Sherry Dutra – Dutra Associates

10 Keys to Success in Your New Role

May 4, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Congratulations! You decided to make a move in your career. You networked, navigated the lengthy interview process, and were offered the job. The time for celebration is at hand! You might be thinking, “the hard work is over, right”? Well, the first stage of the hard work is over. Now you are faced with the first ninety days in your new role which are critical to your long-term success.

How do you hit the ground running? Not in the way you might imagine. Often, we have the urge to dive in and quickly make a big impact. Yet, slowing your pace a bit and getting the lay of the land before jumping into action yields the best results. A misstep at this point, can earn you a reputation that can take quite some time to turn around.

Keys to Success

Here are 10 key tips to set yourself up for success in a new role.

Be clear on expectations. There are both spoken and unspoken requirements of a role. Gain a clear understanding from your manager of not only the measurable performance expectations but also the intangible ones. What informal rules exist on how to accomplish your job?
Support your manager. What are your manager’s aspirations? How can you support them in a way that helps them achieve their goals? Get a sense of how they prefer to receive communication, i.e., face-to-face, via email, via text, etc. Understand how frequently they want updates from you. What are the things you need to avoid doing when interacting with this person? How can you make life easier for your manager?
Take time to observe and learn. New managers and executives sometimes make the mistake of equating success with making rapid changes. Determine how long you have to observe, learn, and then make well-informed decisions about planned changes. The length of time you have available for this will vary with the situation. The point is that you’ll likely have at least a couple of months to map out a plan forward. Resist the urge to jump in too quickly. Hasty decisions often do not end well.
Create your vision and strategy. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived. Identify the key people who should have a voice in establishing a vision for your area of responsibility. Develop a shared vision, determine the strategy to realize it, get buy-in, and communicate the vision and path to get there. Then, ensure you have clear measures of success and hold key players accountable for their contribution to the execution of the vision and strategy.
Evaluate your team. Take the time to get to know the people on your team. What are each person’s strengths, areas for development, aspirations, motivations, and results? Begin to set expectations with each person. Understand what support each individual needs from you and how you can add value to the team. Determine if you have the right mix of people. What adjustments might need to be made to ensure you have the right team to implement the vision and strategy?
Align with the culture. What is the culture like in this new organization? Which behaviors are expected, and which behaviors are not tolerated? What are the values of the organization and how are these lived, or not, in day-to-day operations? How does your style fit with the culture and values of the organization? Where do you already fit in well? Where might you need to modify your style (without compromising your own values)?
Build strategic relationships. There are formal and informal leaders in every organization. Who are the key players in yours? These leaders may be found amongst executives, high potentials, project leaders on key initiatives, and top performers. Which are the most impactful relationships for you to begin building? Building relationships in a strategic way will help to lay the foundation for success.
Understand the political landscape. Stepping into a new role may bring with it potential land mines. Asking questions that will reveal where to tread lightly will go a long way toward your success.
Create a personal development plan. Development never ends. With each new step comes a need to deepen one’s knowledge of the industry, the business, or to expand one’s leadership skills. Learning should be a life-long pursuit. Be sure to create a development plan for yourself within the first 90 days in your new role.
Small wins build momentum. Where are the places where you can begin to make progress without large scale changes? Find some small, impactful, early wins that get the ball rolling while you set the stage to excel in your new role.

Which of these key tips have you successfully used? What others would you like to share?

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

How are Your Teams Feeling Right Now? Measure the Emotional Culture

April 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

A lot of different elements underlie organizational success. You’ve got to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right product and with the right people. But even with the best of these, a great workplace culture truly matters. Do you know the emotional culture in your organization?

Eventually competitors can come along and replicate your best practices, strategies, and processes. As Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, once famously said, “All airlines have airplanes.”

According to Kelleher, “We’ve never had layoffs. We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions of grief or joy, we will be there with them. They know that we value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.”

So consequently, culture matters.

Culture is defined many ways. One of the more commercial ways of thinking about it is this. Culture is the degree of alignment between strategy and the way employees think and behave.

In 2016, HBR ran an article titled Manage Your Emotional Culture. The article talks about and distinguishes between Cognitive Culture and Emotional Culture. It goes on to talk about the fact that emotional culture is rarely managed as deliberately as cognitive culture and that it’s often not managed at all. It gives some great examples of how much companies suffer as a result. Employees who should be showing compassion (in health care, for example,) become callous and indifferent. Teams that would benefit from joy and pride instead tolerate a culture of anger. People who lack a healthy amount of fear (say, in security firms or investment banks) act recklessly. The effects can be especially damaging during times of upheaval, such as organizational restructurings, financial downturns and, as we all have experienced, global pandemics.

WHERE TO START IN UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

To discuss and understand the concept of emotional intelligence and emotional culture, first we need to look at the underlying science of emotions. Why do we react the way we do and how does others’ behavior impact us the way it does?

We all experience a wide range of pleasant and unpleasant feelings at work as we interact with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and others. These feelings influence our decisions, behavior, and performance.

Pleasant feelings have a ‘broaden and build’ effect causing us to think more broadly, engage more deeply, and perform better.

Unpleasant emotions tend to have a ‘narrow and limiting’ effect, causing us to be more closed-minded, less engaging, and poorer at performing. Collectively, these emotions impact the bottom-line for better or worse.

Let’s start with the positive/pleasant emotions. Think about your experiences in the workplace for a moment. When people feel relaxed at work, they tend to be solution focused. When they feel valued, they often promote the brand. When they feel cared for by the company, they go above and beyond in the level of discretionary effort they put towards the company. Finally, employees that are empowered are often the hardest working and innovative team members.

Conversely, let’s look at negative or unpleasant emotions. When people feel anxious, they are more likely to be reactive. When stressed, we can become aggressive. It’s human nature. When an employee feels fearful, they can sometimes blame others. Finally, when people feel disempowered, they can assume lack of responsibility and ownership for their work. We’ve all been there.

Research shows that people in high performing organizations experience more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions than those in low performing organizations. (Boedker et al. 2011)

So, why aren’t more organizations working to focus on understanding how their people are feeling and managing their EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

DO YOU KNOW HOW YOUR PEOPLE ARE FEELING RIGHT NOW?

Emotional culture surveys are the most direct and impactful way to measure emotional culture because they measure three distinct things to help identify whether or not emotions experienced need to shift. They measure:

Experienced emotions
Expected emotions
Ideal or desirable levels of emotions

When you understand how your people are feeling, how they’d ideally like to feel and where the gaps are – you can do something about it. It allows you to more easily understand where the differences are – so you can be informed in making decisions for your L&D, training and development of your teams, and workplace culture. You can continue to strive to be a great place to work.

We’d like to give you the opportunity to do so by experiencing The Emotional Culture Index from Genos International.

The Emotional Culture Index is designed to measure three dimensions of emotions at work.

Current state – How often your people experience certain feelings at work.
Expected state – How often your people think it’s fair and reasonable to experience these feelings at work given the nature and context of your workplace.
Ideal state – How often your people think they should ideally experience these feelings in your workplace to be effective.

It also allows participants to share confidential free text responses on key areas. You can customize the survey by department, team, region, or a particular demographic or group.

It takes only a few minutes to complete. You will receive a complimentary report with its findings and can discuss the results privately with me, a Genos Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner.

NEXT STEPS

As we enter the work of AI, automation and machine led learning, our ability to feel and be human is what makes us unique. We encourage you to take this opportunity to uncover your emotional culture. Please contact Sherry Dutra at sherry@dutraassociates.com to find out more about this limited time offer.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

There’s an Uptick in Retirements: Is Your Organization Ready?

March 3, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

The conventional wisdom has held that 10,000 baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are expected to retire, on average, each day in the United States through 2030. This loss of expertise and knowledge was already having an adverse impact on many organizations. Now, the impact of COVID-19 has accelerated that trend. According to a Pew Research Center report, the pace of retirements amongst baby boomers in 2020 (3.2%) more than doubled the 2019 rate (1.5%).

On the one hand, this is excellent news for those getting ready to enter the next chapter of their lives and an opportunity for younger workers to step into new roles. On the other, how prepared is your organization for a more rapid brain drain?

Based on pre-pandemic research conducted by the authors of Critical Knowledge Transfer, one company reported that in the next anticipated wave of nearly 700 retirements, they would experience a loss of 27,000 years of experience. If that’s not enough to have you sit up and take notice, I’m not sure what will, especially as the trend ticks upward. That said, not every vacated position is created equal. Some will certainly be easier to fill than others. Perhaps the appropriate level of expertise and skill is readily available on the job market or you have done the work to ensure that someone within your organization is ready to take on the role. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Taking a Proactive Stance – 5 Key Tips

Knowing the average age of your employee population is not enough. That still keeps the potential problem at hand difficult to define. Take a closer look at the specific roles held by long-term employees and seasoned managers who are within a few years of retirement age. Which positions require critical skills and experience that are not easy to find on the open market? Long term employees across and at all levels of the organization often hold critical, hands-on experience of how to get things done through their comprehensive knowledge of processes, company historical information, clients and customers. Without a proactive approach, your organization runs the risk of realizing, too late, that you have a critical skill shortage that is adversely impacting your business performance.
Consider implementing a mentoring program that effectively engages both older and younger workers in accelerating development and bridging the knowledge gap. Providing training for both mentors and mentees can help to ensure that a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship is created and both parties find the experience a valuable one.
Utilize knowledge capture methods to gather critical expertise and make it available across a wide range of people. There are many ways to store and manage institutional knowledge including online forums, podcasts, webinars, and videos, to name a few.
Pay attention to employee engagement. Younger members of the workforce have an average job stay of roughly four years. Ensure the right managers are in place who truly care about their employees’ success. Robin Reilly, a Senior Consultant at Gallup has written that such managers “seek to understand each person’s strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions.” Increasing employee engagement will assist in keeping younger workers from jumping ship.
Provide professional and leadership skill development to your employees to develop your associates and prepare those great managers. The on-going opportunity to build on strengths and expand one’s comfort zone through training and development programs advances the growth of your internal talent pool and demonstrates your commitment to their success.

It is a critical time to proactively address the seismic shift that is accelerating in terms of talent shortages in the workplace. These are just a few of the tips that can help you to mitigate your risk. Don’t wait another day to identify where your organization is most vulnerable and take the steps now to ensure a smoother transition.

The Connection Between Sleep and Leadership: It’s Time to Take a Snooze

February 4, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Calling all leaders!

How did you sleep last night?
What amount of sleep did you get?
How refreshed did you feel when you woke up?

How Does Sleep Play Out in Your Life?

Personally, sleep has always been something that I’ve, mostly, prioritized. Of course, there have been times when certain projects have led me to work late into the evening. So, at times, sleep has gone on the back burner. No matter how old I was at the time, I always felt the ramifications of skimping on sleep. Lack of concentration, lower energy levels, and less ability to focus are a few of the symptoms I’ve experienced. What about you?

For most of my adult life, though, I have done my best to get at least 7 ½ hours of sleep each night. Honestly, I haven’t shared that with many people before. In a society that seems to thrive on 24/7 availability and activity, it might seem weak or unproductive to not work all hours of the day and night. Yet, it’s time to stand up for the importance of getting a solid night’s sleep. The evidence is in from numerous scientific sources that sleep is critical to our health and our ability to function. Without enough of it, we open ourselves up to an array of potential health risks and we diminish our brain’s ability to function properly. And, if our brains aren’t functioning properly, how does that impact our ability to lead?

What the Research Has to Say

In the book, Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD, shares research that shows how the pre-frontal cortex is adversely impacted by lack of sleep – anything less than 7 hours per night. What’s so important about the pre-frontal cortex? It is the area of the brain where executive functioning takes place. This includes an array of activities such as, decision-making, coordinating and adjusting complex behavior, ability to control emotional reactions, focusing attention, and predicting the consequences of actions. Needless to say, all of these activities play a role in leadership effectiveness.

Over the years, many of my clients in leadership roles have shared how little sleep they often get. They struggle with an expectation that they must immediately respond to emails and texts that come at all hours of the day and night. They have an enormous number of projects on their plates and have difficulty slowing down their active minds when they try to sleep. Stress, anxiety, and worry can make for a restless night’s sleep as well.

In Walker’s book he shares that during sleep, our brains go through an amazing process of washing out harmful proteins through the glymphatic system and glial cells. In this way, our brain heals during a restful and complete night’s sleep. This nightly cleanse has a profound impact on our overall health and our capacity to function effectively as leaders.

Some of you might be thinking, “that doesn’t apply to me. I can get by fine on 5 or 6 hours a night.” The research would beg to differ. In one study, conducted by David Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the groups studied obtained 6 hours of sleep per night – the amount that many of the people I’ve worked with tend to get. At the 10-day mark, they were as “impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight” – that is, a 400 percent increase in microsleep, the inability to pay attention, where your brain loses its ability to perceive the outside world for a brief moment.

Call to Action

So, if you want to improve your health and set the stage to be the best leader you can be, target 7 – 9 hours of sleep per night. It’s not a nice to have but a MUST have. Productivity never comes from non-stop activity. Sufficient rest is key, for yourself, and for those on your team.

What can you do to help achieve that goal? Here are a few tips:

Shut down all devices at least one hour before you go to bed.
Set limits on how many hours you expect others (and yourself) to work each day.
Only send emails and texts during normal working hours.
When you and those on your team take vacations, commit to making them work-free.
Meditate before going to sleep to relax your body and calm your mind.
Exercise regularly, but not within 3 hours of going to sleep.
Minimize caffeine consumption later in the day, as it can stay in your system for up to 6 hours.
Spend a few minutes at the end of the workday, preparing for the next day’s top priorities. This helps to free up your mind and promotes relaxation.

What strategies have worked for you?

Losing Employees? – Try This Simple Leadership Approach to Engage and Retain Your Team

January 3, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

“The Great Resignation” is something that we are hearing and reading about on a regular basis. Now, more than ever, employees are leaving their roles at an amazing rate – in May of 2021 alone, 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs. According to Gallup, “48% of America’s working population is actively job searching or watching for opportunities”.

While the term ‘employee engagement’ can sound like just another buzzword, it’s anything but. For U.S. employers, the lack of employee engagement is estimated to result in $450 – 500 billion in lost productivity on an annual basis. For over 20 years, Gallup has been researching employee engagement and the percentage of engaged employees has barely budged in the United States during this timeframe. Based on 2021 research, Gallup has reported that 36% of U.S. workers are engaged, 49% are not engaged, and 15% are actively disengaged.

What is Employee Engagement?

What exactly is employee engagement? According to Gallup, an engaged employee is one who is “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”. Someone who is experiencing this type of engagement is most likely to be aligned with their team and organization’s goals and making key contributions to producing desired results. Organizations that do the best job of creating employee engagement achieve earnings-per-share growth greater than 4 times that of their competitors. Additionally, other business boosting results are enjoyed by those companies who exemplify employee engagement. These include higher customer engagement, increased productivity, lower attrition, and higher profitability.

A Simple Approach

There are a multitude of methods available for increasing employee engagement with varying ranges of complexity, time commitment and cost. Yet, the solution may be simpler than you think. When we talk about employee engagement, we often speak in generalities. It can sound as if there is a group called “employees” that we must direct something towards collectively. A one size fits all approach has less of an opportunity to positively drive your engagement levels than one simple opportunity that many leaders have, at every level, including the C-suite. This opportunity, the key to engaging employees, is to get specific about each person.

One Employee at a Time

Engaging employees happens one person at a time. The place to start is to get to know each person on your team uniquely. How much do you already know about each employee and what makes that person tick?

How many of these questions can you answer right now about each employee on your team?

What are their career aspirations?
What personal aspirations do they have?
What motivates them?
What are their most important values?
What key strengths do they bring to the team?
What type of behavioral style do they favor?
What professional development needs do they have?

Call to Action

As you begin the new year, if you can’t answer all of these questions for each employee, I invite you to make it a priority to schedule 1:1 meetings to discover those answers. Then, look for the opportunities to:

let them use their strengths each day,
take on assignments that build the skills for their future career path,
communicate with them in a way that matches their style.

Your employees want to work in jobs that allow them to do what they do best, to grow and develop professionally, and feel a sense of purpose in what they focus on each day. What drives engagement and motivation is unique to each individual. So, get started by getting to know your team. Look for ways to align what is important to each person with the work they are doing, and watch your results begin to shift.

If you would like support in increasing employee engagement in your organization, please contact me to have a conversation. We offer a simple yet powerful and practical methodology to support you in improving employee engagement.

Building Workforce Resilience

November 30, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

While people may love the work they do, many people today are suffering as they don’t know how to deal with the associated stress of a demanding job and environment. Add to that the personal and professional ramifications of a world-wide pandemic and the levels of stress and anxiety have only escalated over the past 20 months.

Never before has it been more important to focus on building the resilience of our workforce at every level. Resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to adapt to stress and adversity. Your level of resilience is defined as your capacity to bounce back from a negative experience to your normal state of functioning. Resilience is not an ability or trait you either have or don’t have, everyone is resilient and can improve their level of resilience. It is typically enhanced by engaging in activities or techniques that help facilitate good physical and mental health. Highly resilient people are able to effectively balance unpleasant and pleasant emotions and make effective responses to them.

Traditionally, organizations have placed more emphasis on physical health versus mental health or well-being in the workplace. As our work environments transform, employees and leaders now face the most demanding environments and roles, which is resulting in a significant increase in anxiety and work-related stress issues.

According to a pre-pandemic article in Harvard Business Review, burnout “costs the U.S. more than $300 billion a year in absenteeism, turnover, diminished productivity, and medical, legal and insurance costs.”¹ Those numbers are trending upward amidst the upheaval that COVID has introduced to our lives.

The studies have shown that no matter the type or level of job, anxiety and stress touches all industries and roles, every socioeconomic status, as well as every race and ethnicity.

Genos International, a leading provider of emotional intelligence assessments reacted to this by creating The Science of Well-Being Program. This program equips employees with the tools and techniques to help them build higher levels of resilience and well-being in the workplace.

The powerful 4 session virtual program (90 min – 2 hours each session) is designed to help employees at all levels improve their mental, physical, social and environmental well-being. The Science of Well-Being is built on the science of behavior change and healthy habit formation. Rolled out across your workforce, this program will result in lower levels of stress and stress-related leave claims, lower levels of absenteeism and higher levels of productivity and employee engagement.

Steps to becoming more resilient:

Look at ‘how you are seen to show up at work’ – a review of your emotional intelligence behaviors.

Every attendee completes a Genos Leadership Assessment. They complete a self-assessment of their EI behaviors, then they select individuals they’d like to receive feedback from. Instead of receiving a numerical or unactionable response like “You’re EI/EQ level is 52,” the Genos assessment is unique in that it measures how you are seen to show up at work and how important your raters deem these particular behaviors to be for your position. They gather input on six emotionally intelligent behaviors:

Self-Awareness
Awareness of Others
Authenticity
Emotional Reasoning
Self-Management
Positive Influence (non-leadership roles) or Inspiring Performance (leadership roles)

Each attendee receives a customized workbook for the program that includes their assessment results, along with a development tips workbook to help them develop key EI behaviors.

Take part in The Science of Well-Being Program facilitated by, Sherry Dutra, a Genos Certified Practitioner.

The course dives into the neuroscience of emotions along with the effects of pleasant and unpleasant emotions on us. Studying emotional intelligence helps participants understand and interpret their own EI Assessment results and how to hone in to key areas for development. The program then goes through techniques and strategies to develop higher levels of personal resilience.

Develop an action plan to boost resilience in multiple areas of your life

Attendees work through strategies for this in four areas: mental, physical, social, and environmental. Then they dive into powerful models for developing resilience in each of these areas.

Developing the levels of resilience for your workforce can be truly life changing for themselves and everyone around them. With the Genos facilitator, each person documents insights and builds an action plan to take back to their lives and workplace so they can start having a more positive impact immediately. It’s a comprehensive and enjoyable program to experience. Let me know if you’d like to learn more.

If you’re interested in hosting The Science of Well-Being Program in your organization, please contact Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

¹Peart, Natalia. “Making Work Less Stressful and More Engaging for Your Employees.” hbr.org, 5 Nov. 2019, hbr.org/2019/11/making-work-less-stressful-and-more-engaging-for-your-employees.com. Accessed 30 Nov. 2021.

What Lights You Up?: Expressing Your Passion in the World

November 1, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

“To love what you do and feel that it matters – how could anything be more fun?” – Katherine Graham – American Publisher

Being in the Zone

When was the last time that you were so engaged in what you were doing that you completely lost track of time? What is it that you were involved with? Were you organizing, planning, decorating, running a meeting, painting, gardening, helping others, or teaching? Whatever you were engaged in, you were experiencing being “in the zone”. This is a state of being fully focused, motivated, and passionate – a state where you are doing what you are uniquely gifted to do.

One of my teachers, Laura Berman Fortgang, has said, “your satisfaction will not stem from what you do but from who you get to be while you do that thing.” We often get caught up in what we are “supposed” to be doing. This can stem from a wide variety of influences including parents, friends, teachers, and societal pressures to name a few. Forget titles and look at the essence of who you get to be in any occupation or pursuit you consider. It can open up doors you never imagined.

Find what it is that uniquely lights you up. Your passion can be something that you’ve known all your life or you may evolve into it as you notice what you most love. To begin your own exploration, consider the following questions.

Ask Yourself

What gets me excited about life?
What brings meaning to my life?
If I could do exactly what I’d like to do, what would it be?
What are my natural gifts and talents?
What did I most like to do as a young child?
What are my criteria for happiness?
What are my values?

Your Next Steps

Once you have jotted down the answers to these questions, it can be helpful to share them with a close friend, a mentor, or a coach to flesh them out and look at possibilities. It’s never too early or too late to decide on the best path for you. No matter where you are on your life’s journey – early career, mid-life, or planning your next chapter – dreams can be realized. Take these first steps to open the door to what could be next for you.

Shifting Your Relationship with Stress

October 11, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Change is inevitable – after all, nothing really stays the same. But in today’s challenging times, it seems like we’re on “uncertainty” overload, never knowing what will happen from one moment to the next.

With uncertainty comes stress and confusion, and while most of us would be quick to say that we want less stress and more certainty in our lives, what we really want is less of a stress reaction to what life throws our way.

We can’t choose what happens to us – but we can choose our responses to the situations we encounter. Let’s take a look at five different responses that people have to stressful situations. As you read, you may want to think of a recent stressful event or news that you may have received, and see what your reaction to that event can teach you about how you habitually respond. You may have one type of response at work, and another at home, or you may react differently depending on who else is involved.

The first and all too common response to stressful events is to suffer and be a victim to it. People who respond this way don’t take action. Things happen TO them – and though they may complain and be generally miserable about it, they don’t take any steps to do anything. They allow life to control them, instead of the other way around. This way of responding is certainly not recommended, and eventually, it will take its toll on one’s physical and mental health.

The second type of response is to accept the situation. Someone with this response may say “so what,” or perhaps get some perspective on the situation by asking if it will matter in a year – or a week – or even in a day.

The third way to respond is to actually take steps to change the situation – taking action to bring it to resolution (or at least move toward resolution). This is a very powerful response, and one that many effective leaders employ.

The fourth way to respond is to avoid the situation. People responding this way make a decision not to get involved in a situation that they don’t see as concerning them, or upon which they can’t make an impact.

The fifth and final way that people generally respond to stress is to alter the experience of the situation. When we look at a situation differently, the experience itself changes. Changing perceptions is probably the most challenging of the responses, because we tend to be stuck in our own interpretations and assumptions about what’s happening, but it is also perhaps the most powerful of all.

It’s your world, and you can create it as you wish. Remember, what one person sees as stressful, another person barely notices, or sees as exciting and full of opportunity. How are you going to choose today?

Your Network: A Future Focused View

August 23, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

When you consider your network, you likely look at those people you already know and consider ways in which to nurture and grow these relationships. Frankly, doing so is an important part of building and maintaining a vital network. However, where you can go wrong is in limiting your approach to only those people you already know and neglecting to consider important connections, you may need to develop, that align with your career vision.

To take a more powerful view of your network, look out to where you’d like to be in your career in the next three to five years and work backwards from there.

Here are a few practical steps to guide you:

Give yourself time to consider your ideal career, three to five years from now.
If you achieve your vision, who will be the people you know and who know you? Be bold here. Consider the leaders in your field as well as in your community.
Now, working backwards, write the story of how you developed a relationship with these people. What projects did you work on? Which professional associations were you a part of? Who were the people that made pivotal introductions for you? What did you do to ramp up your professional development? What leadership roles did you take on?
In what ways do you want to show up differently to attract the people and opportunities that will make your story a reality?
What is the most impactful step you could take now to start expanding your network in a powerful way that aligns with your desired future?

Consider this a twist on the traditional view of networking. Rather than starting from where you are, step into the future, and work your way backwards.

This approach can feel a bit intimidating as it may call upon you to step up your game and reinvent how you show up.

Yet, if you want to reach your career aspirations, then you must be the type of professional that you’d like to attract into your network of relationships. The steps outlined above encourage you to assess how you show up now as a leader and how you need to show up to attract the professional network that will support you in reaching your dreams. And, in the process, you will have the opportunity to help others do the same.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching.

Choosing Your Path to Career Fulfillment

August 2, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Award winning American poet, Mary Oliver, once wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I love this line from her poem, “The Summer Day”, as it invites introspection and calls us to live our lives on purpose. If we apply this to our work lives, this can be a daunting question and one that leaves us overwhelmed with selecting the “right” career. As children, we begin to demonstrate areas of strength as we grow. Well-intentioned parents, teachers, friends and others may encourage us to become a nurse or teacher if we excel at helping others, an engineer or accountant if we have strong math skills, or an artist or musician if we display a creative streak. You can see the pattern and may have experienced it yourself. Yet, this linear path can sometimes lead us astray. Simply because we are good at something doesn’t necessarily mean that it will bring us the career fulfillment we desire. There is something deeper we must explore to be fully engaged in our work.

Employee Engagement Survey Data

The 2020 Gallup Study indicated that, while employee engagement has risen slightly, to 36% in the U.S., we still have 64% of the workforce in a state of disengagement. 51% of those studied are not engaged, which means that they don’t have much of a connection to the work that they are doing and are likely to do the bare minimum in their roles. 13% of those studied are actively disengaged which means that they resent their jobs and have a tendency to complain to those around them and impact the morale of co-workers. Do you find yourself among the 64% who are disengaged? While there are multiple factors that impact employee engagement, there is something that you can do to begin to shift the tide and help you get on track.

A Key Question

A key question to ask that will guide you toward your career fulfillment is “Why?”

What is the “why” behind everything you do – your purpose?

I truly believe that each of us has a purpose in life. Finding that purpose allows us to stay aligned, doing what we love while accomplishing things that are meaningful to us. Your level of happiness will always tell you when you are aligned with your purpose and when you’re not.

To help you get started, here is a resource that will help you to explore your passion and purpose. Click here to read Jack Canfield’s 10 Life Purpose Tips. As a Canfield Certified Trainer in the Success Principles, I have seen the positive impact on clients when they are able to tap into their purpose and express it in the world, both through their work and in their lives in general.

Next Steps

If you are feeling less than fulfilled by your work, I invite you to follow the 10 tips and take responsibility for creating a career that you love. You might find creative ways to express your purpose in your current role or you may find that your purpose exploration starts you down an entirely new path. Whatever your path forward, remember that it’s up to you to take the first step. No one cares more about your career than you. As Mary Oliver wrote, “You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”