🌼 March 2024: Transitions, Tips, Tasks and Top 5

One of the many things I enjoy about my work is the variety of clients and situations I get to work with. In any given day I may get to work with Gen Z college students, a higher ed executive, a team working on ecological preservation and restoration, and leaders creating opportunities for first-time home buyers from marginalized populations. And then the next day I'm hearing from engineers navigating the ever-changing landscape of AI, coaching a founder of a non-profit teaching code to refugees, and following up with a former student needing some insight on a career pivot. I learn something from each one of them, and deeply value their trust and willingness to consider challenging questions.

I'm currently reading Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents -- and What They Mean for America's Future by Jean Twenge in preparation for some presentations I've been asked to give on what it takes to manage Gen Z'ers. While I have lived long enough to know that each generation has its own unique qualities and challenges, what is standing out to me the most about the book so far is that there are some very unique dynamics that we are currently facing in the world today. Between teaching a college class of 20-22 year olds and recently celebrating another birthday that gets me that much closer to the classic age of retirement, what is standing out to me the most is this trend described by Twenge as "taking longer to grow up, and longer to grow older." In other words, people are reaching milestones like driver's license, getting married and retiring at far different ages than they did in the past. In turn, that is changing a lot of sociological dynamics. And I am seeing and experiencing those in real time.

So perhaps that is the lens through which I especially noticed this month's recommendations. Let me know if any of them spark your interest. Thanks for reading.

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🍼 👨🏽‍🦳 Parents, Young Adult Children and the Transition to Adulthood. This comes from Pew Research and provides some fascinating and robust data. Here's a teaser statistic: Parents are very involved in their young adult children’s lives. Majorities say they text (73%) or talk on the phone (54%) with a young adult child at least a few times a week. Given that I talked to my parents once a week on the phone while I was in college because long distance was so expensive, I cannot even imagine this! Scroll down further in the article and you will see 5 additional "chapters" to this report that are worth paying special attention to.

🧰 9 Tips for Landing a Job if You're Over 50. Several of my #careercoaching clients are in that #midlife time of reassessing their professional and life #goals. Many of our conversations touch on several of the strategies suggested here. 

🎉 How to Create Your Own "Year in Review." I am having multiple conversations with #clients about #annualreviews and I am trying to equip them to be able to talk about themselves in energetic and engaging ways. If you are struggling to get started, I think this article from #HBR can stir the creative juices.

5️⃣ New and Improved CliftonStrengths Top 5 report. As of January 20, Gallup has created a new and improved Top Five results report. I encourage you to log back in to the Gallup website, then look on the right side and click on “CliftonStrengths Top 5 Report.” It’s 19 pages and shows how each of your top 5 pairs with your #1, among other things. This is providing really NEW and valuable insights to the clients I have used it with so far. PRO TIP: Use this expanded info to prepare for job interviews and performance reviews. Tell me what you think!

😵‍💫 A List of Soul-Sucking Tasks and How They Affect You According to Your Strengths. More than likely, you have done CliftonStrengths at least once with me and know that I like to talk about the Balcony and the Basement. Here's another interesting list of situations that you might encounter at work and why they can be frustrating for you. If anything, it will provide a good laugh.

👩🏽‍💼 Executive Presence for Women. Great discussion with very specific advice on how to carry yourself professionally, especially in a remote context. I’ve already used it with two clients.

👵🏽 Redesigning Retirement. So I'm a little closer to the classic #retirement age than I'd like to admit... yet this article will surprise you as to the growing trends among 65-75 year olds. Check this out: "Seventy-one percent of Americans who are 65 or older say that the best time of their lives is not in the past but right now or still in front of them. And 83% say that feeling 'useful' is more important to them than feeling 'youthful.'”

🎧 If you want or need a healthy distraction... Maybe it is just me, but between world events and national politics, I am already getting overwhelmed and stressed out. If you want a fun and relatively productive distraction, I recommend this new podcast called WikiHole. A bit hard to explain, but it's a weekly collection of comedians falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes. Give it a try!

Thanks for reading -- feel free to pass this along to a friend or coworker. And I love hearing from you all with questions, comments and feedback at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. Cheers!

Nerds, Networks, Nearness and the Need for Speed - So Many Great Resources for March 2019

I feel like I can't type fast enough to get these written down for you! This is a TREASURE TROVE of super cool resources. Linger on each one - they are outstanding.

40 Things that Google Search Can Do. OK, this BLEW MY MIND!! I have apparently been living under a rock and use Google Search at about 1% capacity... Indeed, I know that the more we use Google the more they acquire information about us, but holy cow there are some great tools here. My current favorite is #12 ("need for speed"). This also falls under the "nerd" category of my title...

Jim Collins — A Rare Interview with a Reclusive Polymath. Here is "nerd" entry #2. I'm not gonna lie, this one is long and Tim Ferris nerds out at several points and nearly loses you. But I am such a huge fan of Jim Collins (haven't we all read Good to Great at some point?) that I stuck it out and I believe it was a great payoff. Listen and learn. I would suggest taking notes so as to not lose track. I just bought Collins' new monograph for Good to Great titled Turning the Flywheel.

Armchair Expert with John Gottman. This is an AMAZINGLY INSIGHTFUL interview with one of the foremost marriage therapists in the country. If you need a little more "nearness" with your significant other, tune in to this one. He especially explores issues around conflict. You can skip the last 40 minutes or so, where Dax Shepherd blathers on with his own commentary.

Research: Men and Women Need Different Kinds of Networks to Succeed. Yep, this speaks to "networks," obviously. I knew this information intuitively and experientially, but it was fascinating to see the research behind this one. Please read this one. It is so important to understand the limitations that women face in the workplace as they seek to advance, and how men understand and experience power. I can confirm all of it.

Assessment: How Well Does Your Team Function? I know, I know there are a ton of these sorts of tools out there, but I find HBR SO trustworthy, so this one jumps to the top of my list... If you decide to have everyone on your team take this assessment, they will receive something called "How Well Does Your Team Function? - Results." If you want to keep the results anonymous, you can have everyone send the results to me and I can collate the group's results. But it would also facilitate group discussion to just have everyone take the test on their own and share the results, if trust and communication are relatively strong. (I'm not entirely sure how this link fits into my title, but I couldn't pass it up! Perhaps "nearness" and "need for speed"?)

I will end with this...

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” 

Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Questions or Feedback? Hit me up at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. Thanks for visiting - share with your friends.

Thursday Thinking 3-8-18

I came across these quotes this week that have really stayed with me:

Oscars 2018

"...with Coco we tried to take a step forward towards a world where non-white children can grow up seeing characters in movies that look, and talk, and live like they do. Representation matters, marginalized people deserve to feel like they belong and I hope that we made a difference and I hope it's just the beginning. Muchas gracias." 

This came from the acceptance speech Lee Unkrich in response to receiving an Oscar for Best Live Animated Feature, for the film Coco. I saw this film when it came out with a cross-section of Anglo and Latino friends, and we wept big soggy tears in the last several minutes, but with smiles on our faces too. I can verify that my friends of Mexican descent whom I sat with that night indeed cherished this rare opportunity to see themselves and their heritage celebrated so beautifully. Like Unkrich, I too hope it's just the beginning.

Advancing Women in Leadership 2018

"If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together."

Apparently an African proverb, this was quoted by Jo Saxton, a self-described "Nigerian Brit" who was a keynote speaker for this conference that I attended this past Monday. Saxton is a truly inspiring leader and a force to be reckoned with. I look forward to hearing more from her.

This quote captures so much of what it means for me to lead. Rather than try to go it alone, I have found it is always better to build a team and a community. I have often found this to be more possible with other women, who tend to want to lead collectively and collaboratively. The conference was a good day of content, networking, and encouragement. Plus I enjoyed leading two breakout sessions on mentoring in the 21st century.

The World's Deepest Problems

"What, after all, are the world's deepest problems? They are what they always have been, the individual's problems--the meaning of life and death, the mastery of self, the quest for value and worth-whileness and freedom within, the transcending of loneliness, the longing for love and a sense of significance, and for peace. Society's problems are deep, but the individual's problems go deeper; Solzhenitsyn, Dostoyevsky, or Shakespeare will show us that, if we hesitate to take it from the Bible."

This comes from J.I. Packer, and landed in my inbox through a daily email called "The Christian Quotation of the Day." I won't deny that they frequently fall flat for me, but occasionally a lovely one appears. I liked this one because I appreciated the way Packer plainly states the big existential questions of life, in a way that caught my attention. And I'm still left pondering his contrast between individual and society's problems: do I agree with him? Not sure.

Representation Matters

“I remember reading, Marian Wright Edelman, and she was actually writing about children, and it hit me, in relation to kids, and for women as a whole, where she says, 'you can’t be what you can’t see.' If you don’t see it, you wonder if there’s something wrong with you, something's presumptuous, something arrogant about you for wanting it in some way. I think women have a complicated relationship with ambition anyway."

Resonant with the first quote by Lee Unkrich, this was quoted by Jo Saxton (I know, the connections between my quotes in this post run amok) during a podcast interview with Jen Hatmaker that I listened to today. I really connected with Saxton's words regarding the contradictory messages that women receive regarding leadership. We are so often asked to be responsible for things, but just as often are deprived of the fruits of those efforts. And if we press forward and still ask for opportunities and recognition, we are often snubbed or shut down. I appreciated the dialogue of this episode and still hope for change...

What are you reading and hearing?