970-224-4042
Encore Careers. Part 2 – Journaling
In my last blog about creating an Encore career you love, I promised to provide some tips for helping you accomplish it successfully, so here goes: We want Certainty, with a splash of Uncertaining Most of us really hope for a life of certainty, where we can predict generally what’s going to happen in a day, such as where our food is coming from, what’s expected of us in our work, and what our relationships will look like. We like a little variety–that’s a concept called Uncertainty. This concept comes from the motivational speaker Tony Robbins. What most of us want is a...
read moreEncore Careers. Part 1 – What Is An Encore Career?
One day, after my “main” career is over, I intend to work as a cook in a soup kitchen. I love the idea of being happily busy cooking alongside others who love to prepare food, creating yummy meals for people who especially need one. I’d see myself doing this work part time, for about 15 hours each week. I may or may not receive income for this, and if it don’t I’ll likely be okay with this. What I’ve just described fits the definition of an Encore career, which according to Wikipedia is, “Work in the second half of life that combines continued income, greater personal meaning, and social...
read moreLeadership. The key to a great workplace.
I spend my work days helping clients make career progress. In this role, I hear horror stories about subpar working environments. After a while, a person might start to wonder if there are any pleasant places to work. But I gained a new perspective as part of a market research project I’m completing. After interviewing three leaders of local organizations, all with stellar reputations as employers, I’m feeling more optimistic. First was my conversation with City Manager Darin Atteberry, who heads more than 2,000 employees and is responsible for the overall operations of our fair...
read moreA Lean Approach To Career Development
A trusted advisor suggested that I read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries to improve my company. Yet just a few chapters into the book, I realized that not only could it advance my business, it has the potential to improve the career results of my clients, as well. The heart of lean startup is about developing a successful product or service by being as efficient as possible, relying heavily on input from future buyers to direct how it should be created. Say you have an idea for building a better mousetrap. Traditional approaches would have you talking with an engineer to create a prototype. In...
read moreSwitching careers – steps to achieving your goal.
Last week I chatted with a security officer while waiting for a meeting to begin. She was happy to tell me how she’d worked for the organization for seven years, but was now ready to switch careers and work for a different company. “I just want a change,” she explained. As a career counselor, I couldn’t resist asking which field she was targeting next. “Something in healthcare, maybe as an intake specialist,” she told me. “But I really don’t have background doing that. I just need someone to give me a chance to show them what I could do.” I’ve heard the, “If only someone would only give me a...
read moreWhat to say when you don’t have experience!
Recently, as I helped a client prep for an upcoming job interview, I asked him to tell me about his experience with one of the job’s requirements: the ability to use the software program Crystal Reports, a tool to create high-end documents. His answer, “I don’t have experience with that.” Until then, he’d provided impressive responses to every question, and this answer landed like a lead balloon. I feared it might kick him out of contention, so together we came up with this action plan which could be executed before the interview: Do his best to get some hands-on experience with the...
read more
