Curiosity killed the cat!

But it certainly doesn't kill your career.

For me curiosity is about wanting to know more. Wanting to learn. Wanting to develop. Being fascinated to get to understand something with more depth. To seek out and explore the new and exciting and learn something that is different from your own experience.

It's knowing that the more you know, the less you know. That as much as you learn there is always more you don't know.

I'm not talking about the curiosity of your standard 5 year old. I'm living with one at the moment and it's driving me nuts!

"Aiden please don't drive that train on the wall! Why Mummy?"

"Aiden put your shoes on please! Why Mummy?"

"Mummy? Why does the train go on the train tracks?" Arrrggghhh!!!!

Curiosity is not asking why. Well sometimes it is, but its more about wanting to understand more. Using "why" can create defensiveness. It puts the person in  a place to explain and defend. It can put people on the back foot.  Curiosity is genuine and interested.

Of course retaining some 5 year old curiosity is probably a good thing. It's certainly making me think about how I explain things!

The fantastic Colin Pidd, who I have had the pleasure of working with over a number of years and at a number of companies, uses the term "tell me more about that". It's great. It doesn't create defensiveness and tells people that you are genuinely interested in what they are saying. It's not demanding. It's gentle and aimed at understanding - getting to a common understanding and purpose. I try to remember to use as much as possible.

There are times when it's easier to notice a lack of curiosity. The Manager who rings me up to abuse me over a car for his team member - when he hadn't asked the right questions of his employee. The Senior leader who travelled a couple of times to a country to  review business results and on asking, said he hadn't learnt anything new after his first trip. The developing leader who doesn't have conversations widely to gain input and understand different opinions before making decisions.

We have all made these mistakes. Sometimes we felt like complete fools when we haven't asked enough questions or even asked the obvious! Being curious requires an open mindset. It requires you to be OK with who you are and what you do and requires a bit of bravery. It can be tough.

Being curious is also a good trait when receiving feedback

When things are not going well for me and I'm feeling stressed and frustrated, I lose my curiosity. I don't know where it goes but it gets replaced with certainty. There is no flexibility with certainty. No empathy and no ability to learn. Certainty, while a place that can be comfortable and even give a permanent feeling is not a place of openness and creativity. Certainty is not where I want to be.

What about you? When were you last truly curious? When did you put yourself in a place of openess and learning? What could it do for your career?

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. Never lose a holy curiosity." Albert Einstein

Fun at work

What? Huh? Fun did you say? At work? Yeah baby!

You know work doesn't need to be all that serious. Sometimes I work on quite serious things but if I couldn't have a little fun sometimes, well what would be the point?

How does this fun come about? Well I work with some great people with very funny senses of humour. There seems to be something in the culture. I get to travel and interact with a wide range of people on a wide range of issues and I have a husband who likes to make fun of what he calls the "cast" at my work. Sometimes he says he is familiar with the "characters" when I'm trying to tell him about my day. Hardly helpful but it makes me laugh. He has only met a couple of my work colleagues.

There is also a very corporate type team at work who are generally very serious and risk adverse who love playing practical jokes on each other and other people in the organisation. I LOVE hearing about their antics. So unexpected and naughty in a relatively conservative organisation!

Have you ever done one of those value assessment type questionnaires? I have a few times and the value of fun comes out loud and clear for me. I don't expect every day to be a riot of fun or a circus but if I don't get a bit of fun every now and then well, I'd be looking for somewhere else to be.

For me fun is just not about having a laugh at the water cooler, it's also about getting to work on things you love doing and having autonomy. I love helping developing leaders and I get to do this. I love blogging and I get to do this. I have even been able to encourage them to blog as well. A couple of our leaders have no idea what the point of blogging is but it's been fun seeing their discomfort! Some have even been humorous in their writing and learnt to write in their own voice. Love that.

There is also fun challenge in working on news things, learning new knowledge and working through complex issues. Mostly I love my job and mostly it's fun

So, on another public holiday in Australia, tell me about what's fun for you at work? Anything?

Lisa xx

Employability

A few weeks ago I received an invitation to talk about "employability" to a group of final year university students. I was pretty chuffed and have crossed off another of my 2014 goals -"Speak/present at 3 different events during the year, either on improving your career, being a full time working mum who travels a lot or something HR related." I have now spoken at 2 events which is pretty cool!

Employability - the ability to get employed, is a pretty hot topic for students. It can be hard to secure that first role when you effectively have no experience and no idea how the degree, which you have worked hard for, will translate into the workplace. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I finished my first degree and certainly no idea how I was going to get a job to go with it.

The thing is, the stuff I spoke about to these students applies to anyone, in particular if you are trying to change the focus of your career. This is what I spoke about:

How important is your degree? 

Well it is and it isn't. It's SO important and also not so much. How does this work? A tertiary qualification is a great thing to have in that it shows you can stick at something, juggle priorities, think critically and argue your point, present, and hopefully write well. All good things. However a degree without any kind of work experience can be a bit empty.

I've done quite a long post on this topic, which you can read about here.

What is your purpose?

I have written a bit about this topic. Do you understand your why? and Working out your purpose: 3 ways

The thing is though, do students finishing their undergraduate degree know what they want to do with their career? The question was asked of the group I presented to and around a third did. Great. Awesome. Not sure I believe them but great, awesome. Of course there are some people who know at 16, 18 and 20 what their passion and purpose is, but really, I think that's pretty rare.

So for those who don't know your purpose, I think that's pretty normal. I think you need a bit of life experience to work this out. You need to have worked in a few crappy jobs (even to work out what you don't want to do) and learnt a bit more about yourself. If you have been in the workforce for a bit the only way to work out what you think you want to do is to try lots of things, think about what makes you happy and what doesn't, and get some feedback. Hop to it!

Developing your skills

If you don't know your purpose and someone has told you that your degree may not be that important (me) what do you do? Well get a job. Some sort of job. Particularly if you haven't worked during your degree. I reckon working is better than not working, even if you are doing something you don't love. The trick is to understand what you can learn from that job. When I finished my undergraduate degree I took at job in retail. I knew that I didn't want to work in retail long term but I was lucky enough to be offered a place in the company management development program. I thought that would be a good experience and it was. I also knew that retail would help me develop communication skills, conflict management skills and I would have an income while I worked out what I really wanted to do. 

When developing skills it's also important to think about breadth and depth in your career. Experiences in different size organisations and in roles that give you experiences across organisations and also deep in a particular area, are great for your career.

Social media: friend or foe?

I love social media, as many people do. Tools such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more, help us to stay connected, inspire and keep us informed. However......when trying to get that coveted first job out of uni, or the next step in our career, social media may not be your friend.

When helping managers recruit people into their team, they are sometimes tempted to do some extra research. Privacy legislation says we can only collect information on candidates that is relevant to the role we are recruiting for. In this context, checking out someone's Linkedin profile is OK. Trawling through their Facebook page, is not.

My advice is make sure your Linkedin profile is complete, up-to-date and presents you in the most professional light. Use a high quality photo, preferably taken by an actual photographer (not your friend using an iPhone) and have it cropped so it looks good on Linkedin. A head and shoulders shot is your best bet. Photos taken "out on the town" while you were drinking cocktails (where you have cropped out most of the person with their arm around you ) is NOT appropriate for Linked in. Just saying. 

What else?.....lock down your other social media accounts if they contain photos and information that is not relevant to your job or career. What I mean is, find the privacy setting and make sure only people you let see your profile can see it. Maybe you don't have anything too exciting on your Facebook page: what you ate for lunch; how many km's you walked today...but think about it from an employers point of view (who shouldn't be looking at your page but they will). I don't do anything exciting on social media but I probably follow some people and businesses that my employers may not want to be associated with. Think about it. 

Lisa xx

We're all walking on quick sand

"We're so stupid if we think we can control,

 All the dark matter in this black hole. 

It's going to pull us under if we don't let go, 

We're all walking on quick sand".

This is a line from a Delta Goodroom song "God Laughs". It's a song she wrote about her parents marriage split but I think it applies to life in general, and certainly life in big organisations.

So what made me think of this song? It's fair to say there has been some change going on at work. Most of this change over the past 18 months I have been involved with, with our leadership team. Being in control of the change, while difficult, is often easier than being part of the group of employees who have had the change inflicted on them. I'm sure you agree.

The most recent changes has got many of the team I work in, unsettled and unsure. There is a feeling of things being temporary and ambiguous . What's going to happen next? If that can happen to that person, it could happen to me too! Some of the changes have shown the way in the organisation and highlighted opportunity. Other changes have been perceived very negatively. This is normal.

I have been surprised by my own reactions and those of the leadership team. I somehow expected that experienced and well seasoned leaders would be better equipped to deal with change. But people are people no matter the age or experience. We all feel unsettled by change, by things happening which we didn't expect and things we don't want to happen. We wish things to be different or to stay the same.

I have spoken before about how often I come across people that want certainty and stability in their lives, their work and careers. Many want to know that when they go to work each day, they know what their job is, they know where they get to sit and they don't need to learn anything new. I find this somewhat unrealistic and hard and.... well, a bit sad.

But what do you do when you are in the middle of unsettling and upsetting change? What do you do when everything seems temporary and nothing seems certain?

1. There is always something not changing (I hope). For example, if work is upsidedown, how is home? Is it stable at the moment? What about your family and friends? Are they still there? It's important to maintain connections that remain stable in times of change. Seek these people out. They should help you keep things in perspective.
2. Even at work, if things are seeming a little ambiguous, there will be other things that are not. You still need to deliver on your plans, deliver to your goals, sell what needs to be sold, deliver on the strategy, even if these things are short term. Identifying the things that remain the same and focusing on these are really important. Particularly if you are a leader.
3. EXERCISE! I bang on this a bit. I'm not a fitness freak I just think that exercise makes a massive difference to how we feel about our world. Wrote a post here about keeping your mind fit. If there is ever a time when you need to keep your mind fit it's during a time of change. When I found out about a recent change that effected me I walked every day for a week! 
4.  Reflect on where you want your career to be. Has the change derailed this? If it has are there other things you can learn that you didn't expect? Not long after I moved to Sydney I completed a leadership program. It came at just the right time with a coach as part of the program. This coach had some great little techniques for dealing with stuff. One that relates to change which I use on myself and talk to others about is - even if you are not where you want to be and may be struggling a bit, make a deal with yourself about how much time you will stay in the same situation. Work out the things you are going to learn and pick a date to review. When you get to that point in time, things will have either improved or you can decide to do something else. At least you gave it a chance.
5. Get networking. This is helpful in creating connections that may help with your career, and helpful to understand that most organisations are going through uncertainty and change. Many industry organisations hold professional networking events that help people connect. Is it time you built up your network?