A few months ago, I read StrengthsFinder 2.0 (in conjunction with other books like The Pathfinder... which I'm still working on. That book is massive!) in an attempt to examine myself in more detail. I didn't take the assessment at the time because I borrowed this book. Based on reading the description of each strength, I predicted that I would have the following as my top 5 themes:
Several days ago, I finally took the assessment. The results were:
Rank 5: INTELLECTION This is how the intellection theme manifests in my thoughts and behavior:
Rank 4: DISCIPLINE This is how the discipline theme manifests in my thoughts and behavior:
Rank 3: RESPONSIBILITY This is how the responsibility theme manifests in my thoughts and behavior:
Rank 2: LEARNER This is how the learner theme manifests in my thoughts and behavior:
Rank 1: EMPATHY Something that I didn't even consider as a strength made it in as the top strength (!). After mulling over it for a while, things started to make sense: most of the things I mention below come so naturally to me to the point where I don't notice it. If there was anything I do notice about myself, it was because the strength was working against me (so I thought I had flaws).
After doing this exercise (which took me several days), I can say these two things: First, I think I know myself a bit better than I did before - I found a new way to consolidate/categorize my thoughts and behaviors. Second, I feel much more okay with myself than I did before. Throughout childhood and into adulthood and working life, I felt like I was constantly encouraged to contort myself into funky pretzel shapes to fit into unrealistic norms or environments that I naturally am not compatible with. I felt like there was always something wrong with me that I had to fix or hide.
I think I can let all of that go now :)
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A few weeks ago, I was on vacation... thinking about what makes a vacation a vacation.
I don't know what it's like for you, but lately I've been running into a bunch of articles that say something along the lines of: "The secret to a happy life is to treat your weekends not just as 'days you don't work' but more like a 'vacation'!" which got me thinking a bit. I haven't had a really nice vacation in a while. Not too long ago, I've been on vacation where my phone would not stop buzzing (unfortunately my work didn't have a work phone vs. personal phone distinction so all the work texts came to my personal cellphone. And this was during my 5th year anniversary trip with my partner). It was frightening to even imagine the number of work message notifications on my phone. More recently, I've been on vacation where the fear of missing out kicked in and I was frightened for almost the entire time - despite the fact that there was not a ton of work accumulating while I was gone. So when I think of "vacation" my mind defaults to: "Oh, you mean that dread?" What made me look forward to the holidays before I started dreading them? I decided to jot down a list of things that bring me joy (and this will continue to grow as I remember more things and discover things that I like):
Did your vacation turn into something to dread before? What brings you joy? I have been on a journey of healing since late 2018. Six months later, I think I can say that I have made progress (yay!). There is one thing that I improved over the first six months of 2019 - forgiving myself and others.
Believe it or not, I was a professional grudge holder in my childhood. Every time I felt wronged by my parents or friends or even strangers, I would hold onto that resentment for years. And every time I felt I wronged myself - by failing to be perfect - I would also hold onto that as well. That was my habit for the past 20 years or so, and I am starting to break out of it. I am starting to genuinely believe the following statement: I am doing what I can with the information I have at the time. I understand that the information I have is usually incomplete. It can be completely wrong. As a result, I can make mistakes not necessarily due to bad judgement but because the premises I believed in were simply not true. In the past six months, I realized that I have beaten myself up enough (isn't 20 years enough?) and that I have better things to do now - to be kind to others (most notably, the 400 students I advise as part of my current job). My message to current students: for many, university is often the place where you discover your interests that you've never even thought about before, and totally different from what you initially thought you would do. (Once upon a time, I was a biology major. I thought I was going into biochemistry. Instead I discovered the Cognitive Systems Program at UBC and ended up transferring into UBC to major in COGS.) You may find yourself thinking, "I should have known I wanted to do X instead of Y - then I could have taken courses that count towards getting a degree in X instead of Y". It is easy and tempting to beat yourself up, but be kind. You were using your best judgement. You still are. You are doing what you can with the information you have at the time. As some of you may know, one of the hats I wear is the Academic-Advising-at-a-University hat. And the most frequently asked question I get is about careers (perhaps because I am the Advisor of an undergraduate program that is liminal in nature): Where do alumni tend to go? What can I do with my major? After having this career conversation with various individuals and thinking about this topic in my sleep for many nights, I thought I'd write down my very general (i.e. non-major-specific) thoughts on the matter. DISCLAIMER: the following thoughts are my own!
This may be relevant for you if you're unsure about the whole how-to-go-about-figuring-out-your-career thing. If you're up for reading the rest, get yourself in a comfy position on the couch and make sure you have your favorite beverage (and/or snacks) in hand... because it is long! :) Disclaimer #2: I ain't got no Master's degree or PhD so for those who would like to know the details about what it's like to pursue graduate studies you'll need to talk to the experts (i.e. graduate students) - I ain't one. Other than catching how "off" the job offer sounds, there are other signs that might indicate that something may be awry about the prospective employer or your prospective boss.
COATING THE PROBLEMS WITH SUGAR If you get a chance to talk to someone at the company you got a job offer from, and if they say something that sounds like the following, you might want to flag those statements and further analyze (and try to get a second or even a third opinion if you can):
RUFFLING THE FEATHERS The other place to look for signs is X (your prospective supervisor). If they consistently exhibit the following behaviors, you might want to think twice before committing to work for that person:
As someone who obsesses about optimizing processes that support people and organizations, onboarding and transitioning are two things I think about for at least an hour a day. Lately, I was thinking specifically about when the ideal time is to start creating transition documents.
From observation and experience, it seems to be the case that starting to create your transition report after you give notice is way too late in the game (unless the role is a very simple one). If the notice was given 2 weeks (read 10 business days) before you leave, that actually doesn’t leave a lot of time for you to get everything documented. Also: when your heart is elsewhere, it becomes very easy to half-ass everything at your current work. That includes your transition report. For this reason, starting to create your transition report when you make the decision to leave your current role is still not good enough. Although you may have much more time compared to the previous scenario depending on how much time elapses between the moment you decide to leave your role and when you officially give notice, the half-assing problem doesn’t go away. The moment your heart checks out, it becomes very difficult to put in the level of care you used to put into your work (back when you really cared about what you did at your current role). I’ve seen this with my predecessors, and I am guilty of this too. So when is the best time to start the transition report? You start creating your transition report on the day you start in your new role. The secret is to not think of a transition report as something that becomes relevant only when you leave your role. A transition report is there to help YOU as well as your successor. The report exists so that you can do cognitive offloading - you don't need to constantly have everything in your head because it's also in the report. You can refer back to it if you forget something. It is your safety net and long-term investment. You know all the notes you take when you start a new role and hike up that steep learning curve? (I hope you have those!) Do yourself a favor and combine all of them into a way that is presentable. Then you're doing two valuable things at once - you're setting your future self and your successor up for success :) You may have heard of the term "scope creep" in management: "Scope creep (also called requirement creep, or kitchen sink syndrome) in project management refers to changes, continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project’s scope, at any point after the project begins.[1] This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled." (From Wikipedia "Scope Creep"; [1] Lewis, James (2002). Fundamentals of Project Management (Second ed.). AMACOM. pp. 29, 63. ISBN 0-8144-7132-3.) This "creeping" can also happen in roles too. When a role "is not properly defined, documented, or controlled," role creep is bound to happen.
One example is the role of supervisor or manager. In some unfortunate cases, some supervisors role creep / micromanage due to the fear of "letting go" of the responsibilities that should be handled by their direct reports. Have you experienced your manager stepping on your toes all the time? The failure to delegate is something that I have struggled to tackle, and I have not found a solution for it (it probably needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis anyways). If you join an organization that is attempting to expand rapidly, your role will likely experience role creep. You'll probably be asked to wear say 3 hats at the time of hire, but when an organization is forced to "do more with less," one day you'll notice that you have 20 hats instead of the original 3. Some people find this enjoyable but others will find this exhausting. When the organization is large and stable, role creep may be the key to get you a raise or to get you promoted. If you voluntarily wear more hats and prove to the employer that you can take more things on (or new things on), that may open doors for future opportunities. Let me tell you my relationship with role creep: Whenever I wanted to wear a new hat and my supervisor said "no" to it because it was out of my "scope"... that hat was - consistently - the hat I ended up wearing in my next job. So if you're faced with a situation where you want to wear a hat but get shut down, it may still be worth doing research around that hat (even if you can't wear it immediately). You never know when you'll get a chance to wear it. It could be right around the corner... Oftentimes I get questions about what resources are available for finding yourself (and your calling). I recommend the following books, not in any particular order - they give you frameworks to think about yourself in different ways and to get valuable information out of yourself.
Recently I was asked the following question: If you could redo everything post-graduation over again, what would you have done differently? My short answer would be: I would have said NO a lot more. I recognize that student life is stressful - you constantly get judged. Although marks are not everything, they cannot be trivialized either because they could matter for some things (e.g. getting into a program, getting into graduate school). You get tested on things all the time, and chances are you won't get perfect marks. Although that is an indicator that you can learn more and improve, it is easy for us to beat ourselves up if we don't do well on an assignment or an exam. So if you've been in that judging environment for 4 or more years, it may take a toll on your self-esteem.
As a fresh graduate, my self-esteem was so low from facing uncertainty and rejection that I was willing to do more than I was actually willing to do. I fell for the short-term gains (mostly money) instead of the long-term impact. Let's say you get a job offer after applying for many jobs. It can be very tempting to just pounce on it - maybe because you've been rejected so many times before and you really wanted this position. But before you make the leap, make sure your gut isn't telling you that something is off at the time you get the offer. If your gut says something is awry, DO NOT IGNORE IT. Stop and listen carefully before you make a decision. Here are a couple of examples:
Lastly - if you are in circumstances where you still need to say yes although you know that something is off, know what your limits are and start planning for your next move before your mental and physical health starts declining. In previous posts I wrote about what kind of pacing might you want in your work life, and what kinds of problems you'd prefer solving. Today I'm writing about the why you might choose to do what you do - a crucial part when you're making decisions on pursuing a career or pivoting from one to another.
Funny enough, I struggled to find my own cause for years because it was actually right under my nose (!) when I was working in/near academia as manager. It wasn't until I worked in a very different domain until I started to notice what my own raison d'être was. I was working for a no-kill animal services agency which runs many initiatives, one of them being a cat sanctuary - a retirement home for hundreds of cats that are deemed "unadoptable" for various reasons and would have been euthanized in other jurisdictions (as a cat person, I'm head over heels for that). As much as I believe in no-kill animal care, that cause wasn't mine. I discovered my own cause only after coming back to academia and speaking to students (to me, they are bright minds who will do great things in the future) again: The way I can be most useful for society is to bring out the talent in other people and to connect said people so that they can collectively do great things out there. I went into servant leadership for that reason. It wasn't because I wanted to lead others - it was because I wanted to nurture (and then send out) leaders out into the wild so that they can make a positive impact on the world. And imagine if they did the same thing... the effect can be exponential. This notion pushes me to do better every day. Do you have a cause you live for? How did you discover it (or build/nurture it)? Was it intuitive or unexpected? Or - are you currently searching? Did your cause change over time? |
AuthorI'm Candice and I doodle with the intensity of the doomguy. Categories
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