032: Career Development - Part 2

Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues, and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.

Hi, welcome to part two of the Career Development series of episodes. I'm just going to jump right in from where we left off in the last episode. So if you missed part one, go back and check it out. So where we left off in the last episode is we're moving into the section about what I like to call work psychology and love this because it's so important. And I feel like it's a little bit different than how we traditionally talk about career development. And I will get into a couple more of traditional career development things in a few minutes. Or maybe in a third episode. Not sure how much time this will take. But let's go ahead and jump in. So the first thing I love to talk about as it relates to work psychology, and it's controversial, so brace yourself, stop trying to get promoted. Stop trying to get promoted, trying like an air quotes trying. Controversial, right? If you're triggered by that, it's okay. It's totally normal. It's absolutely okay to want a promotion. It's absolutely okay to have promotion as part of your goals, whether it's goals for the next quarter goals for the next year, long term vision, nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's the need, and the desperation for a promotion, and getting your value and worth all wrapped up in it. And the trying for a promotion, that's actually going to hold you back, it's actually going to hold you back. We think that trying for a promotion is is the right thing to do. It's going to get us noticed it's going to get a scene, it's going to get us promoted. That has not been my experience myself with my own career development, or with others who I have worked with and coached. It is the folks who yes, they have promotion in their goals, and they want to climb the ladder. And they're looking to get to a certain level that they have that typically not always but typically who are really interested in they're curious. They're interested in learning and development and growing. And they network in an authentic way to build relationships, not to use relationships to get promoted. And they are not better. They don't have victim mindsets about trying for promotions and not getting promotion. And so this whole need we talked about in I think it was the episode before last to the first episode, the first part of letting go of control how when you cling to something when you are and we did the fist like I'm holding my fists together right now if you're if you're not watching on YouTube, you can't see it. But when you cling to something so tightly, and you need it so much, it actually pushes it away. And I don't mean in a woowoo magic sort of way. I mean, your energy, that desperation, energy is not what leaders are looking for. Leaders don't want somebody who's desperate for a promotion. And let me call this out. Because I think it's important. You might be desperate for a promotion, you might have had a spouse who lost their job or your family is in financial trouble. And you really desperately need a promotion from the from the financial perspective. I get it. It's not the way that's gonna it's not the way it's not the thing that's gonna get you the promotion because that desperation, energy will come across and it's going to affect your confidence. You're going to get up all in your head, you're going to try too hard. It's going to make you slip up and, you know, maybe mess up in the interview or along the way along the process. It's going to impact your current performance at work and, you know, if you're somebody who has a goal of a promotion, you want to make sure you're you know performing well in your current role at work and It's gonna mess with all of those things. And the whole trying to get promoted and being bitter about not getting promoted, it creates a victim mindset in us because we get too much of our we feel like we're not being valued. And when you start to feel like you're not being valued at work, and that turns into an obsession with getting a promotion and a bitterness around not getting a promotion, which, which by the way, doesn't mean you're a victim in general, doesn't mean you're a bad person. This happens to most of us, I would say, at some point in our careers, it's really, really normal. You just got to have super high awareness about it. Because when you start feeling that way, you have shifted into victim energy. And that can be felt. And I just gotta be honest with you, a leaders worst nightmare is having a drama victim on our team, we're like, really, it is so difficult, it is so hard to lead that and it sucks morale and it sucks energy from the team. And it is very difficult. And it is not the thing that will get you good feedback when you're going for a promotion or support from your current leader when you're going for a promotion. So what I recommend is, it's okay to want a promotion, but you got to let go of the desperate need for a promotion. And if you are in this boat, where you've been trying you feel undervalued, you've caught yourself feeling a little victime it is probably time to take a lateral move. If you if you've tried a few times and not gotten the promotion, it's probably time to take a lateral move, because it will change your energy it will re energize you even if you think you deserve a promotion, a lateral is, you know beneath your value, it will re energize you, it will shift that energy and you will be much more likely to get a promotion for your next try after you are in that role for a little while. Or, or I recommend looking at different companies, if there's not a lot of lateral option that energizes you or if you're feeling you know, you've gotten so deep into victim mindset that you're you're too better, you could start looking at other companies. And sometimes a good exercise to do is to just go out there like on LinkedIn. Or a lot of times there will be recruiters out there, you know, looking for folks for jobs, like I get messages like that on LinkedIn, not constantly, but fairly often, that I usually just ignore, because I'm happy in my role. If you're feeling any bitterness or frustration that you're not getting promoted, or you're starting to feel that victim kind of feelings, come on, go out there and take one of them up on their offer a role, just explore just be like, Oh, I'm interested in this one. Even if you don't have any intention of leaving your current company, just go explore it, because it really helps us understand what other people are getting paid for similar things that other companies, it can really energize you, it just can shift that energy. So go and start looking at things like that maybe even apply and go through the process and see how it goes. You just never know what's going to happen if you tried to shift the energy by taking a lateral or going out and looking for somebody else. So that's kind of work psychology Lesson One Stop clinging to promotion, desperation for promotion. And a lot of the we're going to talk about other things that you can do, because that's one of the things I want you to stop doing. Okay. All right. Next, work psychology. Speak up and make it known when you disagree with something. Okay? This is scary. This is like when you know you're aren't my my armpits start pouring out sweat, right? I'm worried that I'm gonna say something dumb. If you disagree with something or you, one of the ways that I like to do this, that I that I recommend is for putting it in the form of a question. Okay, when you disagree with somebody, and a lot of times I'll say it like, Okay.

I, that's confusing to me, because I understood it this way. And what you just said sounds different. Can you help me understand the difference between those two things? Like, you can phrase it as a question, and I hope what I just did doesn't sound passive aggressive, I don't mean it in a passive aggressive way, it just comes across as a little bit more exploratory than combative, if that makes sense. I do think it's okay to directly disagree. It's just that if you've if, you know, if you've not had a lot of exposure to that, and you're afraid the question methodology might be a little bit less scary or softer, weigh in for you or see for weight. And for you as you sort of learn how to do this because you don't, you definitely don't want a reputation of somebody who's negative. However, as I've climbed the ladder and gotten into conversations with much more senior leaders, I have realized that it's absolutely possible to say no and disagree while not coming across as a negative person. It it is it's a little bit of an art and a skill that you build. But I find that asking it in the form of a question to start can be really, really helpful. This is what will get you noticed, because even if you Speak up in a way that you disagreed and the group consensus just agreed to disagree with you and they keep moving forward, you're going to start to be noticed even like subconsciously by folks as somebody who is confident and who is bringing ideas to the table. And this is where, you know, having that courage to fail and fall on your face a few times, even though it feels really bad and really hard because our fight or flight kicks in, because we think the tribes not going to like us, and then we're going to die. Right? We've talked about that a lot in previous episodes. And even though it feels bad, it's actually a positive thing. Because you subconsciously, the other folks in that meeting are, or that situation are thinking of you as somebody who has courage who brings ideas to the table, and who isn't afraid to disagree and speak up. And that's we want that as leaders on our team, we want those, those folks on our team. Okay? Next thing is, be you your full self at work, be your full self at work. I know so many people who tell me they are one personality at work, and one personality, in their personal life. Remember how I don't like splitting the whole work life, personal life, but so many people have told me they're different. Now. You know, if you're somebody who uses crude language outside of work, or you know, you're dropping F bombs constantly, that type of thing, like, obviously, know, your audience, and you don't have to bring that full version of you into every meeting, I, I will say it's okay, not the crudeness. But, you know, if you're dropping F bombs or whatever, it is a little safer, even that you think you have to know the audience and do it in you know, spaces that are okay, you certainly wouldn't want to do that on like, if you're a leader of a large team, or in a large team meeting or something to that effect. But when you bury who you really are, it's okay if you're if you're somebody who's just going to work, and you are just fine to be left alone. And do you're like, you know, we've heard of like quiet quitting, right? Where you're just you're fine. Just get your salary, go to work, be left alone crunch numbers, or what you know, whatever it is you do at your job, then that's fine. If that's the case, you're probably not here for career development, because you're probably just fine there. And that's great. That's if that's your best life, I love it more power to you. That's awesome. Actually, I value folks on my team who just want to come and crank out work and go that's like that there's a very valuable place for that. You're probably not looking for career development. So if you are here, and you're looking for career development, you got to bring your full self to work. Because that stifling those certain parts of you, you're gonna, you're gonna come across as less confident, it's going to be hard for you to speak up and take up space and bring ideas, all those things that are really important that leaders are looking looking for if you're stifling who you really are. So I know that's hard if you have been stifling a piece of you, but we want your whole self at work. Like I want to know who you really are. I want to understand you as a as an as a whole person, not just who you are at work, okay. All right. Ask questions. Even the most basic of questions, this is really important and big for getting noticed standing out. It takes confidence and security to ask questions, especially when they're basic. So most of us, you know, me, I've done this Me included in the past. If we have a basic question, and we're in a bigger group, we are too afraid to ask it because we're afraid we will look dumb, right? And that's insecurity that's all rooted in insecurity. And leaders don't want insecure people on their teams. Now let me caveat that everyone's insecure, everyone has insecurities. I haven't secured, the most confident people you will come across the most successful we will come across is still have insecurities. So we all have insecurity. So I'm not saying leaders don't want you on their team. If you have some insecurities. What I'm saying is, you know, a leader, nearly every time is going to choose somebody who's more secure over somebody who's less secure, because they're going to be willing to speak up have confidence. And by the way, let me just clarify because I want to get into any trouble saying this. I'm not talking about extroverted versus introverted. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who have the courage. leaders want courage, who have the courage to speak up, take risks, bring ideas, ask questions, because we all perform the best at work when we have a diverse set of brains, bringing ideas asking questions adding value that's that's what we all want as leaders that we know that's where we will be more most successful. And if you're too afraid, if you're too insecure and too afraid to ask basic questions, that's something we need to work on. And I have I have done that I've gone from being too afraid and being keeping staying small and not, you know, needing to please everybody because of the fight or flight would come up. I Um, to not being afraid. And I can remember, when I first moved into our bank at American Express, I had never done like traditional banking before. This is about I think, let's see 2011. So about 11 years ago that I moved into our bank. And I was going to do project management, which I was very comfortable and confident about. But a lot of the terms the words, people were using the things people were saying were words, I didn't know it was like a different language, because I hadn't been in banking or finance, and I hadn't even taking taken one accounting class in college. And here I am moving into the bank at American Express, right? So, you know, big for me, culture, shock, language shock, like all of those things. And I went in and sat down with one of the very experienced vice presidents there. And this is before I was vice president, I was a manager at this time. So I was a couple levels below this guy. And I just told him, I said, I don't know banking. I don't know the words they're using here, can you help me, and he was wonderful. He went, we went in a conference room. And on the whiteboard, he drew a lemonade stand. And he taught me about assets and liabilities. Now, I knew some of this from just like, doing my own home loans and mortgages and that sort of thing. But he sat down and taught me the basics of, you know, the way that, you know, this massive bank that American Express has functions and works at the most basic level. And it was so valuable to me, like I understood, and it didn't mean I understood everything right from the beginning, but I got it. And if I hadn't have had the courage to have asked that basic question and look stupid in front of him, I wouldn't it would have taken me months and months, maybe even years to learn those basic things that he taught me in an hour meeting by drawing a lemonade stand on the board and talking to me about how things work. And so I really encourage you to don't let your fears and your insecurities get in the way speak up and ask questions, even the most basic and the other thing is, you're going to be helping someone else out who was more afraid than you because I'm sure there are people who had the same question. That's a real thing. Okay. So that one's really important. Know your motivators at work. There's this really great book and survey called, oh my gosh, I'm going to forget the name of that. I think it's called what motivates us I want to say all find it, and I'll link it into the show notes so you can see exactly what it's called and who the author is. But there's a survey and it brings up what are your main motivators at work after you do this, you do this survey, kind of like Strength Finders, but in a different way, it's what what keeps you motivated versus what your strengths are. And those can be the same or they can be different. And learning this is so completely valuable. Because once you know what motivates you at work, you can try to focus your career and what you do around those motivators and your career development, that sort of thing. It's also great as a leader, understanding what motivates folks on your team, or folks you work with on your team. So this is awesome, but knowing what motivates you at work is a game changer for being happier at work because and being happier at work is a game changer in general because we spend 1/3 or more of our adult waking hours that right? Okay, work on not taking feedback. Personally, this is such a hard one, right? This is so difficult to get constructive, tough feedback and not take it personally is so hard, especially when it's about you as a person like I can remember way back in the day I I think I was 22 when I got promoted to a manager level.

And I think my leader had sent out for like year end feedback, and it's anonymous, and, and for the most part, I had great feedback because I was an overachieving people pleasing perfectionist, I was really unhealthy back then mentally unhealthy. And so I did a lot of good feedback, because, you know, we're praised for those unhealthy traits that we have, unfortunately. And I but I had gotten some feedback that I come across as really young, when I was 22. Like, I remember telling my leader like, I am really young, like, I'm 22 years old, I, I am really young, and we had a whole conversation and he was fabulous. He was a great leader, and we had a whole conversation about how like, okay, there are two sides of this feedback. Yes, I am young, but I am at 22 in the corporate world, I'm a young person. And right like, there are some things that I can work on and you know, he taught me some tips and tricks on you know, how to not do some of the behaviors that make me maybe come across as young so it was like a learning experience but also embracing who I am at the same time and having confidence and you know, understanding that whoever was giving that feedback was trying to help me in my career because it was given in a very thoughtful way right. And it it I can remember that was like my first feedback that was like how do you not take that personally when it is about like who you are as a person right? And that will happen I do think that you know for feedback comes in all forms, some of the feedback is going to be more about like who you are your personality, that sort of thing. Hopefully, that's done in ways that make sense. And I think, you know, leaders should tread carefully when giving that type of feedback, obviously, and, and some feedback is going to be about behaviors and about what you do. taking it personally, and letting it spiral, you can turn you into that victim mentality, victim mindset, thinking that your leader doesn't know your value, your leader doesn't see your worth, like you can really, really spiral it. And so the more that we can do to try to understand that the person who is sharing it is most likely trying to do it in a helpful way. And that perception is reality. And we really can try to focus on changing some of this stuff. It's going to go such a long way. And it's going to help you to improve to really take that feedback and use it to improve and develop in your career. So that's, that's a huge one. And it's, it's a really, it's a difficult one, like let's just say like it is, is really difficult. The more you can work on unraveling your value and worth from serving all those around you, the less it's going to sting when you get feedback. That's tough feedback. Right? The reason we take one of the main reasons we take feedback personally, and it stings so much is because we have so much of our value and worth tied up and pleasing others and not disappointing others. But the reality is, sometimes our best is not going to be good enough. And that's absolutely okay, because that's what we're going to learn from and if we can choose to not take it personally. And to move on from that it can be a complete game changer. One of the hardest pieces of feedback that I ever received much harder than that you come across as young. This was more not about who I am. But uh, you know, something I had said, was that something that I had said, in a meeting came across as racist. And I was trying to talk about a cultural difference between the way time management works in the US and a different country who we were working with, and how it was causing some challenges in meeting deadlines. And, you know, there was a very senior leader on on the call, and the senior leader called me afterwards and said that I had to be really careful when talking about that, because it could come across as racist. And she was great. She said, Listen, I know you're not racist, but it could come across that way. And it crushed me because I consider myself to be anti racist. I'm so passionate about being an ally, about diversity, equity, inclusion, all these things. And I was like, completely mortified. And so I had to do a lot of work. I actually worked with my therapists on that one to figure out, because part of me was like, I, this was a true challenge that was happening, this cultural difference between the way that we worked and the way that this other country worked. And we were reporting into, you know, leadership who wanted deadlines met who were in the US. And the the cultural time management difference was it was affecting our deadlines. And so it was a real issue. And I was really sort of stumped about how do I raise it and talk about it? If I'm, you know, it's going to come across that way. And so I had to work through it. And I had to have therapy, like work through therapy about it, and really learn how to take it as a learning experience to be even sort of more careful how I talk about that type of thing. And really just reminding myself that I deep down generally truly like I am, I am not racist, I think it was so triggering to me, because I am so passionate about people. Like I'm so passionate about anti racism, and so it just hit like a passion point of mine, if that makes sense. But so that was a big one for me that I had to really overcome and learn not to take personally and take it as, how can I learn from it? And how can I change my behaviors going forward? So that's a really important one. Okay. embracing change. This is the next one. This is huge. One of the biggest things that I look for when I hire folks on my team, especially at like the manager and director role like, right, these are serious six figure income. You know, important critical roles that I hire, is the ability to embrace change. One of the hardest things to lead as a leader is somebody who is overly resistant to change. Now, let's break this down a little bit. For almost all almost all of us are going to struggle with change, just human nature, even changing even like when the operating system on our computers change, right? That's hard. You have to figure out how new things work. How do you like it change is hard and most of us are going to have some of adversity to change, like we're going to have some resistance to change and that's normal. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is that up, when change happens, I want you if you're on my team to speak up and disagree and tell me how you feel, I want to know how you feel that is welcome. I want to hear it. And sometimes, there will be times when your perspective leads to the thing not changing, or we make a different decision. And that's fabulous tonight, that's why I want people to speak up, I want diverse thoughts and opinions. Other times, we will move forward with the change anyway, even though you disagree with it. And this is the situation I'm talking about learning when to let go of your disagreement, because you have expressed it it has been discussed, and move on and support the change. That is massive, because the person who continues to resist sucks the energy affects the morale of the team. And it's very, very difficult to lead when it keeps coming up again, and again. And again, like the negative comments, the negativity about the change. So working on embracing the change and being okay with it is it's just such an important skill, not only for career development, but for life, because the only constant is change, right? We've all heard that your life's gonna continue to change your career is going to can you continue to change things that work are going to continue to change. And so if you are somebody who really, really struggles with change, like deeper than than average, I highly recommend working with a therapist on that and doing some deep work there, because that's massive for career development. Okay, I think that the last one I'm going to talk about, well, maybe a couple more, there's I have so much on this topic. When we do it in my full program, we go way deep, but it's hard to fit it into podcast episodes, and we're coming up on 30 minutes already for this second part two of the episode. This one's big, and it's controversial. So prepare yourself to be triggered, which is normal. Biggest one of the biggest points work psychology, remind yourself, you don't need this job. You don't need this job. Okay. And the reason that's so controversial, and triggering, is that you probably do need like you need, you probably need a job. I mean, you're probably there because you need to be paid. Like you need money for bills and food and, and that sort of thing. Maybe not all of us, maybe some maybe some of us, maybe maybe you work because you just really enjoy it. And you know, you have maybe a spouse or you know somebody else who has had jobs and you don't have to have the job, maybe you truly feel like you don't need the job. But most of us feel like we need this job for financial reasons, that's probably the biggest reason why we're there. However, what I've come across in my career, and I really had a lot of this myself, and it really took me leaving the company due to burnout for me to unwind it, that's not you don't have to leave your company or leave your job or take a break. Because not all of us can do that I was very privileged to be able to do that. But you don't have to do that to figure this out, you really don't you can do it by these tools that I'm I'm talking through here and through this whole program

is so just realizing that, like, if if you were to lose this job, if you were to get laid off, or you know what, for whatever reason, if you were to lose your job, you're going to be okay, like it's going to be okay, it's not the spiral that your brain does, like this survival brain spiral of like, then I'm going to be homeless, and I'm going to be, you know, not be able to feed my kids and my kids are going to starve and we're going to be you know, we do a spiral really, really quickly. And a lot of the folks who I've coached and you know, I had this mentality to before, we're operating in our role out of a fear of trying not to get fired, we really that's really how we're operating. That's the scarcity mindset that a lot of us are operating from is that we're trapped with the perfectionism is rooted in I can't get fired, because then I can't support my family, then I will be homeless if I lose this job. And it all spirals into the like, massive worst case scenario so quickly, when the reality is for almost all of us is that if you lost your job, you would be okay. You would figure it out, you would go through a hard time it would feel hard, it would feel stressful, there would be hard feelings and situations that would come along with it. But you have a resume, you have skills, you have values, you have a network, you could find another job and a lot of times what I've seen with folks and it happened to me way back in the day when I got laid off. This is where we find a much better opportunity even though we have to go through crappy feelings to get there and you know, fear scary feelings and times to get there. We typically find a much better opportunity that results from that. And this desperation of I have to have this job or else it really really comes through in you know us Not taking career risks which, you know, career development is tied to taking some risks. Absolutely. It is tied to scarcity mindset, it's tied to victim mindset, it's tied to desperation, that whole thing I talked about before about, you know, I need a promotion, I have to get promoted, I need this money, I gotta have this, that same sort of desperation, clinging energy to the job itself. It's unhealthy, it's rooted in scarcity mindset, it will come across in your energy. And so we really need to work on believing I will be okay, without this job, I don't have to have this job. And a lot of that desperation comes from our value and our worth being so tied up in the performance at the job. So we really have to remind ourselves that our value and our worth is innate, we could find another job if we needed to, even if it paid in a little less, or we had to start and work our way up from somewhere else. Some of the most beautiful stories of people living their best life come out of exactly those experiences. So letting go of this clinging to the job is going to be massive for your career development and starting to learn really believe that you don't need this job, you want this job and you're choosing this job, but you would be okay. If you lost this job or you left this job you truly would be alright, that's a massive one. Okay. We are now at 30 minutes for this. So I'm going to go ahead and pause this there on that note, that's a very important one. And thank you so much for listening. I will catch you in the next part of this. Thanks so much for listening to the working mom happiness method. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from listening for show notes or to enroll in the working mom happiness method coaching courses, visit www dot women's best life university.com

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