Everyday we hear or share worries, concerns, frustrations in the workplace and in our personal lives. We spend countless hours thinking or diving into blame for what “others” could do differently.
Well…..
What's beneath that?
It’s usually the deeper question that gets us to the answer.
Inspired by Lois Kelly of Rebels At Work.
Asking people for favors never lasts. If it means something to you, ask others to act based on their values, not because they are doing you a favor.
So often we treat the generosity of others as ‘favors’. Yet this framing often moves us away from the real work of connections and values with others. The real juice is when the connections of giving are deeply intertwined with the mission and challenges that a group is trying to tackle.
The next time you need something from a friend, don’t ask for a favor. Ground your ask in stories and values and you will find your real tribe. This is the tribe that lasts, that will work with you to build your base in the long run.
Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
We live in a world of software code and decision trees operated by our bodies. People pass on this code across generations. So much of what we form and how we lead is informed by the complex multi line software codes that we learn as children.
Most of the wisdom of our elders is worth holding onto as we grow older. Roughly 95 percent need to be cherished, yet 5 percent needs to be investigated and given the freedom to rearrange, renegotiate and sometimes discard. Some space must be generated to align to a new era of leadership in the crowded room of our minds.
This, at its truth, is innovation. The word innovation has the same root as the word native, to be reborn, and renaissance.
As leaders, we must take ongoing corrective action on our mental software. So, how will we break our software code as leaders?
1) See yourself as a living case example of the software. It is always best to see yourself as part of a system and as an example of software. The only challenge or opportunity will be your learning. The major impediment will be your pride, shame, and embarrassment. Watch yourself fall back into the software, old paradigms and get back up again.
2) Don’t worry about not knowing and ask a lot of questions. The naive comments you make and questions you ask will be a source of innovation — ingenius, generative, and something new being born.
3) When someone tries to bring you down, don’t assume that (s)he knows what she did. The default setting is to take it personally. Yet we can only assume that the information is not just in him/her it's in the larger system. How are we as a social system generating a dynamic where one is creating certain cultures over others?
So, how will you break your own software code today and innovate?
This piece was inspired by Ronald Heifetz. For more leadership lessons, check out my free Tools and Dance Moves page here.
I’ve been very humbled and grateful to see the response to my most recent Forbes piece How To Get Noticed, Get Hired, and Get Just About Anything Else You Want Too. With over 10,000 views in less than 48 hours and a plethora of emails from Gen Y leaders ‘getting noticed’ in my inbox, I’m clear of one thing:
The next generation wants to be heard and share their voice with the world. They want to connect with others in deeper ways and have conversations that matter in order to create the world we want to live in.
I’ve received emails from many of you sharing your stories with me, others who have asked for more networking tips, those who are in college and those who are senior leaders, all who resonated with the belief that they could connect with anyone and pursue their dreams.
There’s one more thing I want to share: this Forbes piece and my work is not only about getting noticed, its about getting noticed to act and change the world. It’s about understanding that, as leaders across generations, we need to connect with the voices of power and authority to understand their worldviews in order to influence our communities—it's not just about ‘getting ahead.’
We all know the power of networks is changing and communication across silos and hierarchies is essential. We also need to be more succinct, specific, and willing to get over our fears to make the connections we’d like to make.
So thank you for your sharing your energy and words in the past few days. Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing a series of posts that will help you get clearer on what you need to do to get noticed, hired, and just about anything you want –in a way that is authentic, meaningful, and matters for the challenges we face in the global world today. Keep sharing your questions with me and I'll be sure to answer them in my blog.
In the meantime, for more life lessons, explore my private collection of leadership & career tools, tipsheets & scripts . . . For free. Access to The Generational Alchemy LIBRARY is yours, when you jump on my mailing list.
Anne Marie Slaughter’s piece has reached over 200,000 recommendations on Facebook and an absurd amount of reactions on blogs everywhere. It is the most well read piece in The Atlantic history.
Beyond my leadership consulting and coaching work, I’m a Harvard researcher on the work-life aspirations of Gen Y women and men. I didn’t think Ms. Slaughter was saying anything we haven’t heard before, but her piece rippled and shocked millions of people, largely due to the absurdity of the title.
I believe that women can have it all…over the course of their life. Work-life balance is a unfair term in today’s age—it’s never a weighing scale between the two, it’s an ongoing process.
For those of you who skimmed or half read the piece (you know who you are), here’s a quick summary: Slaughter argues that maybe there are constraints that make women lean back (as opposed to Sandberg’s popular ‘women need to lean in’ argument). She further says that its society that needs to change, not marriage. Here’s a reader’s digest version if you need one.
Most of the critics of the piece had two main arguments. First, women does not mean mother. Many women felt a broader set of issues could have been explored. Second, the phrase ‘having it all’ is a 1980s term. It was used back then as a perspective of what women wanted to be doing, but the negative framing has driven people crazy. It has positioned the issue as an HR work-life problem rather than a conversation on leadership.
The real challenge in my eyes is that this piece was setup as a woman’s problem, not a man’s problem. It sets up men as the norm instead of parents as the norm. Working women are not a special case—working parents are.
And most importantly, what I care about most is how this piece affects Gen Y women and men. The response I heard from some Gen Y women was one of dismay and despair, which upset me. The language and the way we frame this issue can make young women lower their aspirations, feeling like they will inevitably have to sacrifice. I deeply hope that this piece does not become a reason for women to say ‘it’s not worth it’ or ‘I am not going invest in my career because it will ultimately come at too great of a cost to my family life.’
As 20 somethings, we are still trying it figure it all out, so we should see this piece as a guiding light, not a call for help. At the end of the day, everyone has to define what it means for them to ‘have it all’. Having it all, for me, is to have what I want. And I believe I can have it all because I have what I want.
So ladies and gentlemen, let’s not make this piece an excuse to not continue to focus on the real barriers and hurdles that still very much exist in the workplace that prevent women from moving up the corporate and political ladder. Let’s stop being so hard on professional women and support them like we support men in our culture. I believe we can create collective change for the better in business and politics, but first we need to reframe this dominant narrative to a conversation on what women’s leadership might mean for our world.
In my last two posts, I've talked about how to become a writing genius and how to get organized about your writing. Yet we all know writing is only as important as its contribution to others. How can your writing have positive impact on others? How do you convert your writing into a faithful following– and build a movement around what you want to share or teach?
As a writer myself, I believe that Facebook “Likes” and Twitter retweets don’t do much for the people I am most passionate about reaching. Digital natives who understand social media know that there are much more complex and diverse strategies out there that can help any writer convert their writing into their tribe.
Here are my 10 tips to convert your writing into your tribe.
These answers are the backbone of your writing strategy. They shape who you spend time writing for, the topics you share, and where you share your writing.
Your website houses your content. It should answer the questions:
Use search engine visibility and your presence on major platforms and networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) to share your work.
Follow the content of leaders who you align with. Make twitter lists of people whose writing you like and share their work. Retweet and share your writing with those you admire.
Keep track of what people are sharing and engaging with. Sometimes a hot headline can make a big difference.
Hands down? Visual communication is golden—it’s a great way for people to understand who you really are and what you’re all about. Share a video on your website about who you are and what you’re writing about. Don't worry–I'm launching some Bollywood videos soon 🙂
Collect email addresses at every chance you get. Use sites like StreamSend, MyEmma, Mailchimp, or Constant Contact. My fav? Mailchimp! You'll find more about its wonders by signing up to my Generational Alchemy Library on the right hand side here.
Set up a Google Alert for hot topics you want to follow. And google alert your name! You’ll never know otherwise where it might show up.
Office hours are a great way to set aside dedicated time to connect with others professionally. Make intentional dates for on conversations with people about your writing and try ohours.com
In my last piece, I wrote about the nine ways to become a writing genius. The truth is that we would all love to write more, but sometimes we just get stuck. We don’t know how to be disciplined about our writing, get to the finish line, and and it keeps us from doing our best work. Most importantly, beyond just writing, we need time to THINK about our writing and revise our writing. This isn’t about having more work, it's about being more organized around work.
Here are the top 6 tips to turn your writing into a daily practice:
1) Separate time to brainstorm. Sleep on ideas, write them down, read related material and read unrelated articles to your writing. Then go back to them when you’ve had some time to think about them.
2) Have a conversation with someone else about your idea. Exploring ideas with others can make a huge difference. If you can’t meet or talk to someone, write an email to yourself and read it in 2 days. You’ll definitely have evolved thinking within 48 hours.
3) Get ideas into a external form. Even if you don’t know what your writing yet, get it on paper. Sometimes the best ideas come out of a journaling, free flow exercise.
4) Make a writing calendar. Set up intentional time to start thinking about your assignment. Take creative projects and turn them into scheduled appointments. Don’t let them get missed!
5) Make writing social. Form a buddy group and make dates with others to share 1500 words with each other in a writing meeting. Or form a googlegroup and make your own online writing team.
6) Externalize your writing. Have a workspace devoted to writing projects where you can store notes on each projects. I have a physical inbox of index cards of my ideas and my writing. I separate the writing workflow for each piece based on the date its due, the date my draft is due, and the date I will start thinking about the piece.
In my next piece, I’ll discuss how to convert your writing into a following—the essential next step. Stay tuned.
Want more free tools on writing, leadership, and career? Hop over to my FREE Tools and Dance Moves page!
It takes time to build a new creative habit. So start now.
I never started out as a writer. In fact, I was scared of the idea—being a writer? It didn’t appeal to me. I wasn’t that person. Besides, I didn’t even know how to write. And I kept that story in my head for too many years. Little did I know the amount of creativity it kept just to make myself think that I, indeed, was not a writer.
One day, I decided to just start writing. I was methodical about it: I blocked time one hour each day for writing, and focused on developing my own opinions about the world. From then on, I was hooked.
With zero contacts in the media industry, I had to (again) get creative. I decided to start on Twitter: following editors of places like Huffington Post and Forbes, engaging with them, then emailing them my pieces. I didn’t get responses initially. But I followed up. And followed up. And followed up.
Soon enough, my persistence paid off. I’ve become a writer for both Huffington Post, Forbes, and a number of blogs.
My life is much more focused around writing than it ever has been before. And it’s definitely a practice-makes-permanent activity—in the sense that the more I do it, the easier it is to express my thoughts on paper. In that vein, here are the tricks that got me moving—and will get you going too!
1) Read more and imitate good writing. It’s simple, really: all good writers read. A lot. Not only do good writers read, they are also proactive; they learn from the books and articles they read. So in addition to your reading practice, find one or two great articles to learn from each day.
2) Write like you talk. Seriously. You can be as literal with this as you want. Use a transcriber, or try taping your ideas on Evernote to see what comes from your speaking voice and how that translates on paper.
3) Learn how to play with words. The dictionary is your friend. Use the Hollis and Oxford English dictionary to find great synonyms. And don’t shy away from the thesaurus, either.
4) Edit your sentences and paragraphs. Look at the average line in your writing—do you see a period? Gauge how long your sentences are. As a general rule, shorter is better—in the sense that were you to err on the side of too-long sentences, you’d be unintelligible (this sentence is a decent example). Here’s any easy way to check your long-sentence habit:
5) Make sure that your paragraphs start with a topic sentence. Write a reverse outline, put all the main points on a sheet and then come up with the title. Make sure the first sentence is very strong and the last sentence is very strong.
6) Get into the habit of cutting everything you write by 20%. Everyone has a different ratio of what is unnecessary versus important, yet 20% is a standard. It will help you focus on the ideas that really matter and will also increase the number of arguments and claims you make.
7) Establish a strong writing workflow. Start the workflow process in advance. Put time into your calendar to dedicate to writing– not only for creation, but also time for reviewing. It is important to make time to start writing early so you have time to dissociate it and then when it’s out of our head, you can work with it a bit more.
8 ) Get an audience. Most of us have, in our academic pasts, only really written for teachers. Having a real reader is someone who actually doesn’t have a stake in what you write will read it simply to learn. For the academic in me, this has helped tremendously!
9) Re-read, re-read, re-read– then aim for emotional diversity. Think about writing a joke, telling a story, sharing something moving and inspiring, or giving a toast. A truly great writer is a mastery over a range of emotions and tones. And adding a little spice to your writing will keep your reader interested.
For more writing tips and career advice, check out my free Tools and Dance Moves page.
A version of this post first appeared at Levo League.
I didn’t learn to ride a bike through bicyclology, I learned by failing and trying again.
Falling off a bike hurts. Falling is painful. Much like I did not learn how to ride a bike without falling, I did not learn how to lead without failing. Little did I know coming into the last few years as an entrepreneur that failing was okay, and something that would help me grow as a leader. At first, my experience as an entrepreneur on a social enterprise in India back in 2008 was like being lost in the dark abyss of a cave: I felt alone, stuck, and like a complete failure. I was exhausted and frustrated with my failed attempts.
Then I realized that it was just a process like learning to ride a bike. You can learn to ride a bike by watching youtube video instructions or you can learn to ride a bike by surrounding yourself with others who are riding theirs and practicing it with them. When my mindset shifted, I became ambitious, risk-seeking, and much more successful in my startup by learning through my failures.
Each of us have the desire to find the ‘bicyclology” of career and life development. We want a set of memorization techniques and bullet pointed lists to get started. Yet the truth is we have to re-orient our practice of learning from ‘technical’ fixes to more adaptive responses. These adaptive responses require the toleration for ambiguity, the allowance of failure, and the ability to say ‘I don’t know it all.’ From there, we start moving on our new bikes, the brakes may be slow, we may fall sometimes, yet we truly embark on a path we crave with real energy and passion.
When was the last time you fell off your bike in a way that set you on a new road to adventure?
If you want more bike riding, check out my FREE Generational Alchemy Library here for tools and scripts on writing, leadership, and careers. My goal is to give you the best toolbox to tap into your creativity and transform your life, organization, and world.
And if you are a woman entrepreneur, check out the free Find Your True Self quest at TheGalahads.com to discover your own bike riding adventure waiting to happen. More details on The Galahads coming soon!
This piece first appeared at Levo League and Huffington Post.
It’s graduation season, which year after year is filled with beauty and rituals and rites of passage.
I myself am a new graduate—I’m now the proud owner of an MPA from HKS (in other words, I’m following a service-driven kind of path—I’m dedicating my life to supporting, teaching, and encouraging young leaders to meet and exceed their potentials). For me, it’s the perfect time to take a step back, orient myself, and reflect upon what I’ve learned during the process of attaining my Master’s degree.
The main reason I decided to attend graduate school was to connect with like-minded individuals and “find my next career.” What I didn’t expect to learn, though, was this:
Going to Harvard doesn’t solve your career challenges.
In fact, it can multiply them; a major multiplier of considerations being
the inevitable epiphany of how much you just don’t know.
In this day and age, professional degrees aren’t a cure-all for your career. Non-technical (and non-lawyer or doctor) degrees carry both less weight and more flexibility as to what your next step may be.
Sheryl Sandberg spoke at a recent Harvard Business School graduation, and among other topics, brought up the issues that go along with choosing a career after graduation. “As you lead in this new world, you will not be able to rely on who you are or the degree you hold, you need to rely on what you know,” she said. I believe Ms. Sandberg is right on the money; that it’s when we do things in the world that we learn and build upon what we know. So, without further ado,
This lesson came my way from Professor Ron Heifetz this past January. Leadership is about living with a questioning mind, not having the confidence to have all the answers. The gift that great leaders, doers, and thinkers possess is how to harness curiosity and turn it into something worth being confident about.
This lesson came to me after a talk with professional dancer/choreographer Liz Lerman in her course “Dance Collaboration.” What we feel, hear, experience, taste personally is what greatly impacts us professionally—not just in the scientific realm, but in any profession we might choose. We can’t ignore the personal– it’s our engine.
This snippet comes from Rabbi Hilllel (though it’s ringing in my ears from my HKS lecturer, Professor Marshall Ganz). It can feel like a difficult truth is that we only have one shot here in life—not to mention that who we are is determined by what we choose to do with our lives. A key takeaway for me was not to wait to be finished with school to do something in the world, to test out ventures, try new opportunities, and to put myself outside of my comfort zone.
This came from an entrepreneurship forum I attended led by Michael Strong. It mirrors the “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The idea is simple: we all have some type of creative genius. Elizabeth Gilbert phrases it well in her TED talk on genius: that instead of the rare oddball being a genius, every single person alive has a genius. A lot of this just has to do with striking a balance between confidence and curiosity (see No. 1 for more).This is something to remind every graduate out there—go find YOUR genius!
We live in a supersocial society. Building a valuable network can make or break your career. And building social capital is about building transitive trust.
This came from a class I took with Clay Shirky. In it, we studied websites like Ushahidi, Meetup, VoteAgain2010, and Twitter—more specifically, we studied how the changing nature of new media influences public action. According to our examination, the best bets for companies today don’t come in the form of throwing endless money at an advertising campaign. The highest returns go to companies that can prove they care about their customers more than anyone else. So go ahead. Build your tribe.
For more life lessons, explore my private collection of leadership & career tools, tipsheets & scripts . . . plus a few hot Bollywood dance moves? For free. Access to The Generational Alchemy LIBRARY is yours, when you jump on my mailing list.