Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

transitions

Quit Your Job

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There has never been a better time to quit your job and find a new one.

(I can sense you spluttering from afar.)

(You’re thinking that it’s easy for me to say.)

(You’re thinking I might be certifiably nuts.)

(You’re thinking that I don’t know what it’s reeeeaaaallly like out there, especially for someone who’s young or old or whatever you’ve got going on in your life.)

But I know I’m right about this.

In the county where I used to live, Arlington County in Virginia, unemployment is at 2.2%. That’s a full two percent less than the U.S. average. I’ve talked to hiring people in Arlington and they have open jobs which they cannot fill. Good jobs.

I spoke to a client this past week who’s facing the same issue in Washington, DC. Open positions, no candidates.

Around the U.S., there are a record 6.6 million job openings.

Makes you go “Hmmmmm”, doesn’t it?

Because you’ve been stiff-arming a search for a new job. Sure, it’s crossed your mind. But you think:

  • Job searches are a pain in the butt and take forever
  • No one will hire me because I’m under 30/over 50
  • What if no one wants me?
  • What if I find out my skills aren’t that great?
  • What if I land in a place that’s even more toxic than the place I’m in now?

Shall we knock those down, one at a time?

  • With unfilled jobs across the board, finding a new role is going to be easier than ever
  • People who might have previously been excluded are now included, because jobs must be filled. If you’re qualified, you’ll get a look
  • See “unfilled jobs across the board”
  • If you’ve stayed current with your skills in your current role, you should be OK. If you haven’t, take an online course to brush up your skillset
  • Toxic work place? Let’s drill down on that one

“According to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Yale University report, 70 percent of all jobs are found through networking. A recent survey by CareerXroads shows that only 15 percent of positions were filled through job boards. The survey showed that most jobs are either filled internally or through referrals.” (Washington Post) If you, then, focus on networking and generating referrals for your new job, you can ask about the work environment and office politics. If your friends (the people who are doing the referring) say the place is gruesomely toxic, you can pass on that opportunity in favor of the kind of workplace where it’s an utter pleasure to work.

Those workplaces exist, by the way.

And, studies have shown that income changes more significantly when you start a new role versus small annual increases at your current job.

So, a better workplace plus more money! What’s not to like?

You might say, “But I love living where I live and there are no jobs like you’re talking about here!”

What I hear you say is more about your priorities than anything else. Where you live is more important than what you do.

Which is totally fine. In fact, it’s awesome.

You know what’s important to you – now, own it. Realize that your job exists to support your life, so if you’re unhappy at your job… you can still get a new one. Maybe you’ll have to consider a different field, a different kind of role, a new use of your skills. As long as you stay in your town (honoring your real priority), you should be fine. Plus, you know, happier.

The Great Recession, which happened ten years ago this week, impacted all of us. We got frightened, and gun shy, and maybe a little bit cowed when it came to work. We remember when a lot of our friends and family found themselves out of a job and had a hard time finding something. Anything.

And so we’ve carried that trauma forward with us in a collective way.

Now is the time to lay down that burden, once and for all.

There are jobs out there. Good jobs. Lots of them.

If you’re not happy where you are, go somewhere else.

And if you’re an employer who’s not doing everything you can to make your workplace a good place to work with good pay for all – get ready. People can leave you in a hot minute these days – and they will if you neglect your greatest asset. Your people.

 

Making It Through The Chaos and Noise

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I saw my friend Nancy at a party the other night. After the obligatory, “Oh, it’s been too long!” and “You look great!” and “How are your kids?”, she said:

“Michele, you used to write your blog every week. Every Sunday I looked forward to hearing from you and getting a little insight and inspiration. What happened?”

Nancy said what’s been in my own mind. I started writing you all in 2006. Every week – every week for over ten years. It has been a very big part of what I do. And for some reason, I just stopped doing it.

I got into 2017 and felt myself sputter. I mean, over more than ten years hadn’t I said everything that needed saying?

Then, too, I started experimenting with longer posts on Facebook to great results. (If we’re not friends there, you can find me here.) So my writing needs felt somewhat satisfied.

But not totally.

The Wise Nancy said, “Michele, write about transitions. Write about dealing with the chaos we find ourselves in. Write about change, and coping with all the craziness. Write about that.”

Which is somewhat ironic because I have found myself in the same transition Nancy’s feeling. And I bet you’re feeling it, too. How could you not?

I used to think about transition in a very linear way – you started here, traveled a bit, then found yourself there. Finally, blessedly, relieve-adly there.

But now I see transition in a different way. It’s a bunch of stuff going on all at once. Different starting points, different middles, different endings, simultaneously.

You could be a person who’s sending a youngest child off to school while changing jobs while guiding an elderly loved one through hospice while starting a healthier routine while settling into a new house and getting marriage counseling.

Am I right?

And rather than there being a definite end point where you can breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Woosh. Glad that’s done” you end up saying, “OK, done. What’s next on my plate?”

Right again?

My best advice to you if you are human and dealing with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as Shakespeare would say, is to appreciate that a continual loop of  beginnings, middles and endings is the nature of our existence. It’s living.

Rather than resist, or pretend that it’s not happening by sticking your fingers in your ears while muttering “nanna nanna nanna, I can’t hear you!”, why not get curious? Ask yourself what there is to learn at this point of the process. Learn whatever it is. Then find the way to love that you are on a distinctly human journey, accompanied by other people on their own human journey.

You can call it transition if you want – but really what it is… is living.

 

Lessons From Lifeguarding

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When I was about thirteen or fourteen I thought being a lifeguard was probably the coolest job on earth.

  1. They had deep, dark, Bain de Soleil St. Tropez tans;
  2. They looked awesome in bathing suits;
  3. They were totally in charge;
  4. They appeared not to do any work whatsoever;
  5. They made a staggering $5 per hour; and,
  6. They could twirl their whistle by the lanyard, around and around their fingers, quite effortlessly (and slightly hypnotically).

Intoxicating combo of cool.  I decided to become a lifeguard.

Bad news, though – you had to be sixteen.  So I signed up for Junior Lifeguard Training. 

Now, I figured my sixth grade stint as a safety patrol put me in a pretty good position to be a lifeguard – no walker had been hit by a car on my watch, although when Valerie Perry decided to rollerskate to school she nearly got mowed down by a frazzled mom in a big, old, honking Chevy station wagon.  I, of course, saved Valerie’s life by grabbing her hand at the very last minute and pulling her to safety. [OK, my account may be a little over-dramaticized, but that’s the story we breathlessly told upon arriving at school.  Drama is to pre-teens as air is to breathing, as you very well know.]

So you can understand why I was pretty cocky and full of myself as the Junior Lifeguard Training commenced.  I had already saved a life, had read the Red Cross book, and even read the Coast Guard manual – hey, you can never know too much – and figured I’d breeze through.

I was on my way to cool.

But I hadn’t counted on the test.

Because there’s always a test.

The Junior Lifeguard test included mock rescues and using your clothing as a flotation device and a written exam.

And treading water for twenty minutes.

Straight. In the deep end. Which meant there was going to be no way to get a little bit of a rest by touching the bottom for just a minute. Constant movement of the body, but total staying-in-one-place.

I think about it now – how in the world did I tread water for twenty minutes?  If my memory serves me, I employed simple scissor kicks and wide sweeping arms to keep my head above water.  I paced myself.  I relaxed.

And I passed.

This treading water memory came to mind this week as two clients shared their current situations.  He, after two years of treading water, has finally sold his business and is moving on to the next thing.  She’s at the decision point – does she close her struggling consulting practice? Sell it? Take a regular job with a paycheck? She’s surely treading water at the moment.

In his book Transitions, author William Bridges suggests that any transition starts off with an ending, moves into a kind of waiting which he calls “the neutral zone”, and then ends with a new beginning.

Treading water is what’s happening in the neutral zone, and it’s a critical phase that you can’t rush through and out of, try as you might. You’re in the deep end, and you can’t touch bottom.

And we all know, as the poet Tom Petty famously said, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

There’s not much to do while treading water but wait.

Or, is there?

I know that treading water gives you time to find the horizon.  It gives you a chance to scan the options.  It allows you to take stock and get clear before you start swimming. Swimming in the right direction.

If you find yourself treading water right now, you can stop beating yourself up for not going anywhere.

You don’t need to go anywhere other than where you are. Treading water is part of what you have to do to pass the test.

So wait a little bit. Learn what needs to be learned. Relax. Pace yourself. Hey, when you’re in the middle of it, it’ll feel like you’re churning forever – but when you’re done, you’ll see it’s only been twenty minutes.

You’re so going to pass this test.