life@work

What Work Rules Do You Play By?

As a life and career coach I read and write about job searching, happiness, change, decision science, and productivity, to name a few of my favorite topics.

My favorite productivity/simplicity blog these days is Zen Habits by Leo Babauta. There's always something smart, cool, or, well - Zen - on this blog. Just knowing that Leo is a father of six and somehow manages to do what he does with an inspiring attitude makes it slightly more likely that I will become mellow someday (when I can fit that in!)

A few days ago he wrote about how traditional work tools and customs are being replaced more and more by new tools and new rules. It strikes me that many of these newer ways of working are much more likely to contribute to career happiness than the traditional ways.

Highlights of the new rules include:

• Collaborate on documents rather than email them.
• People don't have to be in an office.
• Small teams are better than large teams.
• Reduce meetings because most of them are a waste of time.
• Rest is as important as work.
• Focus, don't crank through a million tasks while multi-tasking.
• Consider that communication is a "stream" in which you wade, take what you need, and get out.

I love this last rule. We can't possibly process everything in our in-boxes like the olden days. There are too many emails, blog posts, IMs and Tweets to keep up with. We all need to admit that we're going to miss some stuff, and move on. Revolutionary!

There are work opportunities that offer some or all of the new rules. It's worth it to think about which ones resonate with you and see what you can do to adopt them!

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Careful With Those Office Romances

This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who writes on the subject of human resource manager. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

Love is in the air, your head tells you that it’s wrong, but your heart thinks otherwise. A covert look, an open smile, a few flirtatious glances, a stolen kiss, and before you know it, you’re in a full-blown office romance. While it’s hard to control yourself when it comes to matters of the heart, there are few basic rules you need to observe if the person you’re seeing works with you, simply because things could get awkward or even downright when the affair sours and things don’t work out. 

• Make sure the other person reciprocates your feelings so you’re not embarrassed or slapped with a sexual harassment suit. If it’s a one-sided affair, let it go at the earliest and move on instead of constantly badgering the other person to reconsider their feelings.

• Hold the affair close to your heart, literally. Do not show your affection for each other openly or tell everyone you know that you’re seeing each other. I know that being in love (or even in lust) makes you want to do crazy things like shouting your feelings from the rooftop, but believe me, it’s best to stay quiet about the whole affair. 

• Behave professionally at all times, even when things are at their most passionate between the two of you. It’s exciting to lock eyes or sneak off for a stolen kiss, but always keep the repercussions in mind before you act hastily.

• Don’t let your romance get in the way of your work. Love and sex are heady feelings no doubt, but you’re only going to ruffle more than a few feathers if you’re seen to be shirking work and sneaking around setting up trysts with each other. 

• It’s not easy to talk of breaking up just when you’ve got together, but you have to be rational and discuss the issue of separation and how you both are going to deal with it. If a few ground rules are laid down, like the fact that you need to be civil to each other if things don’t work out and must avoid trashing each other once you’ve split, you can make sure your work and career are not affected too much.

• If you’re seeing someone who’s your superior, think twice because if things go wrong on the personal front, there’s a high probability that he/she may want to get back at you in the workplace using his/her position.

• Make sure your personal lives and your work lives stay separate; do not let disputes related to work spill over into your personal relationship and vice versa.   

• Some workplaces frown on office romances but usually ignore them as long as productivity is not affected, but there are others where there are specific rules against dating people on a different hierarchical level. Make sure you’re not flouting the rules and going against authority in indulging in an affair.            

• Office romances are sometimes a double-edged sword that you have trouble getting out of and trouble staying in – you know it’s time to move on, but the fear of the fall out affecting your career makes you put up with a bad relationship for longer than you should.

Photo by aussiegall

What To Do When You're the Newbie

When you were a kid, were you ever the "new kid"?

When you were the new kid, did you immediately join in and assert yourself, or did you hang back for a bit to get the lay of the land?

Even if you never had to join a new 4th grade class in the middle of the year or change high schools after sophomore year, you've probably been the "new kid" at work many times.

How do you do "new" well? Sarah E. Needleman of CareerJournal.com has these tips:

Meet your peers in advance.

You get insights into the culture, discover how communication works, and show that you're interested in learning from your colleagues.

Don't be a know-it-all.

Even if you've been in this line of work for a bazillion years, you still have things to learn at this new job. Listen more than you talk - you'll learn more and you'll come across more favorably.

Be diplomatic about your prior employer.

You have no idea whose best friend is your former CEO's sister, so avoid criticizing your past employer or divulging proprietary information about them.

Sign up for extra projects - within reason.

Balance is key here. You want to differentiate yourself without going overboard.

Ask for feedback.

Start with once a week for the first month, then reduce that to one or twice a month. You want to stay in touch with your boss' expectations.

Build your network.

Get to know people throughout the company and search for a mentor. Don't forget to stay in touch with your existing contacts.

After 90 days, make longer term goals.

You've gotten the lay of the land and should set longer term goals and share them with your boss.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Five Steps to a Graceful Resignation

This post is contributed by Heather Johnson, who regularly writes on the topic of career exploration. She invites your questions and writing job opportunities at her personal email address: heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

Those of us who have been in the workforce for a while have certainly burnt a bridge or two. If you have in the past, let it go and try not to repeat the mistake. Resigning from a position should be done properly, as you certainly want the reference and you will never know how an ungraceful exit will come back to haunt your career.

Follow the five steps below and you should maintain your business contacts with dignity. 

   1. Make the choice

Congratulations, you have decided to quit your job! Or have you? Sometimes, we have bad weeks or even months at our jobs. You need to seriously consider whether or not this is the right decision. If you are miserable, a change is certainly in order. However, sometimes things temporarily seem worse than they are. If you are certain you want to leave, then proceed to the next step.

2. Hatch Your Escape Plan

For some of us, quitting a job really is an escape. However, just like escaping from prison, you need to time your resignation correctly. Do you have another job offer right now or the means to support yourself until you find another position? If you are supporting a family, then you will certainly want to line up some options before you leave.

3. Give Notice

Two weeks is the standard length for a resignation notice. You are certainly not obligated to work for longer than that, so do not allow your boss to bully you into staying longer than you intended. This notice should, however, be offered in the form of a typed resignation letter. Keep it classy and do not focus on any negative aspects of your job.

4. Ask for a Reference

If you have been graceful so far, your superior(s) should have no problem with offering you a letter of recommendation. It is best to have this in hand before you leave, as it looks great to future employers and your boss may not even remember you a year from now.

5. Settle Any Loose Ends

Do you have a key to the office or anything else you need to return? Perhaps you have a 401K or unused vacation time you can cash in on. Do not forget to settle up with human resources before you walk out the door for the last time.

By making a smooth and drama-free exit from your position, you will save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run. Even if you are leaving one of the worst jobs imaginable, you are doing yourself a disservice by burning a bridge and losing the reference. After all, you paid your debts to society and should reap the benefits by gracefully taking your leave.   

How Advanced Degrees Affect Women's Lives

Photo by sndrspk

I am one of the few women in my now 10-year-old mom/baby group with "just" a B.A. degree.

Several have at least a Master's degree, and there are a couple of PhD's. Many of my friend's spouses or partners have advanced degrees, too.

I read this article from CareerJournal.com with interest, about a large new study conducted by a law professor at Washington & Lee that's coming out next week on women and advanced degrees.

Among the findings is the fact that women with M.B.A.'s are more likely to divorce than men. (Apparently the men to whom they are married don't also have an M.B.A., otherwise their divorce rate would be just as high, right?)

In fact, women with law and medical degrees are more likely to divorce than their male counterparts as well.

Forget divorce, the study also states that women with advanced degrees are abstaining from marriage in the first place at a much higher rate than are men.

And here is where the rubber meets the road - the more women earn, the more likely they are to be single without children.

This rings true looking at my own world of contacts.

The good news is that my highly educated friends are all still married. Yet, for the most part, they have decided to be at home full-time with their families. In these cases there is a high-earning spouse, with a demanding career that takes up a whole bunch of time.

One of my friends told me once that she thought a family in the U.S. could support only one "high powered" career. Personally, I agree.

We all have our ideas of what a family needs in terms of time devoted to family life and attending to children, and two people working 80 hours a week is really pushing it. (I'm not a fan of any one person spending 80 hours a week at work as a matter of fact!)

So what to make of all this? It's more evidence that career planning and navigation is tricky work when you've got a partner and kids. That old slogan about "having it all" - well, it's time to decide what you really, really want, because you may not be getting it all, not all at one time anyway.

I'm all about optimism and "making it work", a la Tim Gunn. I've got a can-do attitude and lot of creativity. Yet navigating career and family life often involves compromises and feelings of ambivalence. It's important for me to acknowledge that in my own life, and it's important to many of my clients to do that themselves as well.

If this were a blog about social and political activism, I'd have a call for action right about now. But instead I'll have a call for reflection.

• Do you fit the statistics of this new study?
• How has an advanced degree (or lack thereof) affected your happiness in relationships or your decision to become or not become a parent?
• And does your advanced degree translate into high compensation? (For many folks, it does not, sometimes to their surprise.)
  
• What compromises have you made or do you make regarding career and family?
• Are these compromises OK with you?

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

How to Complain (and Why)

A little kvetching is good for you. Going overboard with it is not.

This philosophy works for me. Too much positive thinking just doesn't feel right to me, even with all my work with clients to "dream big".

This article from the Pacific Daily News features quotes from both the pro- and anti-kvetch camps.

On the pro side: When we complain in moderation to a willing listener, we are acknowledging the truth of our experience rather than hiding it. We may feel a little less miserable in the process.

On the anti side: When we complain, we are excusing ourselves from taking action. When we focus on the way things should be and cultivate a positive spirit, we infuse the world with that energy and make it a better place.

You may have read about the purple rubber bracelets you can get from A Complaint Free World to remind you not to complain and to signify your commitment to living a complaint-free life.

Here's my take on complaining and your career.

Complaining in moderation can help you understand what you'd rather be doing.

• Your job may not be a good fit anymore. It might be time for you move on to something really amazing. You're not going to make that move unless you're a at least a little bit uncomfortable. You won't realize your discomfort until you complain a bit.

Complaining too much sours you and infects everyone around you, too.

• It's easy to hide behind complaints (which includes gossip and sarcasm). If you complain a lot and never take action to change your circumstances, you're a victim. From there it's just a short hop over to bitterness. You'll attract certain kinds of people (whiners) and repel others (doers).

Go ahead and kvetch a bit about your job or your boss or the company. And then ask yourself what you will do to make it better.

You won't be able to solve all of your complaints. But doing something even very small will keep you in a position of action and power. And that feels a lot better than bitterness.

You might even decide to wear a purple rubber bracelet!

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Happiness is Giving Your Full Attention - to Just About Anything

There's a book I turn to again and again that I feel I must say something about here. It's called The One Who is Not Busy: Connecting with Work in a Deeply Satisfying Way, by Darlene Cohen.

I'm convinced that finding happiness at work happens more reliably when we're paying attention to how we're thinking and what we're choosing to focus our attention on.

In other words, it's not just about finding that dream set of circumstances to plug yourself into - you have a lot of power and control on your own to make it great or suffer mightily.

Let's face it - a lot of us are stressed out. There's too much to do, the demands are overwhelming, and at the heart of much of our distress is our extreme level of busyness.

We can find some relief through taking breaks. But what Darlene Cohen's small, wise book discusses is a way to take the Zen approach to consciousness, known as simultaneous inclusion, and use it to create an entirely different relationship with busyness and our work.

I don't want to lecture about Zen concepts and summarize koans here, though. Suffice to say, if you're curious about how you can learn to focus your full attention on what you are doing, whether it is presenting a new ad campaign to a client or washing dishes, and consequently experience a feeling of flow and increased well-being, read the book!

I will give you a sneak peek at the two key skills the book offers, and how I think acquiring them would help me.

Skill #1: The Ability to Narrow or Widen the Mind's Focus at Will

If I can get the hang of this, I can focus deeply on a task at hand as if it's the only thing in my world and then come "to the surface" whenever I want and place that task in relation to the general scheme of things.

I do the small steps well and with full focus without losing the big picture.

Skill #2: The Mental Flexibility to Shift the Mind's Focus at Will from One Thing to Another

If I figure this one out, I can move from narrow task to narrow task to narrow task quickly, letting one go completely before dipping into the other. I leave work at work. I don't get stuck in compulsive thinking or fretting.

When there's too much to do I simply do the work, mindfully absorbed in it.

It's understandable to cling to our busyness - it can make us feel alive and it protects us from emptiness - but if life feels particularly mechanical to you right now, try some of the practices in this book (many of them are meditative).

You may find that simply changing your focus changes your entire experience.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

 

Book Review: 45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy

I wish Anita Bruzzese had written this book in 1989, when I was starting my career.

True, it probably wouldn't have included chapters on email blunders, turning off my cell phone, and blogging about my job, but everything else would have applied and would have been welcome information.

I showed up to my first real job after college not knowing one tiny little thing about how an office works or how I should do my job. I came from a liberal arts college that was all about learning, studying, writing, and being at college.

I didn't have a fancy corporate internship, I didn't have an older sibling, I didn't have parents in the corporate world, and I didn't have a clue.

Anita's second book, 45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy - - And How to Avoid Them, is a treasure trove of tips on thriving in the workplace.

It's especially well suited to new careerists, however older professionals would do well to remind themselves of some key activities to avoid, such as gossiping, failing to delegate, asking for a raise you don't deserve, and the classic - goofing off on a business trip.

Your boss notices and cares about things that maybe don't seem that big a deal to you. It pays for you to gain an understanding about how the work world differs from college, from your neighborhood, what you see on TV and how your family works. This book is a wonderful introduction into the rules and mores at companies.

The advice is solid, grounded in Anita's long history as career columnist and workplace expert. Her writing style is personal and often entertaining. Pick it up!

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

 

What is Career Suicide, Anyway?

The July/August 2007 issue of Fast Company features a one-page "open debate" on this question: "Is staying home with kids career suicide?"

I'm always drawn to articles like this. I stayed home with my kids for a time and have been working from home for the last four years. I know how I feel about my own decision, and what was great about staying home with kids and changing careers, and what was difficult. My spouse, friends and clients have done it all and felt it all - stayed at home, never stayed at home, went back and forth, wish they were home, wish they were working.

Two experts weigh in on the Fast Company debate: one is Leslie Bennetts, author, The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? and Vivian Steir Rabin, co-author, Back on the Career Track.

I have read neither of these interesting-sounding books, although that's not stopping me from weighing in on this debate myself!

The key question in the magazine's debate of course has to be dramatically phrased so that we'll all read the one-page article. Career + suicide = chilly, sinking feeling. Ooh, better read more. And that's my big beef with this debate, how it's framed.

The mere suggestion that staying home with kids may lead to the demise of our careers leads to feelings of panic, entrapment and guilt that are completely unnecessary. This is not a helpful or powerful position from which to make important career decisions. I know too many stressed out, guilt-ridden parents to believe otherwise.

Instead as we (meaning all of us, women and men) choose our careers, decide to have kids, and create plans for blending or separating the two, we should focus inward, on our values and priorities, first. It's a mistake to believe that there is some sort of path drawn out for our lives from which we must not stray, or else. Says who?

For example, do you want to be a VP at your company in the next three years? Do you have strong feelings about daycare? What's compelling to you about being a parent? Do you absolutely love being the CEO? Are you willing to move to a smaller house or apartment to be able to afford to work at the job you really want? We all have different answers to these questions.

I'm not refuting the data in the books the featured debaters wrote (which as you remember I have not read yet!) I'm also not suggesting that everything's going to be rosy if we simply follow our dreams. I guess my point in the debate is that I don't want to be debating this question!

I'm more compelled by a question such as, "What do you want in your career and what are you willing to risk to get it?" It's not an easy question to answer at all, but it doesn't instill quite the choking paralysis that the suggestion of career suicide does.

Frankly, what's "career suicide" to one person may be completely acceptable to another. Some careers can be easily restarted. Some people are willing to lose some professional ground in favor of gains in other areas of their lives. Many people change careers several times during their lives.

Priorities shift and things happen. Know what sacrifices are worth it and not worth it for you and your family, and give yourself a break from worrying about career suicide. Make your decisions after completing both a thorough internal sweep and objective research.

Life your life fully and readjust as necessary.

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com

Duncan, Your Virtual Career Coach

Through Barry Bell at wurk.net I read about Duncan, the "virtual career coach", created by and modeled after Top Briefings' founder, Duncan Gotobed.

If you like listening to British accents and wish that cartoon characters would give you career advice, check this out. Some bits of advice are free, and some longer pieces are for purchase.

 

Heather Mundell
Dream Big Coaching Services
www.dreambigcoaching.com
heather@dreambigcoaching.com