May 2020: COVID Conversations...AKA Every Good Resource I've Found So Far

Up till the last two months, the bulk of my work has been in leadership development and management training. Yet since the coronavirus has taken hold, my consultations have been more focused on helping people develop effective coping strategies both professionally and personally.

Admittedly, everyone and their brother is giving advice these days. We are not even sure when all this will be over, and what life will even look like at that point anyway. So I hold on to these recommendations a bit loosely ~ nevertheless these are the resources I have used for myself and with clients in the last month and they have been helpful.

15 tips for sharing parenting duties and workspaces during COVID-19. This comes from someone I've recommended before ~ Gretchen Rubin. One podcaster calls her The Swiss Army Knife for Happiness. This link is flat out practical and down-to-earth. OK, while I'm at it, here's another SUPER HELPFUL one she posted recently on really effective tips on sleep.

How to Combat Zoom Fatigue. I had a "V-8 moment" when I read this from the article: "Finally, 'Zoom fatigue' stems from how we process information over video. On a video call the only way to show we’re paying attention is to look at the camera. But, in real life, how often do you stand within three feet of a colleague and stare at their face?"

A New Way to Mourn. Please, please if you only look at one thing from this post, let it be this. This was achingly beautiful and poignant. I cannot recommend it enough.

A Plan to Safely Reopen the U.S. Despite Inadequate Testing. I have had multiple conversations with high-level, executive leaders who are struggling with how to define the specifics of what it will mean to open up again. While each state will have different rules, all of their standards will not be granular enough to equip each type of entity. This brief and clear article, authored by 7 experts, comes from reliable sources at Harvard Business Review and Harvard Medical School, among others.

How to Recover When Your Career Gets Derailed. I loved this quote: "Don’t underestimate how flattened you are after a career debacle. Give yourself time to recover, gain perspective, and, simply, rest." From a huge transition I had to make during the 2009 financial downturn, I completely concur. Do everything you can to simplify your life and make it possible for you to not have to rush into the next decision.

Podcast Faves. These have bubbled up in new forms since we've gone into quarantine:

• Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel. OK, I am cheating a little bit in this one because it has existed for a couple of years. But she is doing a new series about couples under lockdown that is stunning. Just listen.
• Sugar Calling with Cheryl Strayed. She interviews her favorite authors and asks them for advice as to how they are coping. 
• Terrible, Thanks for Asking. I probably like the title of this more than anything, but wow it has some stellar episodes. There was one in March titled "9 Things" that is UNBELIEVABLE.

Virtual Museum Tours. Last but not least, please please check these out. Better yet, run them through AppleTV or whatever gizmo you've got and drink 'em in. 

• The Louvre in Paris;
• The Sistine Chapel in Rome;
• The Metropolitan Museum in NYC;
• The Smithsonian in DC;
• Hungry for more?! Go here.

Please let me know if you find any of the above helpful... I have been reading a little of Mary Oliver before I go to bed each night, and this one has stayed with me:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

Reach out to me at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. Feel free to share this with others. Thanks for reading.

April 2020 Quashing Quarantine edition: Relationships, Resilience, Refocusing, and Real Leaders

Greetings one and all, from my home office to yours. April 2020 will certainly go down in history as a month like no other... but admittedly, I fear May 2020 may offer little change? The rest of 2020?

But rather than go dark on you, I'd rather pass along the many HELPFUL and POSITIVE things I've come across in just these past two weeks. In this past month I have virtually traveled to Romania, Bosnia, Kuala Lumpur, Washington State, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, and many places in California. It has been incredibly profound for me to be sharing the same experience with people from all of those places, at the same time! We are all going through so much and it will take us weeks, if not years, to process it all. As you come across valuable resources, PLEASE feel free to share yours with me. If I get a few, I'll post 'em! Here is what is staying with me this week...

Esther Perel Zoom Discussions on Love, Loss and Loneliness during Lockdown. Esther (pronounced Ess-tare!) is a gifted therapist (and her Belgian-French-oui-oui accent is amazing) who is able to give words to so much of what we are experiencing right now. She has a wealth of valuable podcasts, articles and short videos, but what I've enjoyed the most right now have been her Wednesday Zooms. These have been the topics:

• How to adjust to your entire relational world being confined to one place. Part 1. If you can, read the chat thread that goes along with it. So fascinating to see what everyone else is experiencing around the world.
• How to adjust to your entire relational world being confined to one place. Part 2. This one dives deeper into how to adjust to this new reality.
• How to Live with Prolonged Uncertainty and Grief. I especially liked her practical advice on this one on how to remain resilient. 
• She has one more scheduled this week (April 22, 2020) on resilience in relationships. No doubt it will be thought-provoking.

Gretchen Rubin WFH Tips. I subscribe to her weekly newsletter and I often find valuable tips, ideas, articles and reflections. Take a close look at the graphic that I have posted next to this. There are some truly useful ideas for how to focus some of your restless energies in productive ways right now.

A housebound world finds solace in Yale’s ‘Science of Well Being’ course. Guilty as charged! I heard about this course on my nightly dose of BBC World News podcast (a practice I would highly recommend as a counter-weight to the frantic newsifying currently available) and decided to give it a go. On the whole, I like it. The lectures are quick and easily digestible, and I wonder if there has been a more significant time (in history?) to think about resilience, happiness, and well-being. So far (I'm on Week 3), I've most enjoyed a resource they suggest using while taking the course: the ReWi app, which provides some gentle accountability related to self-care. I have used it each night to reflect on gratitude, connection, meditation, exercise, sleep, etc. Just do it!

Real Leaders are Forged in Crisis. If I was sitting across from you for a leisurely lunch (I yearn for that day!), I would enjoy hearing how your work life has already changed, and how you anticipate it will be changed permanently by this time. On one level, as an independent contractor, my work life has felt a bit tenuous. After all, "leadership development" might be a bit of a luxury? But for several of my clients, the stress and unfamiliarity of work life as it keeps unfolding has fostered some of the best conversations of my career. People are truly grappling with difficult issues and fears, and I feel fortunate to provide some space for those reflections. 

In light of all that, please do not skip this article. It is challenging and motivating. I love these words from the opening paragraph:

I know that real leaders are not born; the ability to help others triumph over adversity is not written into their genetic code. They are, instead, made. They are forged in crisis. 

Goodie Bag: My Current Coping Mechanisms.

• Some Good News with John Krasinski. This has been THE BEST. My link sends you to Episode 1, but make sure you tune in to Episode 2. Tears. PS He's putting on a make-up prom for Class of 2020 this Friday. SUCH a great guy.
• DJ D-Nice livestream dance parties on Instagram. He plays lots of current stuff for the young folks, but oh, when he throws back to Earth, Wind & Fire and the Commodores, I'm in 70's funkadelic heaven! 
• Takeout food. My housemate and I had an especially bad day last week and we did not want to be defeated by it... so we got rib tips and sweet potato fries for dinner. Do not judge me.
• Homeschooling during Coronavirus? Quite possibly the best little video I've seen so far. Enjoy.

Again, please let me know what you are experiencing through COVID-19 and beyond. Contact me with feedback and questions at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. Please take good care.

WFH 2.0, Almost April 2020 Edition: Stages of Grief, Social Distancing, Shifting to Online, & Searching for Work

Oh friends... so many words. There is much that could be said, but I don't want to casually throw out meaningless platitudes or shallow sentimentalities. Rather, I will simply pass along some resources that helped me get through this month a little more easily. Please know I am thinking often about everyone I've worked with. Let's stay in touch...

That Discomfort You're Feeling is Grief. If you read nothing else on this post today, please read this. Simply put, it is poignant and powerful. It says all the right things about what it feels like to be living through this crisis. Save it and read it more than once in the next few weeks (months?). Pass along to others.

8 Ways to Manage Your Team While Social Distancing. Earlier this month I shared a resource that highlighted seven things to keep in mind while working from home. Several of my clients passed them along to their teams. Here is another useful article that is geared especially for managers and leaders. Here is the inviting introduction: "To help managers who are new to this – or even experienced managers who need additional guidance in these trying times – here are my best recommendations for supporting continued learning and the emotional well-being of your employees."

How to Shift to Remote Learning. I am well aware that there are so many articles flying around as higher ed instructors scramble to shift entirely to online learning for every local community college, private school and public university. But I found this article especially instructive. And even if you are teaching lower grades then college, I think there is some outstanding and applicable information to be had here.

Looking for a job during coronavirus? I have already had more than one conversation with someone who is looking for a job right now, either because they got laid off or simply because they had the misfortune of deciding to leave their old job right before this all hit. Where do they start? This link is a good place to start. And let's be honest, if you are at home with time on your hands because of quarantine, perhaps you should take some time to update your LinkedIn profile and resurrect your resume. If that rings true for you, I would go here first.

Unlocking Us ~ Brene Brown Podcast. I don't feel like I have to say much here. Just cue it up and listen. She has immaculate timing. This podcast could not be coming out at a better time. Please listen. And if you're looking for another good one, I would also download this one titled Terrible, Thanks for Asking. The episode from March 17 titled "9 Things" is extraordinarily good, but every episode is worthwhile.

Final Thoughts...

“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”

Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Please send feedback or questions to me at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. And peruse more leadership development resources at KSLD Resources. Thanks for reading... and take care.

WFH Update, March 2020: Coronapocalype Edition

Well friends.... wow. As we all crawl, struggle, panic, prep and persevere through this #coronapocalypse, I find myself straining to maintain some level of normalcy, while at the same time recognizing that we are all living in an incredibly unique moment in world history. Some of us are sheltering in place and the rest of us are doing our best to practice social distancing (two words I'd never paired together until a week ago...). In the midst of so many unknowns, at least we can seek each other out for support and friendship.

So here are some things I've been reading and reflecting on...

Working from home? 7 smart tips to help you get more done. Believe it or not, I have worked from home since 1995. In other words, I have some practice at this remote working thing. There are lots of articles flying around that pretend to offer input on this, but this article has some VALID tips on how to work remotely if this is new for you. I have already had a few clients send this along to all of their employees. AND... here are some simple but useful reminders on how to best run a virtual meeting. As someone who does roughly 2/3 of her work virtually, I can verify that these are excellent tips. I would only expand on tip #3, "Test the technology ahead of time": I recommend signing on with someone ten minutes early to confirm the technology (audio/video, wifi bandwidth, screen-sharing capabilities, etc), and I HIGHLY recommend that people use headsets with boom mics, especially for multi-person meetings. You can hear each person more clearly with headsets, and you cut down on ambient noise with a boom mic. My own headset cost $18, including tax #notdifficult

On Twitter @julesforrest: "Can we do a WFH workspace setup thread, unglamorous edition? My partner and I are both working from our studio apartment. My setup is a chair in front of the front door and my desk is our clothes hamper." I don't know Jules, but my heavens this threads KILLS me. I prescribe a 5-minute break every hour you work from home to refresh this thread and see the various WFH hacks that people are rigging up (which includes the cute little pupper in the photo). And should you want/need more funny memes on working from home, go here. New favorite hashtag of mine: #wfh 

"Real Leaders" podcast series on HBR IdeaCast. This is 4 episodes, and episode 1 is about one of my absolute heroes, Sir Ernest Shackelton, Antarctic explorer. Episode 2 is about Rachel Carson, a key pioneer in the environmental movement. DO NOT MISS THESE! They are equal parts inspiration, motivation and tremendous storytelling.

How Corporate Cultures Differ Around the World. Just today I had a fantastic conversation with a client in Bangkok about whether they "claim" or "grant" leadership in their culture. Obviously, this is one consideration among many as we engage in global work across cultures. I appreciate this article not only because of the subject matter, but also because it takes a global (AKA, not US-centric) perspective (which is um, more pertinent than ever in light of this global pandemic). One of my growing interests is in the dynamics of leadership development interculturally, as I noted in my December 2019 post regarding Erin Meyers' book The Culture Map. This article is an excellent "Part Two" to that post.

The Difference Between Leadership and Influence. In the same vein, I liked this reflection because it also explores the concept (as opposed to the methods) of leadership. It is concise, but thought-provoking. It would provide a great discussion starter at an executive team meeting or retreat. Here's a teaser: "You can influence without being a leader, and you can lead without influencing, but you can’t be a good leader without influencing."

Final Thoughts...
Stephen Colbert on Twitter, March 11, right before coronavirus was declared a pandemic: 

"What I wouldn't give for a dull moment."

OK, maybe one more photo from that WFH Twitter feed...

Feel free to pass this post to friends, and reach out to me with questions and feedback. Heck, if you've got time, let's schedule a video call! Contact me at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. And don't forget my resources at bit.ly/KSLDresources. Keep calm and use hand sanitizer.

Learning, Living, Listening: March 2020

February was a full month for me… It included trips to Chicago and Boise to work with clients, a garden-variety cold that just would not let go, another birthday (they just keep coming, dang it!), and three new clients.  In the balance, a great month ~ indeed, I am grateful!

Thus with gratitude in mind, I want to share three different resources I came across in the last month that reminded me of the things that really matter. Amidst the chaos of coronavirus and this election season, I am doing my best to focus on further horizons, on what it takes to make a difference over a lifetime. I hope they encourage and challenge you.

LEARNING. A Little Happier: Teacher Anne Sullivan Writes About Helen Keller’s Moment of Profound Realization. Ignore the first 57 seconds of this link and then listen undistracted for the next three minutes. I promise that you will be moved as you listen. Then take some time to recall which teachers had the greatest impact on you, and consider where you can do the same.

LIVING. Third Places. This is a concept that I only learned about a few years ago, but I really resonate with it. As the article says, "Your first place is your home; your second place is your work. Your third places are your regular haunts." He goes on to list the eight qualities of a Third Place. Politics and a potential pandemic will only serve to divide and isolate us further. In contrast, I hope more and more of us can seek to create third places, and also seek to reach into new locations outside of our safe bubbles. Working from home, I am certainly reminded that I need to be more intentional in cultivating third places, and in pursuing deeper and slower conversations wherever I am.

LISTENING. Wild Work Advice with Cheryl Strayed. This comes from one of my favorite podcasts, hosted by Adam Grant, called WorkLife. Grant is an organizational psychologist who studies motivation and meaning in the workplace. This particular episode revolves around whom we seek out for advice regarding work. It's a great conversation.

Bonus Content. The Era of Antisocial Social Media. I'm adding this one because I am so intrigued by it. Just when I thought I had finally figured out how to use social media, I came across this dandy curveball… Trends are showing that  younger people do not like social media as much as private messaging! Read this article for some really interesting new research around a rejection of social media. Which is probably good news for everyone, right?

Final thoughts...

"Hope does not need to silence the rumblings of crisis to be hope."

Walter Brueggemann

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to pass this along to others, and send feedback and questions to kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. You can also find lots of other resources for your work life at bit.ly/KSLDresources.  Ciao for now!

Searching for Work, Serving on a Board, and Stepping up in Your Leadership: February 2020

I had to pause when I dated something last Saturday, on February 1, and mumbled to myself, "Where did January go?" I don't know about you, but 2020 seems to be galloping forward and I'm having a hard time keeping up! Nevertheless, I'm thankful for interesting work and great conversations with clients. Once again, I came across some good stuff along the way and want to share it with you.

Are You in a Job Search? Purely out of curiosity, throughout January I tried to be intentional in asking people if they made any resolutions. Several mentioned some variation of "I want to be in a different job by this time next year." I know full well that it is pretty darn hard to jump start that process, so I came across two helpful resources in quick succession that might prove valuable if you need some help getting going:

• The Best Cover Letter Examples for Every Type of Job Seeker. Perhaps it's been a minute (or a decade?) since you have looked for a JOB job and you're feeling a little rusty... do you look on Monster? LinkedIn? Indeed? Craigslist? And what about a cover letter? Do they even care about such things?? Before you start hyperventilating, go slow and start with this link. There are multiple subarticles and examples here to get your wheels turning.
• How to Leverage an Offer... with Grace. On the other hand, perhaps you are not looking for work, but headhunters came looking for you. I think this podcast episode is a genuine, relaxed conversation that plays out several different possible scenarios. Worth a listen, at least for first 10 minutes. Best piece of advice, plain and simple: "Know what you want going in." Tune back in around the 20 minute mark for a call related to when to make a job change. PS This podcast is an easy and interesting conversation week after week about workplace issues. You may want to subscribe?

Are You Ready to Serve on a Board? Whether you want to give something back to your community or you are looking for a way to amplify your experience and resume, serving on a board could be a great next step. Though this article is targeted more toward those looking to serve on a corporate board, nevertheless the questions it asks are worth your consideration, even if you are just serving with your favorite little local non-profit, given the fiscal responsibilities we are now all exposed to when one takes on such a role. PS I've posted this article within a whole folder of board resources on my KSLD Resources drive, so feel free to look around for more articles and resources on a wide variety of topics.

Favorite Management Tips from HBR, 2019. This is a helpful compilation of key management tips from Harvard Business Review. You can use the ideas to populate your training meetings or even your staff meetings with your managers. Have fun!

20 Ways to Waste Time During the Day. Many (all??) of us struggle to maintain productivity and focus during the day. Clients often ask me for help in getting them to manage their time more effectively ~ do you know of a new app, a new time management system, a book, heck, even a gimmick, to help me knock down my massive list of to-do's? While I can pull from several tools, sometimes I recommend that you just take some time to put the mirror on yourself and look at some of the patterns and habits you have fallen into that need some attention. This list of twenty ways can be a good self-check and wake-up call. Personally, #3 and #11 are things I tend to do, and I'm currently trying to address them accordingly. How's by you?

What Am I Reading? Currently I'm reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. After hearing the author interviewed on a podcast and having someone else mention it in a conversation, I took that as a prompt to pick up the book. I'm taking it slowly, but it is powerful stuff. I am also quite confident that I will be applying its insights in my work, since the issues of stress management comes up so frequently with those I work with. We have become very disconnected from our bodies, yet they often end up screaming back at us to get our attention. WOW.

Final thoughts. I can't quite figure who actually said this because The Google credits several with its origin. Nevertheless, I find it concise and true:

Leadership is an action, not a position.

Feel free to pass this blog post along to others, and I welcome your feedback. Contact me with questions and comments at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. Thanks for reading!

Adapting Your Leadership, Asking for Help, and Antidotes for Stress: January 2020

I don't know about you, but having Christmas and New Year's Day on Wednesdays has been a bit disorienting. Work-wise, I've had things to do on both preceding Mondays, so I had to sort of rev up for a work week, and then (happily) key down for the holidays... and then find that I had work to do on Thursday and Friday! Sheesh.

Oh well. #FirstWorldProblems, right? Overall, I will freely admit that I still had some great time to read and reflect during my time off ~ I'm hoping you did as well. The resources I'm sharing this month emerge from that time. I think you will find them helpful and thought-provoking.

Are You Adapting Your Leadership Strategy as Your Startup Grows? In this fruitful and creative era of start-ups, I am encountering a few clients who are facing some real challenges as they shift from being organic to becoming an organization. As this article describes it, "a chief revenue officer who successfully helps the company win an initial group of customers might not have the right skills to actually run a scaled-up organization." This article from Harvard Business Review asks many of the exact questions I am working on with clients who may be five or even ten years into building their company and discovering some new issues as they scale up that they have never faced before. The key issues tend to revolve around the ever-shifting demands placed on the leadership team. I believe this article at least gets the conversation started.

The Art of Asking for (and Getting) Help. A recent discovery of mine has been an interesting podcast titled The Anxious Achiever. Let's be honest... the title isn't super enticing. But stay with me. This particular episode does an excellent job of describing a dilemma I often experience with clients -- as the podcast guest states, in our personal lives we might easily ask for help, whether it’s childcare, errands or emergencies. But at work we fear looking incompetent or weak. Yet asking for help actually fosters reciprocity and teamwork. But how do we navigate that? I recommend this episode because it gives real-life solutions and helpful options.

Is There An Antidote To Stress? The opening to this podcast says it all: "We’re up against a chronic epidemic: stress. In fact, it’s estimated that 80% or more of doctors’ visits are due to illnesses related to stress." YIKES. But if you are at all like me, you might find it even more stressful to hear people talk about managing their stress! That is why I recommend this particular podcast episode. It is an outstanding, engaging, honest discussion on how to manage stress, but it unfolds as a relaxed, motivating conversation with many practical, simple ideas. I listened to it while I was making dinner and it had my attention the entire time. Please check it out.

As you gear up for 2020: One More Thing...
I was committed to spending some time during my break to really think through how I wanted to plan for the new year. But in that process, I realized that before I could move forward that I needed to look backward and spend some time figuring out where were all the places in my life that needed some purging, minimizing or decluttering....

Maybe I didn't always ask myself what sparked joy in my life, but I tried to be super honest with myself as to what I actually needed. During this process (which has not finished yet) I learned two things:

1. I needed to start by making a list of all the places in my life where there was clutter of some sort, before I manically tried to just get started;
2. I needed to give myself permission to not try to get everything done in a day (or even a weekend!)

Everyone has their own spots where things tend to pile up, but a couple of websites (and let me tell you there are a few thousand of them dedicated to this subject) got me thinking, and these were some of the areas that I have either started to or successfully purged:

• Kitchen junk drawer (EVERYONE has one!!)
• Bedside table drawer (so. much. useless. stuff)
• Bookshelves (7 bags of books were pulled and I feel like I barely made a dent)
• Underwear and sock drawer (there, I said it!)
• Technology stuff (cords, old phones, adapters, blah blah blah)
• Bathroom drawers (can we say, "old make-up from the 90's"?)
• Bedroom closets (this is my last and most daunting area)

So this is my word to the wise: before you get ambitious and grandiose about the journey ahead for 2020, take the time to shed the dead weight. It has been a surprisingly motivating process.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. (Anne Lamott)

Let me know what you think of this month's resources. Go to my resource drive at bit.ly/KSLDresources for even more, or send me an email at kelly.soifer@ksleadershipdevelop.me. Thanks for reading!