I remember the initial stress I felt when I had been assigned a VP business mentor. It was a benefit of being in a leadership program which seemed really great until I had to think about what to say to her. Up until that time, I had only met with mentors who were in IT, so we had a common language and understanding about what our roles were. There were three reasons this mentor meeting brought me a bit of…
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Do you have a mentor in mind for yourself? Would you describe them as someone who is similar to you and your style? It is common to look for people who are further ahead in their career with a strong personal brand, but in many ways they are just like us. Choosing a mentor who was exactly like me is what happened in my career. I didn’t think about it that way at the time. I just saw this female leader…
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If you are a strong performer, you will look for opportunities to get high exposure projects to show your value. The goal you have is to do a good job, but isn’t it also to get noticed for your next role? At this point, you may hear that you should get yourself a mentor or sponsor to help you progress in your career. They can help you make progress faster than you would be able to do on your own. Mentors provide perspectives for…
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Each person who works in a company has an expectation of their manager whether they consciously think about it or not. Most of the time the expectations from either side aren’t even discussed. The manager most likely leads each person on their team in the same way without thinking about it. The employee doesn’t talk about their own expectations and adapts to the style of the manager in the best way that they can. Each generation has different expectations of…
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Mary had been at the company for over 20 years. She progressed through different areas of the company and into holding more senior-level responsibilities over her career there. She was a super-connector and everyone respected her. Tom, who was Mary’s manager, thought she would be a great person to mentor Josh who was just getting started in the company. He was a few years out of college, but already had multiple internships and one other role before joining the company. He was…
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One of the main challenges for multiple generations in one workplace is the way that they want to give and receive communication. Each generation wants it their way and can sometimes struggle to bend towards the other generation’s method. Here is an example: Bob is a Gen X person who is leading a huge project and he works with Matt who is a Gen Y (or Millennial) and Sarah who is a Gen Z. Bob is really impressed with the…
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Communication seems like it is easy to do when you are at work. You are leading a meeting to talk about projects and then everyone goes on their way. You don’t check to see that everyone is aligned and on the same page with what was discussed. There is just an assumption that everyone understood the same thing that you did. I can’t tell you how many meetings I attended that I thought the same thing. How could people who…
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It isn’t easy to admit when you make a mistake or fail at something. For some reason we don’t want to be told we are wrong, so we don’t talk about it. Why is that? People have been making mistakes for hundreds of years, but for some reason it seems easier not to admit it. We don’t want to look bad to someone else or be shamed for not getting it right the first time. Some of the greatest inventions exist…
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Every year I choose a word as my theme for the year. This year my word is vulnerability. I thought I was good at being vulnerable when I was working in corporate, but now I realize that I wasn’t taking it to the level that I could have. Some of you know that I am writing a book right now. Well it has been in the works for over a year now (writing a good book is way harder than it…
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The definition of vulnerability is the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. That pretty well sums up where we are globally right now. The fear of the unknown impacts with Coronavirus is changing the world right now. What we have seen or heard from others is playing on our vulnerabilities to an extent that none of us would have expected a few months ago. Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor said,…
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