If you aren’t feeling authentic at work, not being completely honest with yourself could sacrifice your biggest chances for a better career. You may well believe that if you honestly presented who you truly are at your job, there could be negative repercussions: people wouldn’t like you, you might be less effective at your responsibilities, your true talents and strengths wouldn’t be a good fit. In any demanding career, you will reach burnout more quickly if your purpose is out of alignment; a high degree of excellence will seem hollow, and achievements will not be fulfilling. Your morale and motivation will be low, and career solutions will be difficult to make.

Jon Snodgrass, the author of Follow Your Career Star: A Career Quest Based on Inner Values,  stresses that work which is not personally satisfying “reflects a basic conflict you have with yourself.” Many people function for lengthy periods of time in this condition. But why? What is keeping people from having a better career, and a better life?

Sociological experts (harkening back to Miller and Form’s Industrial Sociology, ) note that Google era ideas about work are still rooted in a belief structure that developed out of Puritanism. The Puritans valued and believed God bestowed favor via success (money and property) from hard work. The way to God’s favor, therefore, was through industrious labor and thrift with financial assets. The worker acted, in the Puritanical mind, as a fiduciary of God’s grace through deeds, secondary to strong faith.

There was very little room for self-actualization in the Puritans’ duty-based value system. Instead, disciplined conformance was exacted with public, criminal punishments when these expectations were not met. If you were a vagrant, or a shirker, or disregarded the ethical standard in some other way, you could expect swift consequences, including dunking, placement in stocks, whipping, and banishment. Such strict edicts would have a lasting effect on society, creating entire communities of individuals who outwardly conformed, and repressed their personal feelings in favor of those that were more acceptable.

From Balancing Your Life – Executive Lessons for Work, Family and Self, we learn that the main repercussion a repressive environment can have on an individual’s autonomy is a sense of guilt when expectations are not met. If left unresolved, this conflict between “what I am, who I want to be, can leave one well into adulthood with a sense of guilt over having inclinations that differ” which pervades in every milieu. Self-censorship then becomes the fallback position. We present a false façade in order to minimize the disapproval (punishment) we anticipate because of the differences we perceive in ourselves when compared with expectations.

The author of Balancing Your Life points out the differences between living inside-out, where a person can confidently express who they are, and outside-in, where a person hesitates to do so:

In my experience, people vastly underestimate the degree to which they live outside-in. This is good in part, since we need a willingness to conform to create a viable society. But if we live too much outside-in, we lose our individuality and our capacity not only to lead but to live our own lives and to manage our careers. If you began life with a basic distrust or were unable to develop a sense of initiative, you are probably living largely outside-in — and living with large doses of guilt and self-absorption. If you can resolve those issues and realize that only you can really take control of your life, perhaps you can increase the degree to which you live inside-out and learn to live less in the shadow of issues unsatisfactorily resolved when you were younger.

When seeking career solutions, this hesitation and repression manifests into more longer term indecision. Dependency upon others to decide for us, whether it be other persons or the expectations of a society as a whole such as the one the Puritans developed, can inflate anxiety and low self-confidence. This perfect storm can so repetitively derail one’s career that it may seem safer to leave it permanently in the station.

In Indecisiveness and High School Students’ Career Decision-Making Process: Longitudinal Associations and the Mediational Role of Anxiety (Journal of Counseling Psychology Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association 2006, Vol. 53, No. 4, 397– 410), the authors found that the inability to make a decision is a risk factor for future coping. Even when indecisive people make a choice, they are less committed to it. This, the authors believe, is because they are “overly concerned with making mistakes.” Instead, indecisives doubt they have enough information, and will delay a decision while they explore and seek more. Career progress past a certain point is doomed: transition into a leadership role may occur, but performance will be sub-par. You cannot lead if you cannot decide.

Seth Godin elaborates on this need to be mistake-free in a post entitled Self-Truth and the Best Violinist in the World :

The quest for technical best is a form of hiding. You can hide from the marketplace because you’re still practicing your technique. And you can hide from the hard work of real art and real connection because you decide that success lies in being the best technically, at getting a 99 instead of a 98 on an exam. . . Until we’re honest with ourselves about what we’re going to master, there’s no chance we’ll accomplish it.

Michelle Phillips, in the Beauty Blueprint, as quoted in Eliza Fayle’s review, defines being honest with yourself as “an invitation to be authentic,” as opposed to being overly critical. Indeed, beating yourself up over past mistakes or character flaws does nothing to begin the process of applying career solutions. Instead, the more practical approach is to evaluate the current circumstances by getting real with an assessment of how they align with one’s true self. Other observers have characterized the mid-life crisis as inevitable. It’s the culmination of the disparity between the authentic self and the conventional pathway followed since youth.

This disparity doesn’t need to exist, much less continue. A reality check is the first step.

A simple process by which you might focus on the things which mean the most to you is recommended by Marelisa Fabrega of the Abundance Blog: “Identify those five things which will allow you to say on your deathbed, ‘I’ve lived a successful life.’ ” Matching up those values with creative enthusiasm will lead you to the most meaningful characteristic people who find their true vocations have in common: “Fit.”

When work fits with interests and temperament, as well as values, work product reaches a higher quality, and a better career ensues. We access more dedication and commitment when things feel right at work. We’re more enthusiastic and tenacious, and, generally, the paycheck’s importance wanes in the face of these more intangible compensations. Marrying an ethic of service to the ability to transform a creative thought into an enterprise creates a magical sweet spot for successful entrepreneurs and higher level employees.

Tuning into a value structure is the first key element in getting real. Your values will provide the inspiration to begin a new venture and stick with it for more meaningful growth and career solutions. All of this requires an honest reality check:

Who are you? What is important to you? What are your strengths and personal challenges? How would changing what you do impact your life and your career growth? Is there room for greater business focus? At the end of your life, would you regret not being able to make that change?

Where do you see yourself on the need for money spectrum? Can you get by on less? Would you be able to exchange emotional gratification for financial compensation? J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly recommends you “set goals that help you reach your dreams, use methods that draw on your strengths, and define success in a way that reflects your values.”

What commercial form does your passion take? Can you turn it into paying work? Will this require you to seek employment, or are you compelled to start your own business?

Have you shared these thoughts with those who are important to you? If not, why not?

These can be tough questions for anyone to answer. But they’re imperative if you’re going to be getting real by defining your true avocation and matching it to career solutions. Choosing to include your strengths and personal passions into forming a meaningful, better career will be one of the most rewarding decisions you will make. If you’re not on this path, you can take the first step now to bridging the distance between your current work and a transformative decision that will reap higher rewards.

Related articles

• Getting Real: How an Honest Reality Check will Improve Your Life (passingthru.com)
• History too kind to Puritans’ brutal intolerance (alwaysquestionauthority.wordpress.com)
• Through a Glass, Grimly Part 5 (passingthru.com)

A Reality Check Delivers Career Solutions is a post from: Passing Thru

What exactly is going on?

Everyone is concerned and worried about the economy, not just in the U.S., but throughout the world.  Whistling past the graveyard of commerce and employment as usual, while necessary to maintain momentum and optimism, also belies the severity of consequences that remain unseen in the fog obscuring our future path.  The facts are clouded by rhetorical flourish, contrarian and seemingly arbitrary markets, dueling predictors, and ideological failure.

What appears to be emerging out of the mist and the mystifying is this:  no one really has a clue.

So, at approximately 2:20 into this clip, we hear that there was an inconceivably massive electronic run on our money supply – $550 billion “in the matter of an hour or two.”  By whom? No mention. In response, the Feds injected a little coagulation against their estimate that, if left unchecked, this event would have escalated to over $5.5 trillion by the middle of the afternoon.  This would have collapsed the economy of the United States, and subsequently, within 24 hours, the world’s.  “It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.” Got that?

Later on, Kanjorski admits that no one really knows how to stanch the wound, that the $700 billion bailout was the “cheapest way” to attempt to prop up banks outside of buying their bad assets.  However, since additional assets have been in freefall, we “are no better off than we were.” So, not only has there been a massive injury, but organ failure has ensued.

Subsequent to the run, we’ve had an election with decisive results, and the majority in the House of Representatives has crafted legislation the likes and size of which we have never seen to deal with our economic issues.  The Senate has passed its own version, presumably without some of its members even taking the slightest look into the 100+ page document:

Hey, what’s with all the extras, the earmarks, the pork?

Well, technically, it’s true that there are no earmarks in the Senate bill, as President Obama (testily?) reminded us the other night.  Instead, appropriations such as $2 billion for a clean coal power plant, $10 million for urban canals, $2 billion for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrid cars, $5.5 billion to green up Federal buildings, $198 million to refurbish the Department of Homeland Security headquarters, and $255 million for a Polar ice-breaker are amendments, not earmarks.

So, these amendments alone, not all of them,are just a little bit under the $10 billion or so that it was so hard to hand the auto companies.  Huh.  We’re wondering if we could amend our family grocery cart with a few additional items between check-out and the parking lot?  Or, if we could amend the understanding we have with our young adult children to include a variable litmus with respect to their decision-making?  We could probably amend to our hearts’ content. And not have happy responses to our amendments.

But hey, perhaps we should just relax, and not sweat the small stuff:

Where is all the precedent, and what do the experts say?

From Nobel Prize in Economics winner to man on the street, it’s anyone’s guess how this all is going to turn out.  Keynes: debunked.  Greenspan: caught on tape admitting he didn’t foresee the mess. Morgenthau, and the Japanese Central Bank, both of whose failed policies appear to have been harkened back to in the preparation of this apoplectically gargantuan intervention in all facets of our social and economic fabric, ignored.  Do we really want government responsible again for what could be a lost decade of growth?  If so, spend on!  Economists don’t seem to be staying on board.

All Hands on Deck!

The U.S.S. Clueless is certainly taking on an enormous amount of water. On the bridge and below decks there is frantic activity to repair the steering mechanism and the bilge is crankin’.  Up top, where we anxious passengers are grouped, the lifeboats appear to be so overloaded that they can’t possibly be seaworthy.  Is it possible, though, that our mother ship could limp along to shore if most of the hapless passengers assigned themselves some tasks and just simply got to work?  Do we need a rescue flotilla comprised of tugs, junks, dinghys and destroyers?  Or maybe just a few helicopters?  We don’t really know, do we?

We can only look to what’s happened when sister ships have foundered. As such, the current strategy on the table doesn’t appear to have a successful precedent, encompasses far too much unrelated spending on social engineering and pet projects, and encumbers our children and their children with a greater debt load than the world has ever seen.

It seems to us that this isn’t the trip we signed up for, and no one knows how the boat works.

Related reading:

• 5 Reasons Why the Economy Might Recover Faster Than You Think (usnews.com)
• Obama heads to heartland to stump for stimulus (cnn.com)

RUSH TO JUDGEMENT? WHAT’S THE HURRY? ARE ALL HANDS ON DECK? is a post from: Passing Thru

Wisconsin Historical Society

It used to be you worked for the same company for pretty much your entire working life.  You exchanged your loyalty for a pre-set tenure.  In the auto industry, it was “30 and out.”  You worked in the plant for 30 years, like many of my relatives, and then you collected your pension and other retirement benefits.

It has been difficult to watch the working men and women awaiting the congressional decision that will seal their fate.  Any one of them could be my father or my cousin.  “As GM goes, so goes the nation.”  The bargain made with the companies by so many depends upon reciprocal loyalty.  What is owed to them who worked for so long in good faith?  It’s a tough question in the light of devastating corporate financial liabilities.

Loyalty comes in many guises.  Loyalty is woven into venues where relationships are paramount.  Fred Reichheld, who wrote The Loyalty Effect, established an economic case for loyalty, with metrics illustrating how a relationship is strengthened when an investment or personal sacrifice is made.  To simmer and cook well, loyalty needs trust as an ingredient.  Its mutation or lack altogether is at the crux of breakdown.

Photo by d4vidbruce

In business, customer and employee loyalty is the key to longevity in the marketplace.  There is good business in assessing and cultivating stronger relationships by using tactics such as rewards programs and contact strategies.  Relationship managers are springing up in companies that formerly relied upon salespeople or customer service representatives.  Does it really have to be this deliberate?  Couldn’t or shouldn’t this interaction be a little more natural?

It’s tempting to mistake long term relationships for loyalty when other factors, such as inertia or competition, might be at play.  We’ve wondered about political relationships, too.  In the Bush administration, loyalty played a key, and sometimes detrimental, role.  Scott McClellan, Scooter Libby, and former FEMA Head Michael Brown come to mind.

Jacob Weisberg, writing in Slate Magazine, recently asserted that loyalty is the most overrated virtue in politics.  (Is there any virtue in politics, we wondered?)  Weisberg believes loyalty is “a relic from the age of patronage, when political appointments were tied to the delivery of votes for a sponsor.”  Thinking back upon the days where an employee spent his entire career with one company, an aspect of subservience seems present there:  Our parents, coming out of the Great Depression, felt lucky to have a job, and did everything they were asked and could do to retain it.  The employer held their fate, much in the way the overlord held the serf’s.

Photo by Piero Sierra

A commenter on Weisberg’s article wrote “Loyalty when used in politics, is transient in nature, and usually to a particular cause or principle, rather than a person or even a party.”  Some politicians may have valued loyalty over competence. Truman’s Loyalty Oath of 1947 provided for an investigation conducted by the Civil Service and the FBI.  There was a Loyalty Review Board and even a Master Index that referenced the inquiries into the backgrounds of government employees.

Is “loyal opposition” an oxymoron? In Truman’s day, in the midst of the Cold War, it would have appeared to have been so.  “Blind loyalty” appears to be more feared in our time. Weisberg admires those who can generate loyalty without seeming to care much about it, citing Bill Clinton, who as “famously untrue to everyone,” had an adaptability that ensured his political longevity.

Weisberg looks to Reagan, Roosevelt and even Herbert Hoover, as further examples, believing if you’re confident in your vision, you don’t need the insularity that surrounding yourself with loyalists brings.  However, one of our most isolated Presidents, Lyndon Johnson, might belie this theory.  LBJ famously kept J. Edgar Hoover in his job saying, “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”  Does pragmatism trump loyalty in keeping your enemies closer?

What triggers disloyalty? Greed, mistrust, an entire host of catalysts.  Many are the multi-million dollar tell-all book deals made when loyalty is abandoned.  A disappointment in someone’s character triggered mine.  Years ago I worked for a personal injury lawyer who attempted to re-negotiate his fee for a higher payout when a case settled for millions of dollars more than he anticipated.  During a meeting with the client, I quietly shook my head when she looked at me questioningly when he floated the idea.  I left his employ shortly after, and I have never regretted it.

Photo by mamuso

How detrimental would disloyalty be to someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it? Jacob Weisberg seems to think Obama pays attention to other things than how loyal his appointments and staffers are.  I tend to disagree with that assessment.

It’s hard not to believe Obama is just as concerned with loyalty as his immediate predecessor has been.  After all, there’s that 60+ page questionnaire that’s floating around.  It’s paramount to present a united front in a new Administration that could be under criticism for lack of experience in its Chief Executive. And, it’s only a matter of time before someone decides to cash in on proximity to the Office of the President.

When the potential for disloyalty in any relationship is high, do we assess the risk?

What part does the potential for loyalty play in today’s Human Resource function?

How loyal do we expect our employees, friends and family to be?

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LOYALTY is a post from: Passing Thru

Campaign promises made aren’t always promises kept. In the beginning days of our nation, strict Constitutionalist Thomas Jefferson called for reduced executive powers and an austere reduction in spending to reduce the leftover national debt from the Revolutionary War.  Yet, when it became time to purchase vast lands in the west from Napoleon Bonaparte (who was in the midst of financial difficulties arising in part from campaign promises, himself) in 1803, Jefferson suddenly became an imperialist. Newly devoted to Empire, Jefferson spearheaded the Louisiana Purchase.

Photo by Pete Wuebker

Woodrow Wilson promised that the United States wouldn’t become involved in the conflict of World War I, but five years later, in his second term, we did.  LBJ told us no American soldiers would set foot in Vietnam in 1965.  The previous year he vowed we would win the War on Poverty.  George H.W. Bush famously told us, “Read my lips.  No new taxes.”  Yet, tax us he did.

It seems as though campaign promises are tacitly understood to be flexible in their execution and interpretation.  While campaigns are active, it’s journalistic sport to tally the cost of what is promised.  Recently, news outlets reported that the nation couldn’t afford either of the 2008 Presidential candidates proposals, even before we were officially declared in a recession.  Where were the billions in spending proposals going to come from?  Certainly not entirely from cuts in government bureaucracy, although it may frequently seem the government is bloated enough to provide that amount.

Candidates routinely excoriate the proposals of the other, and bat the financials across the net while we sit as spectators, wagging our heads back and forth, eyes glazing over.  Finally, we pull the lever in the hopes that some benefit would emerge in the list of issues and solutions, which generally require more spending rather than less.

Once the verdict is tallied, the real fun begins.  The period between election and inauguration is filled with breathless speculation and review.  Already we are told that Obama has backtracked on certain promises, citing change in conditions (the windfall profits tax on oil companies – kaput), pragmatism (former lobbyists are now seen to have the necessary experience to get things done in Washington, instead of vilified), and, arguably, change itself (lots of familiar faces are returning to D.C. after an 8 year absence).

Do people really vote for a candidate based upon what (s)he promises? This Presidential election demonstrated that they do, despite that promises are distorted, fabricated, and assigned by others to the candidates.  While it’s difficult to assert anything other than candidates will say what they need to in order to get elected, it’s equally difficult to predict what they actually will do when they take office.

While campaigns are high theatre with grandiosity and largesse, suddenly the new President is thrust into circumstances that require difficult decisions. Bill Bennett recently said Obama could be one of two things:  in it for the country or in it for himself, and Bill hoped for the latter.  Why?  Bill thinks that if Obama is in it for himself, i.e. looking forward to a second term – and all indications are he is aiming for precisely that, then he will make centrist choices instead of returning to his leftist roots.  Could be.  Who knows?

The cynical practice of knowingly promising what can’t be delivered is disturbing, we can all agree.  What about under-promising? It’s fairly certain great businesses were built upon under-promising and over-delivering.  Does keeping the message deliberately vague assist in this strategy?  Consider the Obama plan to “create or save 2.5 million jobs by 2011.”  Sounds good at first.  But, doesn’t that mean he wouldn’t really have to provide any new jobs as long as they weren’t being lost?

What about abandoning a promise? Ronald Reagan famously branded Russia an “Evil Empire,” yet moved to reduce nuclear weapons.  In Canada, Prime Minister Harper ignored his own commitment to fixed election dates, and called for an election outside of those parameters.  Douglas Waller, in Time Magazine, is of the opinion that political promises built upon “the shifting sands of the economy” should be broken, and is “nervous when a politician makes an ironclad promise.”

Sometimes abandoned promises are described as revisions in position.  Mitt Romney famously revised his position on abortion, as I recall.  The risk is being labeled a “flip-flopper,” where the change of heart is interpreted as merely politically expedient.  Is there room in politics for a thoughtful conversion?

We think the fulfilled campaign promise is endangered, on a quick road to total extinction. Certainly it’s rare when promises are kept and results are delivered.  Is this so rare that when it does occur the novelty propels a politician to greatness?

ENDANGERED SPECIES: THE FULFILLED CAMPAIGN PROMISE is a post from: Passing Thru

Image by Jeff Kubina via Flickr

I can barely write this post for emotion.  Today, I will go and vote.  My husband and I will go together.  Our polling place is a short walk down a tree-lined street from our home.  When I lived in Deephaven, it was another peaceful walk to an orderly polling place in a well-kept school.  For years, I took my children with me to vote.  While we waited together, we talked about how lucky we were as a nation to have the privilege of free elections, and what the cost had been to keep them free.  We talked about how people sacrifice in other countries just for the privilege of doing what we waited in a peaceful line to do, with smiling helpers, and friends and neighbors.  Now all five of Pete’s and my children are of voting age.  Our youngest two will be voting in their very first elections today.

I spoke with my son, whose 21st birthday is today, last night.  He was still undecided, but leaning.  He fervently wanted to make the best choice.  So, we talked about where he might get more information online, and different ways of looking at the whole that would arise out of voting for its parts.  I am proud of him.  It’s his vote, his decision to make.  He has an entire lifetime ahead of him to experience and learn from choices.

James Vellecott, AP

I think of the story I heard out of Fallujah from a U.S. Marine.  They were instructed to set up a polling place even though the city had been deserted by civilians during many weeks of battle with insurgents.  The tables were ready and guarded.  Hours passed and no one came.  Then appeared one man, alone.  He asked the interpreter if it was safe to vote, and was assured.  This one man lifted his arm, beckoning, and along the horizon, they showed themselves.  Hundreds of people, walking out of their desert hiding places, helping the old ones, with their children in hand, risking their lives, coming to vote.

Pete and I are heading into our autumn.  We’ve learned from the consequences of making reflex choices.  And we know that even out of what seems to be a not-so-good collective choice, a phoenix can arise.  So we have faith in the wisdom of the people, the foundation of our Constitution, and the goodness of our country.  We will take that short, peaceful walk, cast our vote, and be thankful.

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VOTE is a post from: Passing Thru