We reread this book because of the pandemic and protests. It was worthwhile, as Brave New World (BNW) is a warning of what takes a society off-track and an opportunity to be optimistic about the future. As in, “here’s all the bad stuff that’s going to happen, SO PLEASE DO SOMETHING ELSE PEOPLE!”  Most important, BNW offers five surprising skills that will help you make important changes in your own life and work: Bravery. Perseverance. Reason. Persuasion. Drive. 

Bravery. “Brave” is the first world in this book’s title because it is the most important skill we need to create new futures. But not just bravery for its own sake. Bravery to find out who we really are, where to position ourselves to stand out from the crowd, and to understand how and when to pivot. Some of this comes from tuning into our professional and social networks, yet our experience and research reveal that you have to listen to your own intuition. You must know when to adapt, know when an organization or professional relationship is toxic, and figure out how to express and protect yourself respectfully and strategically.

Perseverance. Just because you’re sick of hearing bad news doesn’t mean you have permission to turn your full attention away from it and onto something else. What are the things in your own life and community that you are avoiding? Why are you avoiding them? What if there was one thing you could do to make confronting these things responsibly possible? Once you can break problems down into component parts, you can see the many things at play, tune out the noise, and open a space for new solutions. 

Reason. Ask yourself: What are the reasons why I do what I do? Why I am where I am? Why do I have the dreams and goals that I have? Then, think about reason as a form of critical thinking, planning, and acting. To see and reach your goals, you need to be crystal clear about what you know, who you know, how to learn, and other variables about your profession that impact your career trajectories.

Drive. While most advice is for you to focus on what you want and find your motivation, we learned from BNW that you need to think about the instincts you have that are NOT triggers for long-lasting change. What underlying reasons are there for not doing what you say you want to do? It could be that you are too focused on taking care of those around you, an important role particularly in these times. That is fine and perhaps means you need to be kinder to yourself. But if there are other reasons the drive just isn’t there you should start figuring out what they are.

Persuasion. It’s impossible to succeed without being a persuasive communicator. Period. It might be a struggle at first, but you must learn to be sincere, to create memorable interactions, and to ask for what you deserve while maintaining your professional boundaries. Persuasion is impossible without getting others to “tell you more” about what they need, what they like, and what challenges they are facing. Be sure to prompt others and listen actively when you communicate, empowering them to share their own perspectives and goals. One way to start is to play “The Compliments Game” we learned from Ramit Sethi. In this game you find three people to whom you don’t speak regularly and give each of them a unique and personalized compliment. Take note of the person’s reaction and of your own reaction to the experience. Then, leave us a comment below to let us know what happened and what you learned. 

Start playing “The Compliments Game." Leave us a note below. Then, check out the next installment of our #BeautifulBookClub series, Giraffe and a Half . It’s an unconventional choice and one we hope will show you a different way of seeing yourself and the beauty your work adds to the world.

Small things.

Over time.

Can become.

Big things.

Notice anything funny about the list in the image above? It’s the periods at the end. of. every. bullet. in. a. bulleted. list. And it’s a real rule I encountered when I did a research project inside a large research and development organization. One of the strangest things I heard, and I heard it several times, was that periods had to be placed at the end of every bullet in a list. No regard for whether or not the bullets were actually sentences, or if it made sense, it was just required.

Hearing this made me say, “tell me more!” Remember, I’m a social scientist. I saw the logical answer; that this organization had a compulsive drive for high quality work.  Being a research organization, it was understandable. They dealt with lots of data and ensuring consistency and attention to detail was critical. This was the story that leadership told themselves and others.

While the story management told themselves was true in one way, this peculiarity actually pointed to something deeper that was very clear to those lower in the organization.  Somewhere along the way, a director had been chided in a meeting for a typo on a slide he was presenting. The director used a period on one bullet but not another. Another time, miscommunication happened because a group presented the director’s preliminary findings as final. The experiences of these managers were brought back to the teams they managed in the form of well-meaning rules requiring multiple layers of proofreading and approvals before anything was shared outside the group.

Idea sharing in the organization came to a dead stop.  Stovepipes around functional areas were reinforced. Fear and bureaucracy flourished.

These issues were basically the unintended consequences of what could be chalked up to “bad manners” by leadership.  In organizational research it’s called incivility; “rude, condescending and ostracizing acts that violate workplace norms of respect, but otherwise appear mundane”(1). Uncivil acts appear mundane and that’s the problem. Research reveals that uncivil acts disproportionately affect people from underrepresented groups and contribute to lower job satisfaction, more health issues, absenteeism and turnover for everyone.

Here’s a list of behaviors you’ve probably experienced, seen (or, let’s be honest, done) at work (or home) recently.

1. Put someone down or was condescending

2. Paid little attention to someone’s opinions

3. Made rude comments about someone

4. Ignored or excluded someone

5. Made jokes at someone’s expense

6. Yelled, shouted, interrupted, or swore at someone

Let’s practice recognizing and redirecting incivility. Period.

P.s. If you’re a nerd like us and you want to read the real stuff and challenges to it, here’s one of the references.  Email us if you want more!

1: Researching Rudeness: The Past, Present and Future of the Science of Incivility by Cortina, Kabat-Farr, Magley and Nelson, 2017

What are you doing? This is pointless and boring! Why aren't you doing something you love?

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. From parents to doctors, to attorneys and teachers, the desire for a career roadmap to answer these questions is on everyone’s minds.

That’s because roadmaps make things easier. They’re linear, two-dimensional, static and already finished products before you get them. The territory is completely charted.You know what we are working toward? A career GPS. Here are 5 reasons why.

1. What to avoid. A career GPS will allow you to test out different scenarios before you get on the road, alerting you to traffic and accidents that might get in your way at different times of day or night.

2. Positioning. A career GPS will account for where you are now and how you might have gotten there. It tracks your most visited destinations and routes (a bit scary, but still useful) and suggests alternate paths.

3. Recalculation. A career GPS allows for detours, construction, mistakes and different decisions. Will ask you questions about how you want to travel and tell you what’s going on in the bigger picture.

4. Estimates. A career GPS will tell you how long it will take to get to your destination in real time. It’s fully present, allowing you the choice to make informed decisions about where you’re going, when and why.

5. Interaction. A career GPS gives you audible feedback in terms you understand. For instance, different languages, accents, voices and forms of measurement.

But even a career GPS can’t give you passion or fulfillment. And that’s the whole point. A career GPS would be a great tool because it promises only to help you use what’s around you to make more informed decisions as you go. It’s about the journey. (And the journey can be your destination.)

Looking forward to the journey, and to letting it be beautiful

I can’t balance in yoga, or elsewhere in life, and that’s okay. Want to know why?

Because I don’t have to. While there’s nothing wrong with trying from time to time, a decade of practicing yoga has taught me that there are other skills just as important as balance, like flexibility and strength. Not to mention knowing yourself well enough to find support when you need it.

So, when I can’t balance I lean up against a wall or put my hands on the ground. Sometimes I switch sides. Or, I use some props to find the positioning I need. Or, I refocus by looking at something differently. I’ve taken these skills off my mat and into other areas of my life and I finally feel free. Free to be who I’m becoming and to enjoy more quality in the time I spend at work, with my family, meditating and pursuing personal projects like this one.

You can find that freedom too. Bust the myth of balance and figure out how to become stronger, well-supported and more flexible so that you can live, thrive and flourish for an entire career.

Here’s what to do next:

Answer these three work-life questions that’ll help you identify what’s really important and where to invest your energy.

1. What's one time that made you feel like all your hard work was worth it?

2. If you got to throw away one task in your job description that would make your work more meaningful what would it be and why?

3. What is your theme song when you enter your workspace? Your home? Why?

And, if you’d like, send us an email. Let us know how we can help you dream, think, stretch, and relax into a new vision for your work-life.

Here’s to losing your balance, and finding beauty!!

Too often the only portion of our career that we carefully plan is what we will do immediately out of school.  We train to be biologists, dentists, lawyers, teachers, engineers, accountants. But then there is the rest of our career.  Technical training is easy to come by and embedded in most professional contexts. Dentists continue to learn the latest science, teachers learn the latest teaching techniques, lawyers the latest case law.  But then we gain technical competence and we’re promoted. (Hooray!??)

With promotion comes politics. Have we planned carefully how to: give good feedback, navigate bureaucracy, run businesses, advocate for those who work for us, carry the emotional weight of the organization, engage in empowered listening, and effectively plan a re-org? Likely not.

At this stage the pull of competing interests increases.  Demands on our time and talents are suddenly different (often at home, too!). Our calendars are riddled with meetings.  We often aren’t even sure that the path we’ve chosen was the right one and now we’re representing it to those that work for us.  People need things from us everywhere, and our typical ways of working aren’t working. Work starts to wear. The daily grind takes on new meaning.

We hope you’ll join us in our project to plan, design and train to make our work beautiful. Beautiful for ourselves, for others.