career – Dutra Associates

In Search of Whitespace

July 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to be in attendance for a talk by Juliet Funt, who is the founder and owner of WhiteSpace® at Work. She was inspiring! Recently, as I was speaking with a client about the current challenges he is facing in the workplace, Juliet’s talk came back to mind. In a completely engaging and amusing way, she made the case for whitespace in our days. What exactly is whitespace? As described by Juliet, it is a purposeful, freedom experience for the mind; an opportunity for the mind to dance, play and end up at unexpected junctures that serve us. It is setting aside time and thought for which you have no specific plans.

Our typical workdays are comprised of “reactive busyness”. This brings to mind notions of fire-fighting and problem fixing that, while giving us the illusion of getting things done, are really lots of activity without necessarily true productivity. Juliet indicated that “we have no relationship with thoughtfulness as a key to success in the workplace”. What is missing, she indicated, is whitespace. Pointing to benefits such as, developing more game changing ideas; increasing productivity, creativity and engagement; being more calm and present; connecting interpersonally; she suggests that we must “redistribute effort and excellence” to allow whitespace in our days.

To redistribute effort, consider letting go of some things. We often hold on too hard for a variety of reasons. Ask yourself: What can I let go of in my life – both personal and professional?

What baby steps can you take to stop responding as if each email and text is urgent?
Do you really need to attend every meeting you’re invited to?
Can you truly get your work done if you are in back-to-back meetings all day?

To redistribute excellence, it’s time to curb your perfectionistic tendencies. Perfectionism is a real talent and we must make choices on where we will spend that talent. Ask yourself: Where could good enough, be good enough?

So, where to begin? Start small – manage your calendar to create whitespace; appreciate the forced whitespace that comes when stuck in a traffic jam. According to Juliet, if you’re aspiring to whitespace and give it value, you are ahead of 90% of others in the workplace. Be creative and design a little whitespace that works for you and watch your success grow!

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.

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

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.

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.”

6 Keys to Managing Your Most Important Work Relationship

March 6, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

While all work relationships are important, there is arguably one that is most important. That is the relationship with your manager and it’s often overlooked. Sometimes this is referred to as “managing up” which is primarily concerned with how effectively you work with and can influence your manager.

What makes this relationship especially important? Your manager ultimately determines the types of projects and assignments that are on your plate. Additionally, your manager has influence on your career path and can help connect you to resources within the organization to help you reach your team’s goals.

Here are six keys to help you strengthen this relationship:

Ensure you are clear regarding your manager’s expectations. The job description for your position may provide you with the formal performance requirements for your role, but your manager will likely have additional expectations. Have a discussion with your manager to ensure that you are aligned on the key measures of success, the priority initiatives to execute, and the principles and values that should be reflected in how you carry out your role.
Get to know your manager. What communication style does your manager prefer? What is important to them, both personally and professionally? In what way do they want to receive information and updates from their team members? What types of things are a natural source of frustration for your manager? If you are aware of the answers, you will be better positioned to help your manager be successful.
Look for the good. As humans, we have a natural tendency to be on the lookout for danger, which can cause us to focus on traits and attributes in managers that we don’t like. Even if your manager can be difficult to work with, focus on the things that your manager does well. Look for the opportunities to learn from your manager and acknowledge their contributions and support.
Consider how you can adapt to your manager’s behavioral style. For example, let’s say that your manager is someone who drives for results and you are more of a process-oriented person. It would be important for you to learn how to present your ideas and other communication in a quick, high-level summary format.
Make your manager look good. Doing something that reflects poorly on your manager is a quick route to damaging your relationship. What might you do to increase the level of trust, respect, and confidence that your manager has in you?
Discover ways to free up time and reduce the hassles your manager deals with. Doing so allows your manager to focus on what’s most important and supports their success. So, take the initiative, be solution oriented, provide possible ideas for resolving issues that you must escalate. Be a leader!

The only behavior you can control is your own. Don’t leave the full responsibility for the relationship in your manager’s hands. Some managers are amazing at creating relationships with their team members. Others, not so much. Regardless of the type of manager you report to, being proactive in building a strong relationship with your manager will not only help their success, but also yours.

For more ideas about how to improve relationships and alignment up, down, and across your organization, contact us at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

Emotional Intelligence in Hiring – What You Need to Know

January 8, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

The case for emotional intelligence is clear. Successful organizations all over the world are now incorporating EI into the development of their people and their leaders. There’s also a wide variety of research and articles on the importance of hiring FOR emotional intelligence. But in all those blogs and pieces of content, authors don’t talk about HOW to hire for EI.

When we understand our own emotions and the emotions of others – it’s a win-win situation. Our relationships grow, we become more resilient, and able to handle stress more effectively. Far too many employees lack basic self- awareness and social skills and too often, people aren’t aware of how their moods and emotions are impacting others in the workplace.

According to Harvard Business Review, “One of the reasons we see far too little emotional intelligence in the workplace is that we don’t hire for it. We hire for pedigree. We look for where someone went to school, high grades and test scores, technical skills, and certifications, not whether they build great teams or get along with others. And how smart we think someone is matters a lot, so we hire for intellect.”

The World Economic Forum lists emotional intelligence as the 6th most important job skill required for success at work by 2020. WorkSafe Victoria have also observed that more mental injuries get caused in workplaces now than physical injuries; and levels of EI positively correlate with levels of resilience and negatively correlate with levels of occupational stress. In other words, people with high EI feel less stressed and are more resilient at work. Organizations that are focused on emotional intelligence in their talent management strategies are taking the right steps to ensuring healthy and happy workplaces and teams.

Measuring emotional intelligence should be added to talent management and hiring processes, not to replace other strategies but to strengthen an existing process.

Yes, you still need a comprehensive hiring plan, but what’s now clear to business leaders everywhere is that EI skills and behaviors are as important as your intellect, experience and background in determining success at work and in life.

The Genos Emotional Intelligence Selection Report

Emotional Intelligence: a set of skills that help us better perceive, understand and manage emotions in ourselves and in others.

Collectively, being more emotionally intelligent allows us to make more intelligent responses to, and use of, our emotions. These skills are just as important as intellect (IQ) in determining success at work and in life. Emotions influence, both productively and unproductively, our decisions, behavior and performance.

Published psychometric studies have shown that scores on the Genos Selection Assessment meaningfully correlate with a number of important workplace variables. The higher people score on the Genos assessment, the higher they tend to also score on measures of:

Workplace performance
Leadership effectiveness
Sales and customer service
Resilience
Team work effectiveness
Employee Engagement

Here’s how it works:

The Genos Emotional Intelligence Selection Report is the best measure of how often a candidate demonstrates emotional intelligence in the workplace. The report allows hiring managers to utilize EI measures as an additional means to avoiding bad hires.

The Genos Selection model comprises a set of seven emotionally intelligent competencies. These competencies represent skills and behaviors, based on underlying abilities and experiences, that are measurable and observable. The Genos model captures the workplace skills and behaviors that manifest from emotional intelligence abilities.

Users first experience a high-level overview of the candidate’s total EI score along with a deeper dive into each behavior and its results.
Interview questions and an interview evaluation guide then allows the hiring manager to dig deeper into the EI of the individual.
Wrap up the process by using the summary section to help combine assessment and interview results allowing you to present recommendations to a client or HR decision maker.

The information presented in this report should be combined and weighted with other sources of information to determine the candidate’s suitability or lack thereof for employment. Emotional intelligence is one of many factors related to success in the workplace. If you’d like to learn more about this innovative new emotional intelligence selection tool, please call Sherry Dutra at 603.595.1588 or email her at Sherry@DutraAssociates.

Game changing for hiring, life changing for your new hires.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

Developing These Six Behaviors Will Help You Become a Better Leader

December 2, 2020 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

There is an abundance of research on the impact emotions have on an individuals’ performance in the workplace. It shows that people often perform their worst when they experience unproductive feelings, such as feeling frustrated, concerned, stressed, inadequate, and fearful.

Research also shows that people perform their best when they feel involved in purposeful work that develops who they are… and when they feel valued, cared for, consulted, respected, informed and understood.

So, how can developing your leadership help ensure your people feel and perform their best?

Leadership is fundamentally about facilitating performance, supporting others to do their best, and to do their work effectively and efficiently. One of the most robust, consistent findings in the area of social sciences is that there is a direct link between the way people feel and the way people perform. As such, leaders need to be skilled at identifying, understanding and influencing emotion within themselves and others in order to inspire performance.

Emotionally intelligent leadership is about leaders intelligently using emotions to facilitate high performance in themselves and others.

How, then, do leaders develop the skills to do this effectively? In the virtual Emotionally Intelligent Leader program, participants first engage in a personal Genos EI Leadership Assessment, in order to understand “how they are showing up at work.”

Participants will improve their understanding of emotions and emotional intelligence. They will also explore and practice tools and techniques for applying emotional intelligence in leadership and creating conditions for others to achieve high performance.

In the program, participants will:

explore the neuroscience of emotions and emotional intelligence,
examine tools and techniques for effectively asking for, and responding to, feedback,
explore techniques for developing self and other awareness,
examine how we can use reactive and proactive techniques to build our resilience and effectively manage strong emotions,
explore an approach for facilitating engagement discussions with staff members, and
explore techniques for applying EI in leadership and creating high performance in others.

The material for the program is based on the Genos Emotional Intelligence Leadership Model.

The Genos model of emotionally intelligent leadership has been developed from over a decade of research work examining how effective leaders use emotional intelligence abilities in their leadership of others.

The model comprises six emotionally intelligent workplace competencies. These competencies represent skills and behaviors based on underlying abilities and experiences that are measurable, observable, and critical to successful job performance.

The six Genos EI Competencies are:

Self-Awareness
Awareness of Others
Authenticity
Emotional Reasoning
Self-Management
Inspiring Performance

Self-awareness is about being aware of the behaviors you demonstrate, your strengths and limitations, and the impact you have on others. Leaders high in this skill are often said to be present rather than disconnected with who they are. Self-awareness is important in leadership because:

a leader’s behavior can positively or negatively impact the performance and engagement of colleagues
leaders need to know their strengths and limitations in order to continuously improve and maintain success
leaders’ interpretation of events at work is both made by, and limited by, their intelligence, personality, values and beliefs.
In order to objectively evaluate events, leaders must know how they interpret the world and how this helps and limits them.

Awareness of others is about noticing and acknowledging others, ensuring others feel valued, and adjusting your leadership style to best fit with others. Leaders high in this skill are often described as empathetic rather than insensitive to others and their feelings. Awareness of others is important in leadership because:

leadership is fundamentally about facilitating performance, and the way others feel is directly linked to the way they perform
awareness of others is necessary in order to take effective steps to influence and facilitate others’ performance
to bring out the best in people, leaders need to adjust their leadership style to best fit with the people and situation they are leading.

Authenticity is about openly and effectively expressing yourself, honoring commitments and encouraging this behavior in others. It involves appropriately expressing specific feelings at work, such as happiness and frustration, providing feedback to colleagues about the way you feel, and expressing emotions at the right time, to the right degree and to the right people. Leaders high in this skill are often described as genuine, whereas leaders low in this skill are often described as untrustworthy. Authenticity is important in leadership because:

it helps leaders create understanding, openness and feelings of trust in others
leaders who are guarded, avoid conflict, or are inappropriately blunt about the way they feel can create mistrust, artificial harmony and misunderstandings with those around them
leaders need their people to be open with them. If, as a leader, you do not role-model this behavior, your direct reports will be guarded with you.

Emotional reasoning is the skill of using emotional information (from yourself and others) and combining it with other facts and information when decision-making. Leaders high in this skill make expansive decisions, whereas leaders who are low in this skill often make more limited decisions based on facts and technical data only. Emotional reasoning is important in leadership because:

feelings and emotions contain important information, for example, if a colleague is demonstrating frustration or stress, these feelings provide insight that they are going to be less open and supportive of new ideas and information
the workplace is becoming more complex and fast-paced; this requires quick, solid decision-making where all the facts and technical data are not available (gut feel and intuition are important in these environments)
people are influenced by emotion; if you fail to consider how people are likely to feel and react to decisions made, you may not achieve the appropriate buy-in or support for your decisions.

Self-management is about managing your own mood and emotions, time and behavior, and continuously improving yourself. This emotionally intelligent leadership competency is particularly important. Leaders high in this skill are often described as resilient rather than temperamental in the workplace. The modern workplace is one of high work demands and stress, which can cause negative emotions and outcomes. Self-management is important in leadership because:

a leader’s mood can be very infectious and can, therefore, be a powerful force in the workplace; one that can be both productive and unproductive
this skill helps leaders be resilient and manage high work demands and stress
to achieve, maintain and enhance success, leaders need to pay conscious attention to the way they manage time, how they behave and to continuously improve how they lead others.

Inspiring performance is about facilitating high performance in others through problem solving, promoting, recognizing and supporting others’ work. An individual’s performance can be managed with key performance indicators. This is important, however, research has shown that this “compliance” style often fails to drive discretionary effort and high performance. Leaders who combine this with a more inspiring style often empower others to perform above and beyond what is expected of them. Inspiring performance is important in leadership because:

leadership is fundamentally about facilitating the performance of others,
managing performance with rules and key performance indicators usually produces an “expected” result rather than an “unexpected” high-performance result
people often learn and develop more with this type of leadership style, resulting in continuous enhancements to performance year on year.

Strong leadership has never been more important as we navigate the impact of COVID-19. If you’d like to learn how you can bring this virtual program to your organization to support your leaders in becoming more emotionally intelligent, contact me at 603.595.1588 or via email at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Genos International EU

Career Reflection in Times of Crisis

July 7, 2020 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Since the pandemic began, I am finding that many professionals and business owners are stepping back and taking a hard look at their careers. The questions and concerns they are raising range from deeply questioning “Is this really what I want to be doing?” to a vague sense of “I’m feeling bored and restless.” Perhaps you have been having some of the same or similar thoughts.

Reevaluating one’s life during times of unprecedented change and upheaval is quite natural. When you get shaken to the core, any vague or significant discomfort you have been feeling in your career suddenly smacks you in the face. You recognize that life is short and you may choose to stop tolerating or settling for the current situation. During such pivotal moments that jar you out of your comfort zone into foreign territory, you are called to check in, reflect, take a pause, and explore what creates a sense of satisfaction and engagement for you. Being truly engaged in any aspect of your life is fundamentally based on how satisfied you feel. When you’re feeling satisfied, you’re happier, more fulfilled and more productive. What if you had the key to unlock the secret to your personal success? What might be possible for you?

Identifying and creating strategies to meet your core needs is the secret to your personal success. What are core needs? They are the types of energies that you need to have in your life. When your needs are met, engagement occurs. When core needs are not met, you become disengaged, drained, unhappy, perhaps even stuck. Unfortunately, you usually have no idea why you feel this way and, as a result, you are at a loss about what to do next.

Examples of core needs include accomplishment, creativity, teamwork, recognition, fun, contribution, and autonomy, to name just a few. In working with clients, I’ve found that the number of core needs that an individual might have can vary widely. Some have 8, others have 20. How few or many you have doesn’t matter. There is no perfect number. Rather, what is important is working through the process of identifying those that are the “must haves” for you, the ones that give you energy.

So how does someone identify their core needs? It’s not as simple as looking at a list and choosing what stands out. When there are many options, it can be hard to hone-in on the most important. Instead, we look to your actual behavior in practice as a better signal for identifying your core needs. To do this, we explore top experiences in your life and what made them so great for you. To facilitate this process, I use a tool called the Core Needs Navigator™ that gives you the resources and knowledge to allow you to feel fulfilled, productive, effective and satisfied in your work. You uncover your core needs and explore how they are working in your present work life and how they may best be attained moving forward.

The beauty of this process is that it allows you to step back and look more objectively at your needs. This broader view allows you to see more and gain greater insight into your core needs and what specifically is necessary for you to feel that need is being met. Armed with this information, you can develop strategies that will help you improve the match between what you really need and what you are getting.

Keep in mind, you may discover that all that’s necessary is a small shift. It may not mean a career change or a move to a new company. Once you are in touch with your needs, you realize, perhaps for the first time, what is truly creating dissatisfaction and now know what to ask for that can make a huge difference. In other circumstances, you may realize that, in fact, a bigger change is in order. Yet, with your core needs as the compass, you have clarity and a decision-making tool to guide your next career steps.

The Core Needs Navigator™ can be conducted virtually for individuals as well as for groups. If you’d like to learn more about how you can create a fulfilling career that meets your needs and identify the next steps to get there or help your employees become more engaged and satisfied, please contact me for a complimentary coaching consultation.

Networking – It’s Not a Dirty Word

February 28, 2020 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

When you hear the word “networking”, what immediately comes to mind for you? Do you cringe and want to retreat into the safety of your home? Do you feel as though it’s about pitching your wares, trading business cards and manipulating people? If so, it’s no wonder that you resist doing it. Who wants to feel like they are using others and being viewed as insincere?

A Key Success Factor for Life
Often a key factor of my clients’ success strategy includes networking of some sort. Whether they are:

exploring a new career path,
seeking a new job,
looking to expand their leadership capabilities
starting or building a small business or
considering a transition to retirement,

connecting with and learning from others helps them to reach their goals. However, when networking is brought up, it is often met with resistance and a very undesirable view.

Points to Ponder
Yet, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you come from a perspective of networking that is based on building relationships and seeking opportunities to add value, you can change your entire experience of connecting with others. How might you feel differently about networking if you considered the following questions prior to your next networking opportunity?

What can I share and offer that is valuable to others?
What can I do to help someone else feel comfortable?
How can I contribute to another’s success?
How can I truly listen to what another is saying so I can identify ways to help them?
Who do I know who would be a great connection for this person?
How can I simply engage in a relaxing conversation with someone?
What am I curious about regarding this person?
How can I be my true self and make genuine connections with people?

Call to Action
What does networking mean to you now? Hopefully, you are beginning to see networking in a more positive light. One in which you build relationships based on true connection, integrity and mutual support. I invite you to create an opportunity to network with someone over the next week and focus on building a new relationship or deepen an existing one. Feel free to share how shifting your mindset around networking impacted your experience.