Grace Under Fire

 Yesterday watching Carrie Underwood calmly and professionally manage a difficult situation brought me back to my own uncomfortable moments at work. If you didn’t watch the Inauguration of President Trump, you missed the part where Underwood was to sing America the Beautiful accompanied by piped in music. Something went wrong and the music wouldn’t play. After a few uncomfortable moments, Carrie Underwood asked the audience to join her as she sang the song a cappella. Talk about pressure under fire.

If you’ve been in a similar situation (not that you are called to sing in front of millions of people), you totally understand the stress of the situation.  Seconds can feel like hours.
Carrie’s situation reminded me of something that happened to me many years ago when I was a young, junior Learning & Development Specialist with the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. 

I was asked to make remarks to a class of students who were graduating from our computer studies school. It was an outdoor late afternoon ceremony with over three hundred invited guests including family, instructors, and members of the Chubb executive board. It was a big deal. My job was to explain the program to the audience and introduce our company CEO.
All day long we were outside testing the equipment. Our administrative staff had extra batteries for the microphone although we didn’t think that we would need them. We shifted chairs, arranged the dais, and did everything according to plan.

Four O’clock rolled around and the guests and graduates started to arrive. I was especially nervous because I’d never addressed this many people before, and I wanted to make a good impression. In addition, one of my peers was recently promoted and my manager explained to me that I needed more polish and experience before I was promoted. 

As soon as I kicked off the ceremony, my microphone died. I thought it was because we used it so much to practice but I later found out that our Admin forgot to use fresh batteries. I froze and here again, the seconds felt like hours. Everyone was watching to see what I would do. I finally realized what was happening and knew that I had to do something. I passed the microphone to the admin who ran up to the stage and I stepped down into the audience. I walked down the middle aisle loudly saying my remarks. As I walked back towards the dais, I was handed the working mic, and I was able to end my presentation and introduce the CEO. Thank goodness, the mic worked properly for him. Overall, the rest of the ceremony went well, and the world and my job didn’t end.

I learned so much from that day, especially to always double check the equipment. I learned that a sense of humor can sometimes break an uncomfortable situation and that it’s critical to have a back up plan and to think on my feet. 

Since that day, I’ve had other mishaps but got through them with humor and what I’d like to think of as grace. So, bravo Carrie Underwood. Those of us who have had mishaps at work truly understand and applaud your professionalism.

Diversity in Style, Politics and the Thanksgiving Table

The holidays are quickly approaching and with them, especially this year, bring discussions of politics. Experts have suggested that people have a solitary Thanksgiving if they don’t care for the way their parents or other guests around the Thanksgiving table voted. OK, that’s the good thing about our country; we all have the right to say and do what we please. People are hurting, concerned, scared, anxious, confused, etc. about the election results and therefore, want to skip visiting the family members or former friends who don’t quite see things their way. Again, OK, that’s their right.

In my corporate Human Resources days I used to give Leadership and Teambuilding training classes. Human behavior type as well. One of the concepts that I clearly remember is this. The world/ companies/departments/communities/families cannot exist if we were all leaders or if we were all followers. In other words, if we were all the same. If that were the case, the leaders would be setting goals or planning strategically without anyone to do the actual work. Conversely, if the world/companies/etc. were exclusively followers, nothing would ever get done because there would be no focus, no planning, and no direction. In between the leader and the follower are other types of people and behaviors and when all of them are combined, great things happen. Goals are met. It’s diversity of style and it’s what make people, "people" and not “cookie-cutter” mannequins.

This same concept holds true for personality types. Usually there are the leaders, the communicators, the worker bees, and those that ensure that the work is done properly. Here again, without all four types, plans wouldn’t be made, targets wouldn’t be reached, and things would generally be a mess. Everyone needs to work together to make things happen.

To get back to Thanksgiving. What will refusing to speak with your family or friends who don’t think like you, get you? It gets you absolutely nothing but more hurt. You have an opinion and so do they. Your opinion doesn’t make you a bad person but neither does their opinion make them bad. This is where civil discourse comes in. Voting one way does not automatically put a person in a box (the leader or the follower the right or the left). Without their (or your) train of thought there could not be discussion, teamwork, listening, understanding and love. 

So, as we say in yoga, “You do you.” Your family or friends may be bewildered by your choice of not being with them this holiday but hopefully there will be a next year and another reason to get together, forgive one another (and yourself) and move on. Hopefully. Life is too short. 

Ben Rector The Thanksgiving Song  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwaxNPY5nIY

Ghosting an Interviewee

I've heard of interviewees ghosting a company after accepting a position. It's pretty despicable in my book. On the other hand, I've had a couple of clients tell me that they have been ghosted by the company that they interviewed with. They went on a few interviews, received very favorable feedback, were told that they would be hearing from them with the next week to two weeks and then nothing. My clients did the right things; wrote the thank you notes, thanked the recruiter and then nothing but a month of radio silence. 

The client wrote a follow up note at the one month mark and then I gave him a sample note to send as a final query. While my client is very disappointed, I said that I'm not sure that a company that pulls this is the kind of company he wants to work for. He agreed and has moved on. 

In my book, this annoying habit of major corporations never responding after such positive interviews is low. I don't think they realize that their tactics are a punch in the gut to the interviewee.

Protests and the Job Search

I'm a job search coach and for years I have told my college age clients to delete any incriminating pictures or commentary that might make a potential employer hesitate to bring them into their company. When there are hundreds of thousands of students vying for work after graduation, who do you think an organization will choose - the candidate with the skills and a clean record and social media presence or the candidate with the skills but with a tarnished presence?

Many of the students in the recent Hamas/Israel protests have covered their faces. They will eventually be discovered through posts, comments, AI or any other means. Students without the disguises will obviously be found sooner.

With age comes wisdom and not that anyone is asking, but my advice to those protesting? Be aware, think of your future. You've got 40+ years of work ahead of you and so many opportunities to make a difference, make money and apply all that you have learned in school into a profession you love. Use you head, don't believe everything you read or have been told. It's time to grow up.

Salary Negotiation Tips

 A retired teacher friend of mine is thinking about returning to the workforce but as an educational consultant. The company is flying her our for an interview today and she will spend a few days with them at a convention and also at their office. There are a lot of questions surrounding this new position and I think that they really want her to join their team. 

We talked about preparing for the interview, especially salary negotiation. In the state where my friend lives, salaries for teachers are based upon education and years of service. When she started teaching the salaries for entry level teachers were pretty much set. Now that she is interviewing for a business, the rules for salary are different.

The new position is for a company that sells a product and collaborates with schools. Preparing for salary negotiation is just as important as preparing for all other parts of the interview (understanding the position, learning about the company including products and services, preparing specific examples of past positive performance and projects, preparing responses to common interviewing questions, coming up with questions for the interviewer, etc). So what did we do to prepare for salary discussions?

1. We looked up salaries for similar positions in the community and within the state.

2. We settled on a salary range that my friend would find appealing.

3. We prepared a statement that would introduce the salary range when the timing was proper.

4. We looked at other job benefits that were positive and that might allow her to negotiate the salary. Some of these areas included benefits, working from home, community service and vacation time.

 5. We talked about her value and what she brings to the organization.

Today I texted my friend wishing her well on her interview. She said that she felt prepared for all aspects of the interview including the salary discussions.

Don't go in blind to an interview. Do your research and come up with a salary range that you are comfortable sharing with the interviewer. So many people forget this step and it's easy to remedy. Google "Salaries for a (position and location)". Look up some salary calculator tools including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Glassdoor, Salary.com. and Salaryexpert.

A Yoga Drishti and Your Job Search

 If you've been following this blog long enough, you'll know that I practice yoga. I also write how certain yoga techniques can be used universally; especially in a job search. Today, while in  a yoga class, we focused on a drishti while doing the tree pose. I focused hard on the pattern of the curtain at the front of the room and stopped listening to those chatty voices in my head that were telling me that I would fall. The more I focused, the taller I stood.

To backtrack, a drishti is a yoga technique that uses a focused gaze to enhance concentration. It's usually used in balancing. It's a Sanskrit word defined as "focused gaze". Using my example from class today, the drishti directed my attention to my inner concentration. When gazing at a fixed point (the curtain) while trying to balance on my one leg, it helped to shoo out the negative words in my head and concentrate on completing the balance.

In your job search, don't let the negative voices in your head tell you that you you're not good enough to apply for a better position. Don't tell yourself that you're not smart enough, not loud enough, don't have the skills or are generally not worth it to go after that position.

Calm yourself, turn inward, focus on self care and eliminate those chattering negative voices. You ARE smart enough, you ARE good enough, you DO have the skills and mindset to go after that job. You ARE worth it. If you can, focus inwardly on something or somewhere that brings you joy and focus on the positive. You WILL succeed.

Please Visit a Dermatologist

Today I had surgery for a Stage 0 Melanoma. It was discovered about a month ago when I went to my dermatologist for my annual skin screening. I was so lucky to have a Nurse Practitioner who was thorough and eagle eyed as she spotted a pinhead sized dot on my left buttock. She took a scraping, sent it out and sure enough, it came back as a Melanoma in Situ (along with all these other words that I'd never heard of and had to Google).

The Nurse Practitioner called me into the office to go over my results rather than sharing the news over the phone and then referred me to a Surgeon/Oncologist in Naples. That began a month of appointments, discussions, pictures (!) and then today, surgery. 

My surgeon was wonderful, the team at the surgery center were kind, caring and funny and what was a scary event turned into a kind of visit with friends. I won't get my results until I meet with the surgeon in two weeks so until then, I will research Melanoma and hope that it stayed in the margins and didn't stray. 

I'm also using my job search blog as a place to tell you my story and to ask you to get your skin checked. I had a bad experience with a dermatologist in NJ about ten years ago and it left me not trusting them. I'm glad I changed my mind and have been consistently getting checked over the last few years. So please, get checked. I grew up at the beach and love to be outside. This melanoma doesn't seem to be caused by the sun, the doctor says it is most likely from my family history.

If I can make one person visit a dermatologist from this post, I'll be happy. 

PS I learned to today that a melanoma, even a stage zero can quickly spread within six weeks. That's not very long.