Modern Leaders, Perpetual Learners
Photo Credit: Sonoma County Sky, August 2023 - Kevin Jordan
Greetings -
I hope you, your family and friends are enjoying the waning days of summer (and staying cool)!
We recently returned from dropping our daughter off for her second year of college. Her enthusiasm for this next chapter is infectious and we are excited for her and the possibilities that await. By all accounts, she is acclimating quite well and enjoying her new surroundings, friends, etc. We watch and listen with deep admiration and love, mixed with a twinge of sadness, as the house grows quieter.
As work continues to take me around this fair country of ours, I have spent a significant portion of my summer facilitating a series of trainings and coaching sessions focused on leadership and management fundamentals. I have the good fortune to partner with a cadre of outstanding colleagues on this enriching, rewarding and fun work. As it has and continues to be a focus for me, I thought it would help to provide a small sample of great resources that have informed my perspective on leadership and management. You can find these in the Spotlight Articles section.
The Articles section (+ one of the Podcasts) is dedicated to various perspectives on career transitions, especially for mid-to-late career professionals. Whether it is a significantly new or different strategic approach or a smaller, tactical move, the desire to thoughtfully and deliberately career craft is paramount. Yet, with so much in flux and the choice set often overwhelming, it can be difficult to define and implement a meaningful and tailored development plan.
In my career crafting work with clients, we focus extensively on understanding the values, strengths and motivations that are most important to them. This process is grounding; it allows us to construct a framework to direct their greatest gifts to organizations aligned to their purpose and ambitions. The rigor in this work is fundamental to discerning what truly matters most and how they can best move forward to realize their career consonance and achieve their career aspirations.
I hope you find value in this month's reading and listening. Diverse in content and sourcing, the material piqued my curiosity and desire to learn more.
Spotlight Articles
In his Harvard Business Review article - The Best Managers are Leaders and Vice Versa - James Bailey notes that "most of the long-running debate over 'leaders' vs. 'managers' focuses on nouns when it should focus on verbs. Everyone needs both 'leading' and 'managing' in their work...It takes both leading and managing, charging and charged, to strike the balance."
Leadership starts from 'our seat.' It flows from our values, strengths and commitment to excellence in the quality of our work and the integrity of our relationships. Leadership is not dependent on title, role or organizational hierarchy. We all have the opportunity and obligation to lead, even if we don’t have the opportunity to lead teams or develop people. (For more on this concept, see Dr. David Burkus's TED article: 5 ways to show you can lead — even when you don’t have a leadership role.)
Our leadership capital derives from our ability to discern those opportunities that require us to lead and those that require us to manage, "...together with the courage and capacity to act on [our] choices.” @Linda Ginzel, PhD. Exercising that capital thoughtfully and judiciously is necessary for the effective functioning of organizations. (For more on the excellent work of Dr. Ginzel, check out her work here.)
This dynamic is summed up well by the late James Parker, former CEO of Southwest Airlines: "Defining and communicating the mission; providing guidance as to how it might be accomplished; equipping people with the proper tools (information, training, etc.); motivating and inspiring through selfless dedication and respect for others; providing both positive and negative feedback, including recognition for achievement; and, ultimately, getting out of the way and giving people the ability and authority to accomplish the mission, with the full confidence they will be supported."
As always, happy reading and listening!
Be well, take good care of your families and community.
-kj
PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to shoot me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)
Articles
Harvard Business Review: What to Ask Yourself Before a Career Pivot. "The best thing you can do is to make an informed decision: be clear about the motives you are trying to fulfill — especially changes to your professional self or identity — and scrutinize the pros and cons of available options vis-à-vis your skills, interests, and personality. Finding the balance between an open-minded desire to experiment and a strategic focus, and being honest with yourself when you evaluate the outcome of your choices, will enable you to keep advancing and developing your potential."
Harvard Business Review: How to Make a Pivot in the Latter Half of Your Career. "Changing careers as an older worker can be daunting, especially amid today’s relentless uncertainty. But you already have what you need to set yourself apart as a candidate — you just need to do a little extra preparation to ensure that hiring managers and interviewers can see how your unique set of skills, experiences, and perspectives will move their team and organization forward."
Harvard Business Review: 4 Strategies to Prepare for a Late-Career Shift. "If you’re a senior professional who has decided to change careers, how will you compete in a new field with younger competition? Will prospective employers immediately dismiss you as a candidate because you’re overqualified? The author presents four strategies to use if you’re preparing to switch gears later in your career: 1) Own your age enthusiastically; 2) Identify multigenerational connections within your network; 3) Be prepared to 10X your job search; and 4) Practice your answers to tough questions."
Book
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles. "Based on the true World War II story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris, this is an unforgettable story...that explores the consequences of our choices and the relationships that make us who we are—family, friends, and favorite authors—The Paris Library shows that extraordinary heroism can sometimes be found in the quietest of places." [Engrossing and well-written, this is a gem of a book. I purchased it at The Red Wheelbarrow, a lovely bookstore not far from the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.]
Blog Posts & Opinions
Seth's Blog: Goals and expectations. "Empathy, a cycle of skills improvement, developing new attitudes and showing up in service often accompanies the careers of people who get from here to there."
The New York Times - Essay: Off the Clock. "In the wake of the pandemic, people are rethinking their relationship not just to work but to time."
The Wall Street Journal - Work & Life: Don’t Be a Jerk at Work. (But Don’t Be Too Nice, Either.) "How devolving into people-pleasing can hold back your career."
Podcasts
Harvard Business Review: Why Today’s Leaders Need to Be Perpetual Learners. "Change is never easy, especially if what you’re doing now seems to work just fine. 'Changing yourself in the job, especially if you’re doing well, is one of the hardest things to do.'"
TED: The Way We Work. 5 steps to building a personal brand you feel good about. "Whether you realize it or not, you have a personal brand...and you have the power to shape what it is. Here's how you can create a brand that captures who you are, who you'd like to be and how you want to make an impact on the world."
Second Act Stories: Ready For A Career Transition? 26 Minutes With Coach John Tarnoff. "John Tarnoff is a non-traditional, career transition coach. A veteran of Hollywood, John was fired 7 times over the course of his lengthy career in entertainment. At age 50, he decided to go back to school and earned a master's degree in spiritual psychology. Pivoting to a focus on people and career counseling, he eventually wrote 'Boomer Reinvention: How To Create Your Dream Career Over 50.'"
Arts, Music, Culture & Humor Corner
This month I am dedicating the entirety of this section to three stellar musicians - Sinéad O’Connor, Robbie Robertson and Rodriguez - all of whom touched me in profoundly different and extraordinary ways. Their music and spirit live on.
The New Yorker: Sinéad O’Connor Was Always Herself. "The world owed the Irish musician more than it gave, but her best music turned away from the masses and instead looked inward."
The New York Times: Robbie Robertson...Canadian Songwriter Captured American Spirit. "The songs that Mr. Robertson, a Canadian, wrote for the Band used enigmatic lyrics to evoke a hard and colorful America of yore...With uncommon conviction, they conjured a wild place, often centered in the South, peopled by rough-hewed characters...The music he matched to his passionate yarns mined the roots of every essential American genre, including folk, country, blues and gospel."
The New York Times: Rodriguez, Singer Whose Career Was Resurrected. "Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose songs, full of protest and stark imagery from the urban streets, failed to find an American audience in the early 1970s but resonated in Australia and especially South Africa, leading to a late-career resurgence captured in the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” in 2012...Rodriguez’s story was, as The New York Times put it in 2012, 'a real-life tale of talent disregarded, bad luck and missed opportunities, with an improbable stop in the Hamptons and a Hollywood conclusion.'"
Reflections
"I'm on a mission. I'm moving on. And if you look for me, there's only going to be dust." - Robbie Robertson
"It's essential to work on something you're deeply interested in. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could. The three most powerful motives are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive. Sometimes they converge, and that combination is the most powerful of all."- Paul Graham
For the young who want to
by Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.