Category: Career

Categories
Career Generation Y Women Workplace

Gen Y women – out of the workplace woods?

Here’s the thing. I work with a lot of men. During phone calls, I speak with men. For meetings, I sit down with men. At networking events, more men walk in the door than women. In particular, at entrepreneurial events there are lots and lots of men, and just one or two women.

And guess what? I could care less.

Sort of. Because not immediately, but always eventually I notice there are fewer women than men in my life. And then, inevitably, I feel that it’s necessary to say something like, “Where are my women at?” I don’t know why such words fly out of my mouth because I feel comfortable around these men. They’re good guys. But there’s this undercurrent that just doesn’t feel right.

Monica O’Brien calls this casual sexism, and basically tells us to shut up about it, play by the rules and move on. Which is good advice. It’s the path that’s gotten me where I am today.

Indeed, this month’s issue of Portfolio observes that nobody wants to talk about it because most people think there’s nothing to discuss.

Generation Y women in particular are growing up believing they don’t have to worry about sexism. In college I certainly didn’t feel there were inequalities.

It was only a few months after graduation that I learned otherwise. Somehow I had finagled my way onto the Board of a local nonprofit, and the rest of the Board was comprised of men. Older men who didn’t listen to me. There was one woman who joined our meetings by teleconference; she was pregnant and bed-ridden. And those meetings always made me a little indignant.

Like when I read advice that tells me I have to get married and have babies before I’m thirty. I guess it’s smart advice, but it doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t feel that my entire life needs to be managed around having a baby, because I don’t feel that my sole purpose in life is to have a baby.

But it seems that because women are different, being built to have babies and all, that our success isn’t the same as the success of men.

For example, when one of the top alpha females in my area personally called me last week to congratulate me on a recent success, I was ecstatic. I told Hercules all about it, and he said to me, “That’s great. But you know, she’s really not all that smart.”

And I took what he fed me, because I respect Hercules and I like him a lot. But then, do you know what I did after that? Each time I told the story, I added that clause to the end. That this wonderful, well-respected woman who personally called me might not be that smart in reality. What?!

That belittles her success and it belittles mine. It’s casual sexism at its best.

This is what Gen Y women are dealing with. And it may be entirely more dangerous than outright discrimination since it seeps quietly into our minds and then out of our mouths. That sucks.

Because while we may not be marching for our rights any longer, we’re still debating whether pantsuits are unfeminine and men like Jun Loayza now think it’s charming to ask if we were “a little crazy as an undergrad.”

We’re not out of the woods yet.

Gen Y women will have to breed an entirely different form of feminism to deal with this. I don’t have the answer here, because I often feel conflicted. I genuinely enjoy being a woman. In my view, I want to wear the dresses and have the power. Only time will tell if I can have it all.

Working girl.

Categories
Career Finding a job Generation Y Workplace

Back Off: Gen Y’s helicopter parents are a good thing

On the third round of interviews for my current job, my interviewer was a Boomer whose opinion as the head of a similar and larger organization was valuable to my future Board.

After talking about Gen Y leadership, in which I blatantly quoted my blog to close the deal, she asked me what I would do if I witnessed unethical behavior.

“I would investigate to see if it was really unethical behavior,” I said, “or if I was misunderstanding the situation.”

It was the perfect answer for a business that loves gossip, but doesn’t like to make waves.

Then out of nowhere I felt compelled to add, “And I would probably call my mom and ask her advice.”

My interviewer smiled. Turned out my answer was right on all counts.

We ended up spending a large part of the remaining time talking about her relationship with her mom. She described how her mother had come to interviews with her, and how she continued to count on her mom in her high-profile position.

Gen Y isn’t the only one counting on parents for advice. This is behavior magnified and built upon from previous generations.

I call my mom all the time. Not as much as she’d like me to – a constant source of debate – but I value her thoughts and respect her advice more than anyone else.

She’s usually right too. Men, career, friends, she just knows. Everything. Annoying, that.

“Most Gen Y’s have strong, positive relationships with their Boomer parents,” Tammy Erickson argues at the Harvard Business Review. “They speak with Mom or Dad when they have a problem, and most feel that their parents understand them.”

I’m not saying that you should always listen to your parents, or that they’re always right. My own mother, who I referenced in my interview to get the job, and who praised me for my smart answers, was hesitant that I should even take it.

She didn’t really understand what I would be doing. I still don’t think she fully understands. But I took the job anyway.

I also listened to my mother at the same time.

Listening to my mom is recognition that I am becoming an adult. See, asking for help is one of the most adult things you can do.

There’s no one better to ask for help than your parents, because despite the fact that sometimes they might annoy or guilt-trip you, they really, in their heart of hearts, want the best for you. And they’re always proud of you. They always love you. That’s what parents do. And they know you better than anyone else.

I find it funny to read that some experts believe that Gen Y “may well shatter,” as the result of intense Boomer parental involvement. Do you know what I do when life isn’t going my way? I call my mom. And do you know what she tells me? “This is your life,” she says. “Stop crying and deal with it.”

Okay, it may not be those exact words, but today’s parents are not ignorant. They know that despite their coddling, Gen Y will need to become independent in order for us to succeed.

So we might as well stop getting up in arms that parents are helping their children. Because in the game called life, we really need as much as help as we can get.

“Use your parents’ insight to gain experience when you have none,” Rosie Reilman argues. “But don’t let them live your lives for you. This is your life. Take ownership of it.”

I agree. I’m not saying don’t grow up. We should grow up and take responsibility. I don’t believe, for instance, that you should move back home after college. Because of how I was raised, I think that’s irresponsible.

But I think we all feel, especially in our twenties – and maybe it never ends – that we’re doing a good job of just acting like adults. And maybe if we’re good enough actors, we’ll actually become adults someday. With the help of our parents, of course.

While Erickson believes we should accept all this as “a changing cultural norm,” Scott Williamson argues that “accepting this sort of behavior just enables more of it.”

But I believe we want to enable a workforce that asks for help, that respects their parents, and who aren’t afraid to admit that we don’t have all the answers. Certainly, there are instances when it can go overboard, but why must we continually let a few bad apples set the tone?

We shouldn’t sensationalize what is generally a good trend.

Motherly advice.

Categories
Career Generation Y Workplace

Three ways to build credibility as a 20-something

This post was originally published at Qvisory.

As a twenty-something in the workforce, you will be questioned time after time. Here are three ways to build credibility:

1. Develop skills that travel.

Most likely, you’ll change jobs 6-8 times before your thirty. You need to develop a set of talents that will travel with you from job to job. Career coaches call these transferable skill sets (e.g. communication, interpersonal, and management skills).  Essentially, the skills you’ve been developing since grade school. Consistently developing these abilities will not only open the door to any job you want, but will make you successful wherever you go.

2. Hug thy naysayer.

Generation Y wants to be liked. We grew up being coddled by our parents, and frankly think we’re the best thing on earth and like to be told so. Not everyone agrees with us however, and a lot more don’t even like us.

While it’s important not to get wrapped up in what others think, you need to build relationships, even with the people bringing you down. Learning to deal with criticism effectively is about knowing yourself, who you are, and what your motivations are for working.

The next step is to develop mutual respect. When comments get heated on my blog, I often email the person and talk to them individually. I say thank you a lot, even when their thoughts make me want to scream. I appreciate that they’ve taken the time to respond to what I had to say. It’s best to engage in conversation when all the players are at the table. That’s how you learn.

3.  Don’t work harder, work smarter.

When a twenty-something doesn’t show up to the office at 9 AM, the rest of the world worries.  But our generation works differently. Make sure it’s in your contract that your performance isn’t based on when you show up to work, but if you get the job done. And if you want to wear jeans to work every day, say so. Be upfront about how you can add the most value.  You’ll work better if you’re able to choose how you are productive, and your results will speak for themselves.

Categories
Career Finding a job Knowing yourself Work/life balance

How I got my dream job (and survived)

This post about going from bottom to top was inspired by this comment. Thanks, Milena!

I walked in and almost everyone was sitting down, and the speakers were close, shoulder to shoulder. It was so hot and sticky outside, I went to the bathroom to freshen before sitting down near the door, lest the presentation be boring and I should want to leave in the middle.

Big Brother was the moderator of the panel, and I had seen him in the press, but never in person. After the event, we somehow managed to walk out at the same time. He said hello to me, in that special way he has, gleaming with charisma.

Much later we sat at a coffee shop, and I saw him repeat this behavior with other people who stared at him, as people often do. And I must have been staring too, because I remember the way that I felt was that my future was intrinsically and inexplicably linked to this man.

I couldn’t have known then that we would eventually sit in a car together as he expertly handled a disastrous situation. Or that we would have flurries of text conversations at nine o’clock at night. Or that he would be the one of the few people who could simultaneously inject fear and ambition into my dreams, that he would be one of the few to infuriate and inspire me all at once.

At the time, I was confused and unhappy. What I thought was supposed to be my dream job wasn’t working out and I felt claustrophobic in an invisible box, like a mime putting on a bad show.

I had a ridiculous time getting up in the morning, often rising out of bed just fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be sitting in my office chair. A three minute walk from where I lived. I didn’t really tell anyone at the time, not my boyfriend, or even my mother.

And little did I know things were only going to get worse, much worse, before they got better.

Eventually, it was mutually agreed upon that it would be best if I left my job, which sounds better than being fired, and it was just two or three days before Thanksgiving.

I felt a huge sense of relief, and full from a big plate of humble pie, I applied for and started my next job a short two weeks later. And then, a short two months after that, my body decided to send me to the emergency room. The day that I got out of the hospital, my boyfriend broke up with me.

It’s a strange feeling, hitting bottoms you never knew existed. But what’s even stranger is the wherewithal you find in yourself to keep going. That night, I cried on the shoulders of two of my friends, but in part of my head – the part that was growing an antidote to my flair for drama – I also thought that it was no big deal.

I needed to get healthy. I needed to get a paycheck to eat. I needed to figure things out.

So, I did that. With no other choice, it was remarkably easy.

I won’t describe much more about my second job because, in short, I loved it, and it’s difficult to write about such happiness without sounding absurdly corny. Suffice to say, the job was like a retreat for my career, and the organization I worked for was tremendously good to me.

So it was a surprise to everyone, most of all myself, when I started to feel restless later that year, and into the next. Seemingly losing it all made me remember I wanted much more.

That’s when I started this blog. Actually, I started a different one where I posted bad prose that I had written, and told around three people to go read it. Then I started this blog. And I told everyone in my address book to read it.

See, here’s the thing. When you put yourself out there for all to see, when you make yourself vulnerable, and you’re taking a big risk, and you’re doing all this because you can’t think of doing anything else, people will rally behind you. They will support you. Because people like to see others succeed. The universe will conspire in your favor.

The rush of this risk was so big, and the potential payoff so great, that I started to take more risks. I acted in a play where I learned the lines just eight hours earlier. I went skiing for the first time, fell on my butt, and got back up again. I learned sushi was the best food ever.

Oh, and I applied for my dream job and got it.

I don’t want to make it seem that I went through this big transformation over a short period and I know everything now. I didn’t and I don’t.

Let me be clear. It was really the years before this one, and those before that, which set me up to succeed. But eventually, you reach a tipping point and things begin to flow in your favor.

The pace since that’s happened has been like a water slide at a water park. The ride down is fast, scary, and exhilarating, and once you’ve reached the bottom, you can’t wait to make the long, hot and sticky crowded climb back to the top and do it all over again.

Because now I have an entirely new set of challenges and struggles that I face. I work hard, but also strategically and intelligently. And Big Brother, who seemed untouchable to me a couple years ago, is now one of my many mentors.

Dreams = Reality

Categories
Career Generation Y Self-management

Figuring out your next career move without settling

Penelope Trunk’s latest post on steps to figuring out your next career move only makes sense because most people don’t want the responsibility of change. They will read what she has to say, feel a bit uncertain, but will nod along anyway.

This is good for those people, most people. Most people either don’t have the balls or are not well-equipped to do what they want.

The can cross off the “career-equivalent of winning the lottery,” because that dream was making them feel anxious anyway. And while they love to write, they can see that it gives them some sort of peace to admit that they may not really love it if they never make time for it. They’re good to go with the cubicle.

This is all okay. It’s called settling. And it’s a viable option. A good one that will make you happy.

Some others, well, they’re not settling. They are different from most people. This is the group that seems to find the prize in the cereal box every time. They’re leaning into the wind and winning, and the book industry is making a good deal off the fact that most people want to be just like them.

Along with the crowd that is Oprah, I’m currently reading, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, in which the author predictably states that the book, “can only awaken those who are ready.”

It is both a shame and a triumph that the most banal statements are always the most obvious, the most difficult, and the most necessary.

The only way you can be ready is if you’re ruthlessly transparent, authentic and honest. In the book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge argues that a commitment to truth is a “restless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are.”

This is much different than knowing that you’re afraid to talk to your crush because you have unrealistic expectations of the happy movie ending.

Rather, it’s an advocacy and inquiry that rivals trying to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or if you’d prefer, finding the one good-looking guy at the bar on a Friday night.

There is a shortcut, the sound of settling. It’s comfortable like a blanket over your shoulders, spaghetti in your stomach, sex in the dark.

Settling leads to mediocrity. It’s the acceptance of the “good enough” status quo.

Successful people know that the gap between our vision and current reality “can make us feel hopeless. But the gap is also a source of energy,” Senge argues. “Truly creative people use the gap between vision and current reality to generate energy for change.”

In encouraging yourself to rely more on your concepts of reality, rather than your observations, and in discarding your dreams and goals in order to be realistic, to settle, you lose this creative tension.

That’s why Generation Y is uniquely positioned to create real change in our next career move. We’re idealistic and yet keenly aware of the world’s scorecard. We understand, as Senge argues, that “the juxtaposition of the two, the dream and the present reality, [is] the real force for change.”

Fall into the gap.

Categories
Career Generation Y

Listen to free podcast about my organization and Gen Y issues!

I was on a local radio show on Tuesday, Madison 1670 The Pulse, On Air with In Business Magazine, talking about my organization and a lot of Generation Y and Generation X issues.

A big thank you to Joan Gillman of the University of Wisconsin School of Business, and Jody Glynn Patrick, Publisher of In Business Magazine for inviting me to be on the show!

You can listen to the free podcast here. (A direct link to the free download, where you can listen in your browser or download the audio. A full list of available podcasts from the program is available here.)

Check it out… you can tell when I stop being nervous when I stop talking so fast.

Let me know what you think!

Categories
Career Networking

5 networking tips for the real world (including the Holy Grail)

Update: This post was also published at Damsels in Success.

Recently, more of my time is spent meeting with people who request to meet with me, instead of the other way around. Here’s some advice from being on the other side:

1) Give me a compelling reason to answer you. A lot of networking advice tells you to just check in with someone so that you’re on their mind.

But this sucks for busy people.

When you receive hundreds of emails a week, an email that “checks in” is like a nag draining you to do the dishes. That’s because while the email needs to be answered it becomes the lowest priority out of all the rest.

That email subsequently makes me feel guilty, sits in my inbox until the end of the week, and by the time I have time to answer it with something nice and charming, I’m exhausted.

So please, don’t check in with me unless you’re family.

Instead, tell me why you’re writing. Be interesting. Tell me that you were just in the paper, or that you’re working on a new project and want my feedback, or how you can help me, or that you just went on a great road trip. Preferably, the shorter and the more value, the better.

Networking is about developing relationships. Act like it.

2) Don’t lead me on. Someone recently tried to schedule a meeting with me, and then proceeded to reschedule the meeting, not once, not twice, but four times.

Now, I reschedule meetings all the time. It’s the nature of the beast. But there comes a point when you should use the etiquette napkin to clean up your act.

I also recently requested information from a piano teacher and found her rate to be quite expensive. When she followed up with me, I told her that it wasn’t in my budget. I could have told her I didn’t have the time, or that I needed to think about it, but being a tease is only acceptable on a Friday night. Outside of that, you’re just annoying.

3) Be specific, but mysterious, and a little humorous. When asking for things like meetings or advice, it’s important to give just the right amount of detail in a succinct manner. Something like, “I’d like to meet with you to learn more about you, tell you about the new idea I have to restructure my organization, and I hear you like blueberry pie, so I know we’ll have lots in common.”

Now I know not only that you’re interested in me, but why you’re talking to me, and I’m excited to meet you. Think of it as email foreplay.

Also, when people offer to pay for my lunch as an incentive to go to a meeting, I love this. Because as I’ve mentioned, I’m on a budget. But if I told the President of some company I would pay for his lunch, not so good. You have to find value in a way that’s important and specific to that person.

Use the internet to find out what might work. You don’t have to say, “I stalked you on Google,” but simply “Oh, I heard you enjoy sushi.”

4) Don’t ask for something I can’t give you. A lot of people email me and ask for things. We all like this, because it makes us feel special and powerful.

But it’s frustrating when you’re asking for something I can’t give you. Don’t ask me to promote your product on my blog when I’ve never promoted products on my blog. Don’t ask me to allow you to “give a talk” on your services when my organization has never allowed that.

There aren’t a lot of lines to cross when you’re asking for help, so you’ll know what’s right and wrong by simply paying attention.

Nobody likes to say no. Make it easy for me to say yes and the conversation will be gravy. In fact, letting me help you in a way that’s easy for me will increase my goodwill towards you. Funny how life works.

5) Tell me how you can help my friends. This is the Holy Grail of networking advice.

There’s only so much that I can do individually for my network and the very nature of having a network is expanding it so that we can all help each other more. Similarly, there’s only so much that a CEO can do for his company, a manager for his employees, and so on.

To that end, I’m always excited when people come to me with opportunities that I can pass on to others in my organization. This is probably even more important than helping me directly, because it makes me look good.

It’s also probably the hardest to do, but if you can pull it off, you’ll be so awesome you can give yourself a gold star.

Networkit.

Categories
Career Generation X Generation Y Knowing yourself Leadership

The most important thing for a decision in politics

Today, I wore a sweatshirt at the same table as someone wearing a suit. Today, I had lunch with someone who I like. He’s intelligent, successful, good-looking. Today, I had lunch with someone who listens to my ideas, and doesn’t agree with me all that much. I respect that.

So, it shouldn’t have surprised me that today, I had lunch with someone who isn’t voting for Barack Obama.

And yet, never has my stomach risen to my heart so violently after eating just a regular ole’ hummus sandwich.

My whole body wanted to reach out and envelop him in all that is Obama.

If this sounds a bit hysterical, it should be.

Unity is not easy. Hope is not rational.

And as much as we’d like it to be, neither is politics.

It would be easy for me to argue for an Obama candidacy on the basis of the issues. I’ve researched those. And if I were voting on issues alone, settling for any one candidate would prove to be easy, because any one candidate is remarkably similar to the next.

But I’m not voting on issues alone.

I’m voting on something entirely more powerful.

That is, the first feeling you get – your gut instinct – which, as it turns out, is remarkably accurate.

We are highly instinctive creatures. We know how to read people and situations for survival, for love, and for power.

A recent study looking at the faces of successful CEOs proves it. The “experiment lends support to a growing argument among psychologists who study decision-making that when people come to quick conclusions without much information, their decisions are often good ones.”

Our human instinct is among our greatest strengths.

It’s why a woman can tell within the first five to ten minutes of meeting a man whether or not she will sleep with him.

It’s why Ryan Healy spent months going over idea after idea for his new company, only to return to his original thought.

It’s why individuals who hone the gift of fear – the most primal of all instincts – are able to save their own lives.

You cannot hide from instinct.

Across the ocean, there are those who use their instinct just like we do, and will look at Barack Obama and notice “first and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy,” argues Andrew Sullivan.

In fact, everything you need to know about Barack Obama is available in his face – his authenticity, first and foremost, and then the change he wishes to create, as well as his imperfections as a leader, husband and father, and his great hope for this country, his wife, and his daughters.

It is for this reason that Generation Y and Generation X have embraced Obama like none other. We know that “authenticity is not the product of manipulation. It accurately reflects aspects of the leader’s inner self, so it can’t be an act,” just as Harvard Business Online reports.

And yet, we have to be weary. Instinct is easily muddied. It can be dragged through lies and panic and deception, much like the sludge seen on the streets of Madison, WI after blizzard, upon winter storm warning, upon wind advisory.

You can call your instinct an evolutionary reaction, or maybe your soul, Nature, the Universe, your heart, or perhaps even God helping you throughout life, but don’t ignore it. Protect it. Learn to trust it.

Know yourself better than anything or anyone to change the world.

My instinct is that Barack Obama is the leader to unite this great country. You don’t have to agree with my gut, but I urge you to listen to your own.

Yes We Can.

Categories
Career

What does my voice sound like? And what does yours?

I’m so excited to tell you about two things:

1) Hear my voice. If there was ever a way for you to get the New Year started off right, this is it. Andrew Rondeau has interviewed me as part of his Great Successful People package. There are 41:50 minutes worth of me talking and I give some good advice, if I do say so myself. And I even talk about you, my dear reader!

I’m not the only person interviewed, however. Others include John Kotter, Penelope Trunk, Ben Casnocha, Scot Herrick, and oh-so-many more. PLUS, Andrew has a great British accent that is much fun to listen to.

All of the interviews are available for a discounted price before February 15, and Andrew has kindly offered to share his profits with the interviewees, so support me by checking out Great Successful People today >

2) Develop your voice. The third issue of Personal Branding Magazine is also out, which I again helped to edit. Dan Schawbel, personal-brand-expert-extraordinare, has put together a great collection of articles, and the third issue is a huge improvement over the first and second (which were also great).

This issue is focused on brand influencers, and includes articles from several of my blogging friends like Ryan Healy at Employee Evolution and Tiffany Monhollon of Personal PR. Check it out>

Thank you for supporting both projects!

Categories
Career Generation Y Leadership Women Work/life balance

Generation Y breeds a new kind of woman

This post is an opening argument to the question, “Do women need men and/or children in order to be fulfilled?” Check out the opposing viewpoint from Justin Sanders here. This post was also published at Damsels in Success.

Update: This post was also published at Huffington Post.

Women need men. Just not like we used to.

While career guru Penelope Trunk insists that we will find deeper fulfillment from relationships over work, others like Hannah Seligson wonder why we can’t talk about “young women and careers without talking about the hunt for a husband?”

Generation Y women don’t relate to either. We don’t live container lives, with work and family and play muffled under air-tight lids. Our life bleeds together, and instead of a singular goal of family or career, we lead our lives as a continuum, family and career ebbing and flowing.

The reality of young women’s lives today is that we want it all, despite the warnings. While coming of age during 9/11 reinforced that family is deeply important to us, we were also raised to believe we could do and be anything, especially equal to men professionally.

It’s not about prioritizing one over the other, nor is there a single answer that works for everyone; there are extremes at either end. What remains consistent in women, however, is their sense of increasing independence.

Whether we check off men, children, career, or all of the above, the fact is that we have a choice, and what fulfills and limits us is not created by society and media, but increasingly our own desires.

As a result, our roles are changing. Women are becoming the leaders, and men the supporters. Even in relationships where children are the priority, and the woman chooses or is able to stay at home, women take on the dominant role, commanding a deeper respect than any time in history.

Many view the shifting roles as threatening the very basis of our biology. But it isn’t. It is simply uprooting the traditional western viewpoint.

Indeed, while spouses and children still rank as a source of fulfillment for women above careers, one’s personal fulfillment is increasingly not just augmented by, but necessitated by professional fulfillment as well.

Bored with motherhood and marriage, we savor the challenge of work. Michelle Obama said in a recent interview, “I love losing myself in a set of problems that have nothing to do with my husband and children. Once you’ve tasted that, it’s hard to walk away.”

Women don’t need men or children for fulfillment. They might get on okay with a cat, or their career, or another woman. But really, Generation Y doesn’t need much. We’ve been coddled and spoiled, and have long surpassed what we might need, and are instead creating what we want.

And what we want is to define a new kind of woman, a “compassionate alpha.”

The Generation Y woman has leadership and strength, and promotes community and empathy. We don’t dismiss motherhood, but embrace our strengths and use those to change the workplace, reaping from it a greater sense of fulfillment than ever before.

It is not a coincidence that at a time when power-hungry hierarchies are being broken down, women are leading and infiltrating the workplace. It is our skills and talents that have created such an influential shift.

Generation Y women are high-achievers, shrewd, well-dressed, and possess an emotional intelligence that far surpasses our male counterparts. We don’t rule by insecurities or fear, but by knowing ourselves well, and seeking connection with others.

In short, we’re women. We strive to be who we are, in our sexual identities, and in how we construct our personal and professional lives. We acknowledge our own complexities.

Our personal and professional lives are blurred more than ever before, and a woman’s strength in today’s society is the fact that we are true to ourselves — more so than any other generation — because past generations fought for our right to do so.

Ruthlessly beautiful.

Categories
Career Generation Y Leadership Work/life balance

Life as a Gen Y leader – Week six

I went out on a date last night. A real date. A lot of the time I go out for dinner or drinks, and the guy thinks it’s a date, but it’s really not, and I’ve yet to figure out how to handle those situations gracefully. I usually smile the smile that says you’re quite lovely and nice, but I don’t think so bud. Usually, they get it. I think.

But last night was a date. I know it was, because we discussed it beforehand. As a Gen Y leader, that’s what you have to do. Your life is in the spotlight, much more, and in some ways, much less, than I would have ever imagined.

As such, dating is a dangerous ingredient to add to the work/life blender. Friends and work and business associates and drinks and family all mix quite nicely. But the moment dating comes into the mix, people get all crazy. Seriously. Many in our generation would prefer not to even talk about it. A foreign concept to me because that’s essentially all my best friend Belle and I discuss.

Belle and I also talk about our sisters and our jobs. We talk about how her mother has breast cancer. Again. We talk about our goals, and dreams, and what to wear on Friday night. But mostly we talk about our respective relationships. Because uh, it’s not like they doesn’t exist, and I have trouble ignoring things that are so basic and integral to our life.

Big Brother likes to keep such things hush-hush, and recommends that I don’t date anyone in my organization. An odd bit of advice, because our membership is made up of young professionals in Madison, and the ones that aren’t part of my organization, well, it’s my job to recruit them. That pretty much cuts out, oh, I don’t know, every good-looking young bachelor in the city. Every young, single, and eligible man in Madison is off-limits. It’s an impossible situation.

So, I went out on a date last night, and he happened to be a member of my organization, and when I tried to explain my hesitance with this fact, he just laughed, like “Is this really what keeps you up at night? You are so lame.” And I laughed back nervously, like “Yes, cute young professional bachelor, I am totally lame. You’re absolutely right.”

I guess I tend to take work too seriously at times. I work hard. It doesn’t stop. From the moment I wake up, I am working, until the moment I close my eyes in bed. And because I can work from the coffee shop, home or at the bar, and not just in my cubicle sans windows, I do. Which means when it is 8:24 pm, I’m usually working. And when it’s 10:02 am, I am working. And when it’s 3:35 am in the morning, well, I am sleeping, but I am working then too. Really. I have productive dreams.

Honestly though, I don’t know how other people do it, and I am beginning to think that I must have some serious health issue because I am not the Energizer bunny of Generation Y. A disappointment that is greatest to myself, because I look good in pink.

So, I am trying my best, which seems to be working out, mostly because your best has to be good enough, and I love myself enough to realize that my best is really quite amazing.

Work/life blur.

Categories
Career Generation Y Work/life balance

Dissent in the Gen Y ranks – family or career?

Ryan Paugh’s recent thoughts on relationships and career are downright blasphemous. I state my opinion with the utmost respect for Paugh. We’re friends. But I disagree with him.

Paugh views long-term relationships and marriage as restrictions for young talent. Young leaders, he argues, are limiting themselves by searching for responsibility they don’t need yet.

Restrictions are what life is about. You should never throw away such opportunities, but embrace what limits you.

I studied design in college and found that given the chance to design anything at all in the whole wide world, the canvas will remain blank. Told to design something with a right angle, or without connecting any lines, or including three circles and your mind will turn on. Constraints make you creative. Creativity breeds success.

I had lunch today with a young twenty-something leader in marketing and public relations who was doing just that. We talked about his future plans and I asked if he would ever consider leaving Madison.

“I’d like to leave, but my wife wants to stay here and her family lives here as well, so I think we will stay,” he replied.

It’s a compromise for him to stay. That was clear. But he will go far because he does not see that as a boundary. Despite limitations, he is successful and is creating change.

Paugh, however, argues that “leaders who are emotionally committed to another person typically can’t hack it.” Ridiculous. The very definition of leadership is being emotionally available to others. Life is about helping other people. A relationship is the sincerest form of such sentiments. Even Oprah has Steadman.

Much of the confusion has to do with the fact that changing the world is not the rainbows and teddy bears we imagine in our heads. It’s dirty grotesque work. It is work that is often sleazy and hard and tiring. Paugh romanticizes that it’s something different entirely.

He talks about relaxing with his friends watching football one weekend and trips to Cape Cod the next – things that just wouldn’t be possible with the ball and chain. The message seems to be that you can’t have a life, and be in a relationship, and change the world all at the same time. “Imagine your potential for greatness if you choose to take a rain-check on the nuptials,” Paugh urges. The reality is that as a leader, you support others, and at the end of the day, you need someone to support you.

For the record, I’m single. I’ve been a serial monogamist and I’ve been a serial dater. I’m a hopeless romantic, but I have no desire to get married and start popping out babies anytime soon.

And yet, as a newly minted Gen-Y leader, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish I had someone to come home to, someone that would understand and support and be there for me. Someone to share the success. It’s hard to be a leader and not have personal support, even with wonderful friends and family.

It is, of course, a personal choice to choose a family or choose a career. Neither is right. On one side, the young and married stand, happiness glazed on their faces, what ifs tattooed in their eyes. On the other side the young and powerful march forward, heads turned backward, looking at what they’ve left behind.

The happy medium between the two consists of the very narcissism Paugh uses to substantiate his argument. You see, part of being independent, part of truly loving yourself, is that you can love another, and perhaps more importantly, that you can allow yourself to be loved in return. It’s the latter that’s hard. But when you can do that, that’s when you can really start to change the world. Because you understand something so powerful, that it can’t be put into words.

Walk the line.