I recently applied to be a professional coach as a part-time role for a large coaching network. I've consistently gotten high marks as a manager so I felt optimistic as I started in the application process and was excited to get through and begin helping more people achieve their career goals. By the fourth question on the application, I knew there was no chance I would be accepted for the role.

This question asked whether applicants had credentials with any of the options in a long list. I had to check the box "No Credentials". There was no way I could be upset about that question - it is far better for coaches to have some type of verified credentials and not just "professional experience"! For my part, I took a screenshot and now have a list of program options to research and learn more about. It took only 30 minutes to go through the entire flow and after the first few I was mostly just taking notes for future ways to improve my chances at a future application date.

It can be difficult to not get disheartened or quit early in a project that is doomed to fail. But, by keeping your cool and approaching the situation objectively you can learn so much.

We've all been there. You don't like what you are doing or how you are doing it. And you can't explain how you got there. All you know now is that you are in this behavior path and the edges seem too steep for you to climb out. In the physical sense a rut forms because of consistently following the same path. In the figurative sense the same is true. A rut is just the culmination of consistently following bad habits. These habits are individual sub-optimal but together they become a daisy-chain of undesirable activities that suck up your time and leave you feeling unmotivated, dissatisfied, and stuck.

How do we get out? Physically, your best chance to drive out of a rut is to turn your car wheels hard into the edge and accelerate quickly to get some traction and pull yourself up and out. Figuratively, the path is no different. Point directly at just one of those habits - preferably one of the earlier actions in your doom spiral - and charge at it. Accelerate up and out by swapping out that bad habit for a very good one. From my own life, I tend to get stuck when I spend time before bed on my phone because it leads me to sleep with my phone at my side and causes the start of my day to be immediately sucked into scrolling through apps. Next thing you know, I start my day at least an hour behind schedule and I feel stuck in that rut. To get out of that rut, I replace my evening phone time with reading a physical book which has carry-thru effects to how I start the next day.

Ruts are easy to get in and stay in. Look at the mechanics of escape and get yourself out!

A lot of companies have recently gone through their annual review cycles. You were probably told what your strengths were and given feedback on your areas for improvement. This is a useful tool for letting someone know what they should do more of and also what they need to change in order to catch up to the average on performance.

There is another important question to ask. What is your unique strength that you should unleash to propel yourself to the next level. The leader I learned this question from called these "filters". Your mental frameworks are a filter to the information you take in and how you interpret your environment. They called these opportunities "filters" because the root change is in the frameworks you apply to your work, restructuring them to allow your unique abilities to flourish. Said differently, you change your behavior by changing how you interpret situations as opportunities to play to your strengths.

We've all likely had the thought to take a question that was asked in a large email thread or on a full team message board and to move it to a direct message or talk about it with the person 1:1. Maybe it seems like there's something you don't understand and you don't want to bore the group while you catch up on the details. Maybe there's something the person asking doesn't understand and you don't want to point that out in such a public setting. Maybe you're both well-informed and the answer is nuanced so you don't want to bother the group with a lengthy back and forth on the details. Sometimes, that's for the best.

But it's also important to realize that keeping communication out in the open can offer many benefits! Recognize that others may be new to a project and are craving a way to get up to speed faster. By breaking out to a sub-thread, you've taken this opportunity away from them. Further, junior members of the team may benefit from the public dialogue by seeing how more experienced team members think about and work through problems. You might uncover a new question through the debate that requires broader team alignment. By talking openly everyone else can readily follow the line of thinking by which the new question was discovered.

For teams, communicating is one of the hardest pieces of work. Don't make it harder than it needs to be. Keep information in the open.

Imagine a high-diver at a competition. They tell their coach that they're going to try one of the hard dives that they had gotten a few times in practice because they know it will score well. Their coach gives them a shrug and they step up to the springboard. However, their form comes loose and they splash hard on the water. It's a belly flop! They come out of the pool red and reeling. The spectators can't help but laugh at their expense.

Let's translate this to work. You may ambitiously say "I'm ready for that promotion - I've done that work before!" You could certainly be ready, but what if your push is premature. You may get that promotion in the short term, but if you haven't locked in those needed skills consistently there is risk. You may flop. It will hurt your pride. It will hurt your performance scores too, and leave you with in a hole out of which you'll need to dig. And, probably, your co-workers will laugh at your flop.

This is not to say that you'll ever be perfectly ready when the promotion comes or that any uptake in responsibility is risk-free to your performance output. The lesson here is to push yourself consistently to perform above and beyond your current level or responsibilities. Treat every day like the first day of that new position. This will help you to ensure that when the opportunity comes, you land cleanly.

Our behavior is chock-full of biases. Often, our biases are instilled by a millennia of evolutionary changes to our physiology, psychology, and group social structures. Today, bias can influence our thinking in less-than-helpful ways. One bias that surfaces regularly is the "similar to me" or "like me" bias which suggests that people tend to opt for or include those that are similar to them. This could by specific to physical similarity, but, more often in a work environment, it relates to similarity of thought. Have you ever had a conversation where you and the other person had naturally similar opinions or humor from the start? This is a good example.

It would be fair to challenge that this isn't necessarily bad. I would agree. The bias tends to become problematic when the comfort that arises from that similarity extends to other facets of decision-making. Are people hired because they think and talk like others in the team, even though they have fewer qualifications than other candidates? Is someone who thinks through problems differently, excluded from strategy conversations more frequently than they should be based when considering their merits? Might someone be evaluated unfavorably for the quality of their work solely because of personality differences from leadership? It can happen. It does happen, and in ways both big and small.

Balance of opinion and diversity of thought bring significant value to teams. Remember to focus on what someone can provide not just on how they provide it.

Why do so many people create resolutions for the new year? It may seem like an obvious answer, but it's not. Outside of a few numbers on the calendar, there's little difference in someone's life when you compare the 31st of December to the 1st of Jan just one day later. But it feels new and it feels different! That's a cognitive bias known as the "fresh start effect" at work.

Still, there's no reason to wait a whole year to take advantage of this idea. Next Monday could be a "fresh week" and a chance to try to start something again. Or tomorrow can be a "fresh day" with the same intention. We see this bias frequently in sports. Imagine a golfer who's just played a hole terribly. When he steps up on the next tee box, it's a new hole and a chance to get back on track.

While the definition of what constitutes a new start may be trivial, it's impact certainly does not have to be. Take advantage of it for yourself whenever you're in a rut or want to try and start developing a new habit.

Yogi Berra is famously quoted for saying "When you come to the fork in the road, take it." Sounds easy enough. Yet, how often do we get to the fork in the road, stop, evaluate, analyze, critique each direction, seek out guidance, list pros and cons, and ultimately become paralyzed by the fear of making the less optimal decision.

A popular opinion article made it's way around the internet a few years back calling out how younger millenial and Gen Z young adults felt this mental strain particularly strongly. After years of piling on extra-curricular activities and AP classes in order to get to the best school possible in order to get a couple of high profile degrees in order to get the best possible first job out of school just in order to have a chance at an impactful career paired with the constant comparing of their own lives to the idealized version of life they saw from friends and influencers on social media through the most socially informative years of their lives...they were exhausted by the ever-present pressure to be the best version of themselves.

It would be unethical of me to say that you should not push yourself on a daily basis. You should hold yourself to a high standard. But perfection is a fallacy and it's definition changes with the times. Don't pursue it. Don't let yourself stall out. Keep pushing forward. Progress is most important.

I had a friend who once said, "The arc of your career often only makes sense looking backwards." It has stuck with me because for many it rings true. Perhaps you know people who studied law and became product managers. Or you've seen the story of the medical doctor who operates a fishing boat. Maybe you were a digital marketer who moved into data science. If you start at the end and trace your way back to the beginning, it often seems that each step is a logical one and it is easy to connect the dots.

But, if you had asked these people years earlier to predict where they would land in their careers it is likely that each would have been wrong. Maybe you feel unsure what the next step is for you in your career. You might have a hard time articulating what you want to pursue next. Take comfort in the examples above. Know that it is difficult to outline what you want to go and do. That is ok. Pursue the things that are interesting to you and the things at which you are talented. The path this leads you down may be unexpected but is very likely to be good.

As you progress through your career, you may be lucky enough to have a manager who asks "What do you want to do next in your career? How can I help you get to be where you want to be?"

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. For most people, it's difficult to define what role they want fulfill in the future. There is an easier version of this question, which asks "What skill do you want to learn next?" This is easier to answer. It's less paralyzing because we don't have to commit to a certain role. Most roles require a number of different skills so we don't rule anything in or out when committing to skills we'd like to learn. It's also a less complex question because, again, we don't have to define all parts of what our work could be. We just have to identify one specific part where we'd want to put more energy.

For your manager, it's a win too. While they may not be able to readily move you to a whole new role or career path, they can certainly find opportunities for you to develop the new skills which you desire in your current position.

"Let's make sure we take time to celebrate our wins from this past year." It's a phrase we hear reiterated so often this time of year as we wind down for the holidays and gear up towards the next that it can feel cliche. But, it is important, even critical that we do this. Here's 2 reasons.

• Research by Heaphy and Losada identified that for high-performing teams the ideal ratio of positive to critical feedback was 5:1. Positive feedback, delivered here by the recollection of individual or team victories, boosts motivation. The celebration of wins inherently encourages more of the same. And motivation has a number of carry-through effects that are both direct to the team (higher 360 feedback scores) but also beneficial to the business at large (stronger financial performance).
• As it relates to development and behavior change, a key that drives improvement is the realization and mental shift that you can be the person you're aspiring to be. If you have goals to be a stellar public speaker, remembering a time when you gave a stellar presentation reinforces to you the idea that, not only can you do it but, you are already a stellar public speaker. Having this new default state of mind is like a super power.

So, here's to you, for whatever win you found this year. And here's to many more wins to come.

How do you handle an employee who's performance is lackluster, inconsistent, or just meeting the minimum expectations? Have you tried giving them more responsibility?

This may sound crazy, but hear me out. Additional responsibility can have a powerful focusing effect, particularly if you introduce it effectively. It can help the employee:

• Feel more significant as they take on a more important role with the company
• Feel more motivated as they see how success in the expanded role can translate to promotion
• Feel more purposeful as others have greater reliance on them and their success
• Feel more energized as there is no longer time to waste on non-value-additive tasks
• Feel more satisfied in their job after meeting and completing these new challenges

A critical clarification is that "more responsibility" is not the same as "more work". Trying to drive a team member or yourself forward by just piling on meaningless tasks will have the opposite effect, decreasing motivation and job satisfaction.

We often get asked the same question, though it could come in different flavors.

• Do you want to be a people leader? Or a thought leader?
• Do you want to develop a team? Or innovate in a platform?
• Do you want the manager track? Or the principle track?

Are our careers all really that binary? Is it really just a this or that decision? No, of course not. In a way, you could imagine it more similar to introversion versus extraversion. Individuals behave on a range of this scale and can also behave differently in different situations. But at the root is the question of what gives them energy. An extravert gets their energy from other people but can also enjoy getting away from the crowd. Similarly, you probably know an introvert who talks to people.

As you think of your career, ask yourself what brings you energy. Use this answer as the basis of the above. Have the conversation with your manager. Don't become a people leader just because it's what you see happening to those around you. It will be an unhappy outcome for you and will hurt those for whom you become responsible. But also, don't fret if you're having a hard time choosing. Almost every role will likely require some combination of both, so you won't be swearing one track off for good.

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One of the most disheartening outcomes of a project is when, after significant up-front planning, you review it with your manager or stakeholder and find out that you have not delivered what they expected. It can make you want to throw your computer at a wall. How does it happen? Because expectation setting is hard.

Think about how all of your prior experiences introduce nuance to how you think about a problem or situation. Now consider how different the life experiences of your manager are and how that could nuance their perspective. Now consider the differences in context you each have as it relates to the problem statement. Heck, even just consider how a word like 'important' could be interpreted as 'needs-to-be-done-immediately' or as 'needs-to-be-done-slowly-and-carefully'.

One low lift way to solve for this is the "20% check in", a tactic I learned from Blanchard and Johnson's The One Minute Manager. The tactic recommends that even though you align on expectations at the start of a project and review performance vs expectations at the end, you should also check in about 20% of the way into the work. When rubber meets the road and decisions start to be made autonomously any misalignment in expectation will start to show itself early. Checking in early into delivery gives everyone the chance to clarify thinking and work through any emerging problems that had not been previously expected.

It's an easy ask and a highly effective tool. Sometimes the most powerful solutions are the simplest.

Steve Jobs is a renowned innovator and a renowned jerk, at least according to those who did not know him as well.  If you read Creative, Inc. you’ll learn that those who knew him closely saw him to be passionate and very caring.  As they saw it, Jobs cared enough to tell you when your work wasn’t good enough. But he never said the creator was not good enough.

For most, it’s not enough to rely on the semantics of using “this” vs “you”. After all, is our work not an extension of ourselves?  I think it helps to be clear here.  Clarify that the work does not meet the standards of your team and that is why it can’t be accepted.  Confirm that you all expect to meet high standards and that the team has high confidence that the work will get there.

Good managers - like good coaches - set the bar for their team, raise it when the time is right, and instruct their team on how to meet the raised expectations.

I once worked on a team that was combative. It was not fun, attrition was high, the hours were long. And the business performance was strong. This is not an endorsement.

I always worked on a team that was accepting. It was rewarding, retention was strong, the hours flew by. And the business performance was strong. This is also not an endorsement.

The issue with each of these teams was that they were on both ends of the spectrum and not in the middle. They achieved success in different ways; one, by unmatched operational efficiency without step-change growth; the other, by large wins but low rigor of daily operations.

The balance that each of these teams struggled with was challenging the team to meet a high bar of excellence while also supporting psychological safety and allowing space. One always came at the expense of the other. But the benefits of each can't be discounted. Psychological safety empowers teams to speak up and share ideas that could be either crazy good or just crazy. But challenge ensures that the quality of deliver is unmatched and helps people to grow by continually clarifying where they can be better.

Go for both.

Kim Scott’s Radical Candor is one of my favorite books on management. However, the book is often applied by bad bosses who think they now havea reason to be harsh and punitive in their communication to you.  They think the idea of the book is to be direct and candid, to say what you mean and mean what you say.

This is true….for teammates with whom you’ve paid the social capital to develop a strong and positive relationship. This is not nuance. It’s the core tenant of the book. The first step is to invest the time and energy to show you care.  This takes real work.  The second step is to then be direct in your criticism because you care about your team and want them to be successful.  

Tough love is just that, tough.  But it’s necessary to help people get to where they want to be.

"We can't solve the problems we don't talk about." This was a favorite quote from one of my former managers and something I call out to the team time and time again. It's a basic idea that goes back thousands of years. In the Iliad we see Achilles say to his cousin Patroclus "Speak, Patroclus, then we will both know what is on your mind."

The concept is simple but the impact can is broad and deep. By speaking clearly about what we are struggling with, we can better solve for its outcomes. This occurs in a few ways:

• The psychologist Jordan Peterson suggests that people are not good at thinking through complex arguments and can more effectively articulate points if they assign different personas to different sides and then talk the points out loud, rather than mulling them over in their head.
• By speaking the thoughts and problems out loud we can identify differences in expectations between our idea of the task and our managers ideas of the task. This lets us realign where we're off.
• We often have blind spots in our understanding or are missing context. Clearly laying out our understanding can help others to fill in the blanks.

While simple, it's not always easy. It's easy to feel like you risk being "dumb" by not knowing what's going on. Or that you might be too direct or mean in telling your manager why certain behaviors are making your life harder. Bold steps are often worth it. You can always step into it with someone you feel more comfortable with. But do it.

It’s easy to have a busy day.  It’s even common.  Being busy can look good in the short term.  But good managers should not focus on how busy their teams are, but rather how productive they are.  A good manager asks about what is getting done and why it’s valuable, not just about how many items are getting checked off a to-do list.

Yesterday, we looked at how far more effective daily practice is when it comes to learning the piano. Another important aspect: having a lesson book.

If you think about it, it would be laughably nonsensical if a piano teacher walked a student to the piano and said "Alright, have at it." Even for practiced students, pure improvisation is a challenge. A lesson book, filled with attainable pieces of music, gives the student something tangible to work towards. Further, the teacher rewards them every time they are able to play the piece of music well and with their own style.

For management, why are we comfortable giving people an outcome to strive for - such as, think more strategically - without the tactical guidance of what that could look like. Expecting our team and ourselves to come up the right actions all on their own is as fool-hardy as asking a novice to start learning the piano by riffing on the spot. Be reasonable, be helpful, and be explicit in what you want to show in order to demonstrate that you're building your skills.

We can learn a lot by applying lessons from across disciplines. Research on learning a musical instrument suggests that students make significantly more progress if they practice daily than if they practice weekly. It's worth noting that this outcome holds even if the total time of daily practice is less in aggregate than the weekly practice; for example, 15 minutes daily vs 2 hours once per week.

Is this surprising? It's certainly a powerful insight. How often do we limit our time spent working on our personal development to a weekly 1-to-1 session with our managers? In my experience, most people do this. How well would a child learning the piano do if they only ever practiced when they went to their lesson with the teacher? And worse, how ashamed might they be at their lack of progress despite the effort they put in at lesson time.

When you pick a skill to improve, practice daily.

Have you ever gotten suddenly very motivated to workout after not having done it in a while? You go to the gym, put yourself thru a long and grueling workout, and feel very rewarded for the effort you put in.

How do you feel the next day? Often times, very much not good. You hurt all over. So you take a break for the day. Sometimes, you hurt the next day too and take another rest day. Next thing you know, you look up and you haven't exercised again for a whole week. Not training is bad, but overtraining infrequently is not much better. Next time, you instead go the gym and get yourself a reasonable dose of sweat. The next day, you're ready to go again. And the next day and the next day and the next day.

Your development can, and should be, similar. It's not meant to be easy but if you put in a herculean effort every time you work on growth you will burn yourself out. Start small and build the habit up. For example, if you're working on your writing you can start with a clear and concise 3 sentence summary to your boss about your daily priorities. Work up to the published article you've set your dreams on later.

As we should with any problem, let's look at our responsibility for the current situation. If you know that your manager is not driving your development and you have not taken deliberate action to put together a plan for your own growth then you are complicit in causing the stagnation of your own career.

Is that fair? Maybe not, but the fairness of the situation does not change the fact that you are not seeing the improvements in your professional and skill development that you want. When you see something in your life you do not like, look in the mirror and ask how you could be contributing. There's little benefit in sugar-coating the truth.

And, once you come to terms with the fact that you are responsible for your own lack of career growth, this realization is incredibly empowering. You have everything you need to get to where you want to be. All that's needed is a good plan and steady focus.

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Through the years, I've heard a lot of horror stories about bad managers. Maybe you've heard them. Maybe you've lived them. Maybe you've even been the bad managers. I have been too. And that's ok, if you're willing to keep an open mind and grow from that experience. But therein lies a primary problem.

The management and leadership books on the market are largely directed at those who want to become better leaders. That's reasonable. In fact, it's good business. But it misses the point. This assumption ignores the fact that the most problematic managers are not trying to get better. They are not looking to improve themselves and they do not care to develop their teams.

This is a hard problem to solve, and this likely cannot be solved en masse. The reasons for the lack of team support is nearly as numerous as the number of managers falling short, i.e. it's a highly individualistic cause. In some cases, a manager may simply be overwhelmed with their other responsibilities and cut corners here. Maybe they've been placed into the role by their manager despite having no interest in leading people. It's nuanced and it's tricky.

For that reason, we'll spend time talking about personal development in order to help you to drive your own growth, taking on the responsibility that was abandoned by the bad managers. The first step to solving a problem is to identify a path forward. You are your own path.

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