by Jenny Blake
This is what I call career karma. When I give freely, I reinforce the idea that plenty is on the way back. Plant enough seeds of generosity, without expectation, and it comes back tenfold, often in ways you will not see coming.
Lisa Danylchuk, a San Francisco–based psychotherapist, calls this reciprocal transformation. “The principle of reciprocal transformation says that one person’s growth is another’s,” she says. “Learn to see the other person’s awesomeness or good fortune as a reflection of your own possibility.”
Sharing resources and celebrating others is a start, but not sufficient for reciprocal success.
Your ability to help others starts with you. You must fill your own cup first by asking for help along the way. Don’t just give until you are empty. Going it alone is tough. It is lonely, and most of all, it is frustrating.
I learned this the hard way. I once nicknamed my inner whip cracker “the self-sufficient warrior.” It represented the protective shell I built for myself early in my career and relationships. If I did things alone, I did not have to rely on anyone, and no one could let me down. I could handle and control my own happiness and success thankyouverymuch.
Except that it didn’t work. The more I protected myself, the further away people got. The more I tried to go it alone, the more burned out I became.
Conversely, when I got so low that I had no choice but to ask for help, the exact next steps I needed came to me. People entered my life at just the right time. I started to trust the wisdom that the events in my life had to offer, the perfectly timed unfolding of lessons that seemed handpicked just for me, no matter how challenging in the moment. I recommitted to the full cycle of giving and receiving.
______
The best network-building strategy is not about making a landgrab for favors and business cards. It is about developing mutually beneficial, resonant relationships that do not feel like work; ones that bring you energy, ideas, and connections and vice versa.
People are a linchpin of your Pivot strategy . . . but it is not time to call in favors just yet. What will motivate others to connect you with opportunities before you even have to ask?
CHAPTER 6: BRIDGE THE GAPS
What Skills and Expertise Will Take You to the Next Level?
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
—Neil Gaiman
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IS HAPPENING AT SUCH AN EXPONENTIAL RATE that none of us can predict exactly what skills will be needed to complement technology in the future versus those that may be rendered obsolete. Therefore, it is not sufficient to simply figure out what skills you need and master them.
As the adage goes, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” We must now adjust the second directive to: “Teach a man to teach himself how to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” The most agile pivoters improve upon the learning process itself so they can adjust quickly as new technologies are introduced.
You can accelerate how quickly you spot skills that are needed, and how rapidly you learn them. While the Plant stage helped you identify strengths already under your belt, this chapter will teach you how to effectively scan for new marketable skills. You will learn to discern what areas are worth an investment of further learning and research.
MIND THE GAP
Once you are firmly anchored in your strengths from the Plant stage, it is time to start closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to end up, as outlined in your one-year vision. It is likely that you will need to increase your skills or knowledge to plug these gaps and further refine your vision.
Before you start binge ordering how-to books on Amazon, set a learning strategy by identifying what you don’t know. This can be a bit of a catch-22, as part of the Scan phase involves revealing blind spots. This is the foundation of learning and growth: pushing yourself past your current limits and levels of awareness.
Revisit the vision exercises from the Plant stage. Identify areas where you want to increase your skills, expertise, reputation, and network. Consider:
What are you wildly curious about?
What could you do to further develop in those areas? Where can you go to learn these skills on your own?
Who can you shadow or train with as you improve?
Take a moment to also examine what isn’t currently working in your career setup: what skills would help you move on or correct course?
LEARN HOW TO LEARN
Once you have some ideas about new skills to pursue, there is a sea of resources to help you acquire them while experimenting with other Pivot elements. Part of scanning—and pivoting—effectively involves learning how to learn. Books like Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning, Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Chef, and Josh Kaufman’s The First 20 Hours provide instruction and shortcuts on how to learn just about anything in a fraction of the time you might assume is necessary.
There are also dozens of low-cost online learning platforms—including Skillshare, Khan Academy, Codecademy, General Assembly, Udemy, Coursera, Udacity, and more—that you can join to acquire new skills. And thanks to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), we now have access to courses and professors from all over the world via universities that open their doors to thousands of online students each semester.
The progression of building a new skill follows four stages, or levels of learning. This is known as the conscious competence model, developed by Noel Burch at Gordon Training International. Familiarizing yourself with this model will help you push through the inevitable dips and discouragement that accompany the learning process.
Levels of Learning
Levels of Learning
Unconscious incompetence: You don’t know what you don’t know; ignorance is bliss. You are not yet aware of the skill, or what is required to master it.
Conscious incompetence: The dip. As you start practicing, you become aware of how much you have to learn. You might feel incompetent, frustrated, or discouraged as you realize you need more time or practice to excel.
Conscious competence: You have started to master the new skill, but you still have to actively think about whether you are doing it right. Similar to the first days after getting your driver’s license, you are capable, but vigilant attention is required.
Unconscious competence: You do not have to actively think about the skill any longer. Applying it comes naturally; as a result, meeting your objectives becomes attainable and enjoyable. Momentum builds.
Harness Momentum from Hobbies
It is helpful to have a hobby or skill you can cultivate during a pivot, something that has nothing to do with your career. When I first moved to New York, I set a personal goal to start practicing handstands in the middle of the room during yoga class. This was so scary to me that in the first handstand workshop I attended, I did not attempt to go upside down even once in the packed two-hour class.
The next year, I set a goal of nailing just one handstand in the middle of the room, holding it for a few seconds, and coming down by choice. For the hundreds (if not thousands) of repetitions I did that year, I accomplished this once or twice, more by fluke than anything.
The year after that, I made a point to practice every day in the park, where no one I knew was watching and where the grass would soften my falls. Slowly, my skills improved. I was no longer afraid to try in class, and by the end of the year I was sticking my handstands in the middle of the room most of the time. I felt like a kid turning myself upside down every day, and loved the sense of play, delightful distraction, focus, incremental achievement, and confidence that pursuing this practice brought.
A hobby can boost your outlook during a pivot in several ways:
When you are fried
from wrestling with big questions, it can be helpful to set thorny issues aside and distract yourself with an engaging hobby. The time away often sparks new insights when you return to your big questions later.
There is a special confidence that comes from building a new skill very slowly over time. It is fun to see even tiny amounts of progress, and this gives you something to celebrate even on your most challenging days of cracking complex pivot questions.
Building new skills changes our brain wiring, increasing neuron connections and myelin production. This improves performance, particularly the more we practice.
Hobbies teach the skill of failure. The learning process inherently involves sucking at first, and in many cases you can’t learn the skill without screwing up 100 times, until you finally nail it on try 101.
Hobbies encourage you to get out of your comfort zone, and you may even end up serendipitously meeting people who are helpful to your pivot in surprising ways.
If you have a hobby that involves being physically active, so much the better. You will get all the happy chemicals from exercise, and the endorphin reward of succeeding as your skills develop.
Albert Einstein called this combinatory play, and would often discover innovative ideas during his violin breaks. This practice was so important to his process that he famously said, “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”
LIMIT LINEAR THINKING
When asked about his strategy for writing stand-up comedy, Chris Rock said, “Forget being a comedian, just act like a reporter. What’s the question that hasn’t been asked?” The same applies to scanning: in this stage, you act like a journalist, inquiring into new areas with expansive, open-ended questions to determine what to learn, who to talk to, and what opportunities to pursue.
Asking open-ended questions does not always come naturally. One common Pivot pitfall occurs when people skip the question-asking step altogether, instead selling themselves short with a laundry list of precursory qualifications. They wait too long for more training, more experience, or more certifications, instead of building from their current strengths.
You know you are falling into this someday trap if you are putting linear conditions on a desired outcome, such as “When I earn $150,000 a year, then I can travel more,” or “If I get an MBA, then I can start my own business.” Some of us fall into perfectionistic thinking as a delay tactic: “When my website is completely buttoned up, then I can launch.” Others turn to defeatist thinking: “If I only have a hundred subscribers, what is the point?”
If you have ever taken an improvisation class, you learned a fundamental building block of improv, the “Yes, and” technique. This technique means that anything your improv partner says goes. Between the two of you, you can combine crazy, unrelated concepts if you build on what the other is saying. In fact, that is the only effective way to keep the story moving.
The same goes for your biggest pivot questions. Although some reflection is good, as is some future planning, the real gold lies in the middle—your present reality. Only by adding to your current reality, asking combinatory questions from seemingly contradictory statements, do you move the conversation with yourself forward.
Frame your linear beliefs as combinatory questions: How can I pursue what I love and keep my job? Or, how can I leave and maintain a strong sense of financial security?
Another way to circumvent faulty if-then logic is to ask what the “then” state would really get you. If you had a master’s degree, then what? If you had more money, what would that enable you to do? These “then what” questions point toward the real goal, where we can start to ask much better questions, such as:
How can I test my ideas with a small audience?
How can I make progress toward my pivot even without my next gig or client lined up?
How can I bolster my health, happiness, and hobbies given my available free time?
What is already present in my life and work that I am grateful for?
I have also seen many people afraid to make a career change lean on worst-case scenario questions, usually a variation on: What if I fail and hit rock bottom emotionally and financially? I certainly had this thought when I considered taking my coaching and consulting business full time.
Once I became aware that I was letting fear consume my thinking, I started a thought-replacement exercise. Every time fear-based scenarios popped into my mind, I countered with a more productive question: “But what if I earn twice as much in half the time?” This allowed me to turn my attention toward building a business that would achieve that more motivating aim.
Fix Faulty Linear Logic
List your three biggest Pivot concerns, then rewrite them as “Yes, and” statements. Next, rewrite those statements as “how” questions.
Here is an example, starting with the fear-based concern. “I want to start my own business, but I am afraid of not earning enough money to be financially secure.”
Restating this as a “Yes, and” statement, it would become: “I want to start my own business and be financially successful.”
The third step, rephrased as an expansive question, would be: “How can I start my own business and earn enough to maintain my current lifestyle?” An even more direct version is “What business model would most fit my strengths and provide a healthy living?” You could get more specific still: “What type of business would earn at least $150,000 per year, while supporting a lifestyle that expresses my core values of freedom and vitality?”
Reflect over the course of a week and see what develops. From time to time, I write open-ended questions at the top of a sheet of paper or Post-it Note on the back of my front door, where I know I will see it every day, then add ideas and potential solutions throughout the week or month.
Drop the Bucket on Unanswered Questions
My dad and I developed a game called “Drop the Bucket.” Imagine that there is a bucket in your brain where you place an unanswered question. If you drop the bucket into the well of your brain, like a wishing well, when it is ready it will rise with the answer—maybe in an hour, maybe when you are in the shower, or maybe a week or month later.
According to Steven Kotler, author of The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance, “The secret is to take yourself to the edge of frustration, then stop. Go until your brain can’t take it anymore, then change the subject. Take your mind off the problem.” In doing this, our brain switches from conscious to subconscious processing, and answers seem to pop up out of nowhere.
When you are looking for answers or ideas, frame them as open-ended questions, then drop the bucket. They will come up eventually; the bucket always returns. Asking the right question is the hard part; once it is out there and you review it periodically over the course of days or weeks, your mind will begin to wrap around it and give you some answers.
What are your unanswered questions at the moment? As my dad says, “Put those 85 billion brain neurons to work!”
INVESTIGATIVE LISTENING
In a video interview for Jonathan Fields’s Good Life Project, renowned vulnerability expert Brené Brown shared her approach to research and discovery. Brown follows a social science method called grounded theory, a system for discovering theories or hypotheses by looking at a data set first, then coding it to determine themes later. This process is reversed from most traditional research methodologies that say one should state a question or hypothesis first, then prove or disprove it with data.
Brown explains that with grounded theory, you first observe the “lived experience” and use that to make conclusions, which may or may not clash with existing theories. “It is all about resonance and fit—do the concepts that you are coming up with resonate with the studied population?” Brown explained. “Do people see themselves in the lives and stories that you are creating with your data?”
According to Brown, trust and emergence are two of the most important axioms of grounded theory. “Trust in whatever emerges from the data, trust in people’s lived experiences, and their perceptions of those experiences,” she said.
How does this relate to a pivot? Oftentimes you will need to put your ear to the ground first, then look for themes and clues. This is the purpose of the Scan stage: to have a two-way conversation with many different groups—your peers, mentors, clients, colleagues, companies, friends, and family, anyone who can help you discover new themes, strengths, and opportunities.
Marques Anderson did exactly that when he pivoted from playing football in the NFL to starting his own global nonprofit, the World Education Foundation. Since its conception in 2010, the WE Foundation has worked with an international network of experts, interns, and volunteers, assisting in project structure and implementation in four key developmental areas: health, education, infrastructure, and sports.
Rather than dictate what should happen among his volunteers, partners, and the communities he serves, Marques takes the perspective of “servant leader” instead. In his travels to over fifty-one countries, he makes a point of immersing himself in the local community and culture. Whether he is going to birthday parties, having tea or dinner at someone’s house, or going for a walk with a local community leader, Marques listens with engaged curiosity more than he talks.
“I realized very early on that I needed to let the people guide me rather than me trying to guide the people,” Marques said. “It is very important to me to get those stories from on the ground, where it is not me sitting in an ivory tower telling people what to do and what is best for them. Instead, I let them tell me what is best, then serve as a facilitator to bring those opportunities to them,” he said.
