Coachology: Knowing when to stop and hear the music

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There is room to be true to yourself within the framework of a career. Today we have so many options that when we are not being true to ourselves we cannot really blame the system. We make our own choices and create our own lives.

It’s very hard to know what we want, though. So often our priorities get sucked up into a blender and spit out as a smoothie. I am having this problem right now with going to the gym. I was already just barely holding things together having added the blog on top of what I normally do for work. And now I’m adding promoting a book.

So it seemed really smart, one night, to skip going to the gym. I got so much done. Then it was four nights. And now I’m at that stage where I am so used to not going to the gym that the smell in the locker room is going to bug me. But going to the gym doesn’t just change my abs, it changes my mind and my heart, and it really disappoints me that I’ve let things get to this point.

So it makes sense that I was really touched by an article in the Washington Post by Gene Weingarten, Pearls Before Breakfast. With a genius combination of multimedia and journalism, The Post did an experiment with the world-famous violinist Josh Bell. He went to the subway in morning rush hour, unannounced, and he played classical music on his million-dollar Stradivarius violin, and left the case open for people to drop dollars. The Post documented the event on video.

When Bell plays in a concert hall he makes $1,000 a minute. Here’s how much money he made in the subway: $32.

Clearly, not everyone knew they were hearing something special. And it’s interesting to read Bell’s candid discussion of what it feels like to be ignored when he has been the focus of adoring fans since he was a young boy.

But the part of this piece that really gets me is the video of a commuter who clearly knows this music is special, but he looks at his watch, and he has to decide to stay or leave. It captures every issue on the earth for me right now: How to measure what is important minute by minute.

I am certain about what really matters: Love, kindness, relationships, respect. But let me tell you something, those issues are not on the table 90% of the time. It’s usually a way more complicated decision about how to spend my time, which is really adding up to how to spend my life. I have thought a lot about if I would have stopped to hear the music in the subway. The answer is that it depends on a lot of outside, mundane time factors. Like, did I need to run an errand before work.

This week’s Coachology is about getting help figuring out how much time you should pay attention to the music. We all have music playing inside of us, and we all make decisions about how much to listen. Some of us have actually made it so we don’t hear the music at all: There is no passion.

Peter Vajda is a career coach with decades of experience who is great when it comes to helping people match their work life with their values and their passions. Peter would be a good match for someone who feels like their work needs more meaning but they don’t know what to do about it. If this is you, send me three sentences about what you’d like to get from 90 free minutes with Peter. The deadline is midnight on April 15.

Hat tip: Ben from Amver.

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Estimate time more accurately by admitting you don’t

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The first thing I did when I sat down to work today was do the easy stuff on my list that does not need to be done until the end of the week. Then, when I should have been going to bed, I started working on the stuff that has to be done today.

I know that I do this a lot, so I have started implementing tricks to stop myself. Like, I categorize everything on my list as an A, B or C, and I have to do all the A’s first. Sometimes I’ll give myself a little gift and do an easy C for a break. Steve Pavlina has written a treatise-length blog entry on the perils of doing the unimportant tasks first. I am hoping that will inspire me.

But research shows that we procrastinate because we are hard-wired to be time optimists; we overestimate the amount of time we have left to do a project. According to Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, we think we’ll have more time in the future because each day is different, so the nature of time fools us. But in fact, the amount of time we have today is probably the amount we have in the future. If you’re busy today, you’ll be busy then.

Alex Williams in the New York Times points out that this is such a big problem that we are frequently relieved and even euphoric when someone cancels on us: “In the Age of the Overwhelmed the cancelled date is a luxury gift.”

People also overestimate how much money they’ll have in the future, but the problem is not nearly as bad with money as with time. Our expenses are more often set in stone than our time commitments, so there is less room for us to poorly estimate the variables.

So recognize when you are looking at your to do list that you have less time than you think you do. And maybe you should only accept invitations for something you’d be willing to do that day, even if it isn’t scheduled for that day in reality.

But Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert gives us encouraging news in his book Stumbling on Happiness: The people who overestimate how much better the future will be are actually the happiest people. So maybe being realistic about our time is not so great after all.

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How to get your company to listen to your ideas

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One of the biggest complaints I hear from employees is that no one is listening to their ideas. In a large part this is not because the ideas are bad, but becuse most employees don’t sell their ideas to their company properly.

Selling an idea to an organization requires that you understand how the decision makers operate, then you cater your idea to the arcane decision-making process. So stop complaining about office politics and start leveraging them to sell your ideas.

A good example of how to sell an idea to an organization is this ad campaign run by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Whether or not you agree with the politics of the Center for Constitutional Rights, their approach is interesting:

“America’s leading group of constitutional attorneys present the case for impeachment of George W. Bush exactly as it could be presented by the House of Representatives to the U.S. Senate. Clearly and concisely, they delineate the four strongest charges against the president, citing precedence and evidence that you don’t have to be an attorney to comprehend.”

What is notable here is that the organization is trying to sell its idea by doing the work of the decision makers — in this case, the House of Representatives. This is the kind of campaigning you should do in your own organization. When you have an idea, sell from the perspective of the people who can make or break your outcome. Think about what obstacles would stand in the way for the decision maker, and then you do the work of making a plan to overcome them.

It is not easy to learn how to sell to an organization. Jeff Snipes, CEO of Ninth House, an online training company, told me that one of their most popular types of training is how to navigate the corporate process. “People need to learn to take an innovative idea and build a business plan around it.”

Snipes talked about skills to master in order to get your ideas implemented, and, no surprise, it’s all about emotional intelligence:

1. Solve a problem
The person who needs to give you approval has issues of her own. Everyone does. Getting someone to pay attention to your ideas is a sales issue. You are selling your idea. And the only way to sell something to someone is to solve a problem for them. You need to really understand the needs of the person you are trying to get approval from. And if you cannot figure out how you are helping that person, then you can’t really sell your idea to her.

2. Package your idea
You’ll get higher level people involved if your idea is aligned with the strategic ideas of the organization. In order to get people to buy in to your idea, you have to know what ideas they are focusing on themselves. You need to show them that you are presenting a plan to further their strategic goals.

3. Understand funding processes
Each organization has a different system for funding projects. But it’s safe to say that every system is arcane in its own way. You need to ask a lot of people in a lot of departments to find out the best way to get funding for your idea. If you rely on someone else to get funding, then you run the risk of not getting approval, because someone doesn’t want to deal with the financial implications of your idea. Taking care of a lot of this legwork and office politics yourself can go a long way toward getting approval.

While every company is different, the big-picture strategy for selling an idea is the same for most companies; A lot of rules hold true wherever you go. And even if you don’t end up getting someone to implement your idea, the experience of trying to sell an idea through a large organization is good experience in and of itself.

Sales is hard, and selling ideas is harder. But, like most things in life, you get good at it by trying and learning from failures. So try it.

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LinkedIn is sponsoring Brazen Careerist

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I am excited to announce two things. The first is that traffic to Brazen Careerist increased by forty percent last month. The second thing is that LinkedIn agreed to sponsor this blog.

The two are related. Of course, LinkedIn wouldn’t be sponsoring the blog if there was not a lot of traffic. But to be honest, they did not approach me for my traffic. In fact, they didn’t approach me at all. I asked them.

I have known the director of corporate communications, Kay Luo, for a while because she was on the phone when I interviewed Konstantin Guericke one of the LinkedIn founders. She was very fun on the phone, chiming in a few times. I ended up writing about how her network-challenged boyfriend should be using her network for his job hunt. And she was a good sport about that, so I liked her.

We kept in touch for a while, and after one email exchange when we were talking about my book, she sent me back a link that showed me how to find all the journalists in my network who could cover my book. That was really cool of her to think of. It didn’t occur to me that I could do that with LinkedIn.

So a few days later I broached the idea of her sponsoring my blog and my book tour. I couldn’t believe how quickly she got the idea approved.

This is a dream sponsorship for me because I am a huge fan of LinkedIn and I was writing about them all the time. Way before I thought of asking them to sponsor me.

Sponsorship is a difficult nut to crack in the blogosphere because there aren’t any official rules for blogger ethics except: Have them. I get approached often by people who want to do some sort of advertising/sponsorship/whatever deal. I always say no. The blog is a huge part of my life, and matching it to someone else’s brand is a big step. I have to love that brand. It has to be integral to my message. I think I’ve found that in LinkedIn.

So I will still write about LinkedIn on the blog, but every time I mention them, I’ll remind everyone that LinkedIn sponsors me. And hooray for that.

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If someone’s bugging you, change yourself

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Here’s a fascinating piece about an Amazon tribe that has no ability to use numbers. Even when the tribe members asked anthropologists to teach counting, the tribesmen couldn’t learn. The tribe is good at other things — fishing and making jokes, for instance — but not counting.

This immediately reminded me of couples therapy with my husband. My biggest complaint, for five or six years, was that my husband doesn’t understand tone of voice. For example, he says, “How was your day?” with the tone of voice that someone uses for “I’m going to kill you.”

It’s startling and disconcerting, to say the least. But our third couples therapist finally said to me that there’s nothing I can do. My husband’s brain just cannot learn tone of voice. I need to work around it.

So I do. I separate the meaning we typically attribute to tone of voice from what my husband is actually saying. The Amazon tribe works around the problem, too – they have a word for “a small amount” and a word for “a bigger amount”.

You need to do this at the office. The people you work with are not idiots. It is just that some people are unable to see things like you do. You need to figure out how they see things, accept it, and work around their deficits.

For example, some people are not very empathetic. Like not knowing numbers or tone of voice, these people don’t understand how some else is feeling. You have to take that into consideration when the person says something inconsiderate. Some people just cannot learn empathy.

So I’m recommending two books that are about getting along with people at work. Both are premised on the idea that you have to adjust yourself in order to get along. You Want Me to Work With Who? is very hands on and self-reflective. Working with You is Killing Me has a lot of case studies and examples. Both are good if you want to take a step in the direction of getting along with everyone at work without relying on them to change.

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Job hunt tips I’ve collected

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I am always coming across new ideas for being more effective when you look for a job. Here are some I’ve collected:

1. Don’t answer the phone when it wakes you up.
I know people get giddy for interview call backs like they get giddy for good-date callbacks. But the combination of giddy for phone calls, and sleeping late because you’re unemployed could be lethal.

Time magazine reports that “the morning haze you experience when the alarm clock goes off is known as sleep inertia, and it clouds your brain more than sleep deprivation. The impairment is most severe in the first ten minutes but can linger for up to two hours.” Bottom line: Let the call go to voicemail and go get some coffee.

2. Edit a wikipedia entry to show you’re an expert.
Writing a blog on a given topic is great for your career. It shows that you specialize and you know you’re stuff. But a blog is a big time investment. I got the idea of taking charge of a wikipedia entry from reading this blog post. It seemed totally natural to this woman to contribute to wikipedia in an area she was becoming knowledgeable in.

We should all think this way. In general, editing wikipedia is not rocket science. It shows that we are good at working in a team (which is what a wikipedia entry is), and that we have expertise.

3. Handle hard interview questions with a positive bent.
“Most times people ask trick questions, the person is looking for you to go negative,” says Cynthia Shapiro, former human resource executive and author of Corporate Confidential. An example of one of these questions is, Tell me about a difficult boss and how you got around it.

The impact of being positive in an interview, and in life, cannot be overestimated. Optimistic people are happier and more fulfilled than the not-so-optimistic.

4. Don’t provide two email addresses.
Why do I see so many resumes with multiple email addresses? If you can’t make up your mind which email address is best, then how will you make decisions for anything once you’re hired? Providing two email addresses is not being thorough. It’s being annoying. Know the difference.

5. Make your resume a tease.
I write all the time about how a resume is a marketing document and not a list of your achievements or (worse yet) your job duties.

But David Perry, author of the Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters, takes that one step further and says a resume should be a tease. You don’t want to tell absolutely everything. You want to tell someone enough to get them to call you to ask for more.

6. Pitch your cover letter from the right angle.
A reader, Harry Hollenberg, wrote in with this tip: “Don’t spend your cover letter telling me why my firm is perfect for you. Tell me why you’re perfect for our firm.”

7. Turn your job hunt into a publicity campaign.
This is actually something to do before you need the job. Debra Feldman, Job Whiz (and Coachology veteran) writes:

“Try Googling yourself. If you can’t find anything that promotes you as an expert in your field, take steps to establish a web presence so recruiters and colleagues can find you and learn about your strengths. You can do this and control the content by establishing your own professional website (not family trips) and including information detailing your achievements, links to other references, white papers, articles, presentations at industry conferences and keynote speeches, internal training you’ve developed or delivered, PowerPoint presentations of general interest.”

“The idea,” writes Feldman, “is to let yourself be found by recruiters and others who are looking for certain skills or qualifications. This tends to make you a more interesting and attractive potential candidate than if you submit a resume or write to introduce yourself. Think how you feel when you unearth a gem.”

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Twentysomething: 7 Ways to motivate your millennial

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By Ryan Healy – I want to work, I want to grow and I want to learn. What I’d really like is challenging, fascinating projects and the perfect mentor. The typical entry-level job doesn’t always allow this to happen. Below are a few simple ways to keep me interested and motivated.

1. Be Spontaneous
You don’t have to make any drastic changes. Something as small as going out for a long lunch with a few co workers could be enough to keep me from going insane in my cubicle. If you want to get a little crazy, tell me to go home at 1pm every once in a while – and really mean it. If I think you don’t really mean it, I won’t use it. Even holding a scheduled meeting in a different location, like a local coffee shop or deli can throw a wrench in the status quo.

2 Give me feedback
I love feedback. In fact, I need fairly consistent feedback and encouragement to know if I am performing up to par or not. And bring on the criticism. In fact, if I know that I’m not doing something right I will ask you how to improve, so be prepared to give me some guidance as well. Further, if I exceed your expectations on something please let me know. This won’t go to my head and I won’t think I am overqualified for the job, I just need an idea of what is expected from me.

3. Ask for feedback
I understand that a lower level employee does not typically openly critique their superiors, but why shouldn’t we? We are the ones who see your management style first hand and know what works and what doesn’t. The key to this one is providing an open, knowledge sharing atmosphere where no one will take offense or belittle anyone else.

If a manager makes it clear to me that they want honest feedback about their performance, I have no problem giving both positive feedback and constructive criticism. The normal performance evaluation gives the impression that you are the teacher and I am being graded. A two way performance evaluation will greatly increase communication and allow for a more engaged relationship.

4. An Optional Reward System
Sometimes a minimal percentage raise is not the most exciting reward for someone who will probably just put it toward their massive college loan debt or next week’s happy hour. A bonus is a more exciting performance reward for me, but an optional performance reward system would be a great way to keep me motivated.

For a twenty-two-year-old, an extra few days of vacation time is a lot more exciting then a small percentage raise that is barely noticeable after taxes. Other options might include extra flex time or occasionally working from home. I’m sure if you asked your twentysomething about possible performance rewards they would come back with a page full of options the very next day.

5. Keep me in the loop
Not having any idea about major business events on the horizon can be really frustrating. I realize there is often confidential information that needs to stay in the hands of upper management, but I want to understand where I fit in. For example, if I’m on the iMac team then it’s fine if you don’t tell me about the iPhone. But if you want me to do work on the iPhone, you have to tell explain to me what I’m working on. If you don’t trust me to keep confidential information confidential, you should fire me.

What makes business fun is seeing how management operates and executes on its strategies. I like hearing what you are working on and thinking about. Not only will this keep me interested and motivated, but it’s a great learning experience for someone who will eventually be in a management position. Also, I like to have some input. You probably won’t take my advice, but hearing a different perspective can’t hurt.

6. Be my friend
Don’t worry I don’t want to be your drinking buddy, and I’m not going to tell you my deepest, darkest secrets. But a little friendly interaction goes a long way. This could mean talking sports for a few minutes in the office or going out for a quick lunch and discussing both work related and non-work-related issues.

I have an excellent relationship with my manager right now. Not only do we get along in the office, but we play in a non-work-related basketball league together. This has created an actual friendship that doesn’t always revolve around work. And it transfers over to the job by creating a loyalty to my manager that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

7. It doesn’t hurt to smile
I can’t think of anything that would turn me off more than a manager who comes in every day with a scowl on their face, looking like they can’t wait to go home. If I have any plans of staying with the company, then most likely my goal will be to move up the ranks and take over my manager’s position.

If I see that this person does not enjoy what they are doing, then why would I want to stick around to take over that position? Obviously, I can make up my own mind about whether or not a job is a good fit for me, but dealing with a disgruntled manager every day will send me running for the exits. Be positive and at least pretend you enjoy your job.

If you don’t think these techniques will work, go ahead and ask your twentysomething what they think, I bet you will get some good feedback.

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This is a replacement post for the post that used to be here

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I took down a blog post today. I made a pretty big mistake in taking a critique of a book and making a personal attack. I am sure sorry that I did that. I sure don’t want to be that kind of writer. I probably made a bunch of other mistakes in that post too, but the blogosphere goes fast, and I can’t process them all fast enough to tell you about them now.

Here’s what I can tell you, though. Media Bistro linked here today – and it’s a blog and community that I really respect. And CareerJournal.com is featuring this blog on Monday. And I really don’t want any of those people to think the blog is about personal attacks and controversy.

This is what I think my blog is about: Community.

People have always asked me why I write every day about career advice. I mean, there are more glamorous topics in the world, for sure. I tell those people, first of all, that my career saved me at lots of very bad moments in my life, and I’m grateful that I have it to fall back on, and I want other people to have that, too.

But the other reason I write is because I want to be happy in my life, and I know that somehow, my career is involved in that, and I am not totally sure the best way to do it, and I want a community of people around me who are also trying to figure this out. I want us to do it together.

So, you can see that the post I deleted (well, if you saw it at all) is not turning out to be in line with my vision for my writing life. I wish I had never even thought of writing a personal attack. I can only tell you that I’ve learned a lesson. Maybe ten lessons.

To be honest, I am used to having an editor reining me in, which I don’t have on the blog. And it makes me nervous all the time. At Business 2.0 my editor told me never to write about sex, ever. At Warner Books, my editor took out two fat references and told me that no one wants to hear me writing about fat.

I sure wish I had listened to her.

At Yahoo, the readers write in scathing comments every week, (Example: “Terrible advice but I’d take her for something else.” Yes. I’m not kidding.) But it never bothers me. The comments are so absurd that I know the people are not part of my community.

The comments I got today were thoughtful, heartfelt, and definitely were from people I consider part of my community. So, in an effort to keep us all on the right track – looking for how to do work and life in a way that makes us happy – I deleted this post. And you should know that I’m not above taking some advice, either.

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Coachology: Get angel funding for your business idea

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There is a glut of people who are dying to fund business plans. Especially now, as starting a business online becomes less and less expensive, people require less money from investors, so investors have to look harder for startups to fund.

The problem is that people only want to fund good business ideas. It’s very hard to tell if an idea is stupendous. But it is easy to tell if an idea is terrible. And it’s easy to tell if you are pitching your idea for a company in an incompetent way.

Of course, there are a lot of resources online to help you get started with a business plan and a pitch. Entrepreneur.com is full of great resources. Pamela Slim’s blog, Escape from Cubicle Nation is a great community for getting moral support to make the leap into entrepreneurship. And Guy Kawasaki has a classic list of ways to screw up your pitch.

To get funding, you need to know how much money you require to execute the business idea. If you need a lot of money you need to go to a venture capital firm. If you only need a little money (e.g. $50,000) you can go to an angel fund. Guy Kawasaki lists ways you can get to a venture capitalist, and Paul Graham has an essay on how to fund a company on a shoestring.

But to make any of this work, you need a plan that is good enough to make people who know business plans think, “Hm. I wonder if this will work?” So you need a great elevator pitch — the one-minute summary of why your idea is good — and you need a smart business plan that you can send to potential investors.

This week’s Coachology will match you with an angel fund manager, Teresa Esser. She oversees Silicon Pastures, a group that funds early stage startups. She wrote Venture Cafe, a book about entrepreneurship, and she teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin. Teresa will help you sharpen your elevator pitch and business plan so you can land the angel funding you’re looking for.

To work with Teresa, email three sentences to me about the business idea you have. The deadline for sending an email is Sunday, April 8.

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Five steps for getting a raise

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More money is good, right? You’re going to be doing your job anyway, so you might as well ask to get paid more for doing it.

But you actually have to do a lot of preparation in order to ask for a raise effectively. The most obvious preparation is to find out what everyone else is getting paid for what you do. A recent New York Times story gives a good overview of online resources for salary comparisons.

Here are five other things you can do to get a salary increase:

1. Understand your boss’s perspective.
This is not a moment of truth, it’s a moment of negotiation. You convince your boss you’re worth more and your boss convinces you he or she is fair, and you reach some sort of compromise that makes everyone happy.

So be reasonable in your approach. You don’t deserve a raise just because you’ve been doing your job well for x number of months. It’s your job to do your job well — that’s why you were hired. You need to show that you’re doing more than you were hired to do, or that you’re doing different work that’s typically paid at a higher rate.
Gather as much information about your boss’s perspective as possible in order to form your strongest negotiating position. Consider this list of 10 things bosses hate most about employees.

2. Expand your job duties.
Get really good at your job immediately so that you can take on more responsibility in another job, in another capacity. Look around for something more to do, and figure out how to do it. Then tell your boss you’re doing more than one job and you want to be paid extra for doing the other job you’ve already been doing.

If you think your boss will balk at the idea of you taking on more responsibility, start looking like your current job is under control. One way to do this is to have a completely clean desk. A clean desk says, “I’m totally on top of my workload. Please give me more.” A cluttered desk says, “Help. I’m drowning.”

(I’m not making this stuff up — researchers actually study offices. Here’s a summary of why you should have a clean desk.)

3. Consistently over-deliver.
Even during a salary freeze there’s always more money for superstars, because losing a superstar costs a company a lot of money. So getting a raise is about conveying to the office that you’re a superstar. This could be in the form of taking on more areas of responsibility, but it could also be in the form of exceeding expectations in a very obvious way.

Exceeding expectations is something that must be announced. If you finish your project, that’s what people will understand. If you finish your project with incredible results, you need to remind everyone what the expectations were and what you delivered. If you don’t toot your horn, no one else will. A hallmark of a superstar is they know how to toot their horn with out being annoying.

Superstars aren’t overnight sensations — they work at it. So start performing like a superstar six months before you want to ask for a raise.

4. Get a mentor.
Employees who have mentors are twice as likely to be promoted as those who don’t, according to Ellen Fagenson Eland, a professor at George Mason University. A mentor can help you position yourself, time and again, to receive a raise.

An effective mentor helps you see your path in a way that maximizes your talents and stays consistent with your goals for life. This isn’t small task, and almost all successful people say they have more than one mentor. But start with one, because that will significantly increase the likelihood that you’ll get the raise you’re going to ask for.

Unfortunately, for some people finding a mentor is almost as difficult as asking for a raise. So here are seven ways to find and keep a mentor.

5. Think in non-financial terms.
If more money isn’t happening for you, try asking for something else. Telecommuting, a job for your spouse, extra vacation time, training, even relocation to a company branch in a city with a lower cost of living — these are all things that are worth a lot of money to you, but look a lot less expensive than a salary increase in a company’s budget. So non-financial rewards are a good place to compromise in salary negotiations.

Also, you can turn these benefits to cash next time you change jobs. When you negotiate salary at your next company and they ask you how much you made in your last job, add up all the benefits and include them in the number you give. Some people’s benefits total up to 30 percent of their salary.

If the shy ones among you are thinking this isn’t a fair negotiating tactic, get that thought out of your head. Even CareerHub, a group blog of career coaches, recommends that you include benefits in the total calculation of your salary next time you negotiate.

If none of these steps work, try not to be so obsessed with getting a raise. Think about it — most raises amount to about 4 percent of your salary. That’s nothing. Even if you earn six figures, 4 percent isn’t going to be life-altering.

There are so many more things you can ask for that will actually improve your life, like training in a skill area you’re interested in, or the ability to telecommute a few days a week.

Try focusing on the things that really matter to you instead of the dollar amount attached to your title. You may find that your salary will increase as a natural offshoot of the passion you develop for your work.

 

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