Have You Ever Actually Listed What You Are Afraid Of?

We live in anxious times.  But are you generally anxious & worried, or do you know exactly what you are afraid of?

I had lunch with a friend on Friday.  She is a writer, educator and gives excellent tactical advice at Smackdown Your Inner Critic. She has long made it a practice to review her list of fears annually, pick one, and tackle it head-on for that year.  Once, a student expressed utter shock and surprise that she had been able to come up with such a process.  The student said, How did you even think to do that? It never would have occurred to me to list what I am afraid of. How can you conquer a fear if you don’t know what your fears are?

I’m just as anxious as the next guy.  But about what? So here is my list:

(Big ticket) things I am afraid of:

1. Being assaulted by someone mentally unsound (whether due to insanity or developmental delay) who truly does not understand right from wrong and who cannot be reasoned with.
2. Being seriously embarrassed in public and unable to turn the crowd back to my favor with humor.
3. Ending up destitute and homeless when I am elderly. Apparently this is a very common fear among educated, financially secure women.
4. Not being in control of / able to control my self, my environment, my choices, or my actions.
5. Cops. Incidentally, I always have been.  When Officer Friendly came to my nursery school I was scared of him and terrified to climb all over/though the squad car like the other kids where doing.  When my car was stolen when I was 17, the officer had me sit in the back seat to give my statement, and I kept the door open and one foot on the pavement at all times.  When I was pulled over for speeding when I was 22, the cop got me out of the car and my knees were shaking so badly with fear that he breathalyzed me because he thought I was unsteady on my feet because I was drunk.
6. Being imprisoned — with specific, distinct flavor for this fear in domestic vs foreign scenarios.

None of these fears are currently stopping me from enjoying daily life.  However some of them may be stopping me from taking healthy risks or reaching out. (Reaching out is my lowest resilience score.)  I can think of all kinds of things to do in a year to combat each of these head-on.  Not necessarily gonna do any in 2009 — as the How to Become CEO book suggests, Let one new major thing into your life each year (in 2009 that’d be the babe, duh) not, Let several new major things into your life each year.  BUT, it’s good to see the list in black and white, get it into my conscious mind, and start stewing on ideas to confront & smack down that bitch!

Oh incidentally, I totally get that I have a power and control theme going on here. No need to point that out.

What’s on your list of major fears?

What are two things you could do, no matter how small, to help you face those fears and conquer them?

Weekly Review 12/21/08

How did I do against the developmental goals I focused on last week?

1. Goal: strengthen reputation as outperformer. MIT: push hard hard hard in the goal/objective setting offsite Monday to ensure the management team in general, and I specifically, do NOT sign up for ANY objectives that are not seriously specific and measurable.

Sort-of accomplished.  The way the goal-setting session was run, it was hard to push for measurable objectives, because we rarely got down to the objective level.  However, I was an active participant and was vocal about making our goals specific and not boil-the-ocean big.  I was also able to ensure all my goals were represented and that I didn’t sign up for anything vague or that I didn’t expect.  And I made it abundantly clear — I was funny, funny, funny about it but very serious — to my boss (shout-out for managing up!) & a couple of peers that I am not signing up for any work that isn’t prioritized, meaning: doesn’t align to my goals

2.  Goal: strengthen my reputation as an outperformer. MIT: once the offsite locks down the management team goals/objectives, lock my g/o into a final draft by Friday.

Accomplished.  I noodled all week and took the the goals I owned coming out of the goal-setting session down to the objective level.  All my objectives are measurable, even the more strategic ones. (Don’t get me started on strategic objectives).  I’m working now on crafting a reference document that actually lays out the measures I’ll use. This will help me track performance and gather data along the way, and I’ll also review this document each Friday during my weekly review at work, to keep me focused.  I’ve also got my G/O document out for review & feedback with to of my favorite (read: smartest & most trusted) peers.

3.  Goal: be courted for new roles & new jobs.  MIT: work on re-opening my network, by scheduling two coffees, lunches or statuses, one with a hiring manager who has a prospect for me, one with a former manager, director or VP, to reconnect, hear what’s up in their world, drop my elevator speech, and remind them (sweetly, graciously) how great I am. 

Not accomplished!  I did set up coffee with that hiring manager, for after the holiday break. But I totally shied away from reaching out to any of my former leadership at that Director or VP level.  Why am I so shy about this? Well, reaching out and taking positive risks is the big weakness in my resilience profile.  What am I so skeezed out about? I have been thinking about it all week: more to come in a post about it some time this week.

Goals & MITs for next week:

1. Goal: strenghten my reputation as an outperformer. MIT: finish crafting the measures for my objectives. Review and revise my goals overall.

2. Goal: Be courted for new roles and jobs. MIT: figure out why I’m so gun-shy about networking with leaders way above my pay grade.

Only two goals this week, and probably fewer posts too: Merry Christmas!

Now I Will Eat My Hat

No one has gotten promoted.

Contrary to my complete knee-jerk reaction, it was all a complete fabrication that I myself fabricated in my crazy old head.  Rather: titles were changed across several positions to bring title, pay grade and bonus status in my pyramid in line with title/pay grade/bonus combinations throughout the rest of the company. This is really good news, as now peer relationships with partners are more symbolically and factually even.

I have to eat my hat now, because I’m not an idiot, I’m not falling behind, I’m not on the slow track.  But because I let my icebergs take over I spent all weekend in a shame spiral, making all kinds of wild assumptions about what a non-promotable loser I was.  Icebergs suck.  They don’t serve me at all.  I am not a non-promotable loser, and there is objective proof to the contrary.  If I had just asked about it (neutrally, gracefully) when I first noticed the new titles, I would have gathered facts, and  facts are not a problem for me.  Crazy mangy headbees are my problem and without facts they swarm.

Please, please, the next time your icebergs pop up, or your hot buttons get pushed, or you receive news to which your first reaction is to be devastated, or your headbees buzz, please remember this incident.  I know I will.  Remember how crazy I went over nothing.  It’s no good for your mojo.  Remember to step back, stop making assumptions, and start gathering objective facts.  Remember that your icebergs don’t serve you.  Remember that your inner critic doesn’t have your best interest at heart.  Save yourself a lot of time and energy. You can mitigate your icebergs.  They don’t have to control how you feel or react. You can learn to be more optimistic.

Remembering this incident, and the fact that I did it publically on my blog, and how very delicious my hat tasted:  this is my new iceberg-melting heat lamp.

What to Do When You’re Totally Overwhelmed? Smackdown!

Team, I’m privileged to be a guest poster over at the excellent 101 Smackdowns For Your Inner Critic.  I wrote about a great technique for calming the whirlwind – and your Inner Critic’s negative voice – when you’re totally overwhelmed.  Here’s an excerpt:

I am prone to a) inserting myself into totally-out-of-the-comfort-zone situations and b) getting totally overwhelmed as a result.  Since part a) is what helps me grow the most, and generally pays the biggest dividends, I have had to find a smackdown to combat part b). I’d like to share it with you by way of my favorite example:

I graduated from a very small liberal arts college with a writing degree and then for the next six years worked exclusively in and with non-profits and lived a freewheeling lifestyle of clubbing, tattoos and underground commix.  Suddenly one day I decided to pursue an MBA and a life in corporate America. This decision was borne not from cool-headed thinking, but from the emotional aftermath from a political takeover of my agency and the firing of my mentor.

Talk about out of comfort zone.  Not only did I have no undergraduate education whatsoever in business or economics, I had no corporate experience at all.  Nor did I even own a suit. Nor do I really have a head for math. Or skill at golf.

But I had decided to join a top-30 ranked business school, study finance (math math math!), sell out into a corporate job, hold my own with the “golf playing assholes,” as I mistakenly thought all corporate types were, and wear a suit.  And because I’m both a perfectionist and competitive, I took it upon myself to kick ass at it all.

Talk about overwhelmed. Totally, utterly, unbelievably overwhelmed.

What did I do to combat this? Head over to 101 Smackdowns to find out.

Laying Promotion Groundwork with my Performance Review

Why Am I Being Reviewed in November?

Due to my leave of absence, I missed the regular mid-year review cycle.  My top priority this first week back is to get my mid year self-review written and onto my boss’ desk. (Next step is for him to add his comments and formally give me my review.)

Good thing there’s so much loose chatter right now about how good it is to have me back and how partners & clients have missed the value I bring. Puts my boss in the right frame of mind!

Asking for What I Deserve: My Achilles Heel

I’m going to take what feels like a risk this time around and leverage my mid-year review to be frank about my goals for promotion.  I’m pretty self aware and I know that advocating for my own career interests is a weakness of mine — I’m a great coach but don’t easily take my own advice.  Chalk it up to Minnesota Nice or some long forgotten early childhood experience, but asking for raises and promotions is really hard for me to do.

I can usually pretty easily talk about my results, track record and positive feedback. I have no problem asking for big challenges, projects and responsibilities.  But ask to be fairly and competitively compensated for the results I deliver, with salary, title and advancement, and I’m a silent mess.  And my former boss confirmed earlier this year that leadership doesn’t think of me for advancement because they think I don’t think I’m ready.  Because I never say anything to the contrary and I don’t ask for it.

You don’t get anything good at work if you don’t ask for it!

Way out of my comfort zone. So I am stepping into the fear.

It may seem totally duh to those of you for whom this comes easily, but for the rest of us, here’s the plan:

1. Create a personal development goal around advocating for my own career. At my company, everyone has personal development goals as well as regular job-related goals. I already did this earlier in the year.  I have a problem telling my leadership that I want to advance? I made a goal to address this earlier in the year: “Clarify career interests for management.”

2. Remind my boss of this goal. Since I had a reporting relationship change partway through the year, I will send my personal development goals to my boss tomorrow along with my mid-year review.

3. Demonstrate measurable progress against this goal. My self review recaps that I:

• Clarified for leadership my interest in moving to Level 2 management [Just before my leave, I had quick discussions with my boss and my director and explicitly stated that I wanted to get to Level 2.  Despite their perfectly nice reactions, I found the exercise painful and I felt icky for a few days afterward.  You bet I'm taking credit for this as a win on my review, and since this is a weakness for me, it's totally a win.]
• Held 9 networking meetings with leaders in the Communications team and other departments, to explore fit and possible next career moves. Was requested by two departments to check back after my leave ended. [Doesn't hurt to remind my boss others find me valuable!]
• Took 3 talent management / leadership classes. [Reinforcing that I'm always sharpening my leadership skills]

4. Demonstrate great results against my other job goals. The mid-year review form is short and sweet, and I highlight:

• Great results on the major projects my team owns
• Outstanding upward feedback scores on the company survey. 91% favorable; 95% neutral + favorable. [Quantitative measure of my skill managing and coaching others.]

5. Keep my advancement interests top of mind for my boss and other advocates. Career development discussions were already scheduled with my boss and my director, happening to fall within the next two weeks. Today I scheduled time with a key director, who is an advocate of mine, in the Communications department (one of the departments I’m targeting for my next move).  In each of these conversations I’ll reinforce my interest in promoting to Level 2, my track record and skill set that are a great fit for Level 2, and my interest in moving to Communications as part of this advancement. Tomorrow I’ll schedule coffee with a key manager in one of the other departments that interest me.

One final note: Be careful if you try these techniques in your company.

• Are these tactics a good fit for your company culture and “the way things are done”?
• Can you openly talk with your current leadership about a desire to move to a different department? We rotate people a lot in my company, so it’s safe to be out of the closet about wanting to move on — but in some companies that may be seen as a betrayal or as presumptuous so you may have to soften your approach.

Those of you who do this kind of thing easily: What else do you suggest I do??

Psyched Up Interviewing

I have been thinking a lot about job interviewing lately. I will be looking for a new role once I return to the F50C (but not before at least 30 days are up), and I’m already starting to get psyched up to interview.

My nurse friend A will be also be looking for a job soon and we’ve been talking about how scary it is to interview when you haven’t had to do it for a decade.  She’s never had to face down a corporate interview, either: talk about intimidating! Coincidentally,  101 Smackdowns just did a great post on facing down your fears.

Here’s what I commented there and what I told Nurse A:

I went to grad school with someone I’ll call the Very Wealthy Individual (VWI). It seemed as though this person hadn’t needed to fight for a job in their life — that most likely they’d used family connections and networking to get in the door. One day during the height of MBA job-hunt season, the VWI cornered me in the hall one day and went on at length about how much they loved to interview.

Loved to interview? I had never heard anyone say such a thing!  The VWI went on at length about how much they loved to make a connection with the interviewer, how much they loved to talk about themselves, how easy (easy!) interviewing always (always!) was. And the VWI went on to say they were always successful – always got the offer.
Was the VWI insane? Interviews were always easy for them? Were they putting on a big fat front?

Then it occurred to me: the VWI believed interviews were always easy and that the VWI would always be successful.  And so both consciously and unconsciously, the VWI comported themself with an air of confidence, competence, grace, and relaxation during interviews.  The VWI believed success to be inevitable and it was, because belief attracts outcomes.

Now, I was not at all this comfortable interviewing.  And I was interviewing for MBA-level jobs but I had a liberal arts undergrad degree (in writing, no less) and had never worked in the private sector before. You can imagine how confident I felt. I was intimidated, embarrassed by my lack of experience, and fairly pessimistic. But I could not shake off this odd lecture from the VWI. And I so I decided to play “Fake It ‘Till You Make It” and put on my own big fat front.

Before each interview, I psyched myself up into my character, “MFK who LOVES interviewing and is great at it.”

• I went around telling everyone I loved interviewing (just like the VWI did to me)
• I intensely visualized having profound and meaningful conversations with my interviewers, making a real connection with them, and having them get excited about me as a great fit for the job.
• I practiced my answers out loud over and over so that they began to feel like natural, interesting stories.
• I stubbornly fought back pessimistic thoughts and instead deliberately practiced thinking about my non-traditional background as unique, valuable, useful and differentiating.
• Then I become that interview-loving and interview-acing character.

And it totally worked.  And it works to this day.  Because belief attracts outcomes, and you can talk yourself into being confident.

Try it out yourself. Don’t you deserve to shed the interview angst?  Of course you do!  For some great tips on how to psych yourself up to face a fear like interviewing, head here.