily into a new industry or occupation. In a world where jobs are disappearing faster than we can create them--primarily because of the impact that technology is having on our lives--we need to be re-thinking our skills in many different ways, but definitely in terms of the transferable skills we are building.    The New Transferable Skills The other day I ran across a post from Tanmay Vora on Skills for Success in a Disruptive World of Work. It's great stuff, drawing from this article by  Janna Q. Anderson.  Here's a full look at the skills: I would agree completely with these skill sets and would add a few of my own: Design Thinking--the ability to apply the design thinking process of Empathy-->Defining the problem-->Ideate-->Prototype-->Test to address challenges and create new possibilities.  Deep Listening--this is listening to learn, not listening to document or to judge. This is listening that's based in curiosity.  Questioning--the capacity to formulate game-changing questions, to question assumptions and to use questions that create possibility and energy.  Effectual Thinking--Effectuation is how entrepreneurs think and act. The principles of effectual thinking provide a way for you have better control over a future that is inherently unpredictable. Here's more on the basics of Effectual Thinking.  Convening--Creating group structures and gatherings that draw out a group's "best self." This involves moving from being a hero to being a host--focusing on using group practices that honor differences and engage people in expressing their best ideas and possibilities.  As we move further into a world where the robots have already taken over, we need to think differently about what it means to have transferable skills. This list is a good place to start.  How do you measure up?    ______________________________________________________  What happens when you go for a promotion but don't get it? Join me for my first Career Clinic on Blab on November 2 at 7 p.m. (EST) when we'll be talking about how to move on when you're passed over.Check out the other upcoming Career Clinics and get info on how to participate through Blab here.           

I'm very excited to announce the launch of my new Thrive! e-course on Ruzuku. Its a mini course that will help you re-design your career based on the 4 Practices of Thriving--Clarify, Connect, Create and Cope. These are the practices I use in all my own work and in my work with both my individual and organizational clients.  The mini course will: Give you an introduction to the 4 Practices of Thriving! Provide you with a template for creating and implementing 30-day experiments that will help you utilize the 4 practices to create a thriving career.  I've included specific activities and ideas for implementing each of the practices and you will get links to other resources as well.  Help you monitor progress and evaluate your Thriving! Plan.  This is an ACTION-ORIENTED course--the more you DO the more changes you will see. The Practices will help you achieve any of your individual career goals, whether you are looking for a new job, seeking a promotion, thinking about starting a side gig, considering a career change or just wanting to re-energize a tired work life. To access the course, you can sign up here. You will get free, immediate access to all the modules and can start working on your Thrive! plan today. Take a look and let me know what you think. I'd love your feedback!  

A few years ago I was working with a client who was feeling stuck in her life and career. I had her do some work with visuals to explore where she felt she was currently and where she wanted to be.  This was the first image she created of her current reality.    Then I asked her to create an image of where she wanted to be. This is what she came up with: It wasn't hard to figure out why she felt stuck. She had too much going on! That first image is just an explosion, radiating out from the fireworks in the middle. She was being pulled in 50 different directions and had a hard time putting focus into just a few of the most important places.  Diagnosing Your "Stuck" In my experience, there are two distinct types of "stuck"--the stuckness of the over-thinker and the stuckness of the over-doer.  Are You An Over-Thinker? The first type of stuck is the muddy slog of inertia that is the domain of the over-thinker. Often (but not always) these are the introverts who are naturally drawn to thinking before acting. When these people are stuck, it's because they are so busy worrying about making the "right" move, they make no moves at all. They are the perfectionists and the worriers, the people who need to do just one more piece of research or talk to just one more person before they feel comfortable making their next move. But somehow they never actually move. They are stuck in the reflection part of the Act/Reflect cycle.  Or Are You an Over-Doer?  The other version of "stuck" is where my client was at. It's the obsessive do-er's type of stuck. These are often the more extroverted types who thrive on activity and being in the outer world. They are also the people who feel compelled to PROVE themselves.  In this brand of stuckness, I find people who are constantly moving, taking no time to reflect on what they are doing or why. Action is what counts and they have a hard time creating the space for reflection so that their actions are more intentional and in alignment with what they want. These people are stuck in the action part of Act/Reflect.  When you're stuck, it's helpful to try to figure out which camp you fall into because treating your stuckness will depend on whether you're an over-thinker or  an over-doer. Your stuckness is really an imbalance in the Act/Reflect cycle.  Treating Your "Stuck"  While both over-thinkers and over-doers can benefit from doing some de-cluttering, moving out of stuck is essentially a different process for each type. The over-thinkers need more action and the over-doers need more reflection.  Over-Thinkers If you're an over-thinker, then the way to get out of "stuck" is by bringing more action into your life. Over-thinkers need to make a commitment to just doing things, rather than thinking about doing something. And that action cannot be doing one more bit of research or asking one more person what you should do. It has to be action that is in alignment with your vision of where you want to go and that is designed to actually move you in that direction. You need to experiment with different identities and trust the mess that comes with action. You have to let go of the need to do things perfectly and just embrace doing anything at all.  Over-Doers Over-doers have a different task. You need to create space for yourself for more reflection so you can be more intentional about what you are doing and why you are doing it. You may need to start saying "no" more often and streamlining your life to make room for more thinking. Try incorporating some reflection rituals  to create a reflection habit. Your task is to put some real intention and focus behind your actions, rather than being caught in an endless loop of mindless activity that doesn't really go anywhere. Embrace your power to do, but put some mindfulness behind it.  Being "stuck" is really about imbalance--choosing either reflection or action at the expense of the other part of the cycle. To get unstuck,  you have to restore balance to the cycle of Act/Reflect. Knowing your own tendencies towards one or the other can help you quickly figure out how to get moving when you find yourself stuck in one place.   The next time you feel stuck, consider whether your stuckness is a result of over-thinking or over-doing and then look at what you can do to restore the balance.  ______________________________________________________________________________ Check out my new Thrive! online mini course. It's FREE and will help you create your 30 Day Plan for Thriving by implementing the 4 Practices of Thriving!

Yesterday I completed the second session of a two-day training I did for an organizational client on relationship selling. In the first session, I talked with the staff about different strategies for developing and deepening relationships with potential customers and then I had them come up with personal action plans for experimenting with these strategies over the next few weeks. The idea was that they would try out some new ideas and then we would discuss what had happened as a result.  I knew it was risky to do this, but I was hoping that the risk would pay off. It didn't. Only a couple had tried anything new and most had returned to their jobs where they continued to do what they had always done.  Here's the thing. You can go to all the training and development workshops in the world, read tons of books, participate in online courses. None of this will matter if you don't take the step of actually letting it guide you to do things differently.  Courses, workshops, books, blog posts, articles--all of this is simply information that lives in your head. For it to make a difference, for it to actually help you grow, you must DO something with it.  You have to get out of your comfort zone and the rote way you've always done your work. Figure out how you're going to USE what you're learning to transform how you're living.  Create a 30-day experiment for yourself.  Find a project where you can try out your new skills or knowledge. Bring what you're learning into a meeting or interaction with a colleague or client.  Take on a stretch assignment that lets you use the new skill. Incorporate a new idea into your regular work flow.  Just reading something or sitting through a class isn't real learning. It is through action, experience and practice that you learn. If you aren't willing to take that all-important step, then don't bother with the articles, courses, workshops, etc. You've already decided to stay where you are.  ___________________________________________________________________ Check out my new Thrive! online mini course. It's FREE and will help you create your 30 Day Plan for Thriving by implementing the 4 Practices of Thriving! And join us tomorrow night on Blab for our next Career Clinic, where we'll be discussing mentors, sponsors and others who can help you create a successful career. You can find all of the upcoming Blab Career Clinics here. 

I started this blog in 2007--almost 9 years ago.  When I began, it was a place that I used for reflective practice, for what John Stepper calls Working Out Loud. I LOVED those days. I had to control myself from posting to my blog several times a day because I was overflowing with so many ideas and possibilities and my blog posts practically wrote themselves.  I read books and articles and wrote about how they were impacting my thinking. I shared ideas, responded to other bloggers, allowed myself to be passionate and excited and to follow what I loved and what interested me, even if it it didn't seem to have immediate application to my work or "make sense" to people who might be reading what I wrote.  I did things like the 31 Day Blogging Challenge and the 31 Day Comment Challenge, projects that helped me develop my skills, but more importantly, they helped me to connect to a broader worldwide community of practice. Through these kinds of projects and through my own reflective approach to blogging, I met and worked with people from all over the world--people who challenged my thinking, who brought me new ideas, who shared their experiences and struggles and who helped create a sense of community.  We would read each other's posts, comment on each other's blogs, and engage in deep, thoughtful conversations that helped us grow both personally and professionally.  Then something happened. Part of it was the rise of other platforms like Facebook and Twitter that favor short form, pithy thinking and approaches to problems. Some of the people I engaged with in the early days found ways to incorporate these strategies into their overall process, but for whatever reason, I wasn't able to do that as easily.  At key points I found that I needed to take long breaks from being online and in taking those breaks, I fell out of the communities that I'd been so connected to in the earlier days. It's hard (if not impossible) to come back in when you've been away for awhile, so that definitely has had an impact.  But the other thing I'm realizing is deeper, more insidious--something that I need to address head on.  This morning I was reading Austin Kleon's Show Your Work: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. Number 7 on the list is "Don't Become Human Spam" and oh, Dear God, did that one hit home.  I have become Human Spam.  I am no longer the host nor the beginner, nor the person who is working out loud. I no longer ask  big questions or engage with the messiness of the work that I do in a public space. I do these things in private--with a select group of people and in my journals--but I don't do them here because I've wanted to be "helpful" and to somehow be more "focused"  and "relevant." I've been afraid of how people might be confused by the many types of things that I do and the many areas of interest that I have. I've been focused on finding and packaging "my brand" to make myself more comprehensible and digestible rather than on just being who and what I am and letting the chips fall where they may.  I've been afraid that posts will be too long--that if I give you the "Why" and the "how" of my thinking, you'll tune out. (Many of you will, but so what? That's life)  I've thought that my "value" comes from giving you 5 ideas for things you can do to help your career in 5 minutes, knowing in my heart that you are NOT going to be able to have a healthy thriving career when you only give it 5 minutes a day. But people want short posts and listicles, so that's what I should give you.  I've been afraid to talk about how worried I am for all of us, of how I think that the structures and spaces we are living in at work and in life are sucking us dry. I do "career development" work, but there's a HUGE part of me that believes that all of our focus on work is in fact the big problem. If we aren't "productive, contributing members of society" then the message we receive from our culture is that we have no value. And I'm afraid that in doing career work, I end up contributing to that.  So all of my fears have turned me into someone I don't recognize. I'm not bringing my "best self" to my work anymore, partly because I'm no longer working out loud.  Screw that.  It's killing me. It's killing the quality of my work.  I have become Human Spam.  And I apologize to you for that.  I need to switch things up around here. I'm not totally sure what that looks like, but I'm sure that it will be revealed to me as I apply the Vampire Test to my posts. If it gives energy and life--if it feels juicy and meaningful, I will write about it. If it feels dead, if it feels like 50 other people could have written it (and that they probably have), I won't write about it.  Expect less "finished product" around here and more "work in progress." Expect me to talk about things other than how you can have a good career plan because honestly, I care about WAY more than what it takes to have a thriving career. You are more than your job. Work can give a sense of purpose, but so can volunteering, art, parenting, and a whole host of other things.  There will be fewer posts that link back into my old stuff and more posts that link out to ideas and people who get me thinking. Some of them will have to do with careers, but others won't. I learn from artists, from writers and poets, from designers and strategists. It's all grist for the mill and I do my best work when I share that.  I want to be less hero and more host. Fewer answers and more questions. Less presentation, more conversation.  If you're looking for my "brand"--it's learning from everything I can about how we can be loving, thriving, vibrant people who create loving, thriving vibrant lives and communities for ourselves. Some of these communities are at work and through work. Some aren't. I plan to be open to that. If that turns you on, I hope you keep reading. If it doesn't, that's cool too.  Either way, I have to follow my heart in this. I have to stop being Human Spam. 

On Friday afternoon, about an hour after I published my post on becoming human spam, my friend Catherine Lombardozzi, author of Learning Environments by Design, called me. She wanted to tell me how much the post resonated with her and in our ensuing discussion, I stumbled into something that's been bothering me for both myself and for all of us. It's the problem of voice--of how we explore and express our authenticity and wholeness.  Here's what I believe.  All of us carry inside of ourselves a symphony. If you listen to a symphony, there are different instruments, each playing a different part, a different role, all of the parts coming together to create a full, glorious piece of music. Some of the instruments and their parts, if you listen to them alone, make no sense--they are supporting players to the melody and there is little that you might recognize in that portion of the music. Some instruments may even disappear for a time, or take a back seat. But they add richness and vibrancy to the overall piece. Their loss means it's no longer a symphony.  Other instruments carry the melody. You might listen to to just that part and be able to tell what the symphony was about. But you wouldn't be able to appreciate it fully--to know it in all of its glory and beauty.  We live in a society that doesn't always appreciate the symphony. It wants you to play one instrument--maybe a couple of them--and it wants you to forget about the other parts and instruments that make your symphony full and glorious. We want you to carry the melody, the part that is most recognizable to us. If you insist on performing a symphony, then we get upset if you need to practice first. Maybe you haven't quite perfected the drums part or the horns, so your symphony seems a little cacophonous to our ears. We are quick to shame you--to tell you to shut up, take that instrument home. But what might have happened if we let you practice a little, so you could bring in that all-important section of yourself? What if you were able to add that to the piece to make it richer?  It's important that we go beyond the melody of our lives--that we bring in all instruments and let them contribute to the power of who we are. What parts of the symphony of your life do you silence and how can you bring them back in?   

Today kicks off Global Entrepreneurship Week and I'm celebrating with a Blab Career Clinic tonight at 7 p.m. (EST) on starting a side gig with Melissa A. Rowe, M.Ed. who is a full-time educator and founder of Capture Greatness. We'll cover how she started and also give people a chance to join us through chat and video to ask their own questions. Melissa is fun and smart and I know it will be a lively conversation!  Having a side gig is one of the best ways to create security for yourself in your career and it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart. I also find that figuring out how to start a side gig is one of the questions I'm asked most frequently, so that's part of why we decided to do a Career Clinic on it.  A few months ago I put out a survey to ask people about their experiences in starting a side gig. Only 5 people answered, but their responses were interesting. The number one response I got for what gets in the way of starting a side business was feeling alone and isolated.  I had thought it would be lack of time, since that seems to be the excuse we all have for why we don't pursue a dream, so this was interesting to me. I have to say it makes total sense, though, and it's one of the reasons that I started doing the Speedy Startup, because I've observed how much people need a community of other entrepreneurs around them, especially in making those first tentative steps into working for yourself. If you're thinking about going this route, finding other people to work with you might be a good first step.  I also asked people what they were looking for in their side business that they weren't finding in their 9-5. Most were looking for a way to supplement their income, of course, but they also wanted more freedom of expression and a way to make a difference in the world.  I find that people start to think about a side gig when they are feeling restricted and don't feel purpose in their work lives, so this makes a lot of sense to me too.   I'd love to hear from you if a side business is part of your career plan--or even if you think it might be. Please join us tonight on Blab to talk more (here are instructions on how to participate) and bring your questions, thoughts, etc.   

I have found something I wish I wrote called Screw Finding Your Passion by Mark Manson (h/t to Lodi Planting for the link) and it is fantastic. It is the advice we need to hear (note there is cursing so if you are offended by that, I apologize. Don't let that get in the way of absorbing the message, though). Here's what I loved: Today I received approximately the 11,504th email this year from a person telling me that they don’t know what to do with their life. And like all of the others, this person asked me if I had any ideas of what they could do, where they could start, where to "find their passion." And of course, I didn’t respond. Why? Because I have no fucking clue. If you don’t have any idea what to do with yourself, what makes you think some jackass with a website would? I’m a writer, not a fortune teller. But more importantly, what I want to say to these people is this: that’s the whole point — "not knowing" is the whole fucking point. Life is all about not knowing, and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. All of it. And it’s not going to get any easier just because you found out you love your job cleaning septic tanks or you scored a dream gig writing indie movies. Not knowing is the whole point.  That's right. We want guarantees in a life that is filled with absolutely NO guarantees. I don't even know if I will be alive from one second to the next. Yet I persist.  Mark goes on: The problem is not a lack of passion for something. The problem is productivity. The problem is perception. The problem is acceptance. The problem is the, "Oh, well that’s just not a realistic option," or "Mom and Dad would kill me if I tried to do that, they say I should be a doctor" or "That’s crazy, you can’t buy a BMW with the money you make doing that." The problem isn’t passion. It’s never passion. It’s priorities. More truth.  It's not passion. It's priorities.  It's also courage. Are you willing to commit to something that you know in your heart is right, even though other people are telling you that it's "crazy" or "a pipe dream" or whatever else we tell people who want to follow something that's important to them?  If you have to look for what you enjoy in life, then you’re not going to enjoy anything. And the real truth is that you already enjoy something. You already enjoy many things. You’re just choosing to ignore them. That's it. You know your passions. And if you don't--if you really don't have things that you care about in your life--then you have a much bigger problem than finding the job that's right for you because you are living a life that is dead and lifeless and THAT's your problem. A new job is not going to change that.  I'm with Mark. Your passion has already found you. It's the thing (or things) that you do that put you in flow, that make you feel alive and joyful and that you just DO. Your passions are in your sparks. What lights the fire within you? Don't come to me saying you don't know what you love to do. Nine times out of 10 you do. The problem is that you haven't figured out what to do with that--if you can build a career or a business on it. Maybe you can't. But I would also say, "how do you know you can't?" This guy is making a living filming garbage trucks, setting them to heavy metal music and then uploading them to YouTube where millions of weary parents tap can find them to share with their enraptured pre-schoolers. It's safe to say most of us would have told him he was "crazy" for thinking he could have a job doing this. Yet here he is.  I'm going to say this again. It's not "finding your passion" that is the issue. You already know what gives you joy and purpose. The question is, are you going to do something with that? How are you going to make it a priority? What might you have to give up? And how are you going to engage with those passions to discover how they could fuel your life?   

Tonight is our second Blab Career Clinic in honor of Global Entrepreneurship week and our plan is to talk about how to manage your career like an entrepreneur.  One of the things I've noticed as I work with people in my 12-week entrepreneurial coaching/mastermind groups is that one of the biggest shifts we have to work on is moving from thinking like an employee into thinking like an entrepreneur.   I actually find that it's kind of sad that I have to do this because kids are naturally entrepreneurial and then we train it out of them. So much of what we do in school and in our interactions with young people is about teaching them to conform, to follow directions, to be dependent on the grade of a supervisor for their sense of self. This is continually reinforced in our career advice and in our workplaces, so that by the time I'm working with the people in my groups (who are typically in their 30's and up), we are dealing with a lot of baggage and ideas that they've absorbed about what it means to work for someone else, and they have little clue about how to work for themselves.  So tonight's Career Clinic is a forum for us to talk about this--how we can shift from thinking like an employee into thinking like a business owner, even when we have a job? I have some thoughts and ideas about this, but I also want to hear your thoughts. I think this is an area where we need more discussion, especially as we look at the ongoing shift away from "jobs" and into more freelance work. Even if you're working a job, you still need to think like a freelancer to hold onto it.  Our Blab Career Clinics have been fun--every time we get more people tuning in and have had some interesting conversations and insights from our participants. If you have the time, I really encourage you to join us at 7 p.m. (EST) tonight. Here's some info on how to participate if you are new to the Blab format.  Hope to see you there!

  When I wrote last Friday's post on being human spam, I had no idea how it would change me. It was one of those posts that wrote itself (often for me the best measure of it's "rightness") and I just felt this very strong need to put it out into the world.  Once I hit "publish," I felt an instant sense of relief. I literally felt that I could breathe again.  I also felt a huge sense of freedom. Almost immediately, I found myself filled with ideas and re-engaging with my work in some different ways.  I have no doubt that it was the act of acknowledging to myself what has been going on with my work and writing and then allowing myself to write that post that made the difference. It was a much-needed course correction.  One of the things that I talk with people about a lot is how in our lives and work we need to get better at doing these kinds of course-corrections.    I think that we spend a lot of time ignoring or even actively repressing in ourselves those things that feel "off" or "not right." Sometimes this is OK. It may be that we are having an off-day or an off-week.  But when those nagging feelings that something isn't working persist, we need to honor them. We need to let them out and explore them to see what might be going on.  We also need to share them with other people. In writing that post, I told you what was going on with me and how I was perceiving it. I got tons of emails and comments--more than I've received in a long time. People were supportive, letting me know that they valued what I write here. And they also shared their own struggles with these issues. I acknowledged something they were experiencing as well.  My public course correction opened me up to much-needed support from others that further validated to me that this was a good decision. But it also helped other people who have been having their own experiences with this. It was exactly the kind of impact and engagement that I was wanting.  My point here is this. There's value in paying attention to your feelings and to how you are engaging with your work and your life. There's value in acknowledging to yourself that something is off and in sharing that with other people. Even if you don't know where you need to go next, just saying out loud, "This is where I am right now and this is how I'm feeling about it" is critical. It opens up space for something new to emerge. It gives you room to breathe.