Blog: Moving Ahead

Welcome to Careers 3.0 – we all work for ourselves now.

A few days before my new book, Take Charge of Your VIEW, launched on June 2, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Marion Estienne PhD, in her podcast on leadership, Present Tense Future Perfect.

We had a wonderful conversation about my book and the nature of career development today. Here are some nuggets from our wide ranging conversation:

Corporate culture has changed from a place where employees follow a pre-determined path of tasks and promotions that automatically take them to the next opportunity in the organization (Careers 1.0) to one where the employees seek out opportunities that line up with their passions and strengths. In today’s “careers 3.0 culture” you work for yourself, whether you have your own company or work for an organization.

No longer is career development side-lined to the HR department of a company. In companies that thrive today, career development is a core part of corporate culture. Companies want engaged employees and engagement surveys show that career development ranks as one of the top three qualities people look for in a company. The bottom line is that people are looking for work that taps into their best self.

This is a win-win for the employee and the company. The best leaders and company cultures are those that support their people to take charge of their careers by exploring how they can develop themselves within the company and providing opportunities for self-development. Two factors must exist for this to happen: first, employees must be given the tools to help them navigate work opportunities at the organization; second, managers must be willing to have these meaningful conversations with employees about their development and engage then in conversations about their VIEW.

Today’s Tip: The best leaders and company cultures are those that support their people to take charge of their careers.

I invite you to listen to the entire show about career development today and the six-week journey my book will take you through to find your best self.

Present Tense Future Perfect podcast link here.

Direct link to my interview here.

In our previous post, we met in my grandmother’s kitchen and I introduced the first of five secret ingredients of great teams. We began with inspiring purpose. It’s time to reveal the next two.

Ingredient #2: Team Norms

Tony* had the steering wheel. Seven of us crowded in a circle, gripped the metal bar, and pedaled across a parking lot at the Googleplex.

It was a sunny afternoon in Palo Alto, California. Our group, the Executive Development Roundtable, part of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, had been walking the campus with its 3.1 million square feet of office space on an insider’s tour. When we stumbled upon this strange, yellow contraption of pedals and bike seats, we jumped at the chance to take a Google’s “meeting bike” for a test drive.

I imagine that the seven-seat bicycle shaped like a roundtable was just one of Google’s many experiments to uncover the secrets of great teams. More symbolic than practical, Google’s insatiable appetite to dissect the behaviors that drive team performance led to a data-driven study.

Two hundred Google teams went under the microscope to pinpoint the special sauce of a great Google team. The findings surprised the quants (people who really, really, really like numbers): great teams live by a set of norms. Norms are agreements about how people will work with one another. The two norms of most importance? Turn-taking and empathy.

Turn-taking means giving each person a chance to be heard. Empathy is the skill of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. How would your team do under Google’s microscope?

Tips you can use: In your next team meeting, ask people to read this New York Times’ article on Google’s findings. Lead a discussion where you ask the team to pinpoint instances of turn-taking and empathy. Ask how the team could increase the use of these crucial skills, for greater enjoyment and productivity.

Up next, we’ll head to Arlington, Virginia, to learn about ingredient #3, where I was certified in a powerful team coaching approach by my friends at consulting firm Corentus.
*That isn’t ‘Tony’’s real name.

Ingredient #3: Supporting Each Other

Think of the best team you’ve been part of. What qualities did that team possess? How did youfeel about being part of that team?

If you are like most people, your best team was committed to an inspiring purpose and lived by a set of norms. But more than that, you probably felt like your team mates were on your side. And you returned the feeling.

My friends at the consulting firm Corentus stumbled upon this insight through their 20+years of studying the DNA of great teams. I learned this on a wooded campus in Arlington, Virginia during their team coaching certification.

On the best teams, people are mutually supportive of one another’s professional goals. They achieve great heights by helping each other stretch and achieve the things that matter personally to one another.

Tips you can use:  In your next offsite retreat, make time for people to share their professional goals. Lead a discussion about how you can help one another find more enjoyment in the NeXus between people’s personal, professional dreams as well as the organization’s goals.

TODAY’S TIP: How to Inspire Purpose in Your Team  

In our last post, we discussed that there are five key ingredients to creating a great team.

TODAY’S TIP: There are 5 key ingredients to building great teams

In my Italian family, food was love.

Sunday came with a big pasta dinner and my grandmother’s red sauce bubbling gently to a simmer in the pot on the stove-top. We have lots of wonderful cooks in my family, but no one could make sauce like my grandmother. Even if she gave you the recipe, your food would come out good, but not great.

Today, I confess to take-out more often than homemade meals. But I love my work and carry my grandmother’s ethic with me.  As I coach, I help leaders build a great culture to achieve bold goals.

Continue reading »

In our last post, we introduced three tips for moving people in to the Nexus at your organization. As a reminder, the Nexus is that brilliant place where company business goals and people’s passion meet for optimal performance.

Here we will dive deeper into these concepts so you can easily apply them at work:

1. Be specific when communicating your vision.People want clear direction and meaningful work. In Jeffrey’s company we generated a list of projects and tasks that are specific to the company. Managers use the list in career conversations with people to match development goals with work that optimizes the Nexus.

2. Strengthen your coaching muscle.As managers, we tend to give people advice but they learn more when we ask meaningful questions. At Jeffrey’s company, we trained managers how to coach for both continuous and career development. 

3. People don’t learn from challenging assignments, they learn by reflecting on their experience.Schedule time for periodic conversations that reveal insight and lessons learned that people apply to improving both on the job performance, which prepares them for future roles and opportunities.

Remember, relationships are ongoing and there is no finish line.

We’ve been following Jeffrey in our recent posts, whose challenge was to keep people engaged who had worked at his company for more than three years. At Jeffrey’s company Prior Consulting piloted tools that enabled fresh career conversations. Some people left after realizing that the source of their burnout was the result of a small overlap between their interests and the company needs. This is healthy.
Jeffrey reports that managers, not HR, take ownership for building relationships with people, delegating more effectively and coaching people more frequently.

The benefit: people have a clear sense of their strengths and development areas. Managers and employees work together to close the gaps.

KEY TAKEAWAY: If you want to move your team into the Nexus, enable people to take charge of their careers.

As a manager, you need to create optimal performance from everyone in your organization.

In our last post, we learned that quality relationships between managers and people leads to higher employee engagement and increased performance. We also learned that career development is the key to building these quality relationships between managers and their people.

Coaching and mentoring builds quality relationships and allows employees to meet the challenges of their work today while charting their future path.  Millennials, in particular, need to know they are growing in their role, to be satisfied and engaged with their work. Career development activities do just that.

The goal of all this is to move people into the Nexus: the place where company business goals and people’s passion meet for optimal performance.

Here are three tips for moving people to the Nexus:

1. As an employee, be specific when communicating your vision.
2. As a manager, strengthen your coaching muscle.
3. People don’t learn from challenging assignments, they learn by reflecting on their experience.

Welcome to the new Prior Consulting website. Months in the making, this website was created with you in mind.

When I first began thinking of creating a new website, I knew I wanted one with robust tools and other content that people could use to help change themselves, their departments, their business units or their entire organization. This new site is the first step toward that dream.

Here you’ll find:

New Advice Section — This is the piece I’m most excited about as I plan on adding to it significantly over time. For now, you’ll find articles, reports and e-books, and this blog. I’m currently working on a new P/M/L Self-Assessment survey which should be live soon.

Virtual Career Coach — Coming in late Winter/ early Spring is my new Virtual Career Coach self-assessment workbook. A dynamic tool, this self-assessment will help you chart your career path.  We’ll let you know as soon as it becomes available for sale on Amazon.

Expanded Services Information — To help you better understand how I can help your organization achieve its goals, you’ll find information about each of my services. These have broken into three tracks: Coaching, Consulting, and Workshops.

Take a peek through and let me know what you think!