033: Career Development - Part 3

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 three of career development. And per usual, I'm going to just jump right in to where we left off. And we'll go from there, we'll see if we need a part four or not. But here we go. We were just finishing up this work psychology category, as I like to call it. And I just want to finish up the last few things. And then we're going to jump into the next topic, which is leadership. Okay. So I think I already covered it pretty well, in the last episode about how important having courage is for career development leaders are really looking for that. And I just I can't stress it enough like anytime that you get like the adrenaline sweaty arm hit feeling heart racing, that you have a question or something to say, have the courage to push through and share whatever that thing is. Because the fact that you're getting that feeling means it's important means that you're afraid that you're going to be judged that the tribe is going to not like you and kick you out. And then you're going to die because that is fight or fight or flight. That's adrenaline, cortisol flowing through your body. And the more you expose yourself to speaking up in those situations, the more comfortable you're going to become. And the more comfortable you become, the more confident you're going to become. And the more you speak up in those situations, the more you're going to start to get noticed. And it's going to help your career regardless of what your idea of career development is, it's going to be it's going to be helpful, you're going to learn more, all of those things. Okay, so courage is key. Taking messy action. Gosh, I love this term. So much we I know I've mentioned it previously, way back in the beginning, taking messy action. This takes courage. So this is the cure for procrastination and perfectionism. And procrastination and perfectionism are really super linked. And they're always rooted in insecurity, right. And so if you can condition yourself to start taking messy action, especially when there's something that you need to do that you're a little afraid of, you don't know where to start, you don't know where to begin. Messy action just looks like bullet points, brainstorming on a whiteboard, maybe messy action is scheduling a 15 minute with somebody and meeting with somebody and saying, Hey, I got this thing I need to do, can you just help me think through it because I just don't even know where to start. If it's a big presentation you have to do it's literally just like putting some bullets on the page and then stopping. So it's like you maybe you set like a 15 minute timer, you put some bullets on a page, and then you stop and you say that's good enough, I have this thing that I'm doing right now. And that somebody who's very important to me in my career and in in my, in the community in general, where I live has has offered to make some connections for me that it's like it's a big deal. I'm really excited about it. And she asked for my resume. And my resume is not updated from when I came back to Amex a year ago. And for whatever reason, I'm just like, so having like procrastination and perfectionism on updating this resume. And so I've set 15 minute timers three times over the last week to just work for 15 minutes on it. And it's literally like I do it in Canva it's because I like I like it to look nice, and so like to look a little bit pretty little bit, you know, little pizzazz in there. And so I do it in Canva because it has some color and so I've just been moving things around, like rearranging things to fit the blurb for my latest role in there. And I'm just like chipping away at it in small increments, messy action. And so this is it's huge because getting started is usually the hardest part of something. And and this is like the whole design thinking fail fast and pivot, right? Create a minimum viable product of something or maybe it's you know, not even that now even there yet, because you're gonna learn more from that and you're gonna learn faster and better in the beginning and waste less time and waste less money and less resources and all that it really aligns with like Agile methodology design thinking, these are just becoming more and more studied and known to be the most effective way to just get stuff done is about just taking messy action and getting started and knowing that you're in the beginning, it's not going to be pretty, but you're going to refine it over time, and you're going to get there and gonna get where you need to be. So it's, it's amazing for career development, and really helps you get noticed because you're gonna get so much more done. And it's, it helps with that. Just like the paralysis is the word that I'm looking for the paralysis that comes with the procrastination and perfectionism fear, right? You've heard the, what is the saying, Done is better than perfect? Right? Done is better than perfect. That's kind of what Messi action is related to. Okay. Okay, I love also, for work psychology, make yourself bigger, not smaller. So when you come to meeting and sit at a table, you know, showing your hands is huge. In fact, let's talk about that for a minute. That's something I love. This is why this is going to take like 10 episodes, because I have so many little tangents and stories that I love. Did you know so there's a book it's called Captivate forgetting the author's name. She's wonderful Vanessa something or other, I'll link it in the show notes, Captivate and she talks about. It's really just like how to interact people how to get how to interact with people how to get people's attention, that sort of thing. And the number one most important thing, when you are in front of people or meeting somebody, a lot of people guess that it's eye contact. And I think eye contact is number two, eye contact is important, but is showing your hands, showing your hands. This is so fascinating. It's because it goes way back to our survival brains like way back to cave person times. If if, if if you can see somebody's hands, and you know that you know, they don't have a weapon, they're not going to hurt you. They're safe. It's a safety trigger for our brain that if you can see somebody's hands, the brain relaxes and feel safe around that person. And this is why the handshake exists. Really interesting, right? And so when you come into a meeting, and even if it's on camera, I always know that I know the sound that I learned as I'm doing it right now, if you're watching this on the video, I keep waving my hands, which is hilarious. But even if it's on camera in a meeting, I will always start with a both hand wave palms up to hand wave. But this is massive. If you're in a meeting in person, show your hands you put both hands flat on the table, which is a subtle way to do it. But Show your hands don't hide your hands, especially in the beginning because it'll put everyone there at ease with you. If you show your hands. It's very put at ease welcoming, but in general, make yourself bigger, physically not smaller. So sit up tall, sit up straight, take up space, put your hands on the table, make yourself bigger, not smaller, you come across as more confident you'll gain more respect that way. It's just human psychology. And then power poses I think Power Poses help with that you've seen I've linked before and talked about before the Amy Cuddy TED talk on power posing. So just doing some power poses, I'll link that here too. So you can take a look if you haven't seen it, but it's a great TED Talk to watch. Before you go into a presentation or a meeting or something that you're worried about, do the Power Poses that's awesome for work psychology, okay. And then just a classic one you've probably all heard before but like keep track of your wins, even the small ones. So go have a document that you keep during the year that you just fill out really wins that you had positive occurrences even if they were small, because it's going to help hype you up, it's going to help remember you have you're awesome you can do this you're good at your job. And it's also going to help you for like writing your review at mid year or year end but keep track of your wins. Okay, there's a lot more I could normally go into in work psychology, but we're just gonna keep moving for the sake of not having a million episodes on this topic. And we're gonna move now into leadership one of the topics that I am most excited about and very, very passionate about. And I want to start by defining leadership in at work and what that means because you do not have to have people who directly report to you like you don't have to be traditional boss right quote unquote, like a like a boss like somebody who is the leader of people they roll up to you they report to you to to do leadership, right, individual contributors absolutely are leaders and leadership is very important. So I'm addressing, you know, leadership and all of those aspects when I talk through it, some will be some of the things I mentioned will be directly related specifically to like leading people and being a people leader, but others will just be related to individual contribution, contributor ship and leadership in general. So The first one that I love is talking about leadership as it's a verb and a noun, it's both, you are a leader. And you lead, right. And this is so important because one of the most important things as a leader is remembering that you are a leader because when you become a leader, and this could be like leading people directly, or could be the leader of a project, or the leader of a small meeting, or a group. People listen and like they, they listen, and they hang on to your every word, especially in larger groups. And so your words really start to matter more when you're in any kind of a leadership position. And so that's like, I almost want to like, quote, The Spider Man thing with great power comes great responsibility. But I don't mean to sound cheesy, it's leadership is not about like, power, by any means, you know, we're in we're going to actually talk about that. But it is a position where, you know, people are now listening. And so reading the room, knowing your audience, knowing that people are listening and hanging onto your words, I think is really, really important.

And then leadership is a verb. To me. And in my mind, the best way to describe leadership is service. Leadership is service, especially if you are the leader of a team, like you have people who work for you and report to you, you your job is to serve them. Your job as a leader to that team is to try to make their jobs and their lives as easy. As fun as exciting as motivating as possible. I really believe that some people might think that's controversial, but I think good leaders really embrace that. And I just was, I just heard on a Lewis Howes podcast, the School of Greatness, I can't remember who the guests was, but I heard him say this just just today. And it was so powerful and so true that when you are the leader of a team, if something goes wrong, it is your fault. You take accountability, it is your leadership, and it is your fault. If something goes great and amazing, you give that credit to the team, it is because the team worked hard, it is the team's fault. Fault is the wrong word. I know. But it'd be that the thing went well. And that I really believe is how good leadership works. Now, let's be clear, that doesn't mean that you have no boundaries that you work around the clock to make those things happen, you can still have boundaries and be a good leader. The key there is to share your boundaries with your team, tell them what your boundaries are, my team knows that I don't take meetings before 10am. I've shared that with them as a vulnerable, scary thing for me to share. It creates safety for them to have boundaries when you share your boundaries. And they will respect and understand your boundaries. When you share your boundaries and you're vulnerable with them. So leadership, the verb is service. It is it truly is rooted in service. I love that. listen more than you speak. When you're a leader, that's really important. Don't be afraid to learn from if you're like, you know, direct people leader, don't be afraid to learn from the folks who report up to you. Most times they know more about their processes than you do. And that's okay. A lot of us put this pressure on ourselves as leaders to know all the things that our folks on our team do. Because we feel like they won't respect us or think we're a good leader, if we don't totally understand their process. That's, that's not it at all. As long as you are willing to learn from them and listen to them, they will have respect for you. And if they don't, you know, if you're doing all those things you're serving, you're listening, you're working to learn and they don't respect you, that's their issue, not your issue. That's something that's going on with them. And they might be sitting in that bitterness that we were talking about in the last episode. So listen, don't be afraid to learn from them. You don't have to know all the things your job as the leader of that team isn't to be an expert in every single person's job, it's their job to be the expert in their job. Customize your approach for each person. Customized leadership is a game changing, it's the way it should be. It's the way it needs to be. You can't lead a team. And I don't care whether this is people who report to you or a project team or you know, whatever it is that you're leading, you can't lead each person in the same way because every human is different. And that sounds obvious. I see this very, very often leaders, leading with a blanket general approach when people are so incredibly different. And this motivators assessment that I talked about in the last episode really is a game changer here having the folks you're working with you know, knowing what motivates them at work and how they like to be lead, lead, lead, how they like to be led and how they prefer to be recognized. All these things are so important and so critical. And if you can't do the motivators assessment with people, just ask them, just have a conversation with them, talk to them. And what I do is when I have one on ones, I have that in front of me in my office, so I know who I'm speaking with, and what motivates them. And you know, these little key things about them. Game changer, it's so incredibly important. Okay, let's talk about influencing without authority, because that's a big leadership trait that companies and leaders, you know, hiring leaders look for influencing without authority. What does that mean? It means you have the ability to lead somebody, and, you know, get them to do something, essentially. And I don't mean in a manipulative way or anything like that, it means you have the ability to lead somebody and get some gets results, get drive results within somebody who you don't have authority over, they don't report up to you, they're maybe not even on your team. This is big I, I've done a lot of large scale project management in my career. And this is a really big thing, because you'll have folks weigh out over here in this department that has nothing to do with your project. But there's like an impact on your project. And you need them to get something done by the deadline. And they could care less like they don't, you know, but you need to work with them and get them to get the thing done on time, even though they have like no connection to you, or there's really nothing sort of in it for them. If that makes sense. There are lots of other examples of when influencing without authority is important. But it's just a great skill to have. And what it is all comes down to is relationships is genuinely caring and getting to know what somebody is going through. So you take the example I was talking about, you're on this, you're the leader of a big project, you have this little impact over here with these people that are way, you know, six degrees of separation removed, they don't even maybe understand what your department is or what it does. But maybe there's like this little change that needs to be made in their area. And it's important and it has to get done. It's one of the tasks on the on the project plan. If you can simply, you know, rather than just like sending a million emails and explaining it via an email, right, you can maybe start via email, if it's really simple, that's fine. I love an email over a meeting, you know, any day. However, if you're not getting a response, there's something going on there, right. And probably that person is drowning, like a lot of us are that person is probably very busy with competing priorities, they don't know your name, they saw it. So they kind of like didn't pay close attention to your email, this is really common, nothing wrong with them. We all do, it happens to all of us. Probably. They're drowning. And so setting up a call reaching out to them in a different way and setting up maybe it's even just a 15 minute meeting or reaching out on the Instant Messenger, introducing yourself taking some time to get to know them showing a little bit of empathy and that you care. That's how you influence without authority. And sometimes it's one conversation, and sometimes it's multiple. And this is why relationships are everything and expanding your network is huge. Because it really does show that you care, and people are a lot more likely to do what you need, if you genuinely care and have empathy for them. So this is this is a huge one from a leadership perspective. The next one is give direct and clear feedback quickly and compassionately. Who this is one of the hardest things to do, right, giving somebody tough feedback or constructive feedback is stressful for almost everyone. And what I have certainly learned and found over the years number one is, the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it, you're never going to feel totally comfortable. But the more you do it, the more comfortable you get you get with it. So putting it off is like the worst thing that you could do, because you're never going to get comfortable with it. Plus, the whole like cliche that feedback feedback is a gift is just so true feedback is a gift. All of us want to know if we're doing something that is wrong, or could be perceived as wrong, or that we should work on or that we should change, we want to know, right? You want to know, if there's something you're doing that could that if you changed, it could help your career could help your performance could help other people, you know, feel better, whatever it is, you want to know that. And we have to remember that as leaders that it's so they really do want to know it's a gift you're giving them even though it's stressful to do it. And it's hard for them to hear a lot of the time. And what I have found is doing in real time, if you can is much more effective, because then it comes across as less of a big deal than like waiting for your next one on one meeting that sort of a thing. Just doing it really quickly. And then the other piece with feedback is you know, there's the Harvard study on feedback that six positives for every one negative as it relates to feedback. So we really do need to be giving the positive feedback on a regular basis. Even if you maybe feel like it's over the top. It's really really important because then when you do have, you know this constructive piece of feedback that you need to give the positives can really help to counteract that negative piece of feedback. And so what I like to do is like, let's say somebody just gave a presentation, I was on the meeting. And there are a couple of things that I thought didn't go so well. At, which is actually like, pretty rare. I mean, I mean, this is, it's fairly rare, but it does happen. And it's important for folks for their career development, when it does happen that like, I usually like to ping them. Sorry, ping, I hope people know ping means I'm talking corporate speak, I usually like to message them on the Instant Messenger, and say, hey, great job, can

we just talk for a minute, and then I'll tell them, I'll start by saying this one great, good job, you sounded confident you were very clear, great work. As it relates to this, I think this is where, you know, let's work together on reframing this, or this is where your tone could have been a little different. Like, I will say it right then and there after the meeting, because then it's just like, hey, we're done. That's the meeting, here's the feedback, let's move on, it's not making it into like this big deal by saving it for their next one on one, sometimes you do need to save it because you don't have time, or you're going directly into another meeting. That's, that's okay, you still want to give the feedback, totally fine. Just make sure that you, you know, start with the positives, focus on some positives, and then go into the constructive piece and be direct and clear, do not be vague, do not be ambiguous, be very direct and very clear about the feedback. Okay. And delegation is huge. from a leadership perspective, one of the biggest struggles I had, when moving from like manager to director level and then to VP level is like letting go of control. I mean, a lot of us who have career success are control freaks, that perfectionism is real, that over achievement is real. And learning how to let go of that control is a massive piece of career development. Because what what we as leaders are looking for in those more senior levels are, you know, folks who are willing to learn from others and willing to embrace and accept that others can do things differently, and that can be better, that can be better like, and that's really hard when you're a control freak, right? And control freakness has probably gotten you pretty far in life and done pretty well. But remember, controlling everything is not sustainable, even if you're good at it is not sustainable, it will lead to burnout is not rooted in good mental health. And so learning how to let go of control and let others do something, even if the person does fall on their face, and they do it wrong, like the thing you were afraid of happens, where they fail, then you're gonna give them the feedback, and they're gonna learn from it, you're gonna get the benefit of giving feedback that helps you progress in your career, they're gonna get the benefit of learning how to do something, you know, in a different way from an more experienced person that's going to help them in their career. But overall, you just as a leader can't control everything. It's not possible, especially when you start to climb that ladder and get into those roles that have bigger teams under them, you have to let go of control. And you have to delegate. I'm to the point now in my career, where my goal is to delegate delegate every single thing, my goal is to I don't own anything, I delegate all of it, everything. And it's still it's a challenge for me. And every once in a while. There's something that's like, really big or really important, or really fast deadline that I'll just take an own, but it's rare. And I even challenged myself in those cases, to delegate every single thing to my team and then act as that leader, as we work through that. You know, do not micromanage is big. I think that relates to letting go of control. Micromanaging is a result of the control freakishness, people who can't let go of control tend to more be micromanagers. And it is very, very rare that somebody likes to work for a micromanager. So just check yourself make sure you're not doing that. I love this one. Don't get caught up on silly things. Right? Let's talk about that. This is so incredibly important. I see leaders, not all the time, but more often than I should who just care about the dumbest crap. Like the dumbest things like, don't let dumb things get in your way. They don't matter. Let me give you an example. years ago, somebody who I was mentoring came and told me a story of a time that he got feedback from a very senior person who we work with, because he was wearing jeans on a Thursday. And at that time, our dress code has changed a lot since then. But at that time, our dress code was that you dress casual on Fridays, and otherwise, you know you don't and I can tell you right now it did not matter. We don't have clients external parties in our office. It's all just internal folks. And the jeans he was wearing. Were very nice. If he did not look or come across as casual and he got pulled into the office by a senior person, and lectured not to wear these kinds of pants on a Thursday, now I get in some offices dress codes really matter. And they really mean a lot I can tell you right now in this office, they just don't. And there were other folks in our building who were dressed totally casually. And so this was just almost like, it wasn't even a really a rule. It was like an unforeseeable, you know, informal agreement that this department dressed a little bit nicer, whatever, but it certainly wasn't a rule. And to this day, that person just can't stand that other person as a leader, because this person is a high performer, they were really busy, right at that time, and just to be pulled in for feedback on something that doesn't matter. Like don't focus on the silly things. And this is not just, if you have direct reports, this is anybody, like stop paying attention to what time your coworkers start and leave, or how long they go to lunch, like, let it go. If you are that person if you are upset and obsessing about what time your coworkers are starting and stopping. I don't want you on my team. Like I'm just I'm just gonna be very frank like I don't one of my worst things is, okay, let me let me actually caveat that I don't want to get into too much trouble for saying that. If you're if you're struggling with that, and you're willing to work on it, I absolutely want you on my team. Okay. We all have things that we get hung up on from traumas resulting early in our life, right that like, like, I want you on my team if you're willing to work on it. But I will say one of the things that is like leaders biggest pet peeves is somebody coming and like saying, well, this person is starting at this time and leaving at this time and their lunches this long and like, now, if you're in the type of job where it does matter, like you clock in, you work a certain hours you clock out and somebody is abusing that like legit abusing the way that your job is structured and supposed to work, then I think it is important to tell your leader and I as a leader would want to know that I'm talking about the type of work environment where you know, it is more flexible, folks don't clock in and clock out. And you're just like, paying too much attention to somebody else, right. That's the type of thing I want you to really notice and have awareness. And like if you were somebody on my team, and you are doing that, and you I would say try to notice it, and let's talk through it. Because the truth is everybody's situations are are just totally different. And you don't you know, you don't know what's going on with that person. And you don't know what you know, maybe they're crushing their job, maybe they're doing amazingly well and a top performer, they just work a little bit on a different schedule than you like, I can remember. So when I was very first starting out, you know, I think I was like, Am I like 20 or 21 at AmEx, I can remember judging others for when they came in. And when they left and this was I wasn't even in like a clock in clock out job. I was a 21 year old who was just married, you know, I didn't have any kids. So it was like really easy for me to schedule my things around. work. So I can remember judging people for scheduling like dentists and doctor's appointments in the middle of the day. And like, I mean, I can remember judging a man I worked with who had five kids for like leaving in the middle of the day to like, take his kid to the dentist. I mean, I was so naive, I knew nothing, right. So I was a little harsh before when I said if you're if you're fixating on these things. I don't want you on my team. It's not it's not that I want you on my team. If you're willing to work on that. If you're somebody who's willing to open your mind and question yourself, like, why am I obsessing with how my coworkers are acting or what they're doing that is rooted in you and how you feel about yourself. And like for me on my journey, I learned a lot about myself on my journey. This is just the whole like, no better do better learn self awareness. And I figured out how to improve on a lot of my insecurities. And now that I have, I mean, I still have some, you know, I still have insecurities, I always will. But now that I've worked through a lot of it, I don't see myself judging in those ways. And this is like a little squirrel moment. But same for me with body image like I can remember when I was younger. I struggled really badly with my body image right and I can remember judging people what they wore, I remember making comments like oh, I don't know if she should be aware and that like, you know, just just horrible comments, and they were all rooted in my own insecurity about my own body. And so having this awareness like in our jaws, like when we're judging others at work, just know that's rooted in how you feel about yourself. And so if you are like monitoring your coworkers, when they start when they stop are judging them, it's probably more related to like, something in you maybe you're unhappy with your job or you don't Don't feel valued or you're feel like you're working all the time around the clock and you're not getting valued for it right? But maybe, maybe the solution is to be more like your coworker who has boundaries and starts and stops and takes a lunch, right? That maybe that's your solution, not for them to be more like you. This is just really important realization, and it will really help your leadership and your career development to have that awareness. Right. Okay. So that was like the don't get caught up on silly things peace.

Okay, from a leadership perspective, diversity is key, it is critical. And make sure that you are surrounding yourself with folks, whether it be people, you hire people, you know, on your project team, that sort of thing, where you can control you don't always have control with who you're surrounding yourself with, but where you can control it, get opinions, from diverse perspectives, right, bring people who are different from you different from each other, whether it's culturally or career experience, or what you know, where they grew up, you know, even if they're like similar in race or, you know, cultural background, maybe they grew up in two different countries, or states or whatever, just diversity and all the ways that you can think of it the more diverse opinions and perspectives that you can get, the better the outcome of whatever it is, you're you're working through it just it really, really, it's, it's a game changer. So that's a big one that I like to focus on. Okay, I think we've hit on a lot of my the ones that I'm most passionate about. There is more that we cover in the full program. But I'm going to go ahead and start to wrap us up here because we're at about 30 Extra. I'm going to wrap this up here and we're going to do one more part that's going to be a four part topic. Exciting. I told you, I was passionate about it. So before I wrap up, just the usual reminder, please leave a rating on the podcast, if you haven't, if you if you're loving it, if you're finding value, please leave a five star rating wherever you're listening, because it really that's how the algorithm shows it to more folks, it'll pop up for more people. If it's getting good ratings, that really helps it so would I would so just appreciate it if you would be willing to take a few minutes and do that if you're getting the value out of it. And please let your friends know let anyone who you think would benefit know about it, because that's the goal is to get it out to as many people as possible. So thanks for listening and I'll talk to you in part four of career development. 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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