The Career You'll Love

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Nurturing optimism

I’d like to be optimistic, but it’s not that easy.  The economy’s terrible, the election’s coming up this year, people are still losing their houses, …

Here’s how I do it.

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The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Too much planning?

I tend to put a lot of trust into planning.  It gives me comfort that I’ve prepared for contingencies, that I know how things are going to happen, that I’ve avoided risks.

But … I’ve also learned that there’s such a thing as too much planning.

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The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

A peaceful 2012?

This is the beginning of the International Hour for Peace.  I don’t know how widespread this is – Google is surprisingly unhelpful – but it’s a good time to think about how we’re each helping to bring peace into the world.

We all agree:  There’s too much conflict in the world, too much jockeying for position, too much greed and corruption.

But here’s the thing:  Humans are made to strive.  Each of us has ambitions to become more, to achieve, to develop, to grow.  It seems to be that instinct which causes us to want to get more at the expense of others.  It’s a win-lose game, ultimately ending up as lose-lose when those others start reacting to what I’ve done to them.

In my mind, this is one of the basic challenges we’ve been given in this life.  We’re meant to learn how to grow and achieve while helping others to do the same.

Easy?  No.  But life is not easy.

I find it interesting, too, that generally other people will respond in kind.  When I help others to achieve, they’ll help me – often more generously than I ever would have expected.  Call it karma if you like; it doesn’t really matter.

So here’s the challenge I give you, and myself, for 2012:  Let’s work on how to learn, grow, and achieve, while helping others to do the same.  Never at the expense of others, but in aid of others.

I don’t generally make New Year’s Resolutions – I find it a bit artificial and pointless.  Instead, let’s work together to make 2012 a year where we at least can bring peace and collaboration to our little corners of the planet.

It’s hard to know how to bring peace to 7 billion people in the world.  But to the fifty people I’ll affect most this next year?  I’ll give it a shot.

Do you want to help?

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals.

© 2011 Possibilities Partnership LLC

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Time for a reboot?

It’s the end of the year.  I’m not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, really – I don’t see much reason to make up arbitrary goals with the realization that they won’t even last a month.

But…

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The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Asking for help

I’ve noticed a curious thing about asking for favors.

You’d think that the difficulty of getting someone to give you something would directly relate to how valuable it is.  If I ask for a dollar, you might give it to me.  But ten dollars?  That should be about ten times harder.

If that’s the case, though, I should never be able to convince you to help me with something that will take many hours of work on your part.  You’re very busy – everybody’s busy – so what would cause you to just give me a lot of your time?

What’s going on here, it appears, is a much more complex transaction.

There’s a lot of value you might receive from giving me some of your time:

• You might have some fun
• You could learn something
• You might have the satisfaction of knowing you made a difference
• Your social standing could improve

These are often the reasons people contribute to charitable causes or join groups.  Especially when you aren’t getting paid for your contribution, it’s clear that these other factors are what drives you to engage and help out.

What do we do with this knowledge?

A particular case I run into constantly is this:  John would like to learn something from Jane, but is reluctant to ask for her time.  He fears that he might look foolish, and is worried that Jane will see it as an imposition.

And in fact, she might, if John approaches it the wrong way.  “I’d like to schedule a two hour meeting with you” seems difficult for a busy person.  Why?  Because it hasn’t conveyed that Jane is going to get anything useful out of it – perhaps it will just be a boring waste of time.

If John really values Jane’s knowledge, he should let her know.  Here’s some useful phrases that he might weave into a question:

• “I really think I could learn something from you…”
• “I’m looking to learn from experts in this area…”
• “I want to get my career moving faster, so I’d like to ask your help…”
• “I’d really appreciate if you could mentor me…”
• “I’d be so grateful if you’d help me learn more about this…”

Each of these, to varying degrees, conveys a sense of gratitude to Jane:  She’s going to end up feeling good about having helped John’s career.

John will end up receiving priceless knowledge, and in the same way, Jane will receive priceless satisfaction.

That’s much easier, in fact, than trying to get a stranger to give you $10.

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals.

© 2011 Possibilities Partnership LLC

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

A little experiment

Two weeks ago, I offered each of you a challenge:

I have a request for each of you receiving this newsletter today:  Please tell me one thing that gives you inspiration.  I’ll pull those together and share them with the rest of the group in the next newsletter two weeks from now.

What a wonderful response!  Within a couple of days, I had a number of powerful testimonies in my inbox.  Here’s the first:

Thanks for all your emails which I love reading and which inspire me. Sorry if that sounds silly, but yes, you do inspire me. I suppose the other thing that regularly inspires me is learning how to do something new, or learning how something works.

Starting out my career, I was all about figuring things out.  You might not know this, but I now have a business objective to be constantly learning and growing.  I run my own business, so I get to do strange things like that!

The second and third popped in a little later:

I get inspiration from knowing that the work I do brings value to my organization, our clients and to me personally.

and

Having someone recognize my contributions inspires me!

How fantastic is that?  I love it when people figure out that the value of their work is measured by how it helps others.  But let’s not forget that each of us has an inherent worth as well, something that can’t be measured by what you DO – just by who you ARE.

The next message came from a person who has had a lot of personal turmoil – huge, life-challenging issues.  Yet her faith and philosophy gives her strength: “There are lots of things to be grateful for in the past and the present.”  She offers some valuable advice for all of us:

At the end of the day we all have a limited period of time on the planet, let’s get on and use our lives effectively. That includes the job we do. Let’s not waste precious time. You may be familiar with the quote from St Paul about throwing off everything that slows you down and running the race you have been given – well that’s where I am now and I’m also thinking about the crowd of witnesses who watch from the stands and cheer us on. Let’s get running!!

This has meant a great deal to me, and I offer it as powerful advice for all of us.

Finally, I got a Facebook post from my daughter:

You inspire me, Dad, by how hard you work and everything you do.

That just blows me away – it’s hard to find the words.

Now, why did I do this?  Honestly, part of it was a need to get some feedback from the readers of this newsletter, to get a sense of whether people are getting value from this after 18 months.

But more important, this shows us the value of giving something a try.  I’ve often used the word “experiment” for this, because it gives you the freedom to accept the outcome.  Whether it fails, succeeds, or goes off in some unexpected direction, you’re always learning and growing.

Thank you all, for helping me with this little experiment!

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals.

© 2011 Possibilities Partnership LLC

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Mentally disconnected

Right now, I’m seeing a big gap in the employment marketplace – but probably not what you think.  I’m seeing a rapidly growing number of advertised jobs (in October?  Go figure!) with a huge number of people still out of work.

Here’s the actual gap:  Many, many people aren’t actually looking for work – at least not as diligently as they once were.

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The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

When others bail out

My client this morning was feeling some doubt and uncertainty because other folks in his situation are bailing out of their jobs.  It made him wonder whether he’s just the last person to notice that there’s something bad going on.

Should he leave?  It’s not at all clear.

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The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Making the commitment

I was speaking with a friend recently who is wanting to build a group around a particular topic of interest.  It’s been difficult to get it launched, to get a wide range of people excited to join him.

His goal is to get this group running by the end of October.  To himself, he’s been thinking about it as “I want to have this group running by the end of the month.”  To others who might be candidates to join the group, it’s been a bit like “I would like you to join this new group, I want to have our first meeting by the end of the month.”

That might be one of the problems with getting people to join.

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The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Dealing with the fears

Making career decisions is scary!  You’re dealing with life-changing decisions, impacts on your family, people who can affect your life direction in deep ways, ….

Calm down for a moment.

It’s OK to be stressed, that’s understandable.  (more…)