The Bamboo Project Blog

Career Resilience: The Four Patterns that Should Guide All Your Career Moves

 

I wrote a couple of long posts in February on the two major factors most job seekers are dealing with in this economy. The first was on the reality that there aren't enough jobs for everyone who wants one. The second was on the poor quality of many of the jobs that do exist. 

After writing these, though, I was left wondering what it is we can do to operate in this kind of environment. How do I advise people about career and professional development in a world that is so uncertain, risky and, frankly, negative? 

Yesterday it hit me. There is only one thing we can do if we want to be successful when change is happening so rapidly and when so much of our work life is about dealing with stress and curve balls. 

We have to develop our career resilience skills. 

That's it. That's all we can do. We have to develop our resilience skills and use that resilience to meet the challenges that have become a regular part of our work lives. 

Why Resilience?

According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is your capacity to deal with stress, adversity and uncertainty. Resilience is about bouncing back, rolling with the punches, getting back up on the horse. It's our ability to take what life throws at us and use it to grow stronger. 

Our careers are no longer a matter of making a decision about what we want to do with the rest of our lives, getting an education and then following a straight-line career path to that dream job. Those days are long gone. 

Today's careers require us to be agile, flexible, and adaptable. To see opportunity in challenges and to develop our capacity to deal with constantly changing parameters and requirements. 

When you build your resilience, you are in a better position to adapt to ongoing changes. You accept change as a part of life and see change as an opportunity, not as a series of insurmountable obstacles. 

Resilience can also help you feel more in control. You're able to keep things in perspective and to see yourself as an actor in your life, rather than as a victim. High resilience also allows you to be more pro-active in responding to whatever gets thrown at you. 

Four Patterns of Career Resilience

In looking at resilience as it applies to our careers, I see four patterns we need to incorporate into our lives. I see these as patterns, because they are ongoing components of our behavior and thinking that we need to work on. Career resilience is not a once and done event. It is a way of being that you must focus on developing.

The four patterns I see are:

• Patterns that support Clarifying
• Patterns that support Connecting
• Patterns that support Creating
• Patterns that support Coping

Patterns for Clarifying

Resilience needs clarity. We need to understand who we are, what we want, and how we bring value to the work that we do. What are our signature strengths? What do we want more of in our lives? 

Clarity is also about knowing what's going on in the outside world. What occupational, industry and economic trends impact our careers? What is the likelihood that technology or outsourcing could eliminate or completely change our jobs? What credentials and skills are needed to be successful? 

Most importantly, what goals and plans do we need to develop for ourselves, based on our awareness of ourselves and the changes that we see going on in the world? Clarity gives us a sense of purpose and control because it allows us to know where we stand and to see where we can fit in as new opportunities and challenges come our way. 

Patterns for Connecting

Resilience thrives on connections. Resilient people have a core group of individuals they know are always in their corner. They look for who is available, who's trustworthy and who's helpful and they go toward the light of these connections.  They aren't afraid to ask for and receive help and they offer their own services in return. 

Connections and relationships are also at the heart of what it takes to be successful in a networked world. It is your relationships that bring you information, knowledge and opportunities. Your connections can help you bounce back and spring forward, even under the most adverse conditions. But connections don't just happen. We must be purposeful and intentional in developing those connections that will most support us in adapting to change. 

 

Patterns for Creating

Resilience is also about action. What steps are we taking to achieve our goals, to learn from our misakes, to engage in new experiences that can grow our skills and networks? Resilient people have a plan and they work that plan. 

We also have to ask ourselves what patterns do we have in place that provide the best structures for creating and experimenting? How do we spend our time? What rituals are part of our work lives? How do we move from insight into action? 

Flow needs a framework. If you want your career to flow more easily, you must create frameworks for that to happen. 

Patterns for Coping

Ultimately, resilience is about how we cope with life's ups and downs. How do we manage our emotional responses and maintain an optimistic outlook, even under dire circumstances? How do we nurture and take care of ourselves on a regular basis so that we can bring our best selves to our lives? What stories do we tell ourselves about our work, our strengths and weaknesses and about how people relate to us? How do these stories impact our ability to meet challenges head on? 

Resilient people have a generally positive outlook on life and have learned to persevere in the face of challenges. They feel their emotions, but they don't allow their emotions to overwhelm their ability to act. Effective coping mechanisms are a critical component of developing career resilience. 

 Additional Thoughts on Resilience

I see the four patterns of career resilience working together synergistically, each connected to and reinforcing the others. All of them are critically important, although at different times we may find ourselves more focused on a particular pattern. When we're confused or uncertain about where to go next, we may pay more attention to Clarifying. When we're overly stressed and anxious, we may need to spend time on our Coping patterns. If we're trying to expand into something new, we'd be well-served to focus on the Connecting and Creating patterns. And if we've lost our jobs, we need to spend time working on all four patterns. 

There are two things that feel most important to me about developing career resilience. The first is that resilience should be our goal. We cannot control the people and events that surround us, but we can control our capacity to meet the challenges that inevitably arise at work. By focusing on resilience as our goal, rather than on trying to control what is uncontrollable, we put ourselves into a much healthier position for moving forward. 

I also see the idea of patterns of behavior being critically important. Resilience is not something we summon at will. It is something we must build and work on every day. Believe me, we know it when we haven't paid attention to one or more of the career resilience patterns in our lives. I see this all the time when I'm working with people who lose their jobs. They've done little to develop these patterns in their lives, so they are less equipped to move on to their next opportunity. 

For me, working on career resilience is a worthy goal. It's a way to respond to all that is negative and challenging at work and to focus our attention where it's most needed--on our capacity to creatively and effectively respond to a new normal. 

What are your thoughts on this? Does the idea of career resilience resonate with you? What do you do to build your own career reslience? 

Disposable Worker Syndrome is Killing Us

 

For the past several months, I've been doing more work than usual with people who have been laid off from their jobs. I've listened to their stories of how the lay-offs occurred--usually in a brutally swift and cruel fashion--and been witness to their pain at having done all the right things, only to be told their services are no longer needed. It's heart-breaking, really, to see how they try to recover from this assault, accepting their disposability as inevitable in some ways. 

I contrast this with the marketing messages we receive from companies and other organizations about the need to re-use and recycle. Inherent in this is the idea that we can be more responsible stewards of the earth's resources, finding ways to renew and re-use things, rather than throwing them away. 

While this spirit seems to be alive and well when it comes to material goods, I don't see the same spirit animating our approach to people. But in my mind, "renewable and sustainable" isn't just about re-filling water bottles or recycling paper. I think it starts with seeing people as renewable resources, rather than as objects we use up and then throw away. 

I cannot tell you the damage this is doing to workers, this idea that you are only as good as the last thing you did for the company. I see people who have poured their hearts and souls into doing what they were asked to do, into "doing the right thing," only to be told that this wasn't enough. And we remove them from our institutions just as efficiently as we take out the trash, with little regard for the fact that these are human beings, many of whom have tied up much of their sense of self-worth in the work we are now telling them we no longer need them to do. 

In the past, through this blog, I've focused on how we as individuals need to keep renewing and recycling ourselves through a process of lifelong learning and adapting to change. I still believe this is true. But I also believe that, through our institutions, we are doing great spiritual and emotional damage to ourselves by consistently communicating to people that they are disposable and that they are on their own in the process of recycling and renewing.  

To torture my metaphor, we are treating people like garbage--throwing them into landfills and just letting them waste away there. We are doing nothing to provide them with the structures and resources and emotional supports that would help them go through that renewal process. 

I've come to realize that part of the reason for my absence here has been that I'm grappling with what it means for me to support people in their careers when they are operating in an environment that so regularly communicates with them about their disposability. Yes, I can talk about positive professional development, but for most people, this is used to develop their capacities in service to organizations and institutions that are essentially sucking them dry. Once they've been used up, they are cast aside.

Somehow it feels almost immoral to me to advise people on how to play the game when the game is so clearly rigged against them. 

I understand all the reasons for companies shedding jobs, including globalization and the impact that technology is having on work. But that doesn't excuse us from treating people decently. In fact, I would argue that it REQUIRES us to come up with better, more humane ways to treat people who are caught up in the winds of these changes.

I'm only beginning to grapple with where all of this leads me. I'm not sure that there are easy answers. But I do know that it is only in the calling out of what's really going on that we can start to find better ways to handle the changes we are dealing with.

For now, many of us can pretend like it won't happen to us, so it's easy for us to hide our heads in the sand. But I promise you, every person I've spoken with who's been laid off (many of them repeatedly) thought the same way you did. Like unplanned pregnancies or car accidents, a layoff is something that is going to happen to someone else. But increasingly, my friend, that is not true.

We owe it to ourselves and to each other to begin talking about what we need to do to bring humanity back into these transitions, to find ways to support all of us in being able to manage the renewal process. We can't treat people as disposable, as garbage for someone else to take care of. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to others to find better ways to help each other through these upheavals. 

Become Your Own "Job Creator"

Earlier this week I referenced an excellent article by Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, Find a Job Using Disruptive Innovation. Their first piece of advice was to ask more and different questions. Their second suggestion was to start looking at the real jobs that need to be done, not at the jobs you once did: 

 . . . when people become aware of a "job" that they need to get done, they search for a product or service to "hire" for getting the job done effectively. Disruptive innovators grasp the "jobs-to-be-done" better than anyone else because they spend hours, days, and sometimes months watching people use products and services to fully understand the jobs that people are "hiring" products and services to do. Sometimes the jobs are surprising (like Christensen discovered when watching adults frequently "hire" a milkshake to do the job of not getting bored during a long commute). Often these observations pay off with ideas for new products and services better-suited for the job that needs to be done.

The same same approach can benefit you as a "job creator." Ask yourself what jobs-to-be-done do you care most about. Which ones are you most competent at? Or, which ones are the companies your targeting in your job search willing to hire you to do?

Set aside time to systematically create richer, deeper insights about jobs-to-be-done. Spend a half day a week just watching, taking notes, and if appropriate, videotaping or photographing people using different products and services that are interesting to you (or with the products of targeted companies in your job search). As you watch, constantly ask, "what's surprising or unexpected?" to help you discover new features, products, or services that might do the jobs even better, distinguishing you from other job candidates.

While sometimes it makes sense for you to consider your career moves in the context of what's currently available, increasingly I think that we need to take more of a "job creation" approach--looking for the intersection between problems and needs and our own skills, talents and passions. It may be that we are creating freelance opportunities for ourselves or we may be looking at creating new positions within companies or organizations.  Either way, we are thinking about how we can create our own work, rather than just doing the work that is presented to us. 

Here are some resources that can help you get started on being your own job creator:

• Future-Proofing Your Career
• Three Ways to Create Your Own Job
• Can't Find a Dream Job? Create Your Own
• 5 Steps to Creating Your Own Job
• When Jobs are Scarce, Create Your Own
• 8 Steps to Getting What You Want Without Formal Credentials

Your Career is a Jungle Gym, Not a Ladder

. . . look for opportunities, look for growth, look for impact, look for mission. Move sideways, move down, move on, move off. Build your skills, not your resume. Evaluate what you can do, not the title they're going to give you. Do real work. Take a sales quota, a line role, an ops job. Don't plan too much, and don't expect a direct climb. If I had mapped out my career when I was sitting where you are, I would have missed my career.

                                   -- Sheryl Sandberg

As we leave May and enter June, it's that time of year when graduation speakers give us their best advice. (My favorite graduation speech of all time is Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford talk, by the way.) 

This year, it was Sheryl Sandberg's speech at Harvard Business School that caught my eye with her recommendation to treat your career like a jungle gym, not a ladder. That is, to forget the upward climb to the corner office and embrace a more networked career where you are likely to move down a step, then across, then up and then across again. The focus is not on job titles and "building your resume,"  but on developing skills and engaging in experiences that you can take with you across industries and occupational titles. 

 As we go from the 20-year career to a 4-year career, this is advice I think we need to take to heart--especially those of us who remember a time when people had 20-year careers. We live in a hyper-connected, fast-paced world where it's virtually impossible to predict your career trajectory with any assurance. Some of the jobs with the fastest growth didn't even exist 10 years ago, so "planning" for a career becomes even more difficult to do. 

The best we can do to stay on top of things is to be flexible and to focus on developing skills that transfer into different jobs and industries.  As we climb that jungle gym of our work, we need to look for opportunities to re-package our skills and experiences in ways that bring us meaning and engagement, as well as solve problems for our potential employers. 

Career ladders are dead for most of us. We are dealing with jungle gym careers. But at least jungle gyms are more fun.  

Changing Joyfully

Change is hard--or so we believe. But what if it isn't? What if we just make it that way because that's what we believe? 

Yesterday I was reading this post by Megan Thom who writes about how burnt out she was in her work. Until she had an epiphany that for change to happen she must make it joyful and bring to it her authentic self:

In my burnt-out, disappointed and thoughtful state, I resolved that henceforth all activism I engaged in would involve at least one of my favourite activities: growing food, cooking food, eating food, bicycling and singing. All of these activities are inherently change-making in that they all have positive effects on our ecological, social and emotional environments. All of these activities are also fun. I figured that if I focused on these fun activities I would be both an effective agent of change and also a happy person. In fact, I would argue that one cannot be the former without also being the latter.

One of the things I tell people when they are exploring their next career moves is to "follow the energy." By this I mean to stay alert to those activities and interactions that feel inspiring, engaging, joyful and fun. Identifying these moments and then intentionally bringing more of them into your work is one of the basic activities of career exploration and change. 

What I'm finding, though, is that we have a hard time with this. Somehow if it doesn't feel like "work"--that is, if it doesn't feel like a struggle and a challenge and something we have to make ourselves do--then we dismiss it.  And asking someone to purposely bring more joy and fun to what they do? Let's just say I spend a lot of time trying to talk people into believing that this isn't "frivolous" or "impossible." 

I understand this because by nature, I am not playful. I am more serious than I'd like to be and have a tendency to see the struggle, not the joy. But I'm realizing more and more that for change to happen and for work to have real meaning to me, I need to find the joy--to find how I can bring fun and play and my best self to what I do. I need to do this not only for me, but also for the people I work with. If I think that change is hard and act accordingly, then how will they be able to see it another way themselves? 

So lately I'm asking myself, what would happen if I saw change as easy and joyful? How would changing this frame change for me what is possible? How would it change the tools I use and the ways that I interact with people? How could I build joy and play and fun into what I do and how can I help others find that joy and play in themselves?

Right now these are questions for me. The answers are still hidden. But they feel like worthwhile questions to explore. While change can be hard in the sense that we are transforming habits and ingained behaviors, one thing I've learned is that I cannot beat myself up in order to transform. Real change only happens when we act from inspiration, not desperation, when we use joy and fun to motivate ourselves to move in a different direction. 

How can you change joyfully? How can you tap into what most deeply engages and interests you to transform your life and career? I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments on this. 

 

The Power of Positive Peers

Although we don't discuss it much, one of the most powerful influences on our personal and professional development is our peer groups. The people with whom we engage in regular conversations and interactions shape the questions that we ask, the problems that we see, how we approach our work and our sense of identity as professionals.

One thing I've been paying more attention to in the past year is the quality of my peer circles and the impact that my professional colleagues have on me. I started noticing that some people were really energizing and inspiring to be around, while other people tended to pull me down into the suck. Some people exposed me to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new questions and a focus on the awesome, while others seemed to see only the same old problems and no real solutions. 

Since I started paying attention to my professional peer networks, I've started becoming more intentional about my connections. I've begun limiting the amount of time I spend engaging with people who can only focus on what sucks and have been actively seeking to expand my connections to people who want to work on creating what's awesome. This has had a profoundly positive influence on my work and my thinking.

What I've realized, though, is that if we are not consciously thinking about what is going on with our peer networks, it's very easy to be pulled into a negative orbit. This is especially problematic if we are in a negative workplace and the majority of our professional interactions are with our co-workers. It becomes mission critical for us to find and connect with people who have a more positive perspective--those who want to work on building the awesome. 

For me, connecting with positive peers has been a two-step process. First is noticing the influence that different people have on me. I pay attention to how I feel when I interact with them. Do I leave an interaction feeling excited and energized and ready to follow-up on something we've discussed? That's a person I want to connect to more. 

The second thing I've been doing is looking for new people who share the qualities of those people who are currently in my network that have proven to be positive influences. Typically this means people who are curious, creative, focused on positive questions rather than on "problems," and who want to make a real difference. If I see people like this in a LinkedIn Group or some other on-line network, I try to make a special effort to reach out to them. I'm also intentionally looking for these connections in face-to-face interactions and purposely seeking them out to connect. I even tell them WHY I want to connect--because I see and value these qualities, which automatically improves the connection. 

Throughout all of this, I've also tried to be more aware of how I am connecting to other people--am I being the change I'm looking for in my world? This shift has forced me to look at the ways in which I'm negative, problem-focused, uninspiring, etc. I have had to look at how I can shift my own habits of interaction to be a positive peer, rather than a negative one. 

This process of forming positive peer networks and looking at my own actions as a peer has been one of the more important professional development practices I've engaged in this year. 

How are you forming the connections that are going to be most supportive for you? And how are you looking at your own behavior in this process? 

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Feeling stuck? I'm running another 7-Day Getting Unstuck session starting February 27. Details and sign-up information are here.

 

"Take Yourself to Work Day"

For years, we've had "Take Your Child to Work Day." But lately, as I listen to people talk about the false selves they bring to jobs that feel pointless, I'm thinking that we need another day--"Take YOURSELF to Work Day." 

On this day, you would have the joy of bringing the real you to work. The day would be focused on discovering and sharing each other's gifts, removing our corporate masks and creating real conversations and connection with each other as human beings. 

We would start with individual greetings and being made to feel welcome as people coming into a new space. It would be clear that we were valuing each individual person for their individual selves. Anything that made it seem like we are interchangeable cogs in the machine would be strictly forbidden. 

I'm thinking this day would include some of Peter Block's great questions for the Gift's Conversation including:  

• What is the gift you currently hold in exile?
• What is it about you that no one knows about?
• What is the positive feedback you've received that still surprises you?
• What is the gift that you have that you do not fully acknowledge?

There would be no discussion of what we need to "fix" or "improve" in ourselves, no conversations about our deficiencies. Instead, we would celebrate each other's strengths and assets, the possibilities that are at the heart of who we are. 

We would also discuss the gifts we receive from our co-workers, including asking and answering questions like:

• What gift have you received from another in this room?
• What has someone in your group today done that has touched you, moved you or been of value to you?
• In what way did someone here enage you in a way that had meaning for you?

Each person, as he or she heard what is appreciated about him/her, would only be allowed to say "Thank you. I enjoyed hearing that." There would be no downplaying of their gifts, no "I couldn't have done it without you."Just a heartfelt "thank you." 

On this day, we would not be exhorted to be "professional," but would, instead, be required to be real and authentic, including sharing our emotions about the things that are important to us. We would be encouraged and supported in feeling joy, sorrow, confusion, and any other emotion that comes with being a fully engaged human being. The only emotion that wouldn't be allowed is apathy. 

Part of our day would be spent having conversations about the things that actually MATTER to us--the stuff that brings us joy and the stuff that keeps us up at night. Each of these conversations would be received with acceptance and curiosity, not judgement and criticism, because each is part of the real human experience. What matters to us is part of what defines who we are. 

We'd end the day by committing to bringing more of ourselves to the work we do. Not in the sense of pouring our every waking moment into work, but instead, bringing our own unique gifts and humanity to work with us every day.  This includes having the space to NOT work so that we were able to stay in touch with those gifts. And we'd commit to supporting our co-workers in the same endeavor. 

Of course, ideally, this wouldn't be confined to a single day. But even that one day could make a huge difference, don't you think? Frankly, a day structured like this is a day I would happily bring my daughters to, as well. 

Working with the Questions

Last week I wrote that one of the key 21st century skills I think we need is a more advanced capacity for questions. Questions are a topic I've explored frequently here and they are a skill I'm trying to develop in myself for both professionald and personal reasons. 

Tenneson Wolf has an excellent post on different types of questions that can be asked that I think provides us with some great fodder for conversation. This is his list of question types:

1. “Wait-a-minute” -- The ones that make us pause and realize there is more to discover. 

2. “Sit-on-it” -- Questions that can’t be answered when they are asked. They require some time to think, and perhaps even let go of for a time.

3. “Address-the-grand-assumption” -- Or as Hani, one of the participants challenged, address even the smaller assumptions. Karen, one participant from a team of county planners, asked this type of question regarding her work -- “well, when did we start believing that we needed to pave all of our roads?” She was thinking systemically, aware of the cost and resource implications of that assumption.

4. “Name-the-elephant” -- The unspoken that many people know and feel, and that if left unaddressed, renders the work less meaningful or real. 

5. “Still-cooking” -- The ones that keep us actively learning. Or even better, reaching, stretching, letting go, reorganizing, innovating. 

6. “Antenna-out” -- Yes, another variation of continuous learning and attention giving. But even further, an invitation to be learning on behalf of the whole. 

7. “Me/I” -- These shift responsibility back to fundamental accountability and relationship of us as individuals, rather than unintentionally being lost in the bigness of we or them questions. I’ve seen this shift many times. Me/I questions harvest what emerges in expansive thinking to give clarity and responsibility of first next steps of action.

All of these questions can be applied in a career/professional development context. For example, an "address-the-grand-assumption" question I frequently ask people is "Is working for a company (as opposed to working for yourself) the best way for you to find career satisfaction?" I find that many people think in terms of "jobs" and that they haven't considered the possibilities of working for themselves. 

A good "wait-a-minute" question is asking people to consider what would happen if they think about their current job as a home base, rather than as a prison. How does that shift their understanding of their situation and how they can use it to their advantage? 

One of the hardest types of questions to ask in a career context is the "name-the-elephant" question. For example, people may be reluctant to make a career change because they've assumed financial responsibility for their families. But what happens if they ask the "name-the-elephant"question about their partner (or other family members) assuming that role for awhile? 

And "Me-I" questions are critically important. One of the most crucial is "Are you the cause or the effect?" 

I'm constantly working on trying to find the great questions that will help me move my work forward. This framework can be a really helpful way to do that. 

What questions are you asking? How do these types of questions help you expand your questioning ability? How do they help you improve your work environment?

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I'm running an online career visioning session on January 17 to help using the awesome VisualsSpeak online Image Center. You can find more information and the link to register here. 

The Six 21st Century Skills You REALLY Need

Given the work that I do, I'm a sucker for skill lists. As our work worlds grow ever more complex and challenging, it seems that the skills themselves become more complex too. 

Increasingly, though, I've begun to believe that these lists are distracting us from the real skills of success. While working with big data, operating in virtual teams and"cognitive load management"all sound great, I think there are far more fundamental skills we should be developing first. 

My 21st Century Skills List

I think there are 6 fundamental skills we need to develop for success in this or any other century. I would also argue that we are not nearly as good at these skills as we think we are. 

In no particular order, my 6 21st Century skills are:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Asking Questions
3. Empathic Listening
4. Authentic Conversation
5. Reflection
6. Seeking and working with multiple perspectives

Let's take a closer look.

1. Self-Awareness

We humans can be amazingly robotic. And by that I mean responding to commands and conditions without really questioning what we are doing or why we are doing it. This habit of going through life without really being aware of our own internal motivations, mental and emotional habits, assumptions and belief systems is remarkably common and remarkably damaging. 

The first and most fundamental skill we need to develop is the ability to look inside to see how we respond to the external world. What are our values systems, assumptions and mental models? What strengths and gifts do we need to bring into the world? What are our habitual blind spots? What are our insecurities, vulnerabilities and sore points? 

All of these aspects of ourselves, when they are unexamined and unacknowledged, contribute in major ways to our ability to function in the world. The more aware we are of our own mental and emotional processes, the more skilled we will be in all other areas. 

2. Asking Questions

I agree with Seth Godin that as adults, it is often stunning how few questions we ask. I'm not sure why. Maybe we think we know the answers already. Or maybe we just lose our sense of curiosity and wonder about the world. 

What I do know is that our ability to ask good questions is critical to success, not only professionally but in our personal lives as well. And it's a skill we have to cultivate and refine, because the questions we ask will frame the solutions we find. 

We first need to re-learn the practice of questioning, period. Too often we accept what we are told, without going any further.

We also need to learn how to ask different kinds of questions--important questions, positive questions, reflective questions. We need to carefully cultivate and nurture our curiosity and use it to keep asking "why?," how?" and "what if?"

We need to look at how we ask questions, when we ask them and what kinds of questions we ask. Developing our ability to question, rather than to simply accept what is, is the foundation of growth and development. It is also at the heart of creativity and innovation. 

3. Empathic Listening

Stephen Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that we should "first seek to understand." He calls this empathic listening and it is the most difficult form of listening for us to cultivate.  It is not waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can relate your story.  It is not listening to find places where you agree or disagree. It is something much deeper than that: 

The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it's that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.

Empathic listening involves much more than registering, reflecting, or even understanding the words that are said. Communications experts estimate, in fact, that only 10% of our communication is represented by the words we say. Another 30 percent is represented by our sounds, and 60% by our body language. In empathic listening, you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.

Raise your hand if you regularly engage in this form of listening. I know I don't, but that when I do, amazing things happen as a result. (See this excerpt for more on empathic listening) 

4. Authentic Conversation

Creating the space for authentic, meaningful conversations is one of the most valuable skills we can develop. Last week I wrote about moving from being a hero to being a host and when I talk about authentic conversation, I mean our ability to act as a host and participant in deep, authentic discussions.

Conversations are how we learn and how we do our work. They are how we identify and solve problems and how we build collaboration and community. The capacity to create and hold the space for authentic discussion is under-valued and much needed in work and in our personal lives. 

Self-awareness, questioning and empathic listening all contribute to our ability to engage in authentic, meaningful conversation. But there are other related skills and strategies we must employ. 

Our ability to host and engage in authentic discussions is critical for success in and out of work. 

5. Reflection

On one level, the ability to reflect on your actions and work could be considered part of self-awareness. However I see reflective practice as something related, but separate. Self-awareness is one thing we can develop through and as part of our reflective practices, but reflection also is a skill that can help us develop more technical expertise, too. 

Reflection is both an internal, introspective process, as well as a social one. Reflection can happen alone or in groups. It can happen while we are in the midst of action, as well as after the fact.

Reflective practice helps us learn from experience and use our failures and mistakes as fodder for development, rather than for self-flagellation and blame. Reflective practitioners know what they don't know and can devise experiments and activities to help them continue developing.

The ability to adapt to ever-changing and more complex environments is directly related to our capacity to effectively reflect on what we do and how we do it. 

6. Seeking and Working with Multiple Perspectives

Homophily--our human tendency to connect to people like ourselves--is both a blessing and a curse. It's important for us to find and connect to our tribes, yes. But we also benefit from our ability to seek out and work effectively with a diversity of perspectives and frames of reference. This is even more true in a global economy.

I've written before about combating homophily and even as I've become increasingly aware of the negative impact of connecting to only those people who share my perspectives, I still find it difficult to intentionally create space for working with multiple viewpoints. Like most people, I tend to see people who have a different worldview as being "others." I either want to convert them to my own viewpoint or ignore them, neither of which is beneficial. 

As a 21st century skill, I think we have to look at not only how we listen to and engage with people who see the world differently, we also need to look at the strategies we use to find and connect with them in the first place. How intentional are we about diversifying our networks? How effective are we? And more importantly, how willing are we to be shaped and influenced by these differences? 

 

From a career perspective, I think it is these 6 skills that offer the most "bang for your buck." They are the skills needed for success in all aspects of our lives (not just at work) and they are core to most other skillsets. 

As I think about 2012 and how I want to develop myself, it is these core areas that I will focus on. What do you think? How do these skills resonate with you? And what are you doing to develop them? 

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Are You the Cause or the Effect?

Accountabilty is the willingness to acknowledge that we have participated in creating, through comission or ommision, the conditions that we wish to see changed. Without this capacity to see ourselves as cause, our efforts become either coercive or wishfully dependent on the transformation of others. 

Community will be created the moment we decide to act as creators of what it can become. This requires us to believe that this organization, neighborhood, community is mine or ours to create. This will occur when we are willing to ask the question "How have I contributed to the current reality?" Confusion, blame and waiting for someone else to change are a defense against ownership and personal power. 

                    --Peter Block, Civic Engagment and the Restoration of Community

One of the most challenging practices I've been engaging in this year is asking myself "How have I contributed to the current reality?" Another way to ask the question is:

What have I done to contribute to the very thing I complain about or want to change? 

I've found that repeatedly trying to answer this question is both empowering and ego-threatening. It's also well worth continuing to ask. 

It's empowering because it puts the power for changing the situation into my own hands, rather than having it rely on getting someone else to change. It gives me another avenue into figuring out how I can create a new situation or dynamic. 

At the same time, it is ego-threatening because it invites me to consider the ways in which I am all the things I complain about the most. How am I apathetic or not present or too focused on problems or constantly complaining about what's wrong? How often am I critical, refusing to challenge my own world view, listening poorly and pushing my own agenda?  

When it comes to career and work life, I've found that too easily, I can embrace the idea that bad situations are created by other people. I am the victim or else the savior, riding in to save the day. Either way, I am on one side of the situation and everyone else is on the other side. This "me vs. them" dynamic can be very damaging.

Forcing myself to see how I co-create the very things I want to change, though, has given me another way to be.  It is teaching me to be more understanding and compassionate of where other people may be coming from. Not that I'm always able to feel this understanding, but when I can, it has shifted my interactions. 

More importantly, it consistently reminds me that I must be clear about what I want more of and that I must embody those things in my interactions with people and situations where I want to see change.  I can't control what other people do, but I can bring more of what I want to create change. 

For example, a few weeks ago, I asked where the meaningful conversations are at work. Since I asked that question, I've been looking at the ways that I have created situations where meaningless conversations continue. How much work do I put into crafting questions that help people go deeper? How am I expanding my skills and tools so that I create the space and opportunity for those kinds of conversations? How does my own inertia, sense of helplessness, difficulties with conflict and discomfort with being in a place where there are no clear answers contribute to these situations? 

This question--how am I contributing to the situation I want to change?--has been one of my most powerful tools in shifting my understanding of how I fit into any situation. Not only can I see the negative ways in which I contribute, I also become accountable for finding the positive strategies I can use to shift the conversations. 

This question is critical to my reflective practice. Although challenging to ask and answer, it's been well worth the effort. 

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Career Clarity Camp starts January 9. Info on the Camp and the sign-up form are here.