Author: Marla Gottschalk

It is not uncommon to find ourselves in a role — or an organization — not adequately aligned with our  work life goals. Indeed, no role is perfect. However, what if it has become crystal clear that the fit just doesn’t seem to be there? (More about 6 signs of a poor fit here.) We can’t simply pick up and leave — and in most cases no one would advise this. So, the looming question then becomes: What should you do while you wait for your next (and hopefully improved) opportunity?

Consider Jamie, an experienced professional who has re-entered the workforce after a few years on the sidelines. The organization she recently joined is not aligned with the experience amassed in her core sector and she is feels incredibly challenged to keep up with the daunting learning curve. She realized that this first step back into full-time work wasn’t going to be perfect a fit. However, the on-going daily stress is challenging her resolve to stick things out for the longer haul. She knows this step is crucial, but feels she is quickly fading.

Of course, a poor fit isn’t reserved for seasoned professionals.

Jessica, a recent university graduate, entered the world of work with high expectations concerning what she might accomplish in her first year on the job. Active in clubs and organizations related to both her training and intended path, she enjoyed a high level of both autonomy and respect. However, in the real world of work — she is faced with the challenge of proving herself once again. Her manager clearly isn’t open to new ideas from a less established employee and she is struggling to even gain meeting invites. Frustrated and dejected, she toys with the idea of moving on to greener pastures.

Both situations are common — and potentially devastating. Having a heart-to-heart with yourself is often number one on the agenda. Often you must embrace the fact that this happens to many and does eventually resolve. Learning from the situation can offer strategies going forward.

Jill Katz Founder & CHRO at Assemble HR Consulting, shares this advice: “You would be surprised how often people feel stuck in their own role”. Jill who has led HR for several brands, including Macy’s and Calvin Klein continues, ” As we move into a world where personal and professional goals are blending — it is more important to get in touch with what we want — how to get it and how to manage the interim. One critical strategy is to be highly candid with a direct supervisor during the interview process and every week thereafter, to ensure the communication is fluid and open. More than not, these frustrations correlate with this process not occurring.”

In most cases, a combination of strategies can help us move forward effectively.
Here are a few to consider:

• Get real. Expectations can be a real bear to deal with, especially when you’ve over-extended an idealized vision of the near future. If you’ve realized that you miscalculated a role’s potential or there were promises made that couldn’t possibly be met, you may find that a “come to reality” discussion with yourself may be in order. Clarify what you can — and cannot — accomplish career-wise in this role and emphasize the positives. Look for “smalls wins” that will feed your workplace soul.
• Chill & give it time. Being impetuous is not a great virtue within the broader context of a career plan. If you are new to a role or organization, for example, give things at least 3-4 months to establish. This allows time to gain an understanding about the ways things work and for your manager and colleagues to learn your strengths. A career is not like microwaveable popcorn — things take time. If you’ve been with an organization for a time, you know how things can change and things can resolve for the better.
• Look for an inspiring project. Organization work on many fronts. Seek a project with an inspiring mission, that might help build your connection to the organization and those within it. Staying 100% engrossed in work you do not connect with, is a miserable experience.
• Glean what you can. If you can’t move into the right role, make a commitment to learn something valuable. You could seek inspiring individuals that might contribute to your development. For example, there could be a colleague well-versed in a skill of knowledge realm, that would be advantageous to your career.
• Take the time to focus on people. Jill point out that, “Regardless of the subject matter, building relationships will always help to drive a career forward. In moments of stand-still, maximize relationships, get to know others on a more human level by offering time and assistance. This will pay off in the end when new teams are formed and new opportunities become open in the future.” These formed bonds could carry you through a difficult impasse.
• If all else fails, consider short-term “survival” goals. If you find yourself barely hanging on, setting shorter-term goals can help. If overwhelmed or have lost your patience, focus on getting through the week. Then the next week. Thinking longer-term may be counter-productive.

Being in a less than perfect role, doesn’t necessarily mean that you cannot continue to move forward. It simply means that you must change the lens — and utilize the time in front of you in ways that you may have not previously expected.

Of course, I hope that a better fit is right ahead of you.

Do you have a “poor fit” strategy? Share it with our community.

Dr. Marla Gottschalk is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist. She is a charter member of the LinkedIn Influencer Program. Her thoughts on work life have appeared in various outlets including Talent Zoo, Forbes, Quartz and The Huffington Post.

Strengths have endured as a focal point of career growth. Author Whitney Johnson, speaks of our unsung “super-powers” that can drive both career disruption and growth. Massive training organizations, have arisen and flourished, to discuss how we might find our strengths. We all seem to agree that strengths matter — and that their identification is vital.

However, no amount of research, training or persuasion, can help us avoid the wasted energy and missed opportunities which occur because of one simple fact: As individuals, we may value strength identification, but respect for those same strengths does not always follow. The idea of strengths deeply resonates  — but adopting an application mindset does not always follow.

We tend to treat strength alignment, as if it were a luxury item — when in fact it functions like water. A fundamental. A basic. A necessity. Respecting our strengths is integral to building Core Stability.

Normalizing the notion of strength alignment, and exploring methods to bring alignment front and center should become a priority. (Few things could sustain us career-wise, with as much power.) Yet “noise” persists while seeking to apply that “strength signal”.

Weaving the notion of strength application into our conversations about work should become more natural, as there are opportunities that we often overlook. For example, when have you freely shared with a team member: “You know, you have an incredible ability to do this — let’s ensure you have the opportunity to develop and apply this skill going forward.” Similarly, when is the last time you asked: “It has come to my attention that I have this specific strength. Any ideas about how I might apply it going forward?”

What happens next? What should be done with that information? Attempt to change the plan going forward. Let that knowledge serve as a guiding force, helping you (and others) through our own career journey. A campaign — so to speak — to apply our strengths.

Aligning strengths won’t happen without a nudge in the right direction.

We must declare that we believe in their importance.

It is up to us, to champion the mindset and lead that charge.

Do you utilize a technique that helps others apply their strengths and incorporate them into their work lives? Share it here.

Dr. Marla Gottschalk is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist. She is a charter member of the LinkedIn Influencer Program. Her thoughts on work life have appeared in various outlets including Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Quartz and The Huffington Post.

Please note: This post first appeared at Linkedin

In this ever-changing world of work & organizations — I’m going to go out on a proverbial limb and vote for stability.

Not the type of stability that shoots you in the foot and has the potential to signal an organizational downfall (resting on laurels, complacency, lack of customer connection). I’m speaking of the kind of internal stability that allows your organization’s engines to really rev and take flight. The kind of security borne of trust and understanding.

It lives within the organization’s cultural core.

The idea may sound a bit esoteric and difficult to grasp. Never the less, discussing its presence is vital. It is essential because great employees do not simply leave bad bosses — they run, when possible, from an unhealthy culture. We have wrung our hands over various constructs that swirl around that core; engagement; turnover; commitment; loyalty. However, if we do not first take aim to affect our cultural core, forward progress is stymied.

There is a level of stability necessary for organizations — and the people within them — to thrive. We must address this.

Communication = Energy

One thing remains salient (at least from my perspective). You can’t positively affect your organization’s cultural core without bringing your team along. There has to be trust. There must be communication. There has to be the recognition that your people are your organization.

How your traditions, mores and accepted processes affect them is critical. These collectively form your culture.

People provide the energy to start the organizational engines. If the mission of your organization is misunderstood or mistranslated, your cultural core — so to speak — is weakened. Sometimes we simply forget people and we run ahead without them. We forget to ask if they are still “with us”. Or they were never on board to begin with. Same difference. We all lose.

We didn’t even bother to ask. Shame on us. We then must circle back with great haste.

Creating Safety

This kind of stability demands open conversations about how the work is done, the goals and the direction we are traveling. It requires a conversation about growth and career. It also requires planning for the future (competency-wise) — even if that future is a tad fuzzy.

I would hypothesize that for the period time before great success or innovation, the organization was likely stable in some sense at the core — and this provides a sense of safety (ethical leadership, strong teams, adequate resources, etc.) It may seem that successes are borne from one Eureka moment — but there was likely a safe core there. People fully understood they were “culturally” safe and they were free to seek excellence. Even with the whirlwind of activity around them in the external environment, that built stability was present.

Here are 6 elements to keep in mind when building out the core of your team or organization:

• Examine competencies. It’s really nonsense that the notion of competencies is dead for organizations. What’s dead is the idea that these areas of focus remain stagnant. What’s also dead it that we should use these as “hammers” to drive performance. Instead they should reflect the strategy of an organization and translate into meaningful behaviors.
• Build trust. Trust comes in many varieties and it needs to be attended to. Trust in leadership, communication and the potential to succeed — should be considered.
• Temper key risks. How your employees view and process risk is an interesting cultural litmus test. When thinking of doing something remarkable or different, what goes through their minds? Excitement? Fear? Obstacles? This dynamic can limit an organizations ability to remain innovative.
• Examine growth. Does your culture allow your employees to grow and reach across functional lines — or does it force contributors to protect their turf? Does your culture reward team players who help others thrive? Moreover, are ideas protected?
• Conversations are king. You cannot align your team without exploring how they feel about their own aspirations and the environment in which they work. This starts with your core team and cascades throughout the organization.
• Metrics. Strengthening your core requires an organization to include a robust set of metrics. Many will be new markers of success. (Remember Marshall Goldsmith’s quote: “What got who here, won’t get you there”.) This also requires you to examine the drivers of those measures honestly.

From your perspective, how does an organization’s core affect work life? Share that below.

Dr. Marla Gottschalk is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist. She is a charter member of the LinkedIn Influencer Program. Her thoughts on work life have appeared in various outlets including Talent Zoo, Forbes, Quartz and The Huffington Post.

Most of us join an organization with the intention to progress career-wise.

Finding an employer who will help us develop our skill set, discover motivating paths and avoid stagnation is vital. Yet, even in this day and age — these qualities can prove elusive. Our managers simply don’t have the time to help us sort it out and the information available internally can be spotty, unclear or inaccurate. To be truthful, the deficit to explore our future path begins early in the job search process, where the information provided with which to make career decisions is sorely lacking. This information deficit can continue, when employees struggle to find information to inform their career journey.

Ultimately, both engagement and retention suffer.

This problem is multi-faceted. But, there are two sides I’d like to consider here: 1) The information shared during the recruitment phase and 2) the quantity and quality of information available to current employees seeking internal growth paths.

Sadly, there exists a “lop-sided” emphasis on talent acquisition vs. career development. (Yes, recruitment is an integral element of the talent pipeline, which I respect.) Admittedly, this has much to do with the inherent difficulty of capturing the complexity of roles within organizations, describing them accurately and securing the right mechanisms to communicate that information. As a result, employees often (as a last option) seek a change organizations to reach their career development goals. Moreover, because recruitment channels receive the lion’s share of attention — managers seeking talent within their own organization might acquiesce and fill the role from the outside.

This sets up new problems on both sides of the exchange. Firstly, built knowledge about both the organization and the work at hand walks out the door with the established employee. Secondly, employees must again play the role of the newcomer and all that brings — wasting precious time mastering a new culture and its own contextual concerns. (I am ever hopeful that HR tech will begin solve these problem for us. Listen to a discussion concerning implementation of the Fuel50 platform at Ingersoll Rand here.)

Some of the informational issues could at least partially impacted during recruitment — where the information provided concerning roles, triggers early decisions about the job-candidate “match”. There has been progress in recent years to abstain from job descriptions that are simply a long lists of needed skills, responsibilities and requirements. However, there is one category of information that may be rarely shared — but could offer a wealth of information to potential job candidates. This is information concerning career paths of those that went before them. If shared in some way candidates could at least envision how they might develop professionally if they committed to a longer-term tenure.

As an illustration of this issues discussed here, I’ve just read another article about strategies to attract talent, with the word “lure” in the title. This article provided useful information — but somehow utilizing the word “lure” in reference to a job candidate defeats the purpose. We should set out to attract contributors in a transparent and informative manner. This involves putting the right information out there, so that effective decisions are made. For example, the “context” concerning a role does matter. How will you actually apply a specific skill set? What outcomes will you working toward? (See a great video from Ruutly about this very topic here).

In summation, we need work together and solve these information gaps. If we are to tackle the engagement crisis, we need to look beyond the initial role that an individual holds and look ahead. This inevitably involves how we describe and communicate internal opportunities that will comprise their  “future”.

Yes, all of this requires much more thought and devoted resources.

Yes, this would require organizations to adequately describe roles internally and keep track of contributors’ paths.

Yes, this involves paying greater attention to “internal recruitment” within organizations.

Yes, this would involve an even greater level of transparency.

However, collecting and communicating more information concerning where starting point “A” might lead during organizational tenure, could not only attract future employees — but keep a few more great people down the line.

Dr. Marla Gottschalk is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist. She is a charter member of the LinkedIn Influencer Program. Her thoughts on work life have appeared in various outlets including Talent Zoo, Forbes, Quartz and The Huffington Post.

Have you ever wondered why your best ideas always seem to arrive in the shower — or while you are on a walk — or first thing when you wake up? Well, it is no coincidence. Researchers have known for years that your brain requires peace (and quiet) to connect disparate elements that are churning behind the scenes.

This is why you experience increased creativity during down time.

With our busy technology-packed lives, we tend to equate feeling busy with well-being. However, your brain may be begging for a bit of boredom. So, make a point to schedule time to be completely quiet.

If your are very still — you may even hear the faint sound of your own drummer.

To learn more — visit my YouTube channel (yes, I’m experimenting there) and find the playlist: http://bit.ly/2y0Tans

• Manoush Zomordi: How Boredom Can Lead to Your Most Brilliant Ideas. Breaking our technology habit can be a challenge. However, it is more about empowerment, than time spent. Zomordi’s, Bored and Brilliant initiative opened the eyes of thousands.
• Genevieve Bell: The Value of Boredom. Bell educates us concerning how (and  when) the notion of boredom and its negative connotation — developed. She further explores how technology impacts this dynamic.
• Rollo May. Rollo May on Boredom & Creativity. Existential psychologist Rollo May, questions our use of toys (technology?) to avoid boredom — and how boredom “pushes you toward your own imagination.”
• Cal Newport. Quit Social Media. The author of Deep Work: Rules For Success in a Distracted World talks about how a lack of social media, has positively impacted his own life and work. He discusses the addicting nature of the medium and what might happen if we would consider leaving it behind.

Read more about this topic:

Dr. Marla Gottschalk writes about life and career as a LinkedIn Influencer. Her posts have also appeared at various outlets worldwide — including US News & World Report, Forbes, Quartz and The World Economic Forum.

Toys R Us may be a memory in a matter of weeks.

That stirs a boat load of emotions for many of us.

Personally, this conjures up the toys my own children enjoyed; Barney, Pokeman cards and Star Wars miniatures. Once again this confirms that time marches on, whether we like it or not.

The same axiom also applies to the quickly evolving environments in which organizations must live. The landscape evolves, whether or not organizations are ready to respond effectively. Brick & mortar operations have been hit particularly hard over the last decade. Like many that have struggled, Toys R Us has been a formidable company. A storied brand that continues to sell a lot of toys.

However, things have changed.

I frequently discuss how organizations have gone down the wrong path; how they might have chosen the wrong strategy or invested in leadership that led to only problems. However, I’m not sure this tells the entire story with Toys R Us. Yes, leadership could have been more agile, shifting more intently to a focus on customer experiences. Yes, they have faced extreme financial challenges. Yes, they should have been ever-responsive to the e-commerce landscape.

However, I have the distinct feeling these weren’t the only reasons why Toys R Us could be leaving us. You see, as an organization, Toys R Us may represent an era that no longer exists. (Please know I deeply respect what Toys R Us has accomplished as an organization.) A time when children played predominately with toys. When they were not using a device of some sort. A time when lingering in a toy store was on the “to do” list.

Somehow I can’t blame that shift entirely on one organization.

It seems that Toys R Us is verging on extinction. (Hoping this does not come to pass.)

The environment may not support its species any longer.

The reasons why — may have deeper ramifications.

Only time will tell.

What are your thoughts?

Dr. Marla Gottschalk is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist. She is a charter member of the LinkedIn Influencer Program. Her thoughts on work life have appeared in various outlets including Talent Zoo, Forbes, Quartz and The Huffington Post.