Sunday, October 14, 2012

What activities make you feel great about yourself? and so on...



REDIRECT: 15 KEY QUESTIONS

Feeding the ducks on the Labe River

If it’s true that we only live once, then it’s important to take our lives seriously. Too often we get so caught up in what we’re doing that we don’t take time to make sure that we’re spending our time in ways that harmonize with our values, skills and major goals. This exercise will help you think about your life from various angles.

1. What makes you smile? (Activities, people, events, hobbies, projects, etc.)

At the Museum of Play

2. If you unexpectedly had a little extra money, what would you buy?

3. What activities make you lose track of time?

4. What makes you feel great about yourself?

5. Who inspires you most? (Anyone you know or do not know: family, friends, authors, artists, leaders, etc.) Which qualities inspire you, in each person?

6. What are you naturally good at? (skills, abilities, gifts, etc.)

7. What do people typically ask you for help in?

8. If you had to teach something, what would you teach?
Beautiful fall colors in Trondheim

9. What would you regret not fully doing, being or having in your life?

10. What are your deepest values?

11. What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?

12. What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?



13. If you had $10,000,000, and never had to work again, what would you do with your life?

14. If you had 24 hours to live, what would you do? With whom?

15. You are now 90 years old, sitting in the sunshine. You can feel the spring breeze gently brushing against your face. You are contented and happy, and are pleased with the wonderful life you’ve lived. Looking back at your life and all that you’ve achieved and acquired, all the relationships you’ve developed; what matters to you most? List them out.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

The power of Redirect

The power of a goal is quite remarkable.
 
Sara and I just had a stimulating conversation about the current status of this year's primary goal, which we agreed on in our January 2012 Redirect seminar:
 
To build a home in 2012
 
 
We discovered that, although the year was not at all what we planned or expected, it has been nevertheless been focused on building a home. The goal was always present in our minds and hearts, guiding us in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to make many small decisions along the way. Here are three of the ways that our goal influenced our choices and was itself influenced by the events of our lives.
  1. We have strengthened some wonderful relationships with family and friends, while making new friends and enlarging our horizons geographically, prefessionally and spiritually.
  2. We've decided to stay in Prague for at least two more years, and not to move from our little flat, which has been so pleasant and convenient.
  3. We are still writing "21st Century Christianity" and hope to publish it next year.
 
All of these people, events, activities and experiences have molded our thinking and impelled us toward our goal, even though we didn't recognize it while it was happening. How?
  1. Because of our focus on building a home, we lavished time and attention on the people who were interested in what we were doing. These people challenged our thinking and helped us dig deeper into what "home" really means. We're grateful for their support and the ways they've helped us refine our goal. Our travel this year has also been anchored in our goal, as have our professional choices and spiritual development.
  2. We've decided to stay in Prague for at least two more years, and not to move from our little flat, which has been so pleasant and convenient. We thought in January that we'd move back to the US and buy or build a house there. But events and circumstances changed our thinking dramatically. Having our goal helped us frame these events and circumstances in such a way that they became guideposts and mile markers towards our goal.
  3. We are still writing "21st Century Christianity" and hope to publish it next year. This book defines our original mission in Prague and points us to our next big idea/goal. Knowing that we want to build a home has added urgency to the completion of our book.
 
The key words here are challenge, focus, time, attention, checking our progress and a sense of urgency. All of these are elements in goal-setting and working towards a goal. Think about an athlete who wants to compete in the Olympics. First, the goal is set. Then the details are put into place, resulting in a timetable, a support team (emotional, physical and spiritual), a fitness regime, a plan to find financial resources, and so on. All of the details support the goal, which is the heart of the entire effort.
 
 
"Without a vision, the people perish," as Proverbs 29 notes. Without a goal, life is a featureless plain upon which the individual is moving without purpose or destination. He or she is vulnerable to the weather, to the intentions of the people he or she may meet, to predation by wild animals, and to discouragement and loneliness. Without a goal, life is like the bumper sticker--"you're born, stuff happens, you die."
 
We designed the Redirect career development program with simplicity in mind--one goal for the year. This simple idea has turned out to be far more powerful than we had imagined.
 
Our last Redirect starts October 7, 2012;
we'll resume offering it 
when we return from the US in January 2013.
 
 
 

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Next Redirect program, in September in Prague


We are announcing our next career development seminar, Redirect, in Prague. Here are the details. If you are interested, please send us an email at stusek@ili.cc. You can go to our website, www.ili.cc, for more information.
Redirect: a new approach to life and work
Are you using all your talents, experience, dreams and personal abilities to the maximum?

Sometimes you can get “stuck” in a way of living that’s less than what you know you can do. If you are feeling that you haven’t fully developed your unique set of possibilities, the Redirect program can help you assess what you have, what you’ve done, and where you are heading.

Redirect offers assistance to you in five important areas:

1.      Redirecting your current career: changing the direction of your stalled, stale career

2.      Becoming an entrepreneur: finding ways to bring your career and personal dreams into reality

3.      Using your education and experiences to help the people you care about in their areas of need

4.      Making a fresh, new start after a major life change

5.      Getting to know yourself better so that you can create a life of purpose and meaning.

Cost for seminar per participant is 800 Kč (includes all four 2-hour group sessions and one individual follow-up, scheduled to suit both seminar leaders and participant).
Our book, 21st Century Jobs, is recommended to all participants: seminar plus book costs 1000 Kč.
You may pay in cash or by bank transfer
Redirect for Fall 2012

There are four sessions; you attend all four, as each one builds on the previous sessions. Dates are September 3, 10, 17 & 24

 Monday, September 3, 7-9 pm. Why do you need to redirect your career and your life? What do you have to work with, in terms of skills, professional goals, and dreams?

Monday, September 10, 7-9 pm. What have you loved doing in your life? How can you do more of what you like and less of what you don’t like?

Monday, September 17, 7-9 pm. What prevents you from doing what you really want to do? How can you change this?

Monday, September 24, 7-9 pm. What one major career/ life change are you willing to commit? How will you make it happen?

Seminar location, to be arranged according to enrollment

Sorry, no guarantees

In a consumer society, it's quite customary to expect a guarantee when you buy a product or service. My new Hyundai water boiling pot, for instance, has a one-year guarantee, with conditions spelled out in a tiny book.
I can't say how easy it would be to collect on the guarantee, but it does exist. If my dentist makes me a new crown, and I pay a lot of money for it, I expect it to stay in place for 10 or 20 years, and would go back to ask for free repairs if it fell off in two weeks. Again, I can't say he would fix it free, or at all, or even that he'll still be a practicing dentist, but there's some reason to think he will try to fix his work if it's unacceptable.


So it's not unexpected that people would like a guarantee when they get help finding a job, especially if they are paying for the help. In fact, some trade schools do make guarantees: many TOEFL language instruction courses guarantee that the school will get you a job offer. Whether it's a job you'd like, or will accept, is another story.

In New York City in the 1980's a time of recession, I co-founded a career counseling firm that helped laid-off and/or fired high-level excutives make a career transition. If, as was often the case, a firm hired us to do outplacement for its "excess" executives, we would help the people in these ways:
  • to come to terms with losing their high-paying jobs,
  • to do a personal inventory of skills, talents, accomplishments and values,
  • to decide what career and job to pursue next,
  • to strategize and develop their job campaign,
  • to prepare effectively for interviews,
  • to do all that was necessary to get offers for new jobs, weigh the offers and accept the best one.
Nowhere did we promise to get anyone a job. In fact,we stressed in every counseling session that no one can get you the best job for you except yourself.

We also had private clients who came to us for the same kind of career help as individuals. Again, we offered to help in any reasonable way we could, but did not promise that the client would end up with a job.

In this sense, our counseling firm offered no guarantees, only that we would help as best we could, under the conditions outlined in the contract we signed with the client. We guaranteed that we would try to help, but that's a weak kind of guarantee to a desperate person who needs a job right away.

rushing to get a job
Because the rather bitter truth is this: no one can guarantee to find for you, much less give to you, the job that you can like and do best. This is something that only you can do.

Or, to put it another way, you will never be sure of getting the best job for you until you decide to do it for yourself--to do the necessary work of self-exploration, career research, networking, getting interviews, analyzing your suitability for and interest in a particular job, and so on.


One of our clients, a Frenchwoman living in Prague who wanted to establish her own design firm, got the message loud and clear--she commented after going through two career seminars with us, "it's up to me to take charge of my own career. No one can do that for me." She's launched her firm and is well on the way to building a clientele.

No one can guarantee to you that you will do something that you must do for yourself. A coach, for example, can urge an athlete to get into good physical shape, exercise properly, get enough sleep, keep learning new skills, and so on...but in the end, it's the athlete himself or herself who must make the mental and physical effort to succeed in athletics. The coach can make no guarantees to the athlete other than guaranteeing his or her own good will, successful experience as a coach in the past, confidence in the coaching techniques he or she uses, and sincere desire to see the athlete succeed. The rest is up to the athlete.
Barbora Spotakova, 2-time Olympic Gold Medalist in the javelin event
Thereare no guarantees for the most precious things in life: no guarantees that the people you love will always by in your life, that your best efforts will be immediately rewarded, or that you'll even live to see another day. No in one can guarantee you the job you can like and  do best, but you can get solid professional help to envision, design and carry out your career goals.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Patience and Good Manners

One precious asset in the job search is patience. By patience, I mean the ability to work steadily toward a goal in spite of an unreasonable emotional desire for immediate results. Very often, the most valuable things in life come about only after a long period of sustained work, sacrifice and humility. Getting a university education, building a marriage, raising children and developing a career all call for tremendous, ongoing patience.

The patience of nature: centuries are needed to produce a waterfall
Nothing is more harmful to a job seeker than displaying impatience. No one is interested in working with a person who can't control his or her personal feelings, unless that person is immensely talented or pays his or her employees very handsomely indeed!

Closely related to cultivating patience is the use of good manners. In any culture, good manners are based on putting the consideration of the needs, feelings and responsibilities of another person above one's own needs, feelings and responsibilities. Many years ago, the Copy Center of a university where Sara worked had a sign:

"Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

For the job-seeker to be able to act with good manners (rather than harrassing people to do what he or she wants them to do IMMEDIATELY) requires patience. And patience requires developing the ability to stand back from one's own situation and consider the pressing needs of others.

Patience also require faith that all will work well for the job seeker. Religious faith is quite helpful in this case, but other kinds of faith are also acceptable; faith in one's own capabilities, faith that good manners and courtesy will be rewarded, and faith that the current "crisis" is not so very important in the overall scheme of life.

a patient, old tree produces new growth
Another word for patience might be "perspective." By removing oneself from the center of the universe, a more balanced perspective gained, one in which it's apparent that personal desires are just that: personal. Such desires are not the responsibility of others, and should not be insisted upon, if one is to be taken seriously as a potential employee.

If patience in social situations is not possible, then the job seeker is best served by scheduling some quiet time alone.Taking the time to consider one's problems and opportunities in a peaceful, serene setting is very healing, and helps one develop patience and faith.

Patience and good manners are ancient virtues, but never more up-to-date than in the job search. Practicing patience is good practice for successful living! and good manners are just plain good sense.


Thursday, July 5, 2012

The basic problem of job-hunting

This morning, Sara and I were talking about some of our friends who've had their fair share of job-hunting challenges. I have been thinking about this situation, and have come up with one basic problem:

"lack of fit between the dreams, values, skills, goals, and experiences of the job-seeker and the identified needs of the organization."

Organizations must be careful to hire people who will perform the functions and duties that the organization has earmarked as most crucial.

The job interview is the venue for finding out if various candidates, who may "look good on paper," really have the qualifications and skills needed for the job in question, as it is envisioned by the organization.


Due to this narrow focus on finding the candidate who is exactly qualified for a job, the interviewer has no time or interest in finding out the candidate's full range of abilities and skills. The successful candidate must severely tailor his or her "job profile" to fit the job description as it is written.

Of course, this presents an enormous problem. No human being is made for one job, and one job only. Every job-seeker has a multitude of job-related ideas, capabilities, experiences and potential for growth. The hard part is for the interviewer to see beyond the urgent needs of the moment (as the organization has perceived them) and probe to find out about the real person whom he or she is interviewing.

For the job-seeker, there is a very delicate balance between presenting himself or herself in the precise terms of the job in question, and revealing other important assets that may be of immense value to the organization, even if not at the moment.

Then there are the factors of chance, serendipity, conincidence, unconscious prejudice (on both sides) and just plain luck that usually tip the balance in any job-interview process. Even such intangibles as mood, the weather, and "chemistry" usually have more influence on the hiring decisionthan simple facts and verifiable skills.

The lesson is not to be discouraged if you are not chosen for a particular job. So many factors are in play that no one can predict the outcome of an interview. The best procedure is to review the interview with a trusted friend, to see if any glaring mistakes were made.


If you believe you did your best, but were not selected, let go of that job and move on. Time spent in self-recrimination, bitterness, anger and envy of the person who was selected is time that is mush better spent in refocusing of your job campaign and moving ahead with vigor and determination. Good luck!

Saturday, April 28, 2012

from our files: a real-life job-seeker's dilemma

(Here's a real-life interview dilemma. It's based on a CV and cover letter sent to us by a person looking for a job. Only the name is changed!)
Dear Jan,
You have given me an interesting situation to consider! Thank you for letting me assist you in your job search.

Here are some quick observations. Please remember that these are just my opinions, but they may have some validity, as I have been reading resumes and advising people in the job search for 27 years!
1. Your writing style is very good. It flows well, and is easy to understand without being overly simple.
2. You have a real challenge in this job ad because it is so non-specific:

Vacancy description

XXX company is looking for bright, energetic, positive and determined people to join our vibrant multicultural team!

Experience is not necessary, but we do require:

- Fluent Czech speaker
- Open minded
- Positive
- Flexible
- Driven to succeed


Nowhere can I see what kind of job they are offering. I wonder if this is just a "catch-all" ad to gather resumes and review them, at leaisure, to see who looks interesting. This makes your job much harder, as you don't quite know which skills to highlight.

3. Which brings me to your personal dilemma. Your cover letter and resume portray a highly-qualified person with extensive experence as a translator, writer, crafter, etc. But you don't know, because the ad is so general, what to stress.

4. Therefore I suggest the obvious! Send them a letter which mirrors their ad. Without being a parrot, use their language to write your letter. At the same time, severely edit your letter and resume, omitting anything that's not asked for. This is a counter-intuitive exercise, as most people feel obliged to state everything about their abilities. However, if you do, you may end up overwhelming the person who's screening resumes, and portraying yourself as someone who is a potential disturbance to the balance of the organization.
5. So, if you decide to go with point #4, you will end up with a shorter, snappier cover letter--about 3/4 page at most. It will mirror the job ad, but do so skillfully. It will also offer intriguing hints that you may have more to offer than what's being stated. Your resume will be one page, at most, with only relevant information, written in bullet points. At the bottom you can say "complete CV available upon request."
6. In all my experience, both in my own career and in helping 1000's of people in their career development, I have found four key truths:
  • your resume will most often prevent you from being inteviewed, not help you, as it will always include something that the employer finds irritating or irrelevant. You can't avoid this.
  • employers decide on whom to interview by factors that are unpredictable--usually something that's familiar or that reminds them of someone they like.
  • since you can't control most of the factors of interviews, don't take rejection personally. Just keep looking. The best way to get a job is by hearing about it from a friend, or by chance, before it is advertised. Circulating socially in a variety of situations is the best way to get an interview.
  • to get a job, you first need an interview (see above points). But people hire people, not resumes, so the interview is your chance to listen carefully, find out what the employer needs, and communicate to determine if you can help.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Czech and US unemployment numbers do a flip!

Since 2008, the year of the big financial crises on Wall Street, US unemployment has been a concern. One of the major campaign issues in the 2008 residential election was how to lower that rate, and get the US economy "moving again". So it's good news that, according to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has been falling in the USA since 2010:
UNEMPLOYMENT RATES IN THE USA:
  • Jan 2012 rate of 8.3%;
  • 2011 yearly rate of 8.9%;
  • 2010 yearly rate of 9.6%
  • 2009 yearly rate of 9.3%
By contrast, according to the Czech Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the Czech unemployment rate has risen sharply just this year:
  • January 2012 rate of 9.1%
  • 2011 yearly rate of 6.8%
US ECONOMY REBOUNDS
For the US, the fear came from Wall Street's assessment that the failure of a few huge financial institutions in 2007--2008 would cause the entire economy to crash.
As the past four years have passed without a crash, confidence has grown, and people are starting to want to invest their money, not hide it in a sock.

When money is put back into circulation for capital growth, housing starts and mortgages, and consumer spending, the economic data improves, and people gain even more confidence. Since all economies are based on confidence in the future and in reliable social cohesion, good numbers=a good economy. The unemployment rate falls as new jobs are created, and people are not afraid to change jobs or retire, creating openings. It's all good.
CZECH ECONOMY DRAGGED DOWN
According to Aktualne.cz,
"The data show that the Czech budget deficit has been growing faster this year than in 2010, while Czechs spent less in July 2011 compared to one year ago."

Yes, the deficit grew, in large part because the EU did not make the massive Euro grants that the Czechs have grown to depend on, not because Czech manufacturing was down or Czech government expenditures were up. The Greek, Italian, Irish and Spanish financial crises frightened the Europeans much as the Wall Street mess scared the Americans; the reaction of halting spending froze all the EU economies, as governments and people stopped spending.

What's peculiar about the Czech rise in unemployment is that the Czech economy itself is not in such bad shape, relative to the rest of the world. Actually, it's in good company.
According to the most recent numbers in the CIA Factbook (cia.gov), here are some nations with significant deficits:

USA
revenues: $2.264 trillion
expenditures: $3.604 trillion

Czech Republic
revenues: $87.25 billion
expenditures: $97.03 billion (2011 est.) 

France
revenues: $1.383 trillion
expenditures: $1.547 trillion (2011 est.)
     
Germany
revenues: $1.582 trillion
expenditures: $1.643 trillion (2011 est.)      

China
revenues: $1.555 trillion
expenditures: $1.681 trillion (2011 est.)
      
In contrast, a few countries are not in debt, but run a surplus:
South Korean glamour
South Korea
revenues: $267.9 billion
expenditures: $242 billion





Switzerland
revenues: $222 billion
expenditures: $216.8 billion
Norway
revenues: $283.8 billion
expenditures: $219.3 billion (2011 est.)      
Lichtenstein
revenues: $943 million
expenditures: $820 million

Saudi Arabia
revenues: $293.1 billion
expenditures: $210.6 billion (2011 est.)           
    
So why, then, has the US economy regained its impetus to expand, while the Czech economy is stuttering to a halt? Both have deficits, but, as we can see from the numbers in the CIA factbook, deficits don't cause countries to stop being leaders in the world economy. And surpluses don't always lead directly to world economic domination.

Psychologists would, perhaps, say that national character, historic self-perceptions and social relations are as important to economic health (as defined by the unemployment rate) as are such tangibles as budget deficits and industrial stability. In other words, what a nation believes about itself is the key to economic growth and sustained employment prospects for its citizens. Perception is powerful.

Of course, these statistics are, in a sense, "just numbers," as they don't reflect the individual trials of a person looking for a job in a climate of fear and uncertainty, due to poor economic growth numbers. But looking at unemployment as a reflection of an entire nation's culture, rather than as a personal failing, may ease the pain of not having a job.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Entrepreneurial wisdom

Many people dream about starting their own business. No more inflexible working hours, or interfering boss! The chance to finally do things MY WAY!
Sara and I had this dream for 8 years, and we brought in into full-time reality in 1993, when we ran the Business Leadership Forum: USA (Executive Education Program for Central European Business Leaders) programs in Florida.


We loved running our own business, but found that there were some unexpected developments in being entrepreneurs!
  1. We were our own bosses, true, but we now had dozens of other bosses as well--our customers, our partners and our volunteers. Their needs and wishes became our priority.
  2. Instead of evaluating our work performance by checking off a concise list of tasks and responsibilities on a job description, we had to do it all. Whatever needed to be done, we did ourselves or found someone to do for us.
  3. There was no paycheck coming in regularly. If we needed money, we had to find ways to bring it into our business--through customer payments, loans, savings, new products, lines of credit, grants and any other creative ways we could muster up.
  4. Since we were marriage and business partners, we had no leisure. Every waking minute was spent talking about, thinking about, and working in our business. We tried to fence off times of recreation, but invariably, the pressures and commitments of our business intruded into our tiny "personal life" space.
  5. We had a limited social life. Our family and friends didn't want to hear about our business all the time, and we were so absorbed in work that we had almost no other interests to share with them. Our time and money was so stretched that we could scarcely afford the kind of relaxed pace that family and friends expect in social activities. What time we could spend away from the business was spent in making new contacts, recruiting new customers and planning the next five years.
The lessons we learned in the 4 years we worked full-time (with no other jobs or income in our Institute were the most valuable lessons of a lifetime. We traded theory for facts in all areas of running a business: human resources, finance, logistics, marketing, customer relations, planning, public relations, etc. It was like getting an MBA, except for real--our case studies were not intellectual exercises, they were actual problems we had to solve to stay in business!

So when it comes to working for yourself, we could write a book! Hmm..our publishing house could publish and market it, maybe as an ebook...

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Redirect your life and your career

You can find information on how to get a job just about anywhere. Employment offices, university career centers, your local bookstore, and the Internet are full of good advice on getting a job, especially your first job.
But what about your next job? If you've been working for awhile, and need to change jobs or even careers, where can you get help?

ILI had designed a new program, Redirect, just for people who need to redirect their lives. Maybe you are moving to a new city or country, or have reached the top of your current career field, or are about ready to retire, or need to find a new source of income, or simply feel that your life is stale. Whatever the reason, you need to think in a new way about your life and how to use the resources you've gathered in a different way.

Redirect offers a way to evaluate and move on in life. The next Redirect program begins on January 16, in Prague. Please send us an email at jbt@ili.cc for more details.