The Answer to Everything
For career problems, I've found two keys turn almost any lock.
I worked once with a woman who I will never forget. It’s a little sad that our careers have each moved on in different directions. We’ve lost touch for the moment, but I’m sure someday we’ll connect again.
At the company where we both worked, she was like an island that I knew I could visit for relief from our stormy sea of malcontents, misanthropes, and misbehaviorists.
My old boss gave a talk once about “equanimity” — the ability to moderate your emotions under stress. This very memorable woman I worked with — let’s call her Kate — she had this in spades.
It’s not that Kate wasn’t moved by the chaos, or that she didn’t get tossed around by the same turbulence as the rest of us. Kate had her stoic days, but sometimes in our 1:1’s she would shed a few tears.
(Kate was an easy crier, and I love easy criers. Here’s a fact: Easy criers are always good people, and assholes are never easy criers. Don’t @ me. I don’t make the rules.)
Nonetheless, Kate had an uncanny ability to reframe problems in a way that made an impossible thing seem almost inevitable. She would take the words of a grousing colleague and in a deft and nimble way somehow turn them inside out and find a simple solution.
Kate had a way of disposing swiftly and humanely of useless complaints and unproductive worrying. A few kind but knowing words, and you’d be left wondering if there was anything wrong at all.
She had two precise, incisive turns of phrase that I heard her use many times. They’ve stuck with me over the years. I use them all the time now with my coaching clients as we’re dissecting their own career challenges.
Today, I’ll share them with you.
Is It, Though?
We’d often spend time together rolling our eyes at questionable decisions made by our leaders. They seemed preoccupied with making big bets against opportunities that… well, that might not really exist.
“AI is an awesome tool for intelligently segmenting our customers, so we can instantly know which type of user you are.”
Is it, though? How is AI a more effective tool than asking the user as part of the onboarding process? Is the risk of a computer making the wrong election for a user outweighed by the benefit of making it with AI?
Sometimes it Isn’t!
I hear often from new coaching clients is that they don’t feel fully valid, qualified, or legitimate for their current job, or for the job that they want to get.
It’s always a bit startling to hear these feelings of insecurity from the highest-achieving people — folks with years of experience, and a few good jobs under their belt. I even hear this from folks with advanced degrees (one MPS in particular. You know who you are.)
A client said “I want to work in a Big Tech company, but they’re only looking for people with big company experience, and my startup background is a dealbreaker for them.”
Is it, though? Did every single big company employee leave another big company employer to get that job? It’s just big companies all the way down? Nope! Every single employee of a big company, at some point in their career, got their first big company job — and so will you.
Another: “I’d like to move on from my current employer, but the market is crammed with amazing people who were laid off from the top-tier companies.”
Wait…. Is it, though? The job market is tough, but compared to what? We’re coming down from the 2022 talent market, which was more favorable for job seekers than any in my lifetime. Every single company that laid people off in the last year is still hiring right now. And you know what they are not saying? They’re not saying “Wow, it’s so much easier now than it was before to find someone who’s a perfect fit for my position.”
“Is it, though?” is an invitation for you to challenge your beliefs about what’s holding you back from taking the next step in your career.
What Have You Tried?
Our colleagues often complained that management never seemed to take the teams’s ideas for the product seriously. They seemed to prefer to set priorities based on whatever was in the news, or from a dashboard, or a report on metrics that went around every week.
With her calm, inquisitive tone, Kate challenged the complainers: What have you tried? Have your tried organizing the team to produce a proposal, including a business case for why their idea is the greatest? Have you tried asking the management questions about what drives their priorities?
This same idea comes up repeatedly in coaching, specifically in two scenarios. One is when people receive a middling performance review, a meager annual raise, or a lukewarm reaction to your request for more responsibility.
Before you complain about your manager, let’s ask what have you tried? If you got a performance review or an annual raise you’re unhappy with, have you tried pushing back?
A client of mine wrote a concise and compelling explanation for why they deserved a promotion that had been withheld after nearly a year of stellar performance. The bosses responded by acknowledging her assessment — and they gave her both the raise and the title bump.
If your manager doesn’t seem to be taking your career development seriously, before you get desperate, ask yourself what have you tried? Here’s a script several of my clients are using to try to inspire action from their bosses:
Hey Boss! I’m putting an hour on your calendar — separate from our normal 1:1 — for us to talk about my career development. I really enjoy working with you and the team here and I’m feeling great about my contribution over the past few months. I want to continue growing here at COMPANY in my role, and in order to do that I need to feel like I’m making more progress towards my goals. I’m looking forward to talking this over!
Most people know that it’s unwise to threaten to quit. You can and should articulate that making progress towards your career development objectives is an important condition for staying in your role. This is called “setting boundaries” and people who do it well are happier, more successful, and everyday heroes at work.