Small and Do-able Ideas

Great, you’re thinking, lots of people are writing about that topic with big ideas and plenty of criticism to go around.  Not Professor Kanter, her ideas are small and do-able, and instead of criticism, helpful observation and positive, applicable ideas.  Granted, she still doesn’t share how someone without an income can make it while they work to find work, but I at least appreciate the attitude!

Advice for the Jobless Middle Manager

Here’s Kanter’s advice for the well-educated manager whose job has disappeared and is no longer even counted in the unemployment statistics because they’ve given up.

“What do I tell these jobless professionals who are holding their lives together with duct tape? I can say: Hang in there. Don’t give up hope. Develop a big idea to use later. Start your venture. Volunteer at a community organization. Find partners. Think internationally. Befriend immigrants with ties to an emerging market. Restore your sense of purpose. Remember what truly matters”

In the meantime, I think that there is other good advice out there for those in the well-educated middle:

• Now is a time to try that thing you never thought you would try.  What do you have to lose?
• Focus on some other aspects of your life.  Are you using this down time to exercise, eat right, learn a new skill, language, or perspective?
• Remember when you dreamed of working a shorter week or part-time?  What were you going to do with those hours?  Can you do that now while you keep working your “job” of finding a job?
• Take advantage of what your community has to offer – use the library, visit local sites, go to a park, find a new local diner, get to know the world that is right around you that you’ve never had time to experience before.
• Meet people – reach outside your first circle to your second or third.  Have a cup of coffee and broaden that network.  It may be more and more tangential to your job search, but sometimes the innovative idea is on the periphery, not in the core.

Asset Maps for Middlers

And another idea for “middlers” — I don’t mean those related to Bette, but those in the middle of their job transition and maybe even tired enough to be approaching things now in a bit of a middling way — draw your “asset map.”  You’ve probably already thought about the assets you are bringing to your job search, but what about the assets you have to offer to others?

Kanter mentions small ideas that collectively could build jobs.  She’s calling for a movement of small ideas based on all our assets – what do you have that you can offer to the solution of job growth in America?  “Imaginative small actions could aggregate to bigger impact. Underutilized office space can become an incubator for others starting a business. Shared work and living spaces are becoming more common for recent graduates working on new ventures; communities should encourage and facilitate this. Those with international business ties can encourage business partners to invest in the U.S.; good people and cost-reducing incentives are available now.”

I like Kanter’s small ideas and I hope more individuals and organizations will embrace them.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could see a movement across the United States, a movement of both workers and the organizations who hire them?  I am hoping that organizations — companies, foundations, associations, universities, government, nonprofits — will get creative and think about different ways to do things.  It would be a wonderful thing to see a boom of creativity and diversity in how we do things – our work, our products, our services, our decision-making, our politics, our day-to-day lives and our perspectives.  Thanks Professor Kanter.

Yes! You may use this article by Barbara Demarest in your company newsletter, blog or website as long as you add the following bio box:

Barbara Demarest (www.barbarademarest.com) received her MBA from the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University and her BA from Duke University. After 20 years at the Center for Creative Leadership, Barbara launched a strategy consulting practice focusing on people leading change in associations, foundations, universities, nonprofits and knowledge businesses.  You can find Barbara’s executive coaching profile on www.thecoachingassociation.com.

7 Deadly Marketing Mistakes from Guest Author:  Jessica Swanson

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Jessica Swanson, “The Shoestring Marketer,” has helped entrepreneurs, all over the world, explode their businesses using cutting-edge, proven and completely FREE internet marketing strategies. To receive your FREE Marketing Kit,  which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you, learn the exact techniques for marketing their businesses for NO-COST, visit: http://www.ShoestringMarketingKit.com

How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo

David Noer, author of Healing the Wounds and an organizational change expert I worked with at the Center for Creative Leadership, is working on a new concept — WORST practices instead of BEST practices.  I love this idea.  Below is his request for information.  I have lots of ideas for him…BUT the catch is that you have to have examples that can be fact checked…hmm, that may take some thought.  In the mean time, here’s the message from David in case you have something to offer for his work.

I’m doing preliminary research for a paper or an article– which could become a book – on “Worst Practices” in management and leadership. There has been a lot written on best practices, but no so much on worst case examples. Specifically I’m looking for examples in areas such as succession planning, selection, strategy, handling downsizing, mergers, marketing, product development, and ethics. I’m looking for specific examples that can be fact checked as well as general trends. I’d be willing to give credit – if desired – when and if anything gets published, to those who gave me examples. You can reply publicly or, if you wish privately at www.davidnoer.com Thanks for your ideas and help.

And I can’t wait to see what David comes up with from his research!

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Barbara Demarest
Executive Coaching, Seminars & Keynotes
Idea Catalyst, Strategic Adviser, and Freelance Chief Operating Officer

When I hear about job postings, I will put them up on this site and you can search the Blog Postings under the Resources category for the sub-category called “Job Postings” to see anything I have found.  I will title them with the month so that you know how fresh they are.

Here are a few jobs in North Carolina that I have heard about recently:

• Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, NC) - Senior Web Designer
• Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, NC) – Associate Director, Marketing & Communications
• Agency Account Director/New Business Development Consultant psoting with Paladin, a Marketing, Creative & Communications recruiting firm.  This is a CONTRACT position in Charlotte, NC.  See their website at www.paladinstaff.com for more about their services as a recruiting firm and contact norma@paladinstaffing.com if you are interested in this position.

Good luck with your job searches!

Sarah Arnett, an Organizational Development colleague I know, is offering a program called, Moving with Grief through Physical Storytelling.  It will be held at Wesley Long Hospital on Saturday, February 20, 2010 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Program Description:

This workshop helps people find new insights or new “endings” to stories that have played in their head for a while that have resulted in some mode of the grief cycle.  Stories are verbally shared and then I help guide the group to retell the stories IN MOVEMENT only.  The storyteller gets to witness the story instead of only replaying it in their head (again).  This creates empathy, new insights, and group wisdom….No movement experience required – abilities and disabilities welcome. Stories have come from recent events and from events that are decades old.

Who Should Attend?:

Caregivers, Hospice workers, chaplains, agency workers, healthcare workers, therapists, church leaders (lay or ordained) have come to these programs. I have had”regular people” come to these events!

Location:

Faculty:

Sarah Arnett MA, LMBT, NCC, ADTR; Organizational Development Specialist, Moses Cone Health System

Registration:

You may register for this program through AHEC at 336-832-8025.

AHEC is the Area Health Education Center – a national initiative to support education in the healthcare arena.  The Greensboro AHEC enhances learning experiences by providing information resources to both students and practicing health care professionals in the area.  (source AHEC website)

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Barbara Demarest

Executive Coaching, Seminars & Keynotes,

Online Networking & Positioning for Career & Business Growth

info@barbarademarest.com

Ph/vtext.com 336-303-1577

Twitter @barbarademarest

LinkedIn /barbarademarest

Coaching Profile: www.thecoachingassociation.com

Blog: www.barbarademarest.com

My e-book with Joyce Richman, Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job is now available at www.GettingYourKidOut.com

]]> http://www.barbarademarest.com/grief-workshop-offered-feb-20-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.barbarademarest.com/positive-psychology-master-university-of-pennsylvani/ http://www.barbarademarest.com/positive-psychology-master-university-of-pennsylvani/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:21:34 +0000 Barbara Demarest http://www.barbarademarest.com/?p=480 I’ve mentioned the folks working on Authentic Happiness before on this blog; they are led by Dr. Marty Seligman and located within the University of Pennsylvania.  I first learned about Seligman via his book, Learned Optimism, which I read in the 1990s and still find reasons to think about (on a fairly regular basis) today.  The institute and Dr. Seligman are pursuing the study of “positive psychology,” which differs from seeing the world and patients as a series of issues and problems, to instead focusing on “positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions.”

Because I am one of the 700,000 people signed up with Authentic Happiness, I received their announcement about a new Master program in Positive Psychology (MAPP).  I share the announcement in its entirety below.

For those of you considering school, this may be of interest.  It is an executive education model, so many of the students will also be full-time workers who travel in to Philadelphia for the program.  I think it sounds really fantastic and if someone would give me a scholarship, I’d be all over it!

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Dear Authentic Happiness Member:

We are happy to announce that the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania is now accepting applications for the 2010-2011 academic year.

We are looking for the next class to join the more than 190 students who have enrolled in this extraordinary program in the five years since its inception and who are now applying positive psychology in education, medicine, law, business, psychotherapy, counseling, coaching, consulting, and elsewhere.  Some of our younger students are now enrolled in Ph.D., J.D., or M.D. programs to further their training before engaging in the practice of positive psychology.

Because MAPP is offered on an executive education model, most of our students continue to work full time during the year and commute to Philadelphia – from across the United States and as far away as Mexico, the UK, Sudan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand! – for the on-site classes.  While many students have already earned other master’s degrees or even Ph.D.’s, only a Bachelor’s degree is required for admission.

If you hold at least a Bachelor’s degree (or will complete one this spring), have an excellent academic record, and are interested in learning about positive psychology and its applications from leading researchers and practitioners in the field, we invite you to find out more about our program.  If you think the program may be a good fit for you, we encourage you to submit an application before the deadline of March 1, 2010.

For more information about our program, please visit our website at
http://www.pennpositivepsych.org

In addition to general program information, the website contains a link to a recorded Virtual Information Session that features input from administrators, professors, and students of the MAPP program.
Please feel free to pass this message along to anyone else you know who might be interested in this program.

Whatever you choose to do in this New Year, we hope it will be one of authentic happiness for you and yours.

Resolve

by Gail Fritz

Resolve.  That was the word I picked for 2009 after my son told me about how his pastor (at Port City Church in Wilmington, NC) encouraged his congregation to choose one word to focus on for the coming year.  In essence, the word becomes a goal or a compressed New Year’s resolution.

Up for the challenge, I started thinking of several different words like peace and perseverance but settled on the word, resolve.  After a long marriage, I had been going through a sad and drawn out separation that frankly, baffled me.  I had allowed myself to stay in a tumultuous state for far longer than most might consider “normal”.  I kept hanging on to my Pollyanna-like optimism or perhaps my self-indulgent stubbornness believing that things would resolve they way I wanted them to.

After two years, at the end of 2008, I lifted my head just enough out of the mire I had been wallowing in to commit to moving on or at least to taking more steps forward than backwards.  For some people stepping into uncharted territory is an adventure, for others it provokes a form of paralysis.  I fall in the latter category.  But, with bootstraps in white-knuckled hand I resolved in 2009 to move ahead.

Dictionary.com has 18 definitions for the word, “resolve”.  Sixteen of the definitions use it as a verb, with or without an object and two as noun.  I think when the word first popped into my head it was in the form of the noun.  Resolve, a firmness of purpose or intent.  But as I was recently reading through the list of definitions and the word origin on the website, I think in hindsight I might have tweaked or expanded on my own definition of my 2009 word of the year.

The word resolve originated from the word resolven, which means to unfasten, loosen, or release.  In looking back over 2009 I was doing just that.  It was about moving forward, redefining who I was or wanted to be, but it was also about loosening, but not necessarily letting go of, the past I so wanted to continue to be my future. I needed to loosen what was binding me from moving forward, literally or figuratively, but letting go or releasing seems, I don’t know, more haphazard, less determined, less resolved.

The other definition that I really liked for the word resolve was used in the form of music.  This definition of the word is “to cause, to progress from dissonance to consonance.”   Even though I am not musically inclined there is something about the cringing image of a nascent middle school band or orchestra finally coming together to achieve a single harmonious note that resonated with what I was trying to accomplish in 2009.  There were so many individual pieces that I exhausted myself trying to sort out and make sense of.  But somehow in 2009, I unconsciously loosened, but admittedly have not totally released, this need to figure everything out.  Focusing, okay ruminating, on each individual issue or conundrum just caused discombobulated noise in my head.  When I was able to pull back a little and take more of an audience’s view of my situation, the discord faded some and I was able to begin to see a more purposeful crescendo to the last couple years of my misery.

To be honest, I didn’t think much about my word after the first week or so of 2009.  It went on the back burner in my mind along with other New Year’s resolutions that were quickly growing cold.  It wasn’t until this December that I really thought about my word.  Amazingly, when I looked back over the year I realized that my personal “resolve” in a number of areas brought about resolution.  Even though as I told my friends, “I never had to work so hard to get a divorce I didn’t want”, I did the painful work that was needed to close that paramount chapter of my life.  I realized with the help of wonderful friends and family that this step helped me to get on the rim of the mud hole I had been wallowing in for years.  I started writing.  I went back to school for the first time in 30 years to begin pursuing a new career.  I started a program to help others deal with grief and divorce.  And most poignantly for me, I started figuring out how I liked my eggs, a metaphor I latched on to from The Runaway Bride movie.

For the past 26 years I defined myself first and foremost as a wife and mother, two roles I dearly cherish and of which I am most proud.  Though I still do not fully understand the why, I do know, because I have prayed it to death, that God is releasing me for some reason.  His own definition of the word, resolve.

With my 2009 word behind me, I spent some time thinking about my word for 2010.  I thought about, “peace”, but through my journey I already experienced a peace I never knew was possible in pain.  I first picked the word, joy.  I have always taken life too seriously, carried burdens that weren’t even mine to own.  I nearly always did the right thing, was loyal, responsible and reliable.  Although I am proud of many of these traits, as they have served others and me well, I was missing the joy component.  I looked at life too much as a chore, something to do but not necessarily something to enjoy while doing.  I regret what I missed and what I cause those closest to me to miss by not relaxing more and embracing a carpe diem attitude. Ah, “embrace”.  I like that word.  There is certainly a joy component to it and a relaxing, peaceful feeling as well.   As I say good-bye to resolve, loosening or unfastening 2009, I look forward to embracing 2010 and all that it has to offer.

As I move forward, I am going to give some unconventional undergirding to my word, embrace, by borrowing a line in the bestseller book, Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.  Denver who is talking about not needing a calendar or a clock when he was working in the cotton fields says, “ain’t nowhere you got to at ‘cept where you’re at.”  Heeding his words, in 2010 I’m just going to be, be fully present, wherever that may be and whatever I am doing, enjoying and embracing the road ahead.

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Yes! You may use this article by Executive Coach Barbara Demarest in your company newsletter, blog or website as long as you add the following bio box:

Barbara Demarest (www.barbarademarest.com) received her MBA from the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University and her BA from Duke University. After 20 years at the Center for Creative Leadership, Barbara launched a coaching practice to help executives and entrepreneurs position themselves, their products, and their organizations.  You can find Barbara’s profile on www.thecoachingassociation.com.

A friend just sent me an email announcing an upcoming event that I thought those of you in the Greensboro, NC area might be interested in.

Here are the details:

Artista 2010: Exhibit and Sale of Art, Jewelry, Pottery, Sculpture by local women artists

Gala: Thursday, February 25, 2010

Time: 5:30pm –8:30pm

Place: Marshall Art Gallery, located at the Village at N. Elm just east of Pisgah Church Rd.

Tickets: $35 per person in advance or $40 at the door

(purchase online at www.wpforum.org or www.greensboroskirt.com)

Proceeds go to the Women’s Professional Forum Foundation “Nurturing Girls to be Tomorrow’s Leaders”

The WPF Foundation makes annual grants available to local non-profit organizations to fund programs that support our agenda to develop leadership skills for girls.

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Barbara Demarest, Executive Coach — see my profile on www.thecoachingassociation.com or contact me at info@barbarademarest.com

The title of the free tele-seminar is:

“I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew How to Network!”

Here’s the information sent to me by Darrell.

“The author of the 30-year best-selling career book “Wishcraft” addresses your questions about effective networking on January 21, 2010.  This
limited-seating FREE teleseminar will clarify the quickest and most effective ways to effect career transitions in tough times.  The masses are scouring the online job boards but the savvy are tapping into the power of relationships. Barbara Sher’s concepts of “brainstorming” and “barnstorming” have helped her readers network into careers they love for over three decades.  Register now and ask your top networking question of Barbara Sher at http://www.CareerGuy.com/barbara-sher-teleseminar.  This call is limited to the first 150 registrants.”