Second Acts ~ Your Road Less Traveled

If you are anything like me, your career has changed more than once now that you fall into the category the younger folk are calling “Adult Supervision.”  As I look back on the many years I’ve been part of the workforce, I’m amazed at all the things I’ve done and learned.  Today, as a writer, educator and consultant I find that the breadth and depth of my experience has somehow magically all come together in the service of my clients.

How about you?  Have you chosen to change careers – or has this horrible economy made the choice for you?  What are you considering? 

Some people I know are turning former hobbies into careers.  Others are learning new skills and surprising themselves about the new competencies they are acquiring.  Some are consciously taking “The Road Less Traveled.”

Let me tell you the story of a woman who took that road.  Dr. Naomi Brill was a Professor of Sociology when she was forced to retire.  Long a nature lover she started traveling back roads and writing about her observations.  She submitted some of her musings to the local newspaper and they loved them and offered her a regular column.  Soon thereafter, a syndicate noticed her writing, contacted her and syndicated her work.  In the last years of her life (I’m sorry to say she is no longer among the living) Naomi purchased a comfortable motor home and traveled around the country observing, enjoying and writing about the flora and fauna she discovered.  Her “road less traveled” gave her many years of pleasure, although the opportunity came about so unexpectedly.

My friend Carolyn Houston, a former IBM Engineer, decided to learn how to do taxes after retirement, and worked as a tax advisor during tax season.  Other times of the year she was free to travel, which she enjoys doing.  This year she retired for good, and is busily spending her time hiking, traveling, and visiting relatives.  Knowing her as I do, I’m sure she will soon find another part-time career.

Several people I know have chosen to purchase franchises and are now owning and working in retail establishments.  Some are enjoying the interaction with people and others wish they hadn’t taken that particular road.  In some cases, finding the right employees has freed the franchise owners to only drop in occasionally.  That, however, seems to be the exception.  Mostly, once you purchase a franchise, you find it necessary to be hands-on-owner-manager.

On the other hand, a friend of mine purchased over a dozen sites of the same franchise and has professional management at each site.  He and his family enjoy the luxury of the high life, and he oversees his various businesses mostly by phone and e-mail, only occasionally dropping in at one of the restaurants to make sure all is going as described to him by that management.

My neighbor recently opened his own professional tax office and another friend who had been down-sized has created a bookkeeping service. When Bernie Silver and his wife retired, they moved to Sedona where she pursued her art career and his now managing an artists’ studio.  Bernie is finally writing the novel he always wanted to write.

I have close friends – from my High School days – who retired and moved to Boca Raton, Florida.  For the first year of his retirement, Sandy chose to do absolutely nothing.  He’d earned the rest.  He’d worked so hard in the cutthroat New York business world for many years.  During the year of nothing he did occasionally play golf – but not seriously.  Now, he and his wife travel all over the world.

Why I am I telling you all this?  To share with you that life isn’t over yet – and even if “they’ve done it to you” as many people think, you have choices.  You might not have found the right one for you yet, but with a little searching and a lot of exploring, you too can find your “road less traveled.”

Marketing Yourself In Your Workplace

In this era of uncertainty, job security is a thing of the past for most of us. Thus, we need to perpetually market ourselves within our companies and through our network. I’m learning to be more active on LinkedIn – something I joined a long time ago but mostly ignored until quite recently.

Another workshop in which I was involved recently was Marketing Yourself. We offered the workshop to a group of people who were job-seekers and taught them about personal branding, positioning, and target marketing. It was astonishing to learn that many people had never realized that job hunting was actually service (not product) marketing. As I’ve said so many times before – marketing services (yourself) is far more difficult than marketing a product.

Services are intangible. They require either good references and testimonials or free samples. The potential buyer (employer) needs some form of proof that you do indeed deliver the quality and quantity of services you purport to deliver.

One of the LinkedIn groups on consulting has a recurring question asking if we think a free sample is a good thing to do or something we ought never do. Most people report that a free sample is a bad thing to do – that you should never give anything away. I disagree strongly.  In my many years of consulting and public speaking, I’ve learned that once people actually experience what I do and how I do it they are much more likely to hire me. They learn quickly that I deliver what I promise and I deliver in my own unique and effective style.

During our workshop, we helped attendees go beyond their canned (and usually ineffective) elevator speech in favor of a sentence or two designed to talk about the benefits to their potential employer. I, role playing with them as the hiring manager, kept asking:  “What’s in it for me?” Ultimately that is what you have to prove to the person contemplating hiring you.

My advice: Learn how to market yourself internally. What are your accomplishments?  How can you make yourself more visible in a positive manner? Can you take risks?  Lead meetings? Stretch yourself and take on more responsibilities? Brand yourself in a manner to make yourself memorable.

I recently met with a group of HR ladies and we were chatting about how they conduct investigations and evaluations when a complaint is made of misbehavior. The starting point, they innocently told me was to gather evidence in support of the claim. They thought they were being neutral.

I pointed out that with that goal in mind, they were ignoring evidence that might support a different conclusion – and that might even refute the claim of misbehavior. I shared with them several examples of investigative reports I had read that were clearly one-sided because any evidence that contradicted the alleged victim’s statement was assumed (and written this way) to be either denial or outright lying.

Looking for evidence is hardly the same as conducting a neutral evaluation seeking the truth.

Through the years, I’ve saved several people from being fired after HR had condemned them.  In each of these cases someone hirer up in the organization knew and cared enough about the alleged “perp” to want an outside more neutral and unbiased evaluation.  I was called in to conduct it and found that there was no real substance to the original claim – but what in each of these cases amounted to a mis-interpretation of words and behavior.

Neutrality is apparently hard to achieve.

I recently met with a group of HR ladies and we were chatting about how they conduct investigations and evaluations when a complaint is made of misbehavior. The starting point, they innocently told me was to gather evidence in support of the claim. They thought they were being neutral.

I pointed out that with that goal in mind, they were ignoring evidence that might support a different conclusion – and that might even refute the claim of misbehavior. I shared with them several examples of investigative reports I had read that were clearly one-sided because any evidence that contradicted the alleged victim’s statement was assumed (and written this way) to be either denial or outright lying.

Looking for evidence is hardly the same as conducting a neutral evaluation seeking the truth.

Through the years, I’ve saved several people from being fired after HR had condemned them.  In each of these cases someone hirer up in the organization knew and cared enough about the alleged “perp” to want an outside more neutral and unbiased evaluation.  I was called in to conduct it and found that there was no real substance to the original claim – but what in each of these cases amounted to a misinterpretation of words and behavior.

Neutrality is apparently hard to achieve.