Have you ever taken a personality test? I am kinda obsessed with them, especially now that they are freely accessible. I think I probably took my first Myers-Briggs test when I was in college or maybe in my first job. I could never remember the results – mainly because all the letters sound the same. A few years ago I found www.16personalities.com and suddenly I can remember. This methodology is Myers-Briggs-esque, but has some additional Read more…
I once observed a manager who claimed to subscribe to the philosophy of servant leadership. She had an admirable practice of meeting early-on with new team members about her philosophy and her preferred ways of working. She dropped the term servant leadership into those orientations and into hiring discussions as something she was looking for in the people on her teams as well. Yet in practice, I’m not sure her ways of being were completely Read more…
Last week I was talking to a colleague about a job lead. In the course of the conversation, he used the term “golden handcuffs” to describe the perks of a job that he otherwise should have left. He said, “the place was a mess and wasn’t using my skills or providing any growth opportunities, but man, did those golden handcuffs look pretty!” Full company closures in July and December (above and beyond PTO), summer Fridays, Read more…
This month I am hobbling around on a walking boot. (Apparently I somehow tore a muscle in the bottom of my foot doing nothing more than walking the dog around the block.) I had plans to travel into NYC multiple times this month, and I was determined not to let the boot impact my plans. My first trip was low-stakes – I went to visit a friend so I didn’t have a set time that Read more…
Earlier this week, I wrote about the Career Roadmap – a visual map of critical inflection points along an emerging or developing career path. As I worked through the pieces of the Career Roadmap with a colleague, we uncovered another early challenge might arise for folks as they are mapping out their journey. “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Ah, the dreaded interview question. I hated that question in my earliest interviews! How Read more…
Last week Almavina Strategic Partners launched our first product – the Virtual Mentor. It is a set of free resources that are anchored in the “Career Roadmap.” But what is the Career Roadmap? I’m glad you asked! A few weeks ago I had lunch with a longtime friend and colleague. We discussed the opportunity for supporting early- mid-career professional women, noting the gap in this kind of support that exists at the organizational level. My Read more…
For the final installment of the feedback series, it’s time to address the hardest kind – behavioral feedback. Giving feedback on another person’s actions or behaviors feels SO personal, and can be really difficult to do well. Especially if one generally likes to avoid conflict, it can feel easier to withhold feedback than to give it. The problem is, tolerance is a slippery slope! And avoiding feedback is not the same as avoiding conflict – Read more…
Feedback is essential when you are doing something risky. Something brave. Something that challenges you. While receiving feedback in those situations can be scary, the absence of feedback in some ways feels much worse. In the first installment of this series, I wrote “anything is better than nothing.” This is the minimum bar. When someone produces work for you or takes a risk in their work, give them something. Anything at all to recognize their Read more…
My writing process is something like this: I think of a topic I feel needs to be discussed, and then I write the subject line/title of the piece before I start writing. Weird? Maybe. I was thinking about this one experience I wanted to share with my readers and came up with today’s title. As soon as I typed it, I thought – “Hmm, that one’s going to require some explanation. Tolerance is usually a Read more…
I’ve been thinking a lot about feedback lately. Behavioral feedback in relationships. Feedback on performance in the job search process. Feedback on work products (in all levels of school and at work). Today I’m kicking off a series on the importance of feedback with two (possibly) obvious statements and one hot take. Obvious statement 1: Anything is better than nothing. In Fall of 2020 I enrolled in a Masters program at Harvard Graduate School of Read more…