Personal and Career Resilience in Uncertain Times

1. Personal and Career Resilience in Uncertain Times Managing your Life and Career Michelle Kowalchuk The Vital Village / V2 Consulting March 10, 2009

2. Agenda • Current Market Realities • What is Resilience and Why is it Necessary? • Creating Personal Resilience • Understanding the effects of personal stress indicators on work and lifestyle performance • Creating Career Resilience • Creating a personal performance brand to ensure ongoing career success • Putting it all together

3. Current Market Realities • The US lost 651,000 jobs last month which is creating a ripple effect through the Canadian economy • 3 main automakers are close to bankruptcy • World financial institutions are collapsing • World economy is in a downswing that is being compared to the Great Depression • Employers are restructuring to handle the downturn and as a result are asking employees to do far more with far less

4. What is Resilience • “the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.” • “ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.” Dictionary.com

5. Importance of Resiliency People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.” Elizabeth Kubler Ross“

6. Creating Personal Resilience How Stress Affects Resiliency • What is Stress? • Effects of Stress on Personal Performance and Lifestyle • What Are The Early Warning Signs? • Physical & Emotional Impact of Stress • The Role of Satisfaction

7. Creating Personal Resilience What Is Stress? Stress is ENERGY… it’s our body’s automatic mechanism for mobilizing the energy we need We inject ourselves with stress hormones: Uppers -- adrenaline Modulators -- noradren and Downers -- cortisol Body’s Response (Fight or Flight) -adrenaline Back to Baseline -cortisol Recovery -noradren Stressor

8. Creating Personal Resilience Effects of Stress on the lifestyle and overall performance We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares.  They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.  ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

9. Creating Personal Resilience What Are The Early Warning Signs? • Physical • Tight muscles, headaches, insomnia, high blood pressure, illnesses that are difficult to diagnose … • Emotional • Trouble concentrating, forgetful, prone to negative thinking, lack of self-esteem……. • Behavioral • Irritable, impulsive, mistrust others, difficulty making decisions……

10. Creating Personal Resilience • 5 Stress Stages • Fatigue • Strain on Relationships • Negative emotions • Aches / Pains •  Illnesses Physical & Emotional Impact of Stress “Too-Much-Stress” Spiral DEMANDS !!! Less Effective UNCERTAINTIES Threatened 3:1 Victim Feelings Energy from Stress Stress Build Up

11. Creating Personal Resilience Effects of Stress • Workplace indicators and performance • One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.  ~Bertrand Russell

12. Core Wellness Factors Twelve (12) core wellness factors which impact both personal wellbeing and performance in all jobs: Creating Personal Resilience

13. Creating Personal Resilience • A Customized Path to building personal resiliency • Understanding the Vitality Quotient • Understanding your Stress Type

14. Worry Wart Basket Case Speed Freak Drifter Cliff Walker Loner Creating Personal Resilience Understanding Your Stress Type • Personal Vitality Quotient • Six Stress Types => • Action Plan most effective for you

15. Creating Personal Resilience Managing Your Stress Type Stress TypeTop 2 Suggested Actions • Worry Wart Relaxation Values & Goals • Speed Freak Values & Goals Relaxation • Drifter Communications Values & Goals • Loner Values & Goals Communication • Cliff Walker Nutrition Relaxation • Basket Case Nutrition Exercise

16. Creating Personal Resilience The Role of Satisfaction • Know your Satisfiers • Satisfiers are experiences that have satisfied you before and you know will again. • Identify satisfiers from your personal life and your work life

17. Creating Personal Resilience The Role Of Satisfaction Increase Your Satisfaction By 30%… Take 3 Strategic Steps • Know your personal satisfiers • Know what you can & can’t control • Take self-serving action…get more satisfier experiences more often Take 3 Tactical Steps • Look forward to them – see visualize • Enjoy them actively • Relish them afterward

18. Career Resilience The elevator to success is broken. You’ll have to take the stairs.” Joe Girard

19. Creating Career Resilience What Does This Mean? • Workplaces are changing more rapidly than ever before • Understanding our personal indicators, satisfiers and stress types will position us to create a level of resilience that will allow us to weather the storms of change in ways that will allow us to focus on our careers and not the changes themselves.

20. Creating Career Resilience Did You Know? • India has more honor students than we have kids. • China will soon be the #1 English speaking country in the world. • According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004. • Nintendo invested $140M in R&D in 2002 - more than Canada and the US combined spent on education. • There are over 106 million registered users of MySpace. If MySpace was a country it would be the 11th largest. • The number of text messages sent per day exceeds the population of the planet. • The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years. It is predicted by 2016 it will double every 72 hours.

21. Career Models Creating Career Resilience Career Ladder Career Lattice • Traditional hierarchy • Singular path upwards • Move up or stop moving • Work-versus-life balance • Fits more traditional family structure • Assumes workers’ needs remain consistent over time • More conducive to evolving matrix structure (move up or down, or side to side) • Multiple career path options • Move faster, slower; change directions • Work-life balance (Career-life fit) • Aligns to shifting personal priorities • Adjusts as workers’ needs change over time

22. Creating Career Resilience Creating the “ME Inc.” Brand

23. Creating Career Resilience How to Create the Me Inc. Brand • Managing a career requires focus and lends itself to many of the principles that apply to time management: • You set goals • You re-evaluate priorities on an ongoing basis • You step out of your comfort zone • You use the tools and resources that are available to assist you

24. Creating Career Resilience Your Diversified Me Inc. Portfolio • Skills • Knowledge • Capabilities • Experience • Exposure

25. Be a Strategic Career Planner 1 Understand the Marketplace Stay on the Cutting Edge 2 6 6 Step Career Action Plan Engage in Networking Keep an Accomplishment Journal 3 5 Have a Powerful Resume 4 6 Step Action Plan Creating Career Resilience

26. Be a Strategic Career Planner 1 Stay on the Cutting Edge 6 Understand the Marketplace 2 6 Step Career Action Plan Engage in Networking Keep an Accomplishment Journal 5 3 Have a Powerful Resume 4 6 Step Action Plan Creating Career Resilience

27. Be a Strategic Career Planner 1 Stay on the Cutting Edge 6 Understand the Marketplace 2 6 Step Career Action Plan Engage in Networking Keep an Accomplishment Journal 5 3 Have a Powerful Resume 4 6 Step Action Plan Creating Career Resilience

28. Creating Career Resilience Step 3 - Keep an Accomplishment Journal • Write and measure on a regular basis: • specific accomplishments • important projects • notable recognition and examples where you exceeded expectations • particular activities outside of your job description • Actively use this information to: • Sell your skills and abilities inside and outside of the organization • Have a great dialogue during performance reviews

29. Step 3 - Questions to Help Identify Accomplishments Creating Career Resilience Did you… • identify a problem in your department or company that had been overlooked? • help to improve productivity? • take the initiative to improve something or respond to an immediate need? • suggest a new program for your department or company that was put into effect? • save your department or company money? • help establish any new goals or objectives for your department or company? • implement or improve a new system or procedure in your department or company? • change in any way the nature of your role? • present any new ideas that were put into effect? • undertake an assignment or project that was not part of your job, just because you were intrigued by the problem? • informally coach or mentor new or fellow team members? Individual(yourself, others) Team(immediate, departmental) Organizational(systems, policies, culture)

30. Step 3 - Your Career Accomplishments Creating Career Resilience • Compose a career accomplishment using the CAR format: • Challenge • Action • Result • Share accomplishments with your group • Choose one statement to share with the entire group

31. Be a Strategic Career Planner 1 Stay on the Cutting Edge 6 Understand the Marketplace 2 6 Step Career Action Plan Engage in Networking Keep an Accomplishment Journal 5 3 Have a Powerful Resume 4 6 Step Action Plan Creating Career Resilience

32. Be a Strategic Career Planner 1 Stay on the Cutting Edge 6 Understand the Marketplace 2 6 Step Career Action Plan Engage in Networking Keep an Accomplishment Journal 3 5 Have a Powerful Resume 4 6 Step Action Plan Creating Career Resilience

33. Creating Career Resilience Step 5 - Networking Is…. • Developing and maintaining a line of communication with people you know, or would like to know, for the purpose of getting and sharing information for mutual gain • Networking is • planned • purposeful • ongoing • reciprocal

34. Creating Career Resilience Step 5 - Networking is NOT… • manipulative • “schmoozing” • unplanned • asking for a job!

35. Creating Career Resilience Step 5 - The Necessity of Networking • Taking the time to network is key to career management, survival and success • Networking within the organization; through associations, conferences, and training can build multiple champions and mentors • 60%+ of all jobs come through networking

36. Creating Career Resilience Step 5 – Networking 101 People can’t do business with you… …if they don’t know who you are.

37. Creating Career Resilience Step 5 – Additional Networking Strategies • Attending and/or speaking at upcoming conferences and seminars • Writing and publishing articles in trade or professional journals • Joining relevant organizations and gaining access to their membership lists • Establishing a focus group or your personal Board of Directors • Others?

38. Be a Strategic Career Planner 1 Understand the Marketplace 2 Stay on the Cutting Edge 6 6 Step Career Action Plan Engage in Networking Keep an Accomplishment Journal 5 3 Have a Powerful Resume 4 6 Step Action Plan Creating Career Resilience

39. Creating Career Resilience Putting It All Together • Personal resiliency helps us to understand our behaviours and satisfiers and manage them during times of strain so that we are able to keep our focus on the big picture • Career resiliency allows us to take these indicators and satisfiers and build a personal brand that will allow us to create personal career stability and long term satisfaction

40. Questions

41. For More Information Contact Michelle Kowalchuk The Vital Village/V2 Consulting Michelle@TheVitalVillage.ca