Shamwari

Shamwari

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate: An Aviator’s Guide to Life Change (Part 3 – Communicate)

By Leave a Comment

PictureI grew up in the back of this plane…
First you aviate (stay in control; fly the dang plane), then you navigate (get clear on where you need to go). Finally, you communicate.

A big deal in the air is to let people know your position and intentions, so as to avoid collisions or other undesirable interactions (like the controller over an Air Force Base telling you to make a 90 degree turn immediately to avoid being considered a hostile intrusion into their airspace!). It also helps Air Traffic Control to help you. All radio communications are as brief as possible, clear and repeated back to ensure understanding. 

We have clearance, Clarence. Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor?
— Cockpit crew in the movie Airplane.

Once you know where you’re going and how you plan to get there, commit to it. Part of committing is communicating it to others who will be joining you on the journey, can help you, hold you accountable and support you as you travel. This is even more critical if you are taking this opportunity to change direction and follow a different path to the one you just left. Writing down your destination and goals is a big component in accountability. I’ve heard of research that indicates people are more inclined to do something if they’ve written it down as a commitment. I know for a fact that when you do something that engages your body (like actually writing something down), it tends to be more “sticky”. It’s also a fabulous way to clarify your desired outcomes – write them down, share them with someone, don your alligator skin, then ask for feedback from mentors and/or coaches you respect and refine based on that… rinse & repeat. Until it is crystal clear and resonates to your core. You’ll know you’ve got that resonance when you all of a sudden can’t think about anything else; when your new path hangs in front of your eyes and you have to peer around it to see anything else.

Speaking of coaches and mentors – communicating includes asking for help! Your friends, family, former colleagues… indeed, your entire network is right there in front of you, so reach out and ask for what you need. If you’re moving into a new direction in your life, you may also need to invest in building your network. Don’t shudder at the thought of the dreaded “networking” activity – it’s really not that bad if you realize that all you’re doing is building community. Be reassured – real networking is a reciprocal connection activity, not a sleazy “get something from everyone I meet” thing. That’s its own post, so I’ll leave it at this for now: ideally you already have a well cultivated and reasonably extensive network of friends, acquaintances and colleagues online and/or offline. Start by re-connecting. Build on that by engaging and reciprocating (share information or knowledge you have, make introductions for others). And then, when you’ve established some credit as a bona fide community member, don’t be afraid to ask for assistance.

Asking for what you want can be tough – I’m not sure too many of us are all that great at it when we first get out there and start doing it. But, as the old saying goes, “if you don’t ask, you don’t get” so this is definitely a skill to master! One key here, as with giving feedback, is to take the emotional charge and “neediness” out of the request. Detatch emotionally from a “must have” outcome, simply make the request (politely, in a non-combative way and with a positive expectation) and then let it go. You’ll be surprised at how often people will respond in a helpful and affirmative way. If it’s hard for you to ask for what you want, start small with requests that don’t have a lot of emotional charge, and as you see results you’ll find it easier to ask bigger and bigger. This is part of setting and maintaining healthy boundaries too – if you can’t clearly articulate your intentions and requirements, you’re going to find people can’t respect them. Help others help you by communicating clearly.

Did you know that the words you use can actually have a tangible effect on your body and your trajectory for succes? Even our body language impacts our attitude and altitude! So be careful – what you consistently say and think to yourself becomes your reality. It’s a big deal. Be on the look out for negative or defeatist language and consciously choose to reframe things in a more constructive way. It’s a new habit you’ll need to develop, and building the neural paths to support it will require diligence and perseverance, but I can guarantee you that positively shifting your self talk will positively impact your outlook, concretely and emotionally. I’m not talking vapid, Pollyanna-type happy-happy-joy-joy here, I am saying you have a choice as to how you encode your reality. We tend to do that linguistically. Make good choices is all.

Communication Checklist

  • Say Heading: Commit and clarify – state your intentions.
  • Contact: Network! Remember it’s reciprocal.
  • Cleared for The Option: Ask for what you want and set healthy boundaries.
  • Say Again: Relentlessly monitor and adjust your self talk.

And then… Celebrate!

You took the controls, made good choices to keep the plane flying, decided on a route you wanted to take, and you made sure your intentions were communicated and help enlisted. Good piloting, Captain! Keep it up and enjoy the ride!

(do we really need a checklist for this?)

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate: An Aviator’s Guide to Life Change (Part 2 – Navigate)

By 1 Comment

PictureI grew up in the back of this plane…
Yesterday’s post talked about making sure you keep the plane flying immediately after an unplanned change in job status.  Today, we’ll talk about taking advantage of your situation to figure out where you really want to go next.

Navigating in the air requires that you know where you are and where you’re going (duh). That also entails knowing what airspace you are permitted to fly in and the requirements for those spaces, key waypoints or landmarks, as well as your current or planned airspeed and trajectory, and the factors that will influence that (head/tail/cross winds, drag factors including weight, fuel consumption rate etc.) While it’s important to use your calculations and (well calibrated) instruments, equally important is staying present and being aware of your surroundings by (another duh) looking outside the cockpit, so you can make necessary adjustments to stay on path. When flying straight and level in smooth conditions, it’s easy to get complacent and operate on a kind of auto pilot. The risk there is that you fail to adjust for changing conditions and drift off your path, which can get you into trouble. In an emergency, you still have to navigate – where’s the nearest airfield and can I make it there? If not, what is the terrain and where is the safest place to put down? You are fully present and aware, highly observant of opportunities.

If a person does not know to which port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him.
— Seneca, “ignoranti quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est.”

Back to your job situation. Assuming you’re “flying the plane” and a crash is not imminent, your next priority is to navigate a new route. This is where your opportunity lies! You’ve been given the chance to re-evaluate whether that flight path you were on was really where you wanted to go anyway, and to chart a whole new course if it wasn’t. The sky is huge, the possibilities pretty much limitless – grab this gift with both hands and make the most of it!

A key component in any navigation is a compass – making sure you’re aligned with the heading you want to take. Similarly, as you plot a new path, you will want to callibrate your inner compass so that you know where your own True North is. In my experience, most of the times people are unhappy in their careers, it comes down to a lack of clarity about, and alignment with, their core values. We just don’t tend to take the time to really think about these but so much unnecessary struggle (drag, if you will) is created when people are either not clear on their values, or we have conflicting values in play. When you get absolutely clear on your top values, ranked by priority, it’s amazing how easy it is to make decisions that align with those values – and all of a sudden, how much easier life gets! Where we are is the result of a constant and repetitive pattern of (mostly small) decisions in a specific direction. Knowing your “True North” allows you to head in the right direction, and regularly checking in with yourself to ensure you’re still in alignment with your values enables you to make small corrections to stay on track instead of waiting until a huge adjustment is necessary and then feeling stuck.

Once you’ve callibrated your navigational instrument (your values, using your intuition), you can then decide on a new destination and set goals (waypoints or landmarks) that will help you reach it, with regular check-ins and course corrections to keep you on track.

 

Navigation checklist:

  • Check winds aloft: Identify and prioritize your top “move towards” and “move away from” values.
  • Identify destination airfield: Clarify and articulate where you’re headed.
  • Identify terrain, airspace & weather: Chart your course, knowing what factors to take into consideration.
  • Identify waypoints: Set effective goals to reach your destination.
  • The sooner you get clarity and adjust your attitude (the position of your nose in relation to the horizon) upwards, the faster you’ll be back at cruising altitude!
  • Tip – investing in a good coach at this point can pay dividends, like having a co-pilot helping with the navigation.

Now that you have a clear idea of where you want to go, effective communication can help you get there. Check back in tomorrow, same bat channel.

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate: An Aviator’s Guide to Life Change (Part 1 – Aviate)

By 1 Comment

PictureI grew up in the back of this plane
First of all, thanks to all of you who shared and commented on last week’s post, I really do appreciate it.  There were some great and insightful comments and today I’d like to riff off some points made by a former colleague and mentor of mine, who noted that “real growth comes with dramatic change, even when that change is forced upon us”, and mentioned that, in his observation, people affected by corporate restructuring generally “have taken full advantage of the packages and benefits offered to them through the process. More importantly they have actually taken their careers forward, often choosing a new path they have desired but not acted on.”

I’m going to run with another analogy over the next few days, bear with me – let’s get out of the kitchen and into the cockpit for this one. As a fellow pilot, my Dad was always fond of reminding me about an aviator’s priorities at all times, and especially in an emergency: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate – in that order. As I think about the dramatic changes forced upon people who have been advised they are essentially surplus to requirements and no longer need turn up to work every day, Dad’s advice still resonates for me – here’s how:

Aviate – Affirmatively FLY that plane, whether it’s safely all the way to the ground or to an alternative destination.
Navigate – Using all your resources (compass, map, observation etc.) know where you want to go and how best to get there, including terrain and conditions you may encounter en route.
Communicate – Make sure people know what you’re doing and ask for what you need.

I’ve added another one at the end – Celebrate!! As a result of your flying skills and good choices, you and your passengers have successfully arrived at a destination. It may be different from the one you originally headed for, but you remained in charge of our craft and where you ultimately touched down. Congratulations, a celebration is in order!

“There’s more to life than being a passenger.”
– Amelia Earhart

Aviate (Fly the dang plane).
Whether that is to a safe emergency landing, an alternate destination or through different conditions to what were anticipated on the flight plan, your number one job is to stay in charge of your aircraft and to deliver yourself and your passengers safely to the ground (somewhere). So when you hear that fateful sputter of a lost engine, or some other unexpected circumstance ruins your plans for a smooth flight along your charted route, you immediately acknowledge your new reality (after running through some checks to determine whether you can re-start the engine and resume your original plan) and proactively manage the situation to achieve as safe and comfortable a landing as possible (any landing you walk away from is a good one at this point). That means identifying somewhere to land and managing your rate and angle of descent in a way that will get you there alive and with minimal damage to yourself, your passengers and your aircraft.

So, you’ve lost your job. Reel in shock for a while – it’s appropriate and, given that you have more than the seconds or minutes available in an aviation emergency nor have you had the necessary emergency procedures drilled into your head (who practices “what if I lose my job” scenarios? Although that’s probably not a bad idea, for those of you spared the ax this time), something you can take a little while to do. Acknowlede and grieve the loss of what was – that’s also appropriate, just don’t unpack and live in that state forever – because you still need to address whatever immediate threats loom, like rent or mortgage payments, keeping the pantry stocked, making sure your car has gas in the tank – in other words, you still need to fly the plane.

Granted, people laid off with a severance package have a bit more time up their sleeve (equivalent to a few thousand feet of altitude, in our plane analogy), but ultimately we all still need to keep that plane flying. So do what you need to do – whether that means making a budget to stretch your savings or severance money while you take your time with the next priority (navigate), taking an interim job to keep the wolves from the door, or learning to live on one income in your family for a little while. You want to address your basic survival needs before anything else.

Aviation checklist:

  • Check your fuel indicator: Do a budget and identify your fixed and critical expenses. How long can you stay aloft with your current resources?
  • Trim for best glide path: Eliminate any unnecessary spending and Talk to your creditors to see if you can skip payments on loans or if there is any assistance in debt consolidation etc.
  • Check hatches and harnesses: Take advantage of any outplacement services offered (if laid off).
  • Determine a location to touch down: Update your resume and identify all immediate income producing opportunities.

You’re in the pilot’s seat, Captain! I have every faith in your ability to keep us aloft. Tomorrow we’ll tackle the next priority: Navigate – deciding where you want to go and how you are going to get there. Keep flying!

Corporations are Refrigerators

By 23 Comments

PictureAs the Microsoft workforce around the world reels from the news that 18,000 of them will be looking for new jobs sooner rather than later, I am holding everyone who has been impacted in my heart and sending out the intention that this heralds new and exciting opportunities for all of them. Watching people’s reactions has reminded me of some key lessons I learned working in the corporate world, though, I hope they serve well.

I still remember the first time I had to tell someone, as a green 20-something HR Manager in a far-off Microsoft subsidiary, that their job no longer existed after a re-organization. It was heart breaking and a huge lesson to me. At the time I was an ambitious little beaver, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and prone to “forgetting” to be home for dinner because there was always something else at work that needed to be done. I saw the raw passion for the company and its mission everywhere I turned, and had subscribed wholeheartedly to the “cult-like culture” (see chapter 6 of “Built to Last” by by James Collins and Jerry Porras). So when I earnestly informed a senior leader of the subsidiary – someone almost twice my age, earning more than twice my salary, and with a decade or more of dedicated tenure – that his business unit was being eliminated and there simply wasn’t a job for him anymore, I certainly wasn’t prepared for the epiphany of his response.

This successful, suave, executive broke down. He was devastated, repeating “But I’ve given my LIFE to this company… What am I going to do now? This company is my LIFE..”  I was rendered speechless; reduced to offering tissues and repeating the comfortless availability of job search assistance.

Shortly after this, my father was laid off from his high-flying job as an executive helicopter sales professional. Again, devastation. A man, a serial entrepreneur and highly successful corporate employee, who hitherto had never indicated an understanding of the word “No”, reduced in his shock and depression to one question: “Who am I now?”

My worldview crumbled. Immutable laws of nature were suddenly questionable. I had to reframe my philosophy.

Here’s what I ended up with:

Don’t take personally the things corporations do.
Corporations, regardless of what the US Supreme Court says, are not people. They are not humans. They may be run and operated by humans, but the corporate entity itself is not human. So it’s not capable of seeing humans or relating to them – yes, the people running corporations may wield them like weapons of mass destruction, but the companies themselves are simply concepts. Since my layoff epiphany back in those HR days, I’ve taken to likening corporations to refrigerators – the healthiest way to interact with them is to put stuff in and take stuff out. You put stuff in in order to take stuff out.

Do remember the function of a corporation.
It’s to make money for its stakeholders. If it’s a publically traded entity, its job is to increase shareholder returns at all costs. This goes to the point above. It’s not personal, it’s business. Humanity is, sadly, often just collateral damage.

Don’t fall in love with a corporation.
Some corporations have intense and, frankly, amazingly seductive cultures. They employ people with passion and drive – vivacious and positively energetic beings who align themselves with the corporate mission in a way that is magnetic and compelling. It’s easy to confuse that energy with the identity of the corporation – don’t. It’s not the company you’re in love with, it’s the people and their harmonized energy. You can access that energy outside the company – invest in those relationships rather than falling for the thing that can’t love you back.

Do make sure to pursue passions outside of work.
There is a very real phenomenon in which people who worked for a company their whole lives would die shortly after retiring. They had invested so much of themselves in their lifelong career that, when bereft of that meaning and purpose, they had nothing to live for. You’ll hear a lot of talk about “work-life balance” but the bottom line here is: be a whole human being. Be well-rounded – it could save your life.

Don’t allow where you work or what you do become who you are.
There’s more to you than your job. There’s more to you than the title on your business card, the name of the corporation that employs you – while we’re at it, there’s more to you than where you live, what you drive or how much you earn. Sure, there may be some prestige associated with a certain employer or type of work, but one thing is certain: at the end of your life, it’s sure as heck not going to be the most important thing you remember or cherish. Who you are is who your family and friends love; who contributes back to society – not what you do or where you work. What are your talents, what do you love to do, what other roles do you play in your life? Father, Mother, Son, Daughter, Friend – WHO are you – not what do you do.

Do get clear on who you are, what your values are and what boundaries you will defend.
Spend some time investing in getting to know yourself. Get clear about your values, because they drive your priorities and a lot of your decisions. Knowing your values will help you be sure about what you will and won’t trade off so you can set and maintain clear boundaries. As a coach, the most frequent root cause issue I see in people who are unfulfilled or “stuck” is a lack of clarity about, and alignment with, core values.

Don’t (ever) consistently prioritize a corporation’s needs over your own or those of your family.
Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, blogged and later wrote a book (called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”) about the most common regrets expressed to her by people at the end of their lives. Do you think “I wish I had worked harder or longer hours” features? Points for guessing – nope! In fact, here they are – check out # 2.

Top Five Regrets of the Dying
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Whenever he learned of my latest all night work effort, or when I refused to take vacation because of a work thing, my Dad always used to counsel me to go fill a bucket with water and stick my hand in it. Then he’d ask how much of a hole was left when I took my hand out. Smart man, my Dad – he clearly learned his lesson after that layoff 🙂

Do your best work anyway.
There is value in applying ourselves and doing our best work. The thing is, you need do your best work for YOU, for your self respect, for your peace of mind. A job done well for the sake of doing it well is a form of meditation and flow. It’s an expression of yourself. So do your best and then let it go.

Don’t mistake a regular paycheck and benefits for job security.
There is no such thing. Appreciate them while you have them, but do not allow them to become “golden handcuffs”. I often ask people how much their salary and benefits are costing them. That leads to some very interesting conversations. Manage your resources as wisely as possible so if that rug is pulled from under you, you can recover quickly. Wherever possible, lose the debt – stop gambling that your salary and benefits will last indefinitely. Sometimes the golden goose decides not to lay for a while.

Do regularly inventory your strengths, check your value on the market and keep your resume up to date.
This is actually a great way to boost your confidence. If you are regularly reminding yourself of your strengths and accomplishments, you know what you’re worth on the market (and what opportunities abound), and you’re ready to rock the recruiting world with your up-to-the-minute resume, it’s amazing how much more resilient you feel, and how less trapped. So do the Boy Scout thing – get (and stay) prepared. It’s insurance.

If you were just fired or layed off, your world has been well and truly rocked. I’m sorry for how that feels, I really am. Take some time to grieve the loss you just experienced. Acknowledge your feelings of betrayal, fear, anger, bereavement and more. And when it’s time – find yourself and carefully pick yourself up. Get to know your amazing, talented, accomplished self. Remind yourself that what happened to you is not personal. And then grab a hold of those bootstraps, pull yourself up and get back out there. Only this time, remember: they’re only refrigerators – you put stuff in and take stuff out. And life doesn’t happen just in the kitchen.

A final word, for managers and HR professionals who have to wield the dreaded Ax:

Do remember that these are human beings with whom you are dealing – be as respectful and compassionate as you can, without sugar-coating the message (goes for firing as well as laying off).

Don’t take people’s reactions personally – they’re going to run the gamut: anger, shock, incredulity, devastation… Give them space to react and maintain a level of detached compassion that holds space for them without dragging you into the vortex.

Do take time to work with the “survivors” who will also be experiencing some intense responses to the changes. Workplace dynamics will shift and managers will need savvy coaching to help their organizations heal in order to achieve the effectiveness originally intended.

Don’t lose your humanity.  You’re all the corporation has between it and complete soullessness.

(c) Lorrin Maughan 2014