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A job is a way to pay the bills, a career is a path toward increasingly better work, and a calling is work that’s an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity.
Over my time volunteering, I have developed My Career Map framework and practice it over a 2-hours individual workshop.
People in job/career transitions who need a boost of clarity and confidence.
Whether you are getting ready for an interview or just starting to think about your next career move, this individual workshop will help you:
make sense of your career path
tell your career story in a relevant and memorable way
get clarity about what makes you tick and stand out
envisage new possibilities
boost confidence
take concrete actions
In this article, I explore the ideas that help us balance breadth and depth in our careers for maximum impact. 3 interconnected areas. 3 questions in each. 1 lifetime of experiments.
What if, instead of looking for one ideal job, we start expanding our career laterally, via side projects?
When your career has problem areas, it can seem counterintuitive to talk about it yourself early in the interview. And yet, such an approach - the Accusation Audit - can yield exceptional results.
A small and less prestigious company with high growth potential can be an interesting target for a career change.
Your past success can become your future liability. How can we avoid getting into a competency trap? How can we develop new skills when we are so busy?
Mining the Internet for jobs is a great strategy… for NOT getting a job. There is a far better approach.
If you are clear about what you really want, you increase your chances of having the work you love.
What if the way you define your potential next career choices actually stood in the way of your success?
In this article, I explore the ideas that help us balance breadth and depth in our careers for maximum impact. 3 interconnected areas. 3 questions in each. 1 lifetime of experiments.
What if, instead of looking for one ideal job, we start expanding our career laterally, via side projects?
Personality tests are good entertainment. Personality tests are big business. And yet, when it comes to the job search, personality tests are useless.
Constraints - natural or self-imposed - can be a good thing when making job or career change decisions.
A small and less prestigious company with high growth potential can be an interesting target for a career change.
Your past success can become your future liability. How can we avoid getting into a competency trap? How can we develop new skills when we are so busy?
High-risk projects and crisis situations can be excellent career change opportunities. How to make a risky move without falling off a ‘glass cliff?
How a children’s book helped Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, get his first job.
Great virtual communication has less to do with the tools and more with preparation, presence, and engagement.
How to increase the chances that your next interview leads to a job offer? Be relevant. Be memorable. Three types of stories can keep you on top of the interviewer’s mind.
The hiring decision often happens within the first five minutes of a job interview. Here’s a solid game plan to get the first five minutes right.
If neediness is #1 Interview Killer, then negativity is a sure Number Two. How can we avoid negativity when we tell our job/career change story? By reframing it. And that's how it goes.
Do you tend to approach an interview as an exam or even as an interrogation that you need to nail? Such a frame is not only limiting, but it can also unfavorably shift the power dynamics of the interview right from the start. What can we do differently? Short answer: we can realize that we have more power than we think.
We can drastically improve our pitch or interview by focusing on what NOT to say. Saying LESS about your successes is better than saying more.
When we are preparing for an interview, we tend to focus on what to say. Yet what not to say is equally important.
Actions speak louder than words. If you have only words, start with action verbs. And spice them up with a few relevant numbers.
Most of the time, there is always more to a job than what's in the job description. Figuring out the real "job-to-be-done" helps you pitch yourself and your ideas better and increases your chances to get the right job on the right terms.
Hire for strengths rather than lack of weakness. In this article, we distill Ben Horowitz’s hiring wisdom and reverse-engineer it into actionable advice on how to stand out from the crowd.
When your career has problem areas, it can seem counterintuitive to talk about it yourself early in the interview. And yet, such an approach - the Accusation Audit - can yield exceptional results.
A fresh look on confidence from Alain De Botton and “The School of Life”: it examines the good and the bad reasons why we may lack it and explores how we can develop more of it in our everyday life. Confidence is a skill and a catalyst for bringing all the good things in us into the world.
This book provides a systematic, step-by-step approach to understanding the most common business communication challenges that arise from cultural differences, and offer steps for dealing with them more effectively.
This book is a wonderful companion for a classical music lover. In a friendly, accessible, yet not over-simplistic way, the author step by step unfolds the fundamentals of the craft of music, so that we can become better listeners. Read this book while actually listening to music - there is a playlist at the end of each chapter.
The motivation for distraction originates within us. Distraction is just another way our brains attempt to deal with pain. Therefore, the only way to handle distraction is by learning to handle discomfort. If distraction costs us time, then time management is pain management.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks. It’s a true superpower of the 21st century, increasingly rare and valuable in a world of work full of shallow busyness and distraction.
You think you are smart. Welcome to the world of self-delusion. The book is a compendium of 48 ways we succumb to self-delusion, every day.
Not everything has to be so hard. “Effortless” is about doing the essential things in the right way.
Once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.
What if we could get better at solving the RIGHT problems? The way you frame a problem determines which solutions you come up with. By shifting the way you see the problem - that is, by reframing it - you can sometimes find radically better solutions.
Systems Beat Goals. Energy is Good. Passion is Bullshit. Be Selfish - in the Right Way. Manage Your Odds for Success. See Failure is a Tool, not as an Outcome. Stay in the Game Long Enough. Be Happy.
Learn good decision-making by doing: with a pencil at hand, you can examine your past decisions and develop a better process for the decisions you are facing right now. A gem.
Most of our decisions are bets against all future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.
This book distills everything about storytelling into 10 essential rules. Whether you need to tell a story to a client, a boss, a friend, or a stranger, this book will help you craft it.
Eleven basic principles of Mindful Leadership the most successful NBA coach developed to transform disorganized teams into champions.
You are who you hire. This book made my recruitment process intentional, confident, and fun.
Why checklists work, how to build a good one, and why their implementation encounters so much resistance.
Whenever you feel down or in doubt, the wit, wisdom, and whimsical visuals of this book will give you an immediate boost of energy and optimism.
We are all far more irrational than we and the standard economic theory would like to believe. What's more, our irrationality is not random and chaotic. It happens in repeatable, predictable patterns which we tend to underestimate or completely ignore
Speak less. Ask more. Ask better questions. Actually listen to answers. And tame your inner Advice Monster. This book unpacks ideas that help us make the most of every conversation and change the way we lead for the better.
While many of us spend too much energy searching for the next great idea, we would be better off by developing the capacity to make ideas happen.
This book is an encouragement to rewire our thinking habits and think a bit differently, a bit harder, a bit more freely.
Discovering how the famous physicist looked at the world might permanently and positively change your own view on life.
In a world where the only certain thing is uncertainty, range - in skills, experiences, way of thinking, openness to new ideas - is the key to adaptability, creative problem solving, and thriving.
In most corporate environments, rationality dominates the conversation. Why is it so? What are we risking by favoring “the Head” and dismissing “the Heart”? How can we design a workplace that welcomes emotion, encourages empathy, and embraces individuality? This newsletter attempts to answer these three questions.
Words. There is nothing better - or at least, more convenient - to communicate, influence, comfort, thank, share knowledge, encourage, negotiate... This newsletter is about words. It starts with tattoos, continues with a bold and frightening thought experiment from Chinese science fiction, and goes on with 3 practical ideas that help handle words with more care and intent, and thus, in a much more powerful way.
The Eye of the Storm is the center and ... the calmest part of it! We may not always find a safe, quiet place amidst the storm if we just look around. But we can always create quiet time and space inside our minds. And this quiet core can help weather the craziest of storms. This week's newsletter goes against any advice on how to do more and faster. Instead, it is about stopping, doing nothing, getting bored, and practicing the art of stillness. Often, all it takes is just 10 mindful minutes.
Are you happily married? I'm asking not only about your personal life. I mean your work too - because it has all the ingredients of a long-term commitment. So how can we thrive in love and at work? 6 books helped me connect the dots and I heartily recommend putting all of them on your summer to-read list.
In this edition, I have collected tweets, videos, and snippets of wisdom from East and West that teach us two things: (1) Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems, and (2) Equanimity is probably the best strategy to face everything that happens to us.
I am not a big fan of the expression ‘staff engagement’. It sounds like a one-way street where people owe the leaders their engagement, while leaders owe nothing much in return. My deep conviction is that if we want people to be engaged with us and our ideas we need ourselves to be deeply engaged with our people: meet them as they are and respect them. It's a two-way street. In this newsletter, I have explored the ideas that bring different perspectives to the topic of engagement.
The Law of the Least Effort rules the world, for better or for worse. What do you do when your convenience clashes with someone else’s?
Good energy is like good art: you know it when you see it. You know it when you feel it. It is both attractive and contagious. How to boost it? How to keep it? And in hiring, is there anything more important than energy? A few ideas in this newsletter.
When we change jobs and/or companies, our success - or failure - often depends on the trust we are able to build with our new team and across the wider organization. Trust - or lack thereof - can make it or break it when we step into a new role.
So, should we start with trust or distrust? What does trust mean exactly? How to build it? Does it work the same in different cultures? And do we always need trust? Here are a few ideas from very smart people that help answer these questions.
When we consider a career transition, lucky are those who have a safe fallback plan. It’s great insurance that can give peace of mind. Isn’t it strange then that we sometimes stick to the fallback plan as our Plan A, while the dream remains always just a dream? Why do we mistake Plan B for Plan A? One recent consultation got me thinking about it and in this edition, I have collected a few ideas about risk and fear that may help if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Does it matter how fast we are going? How can you set yourself a steady pace? What is the difference between speed and velocity and why does direction matter? Why momentum is a far better concept than “potential” when it comes to people development?
How do you know you are doing a good job listening? What do great listeners do that makes us feel so alive and happy in their company? How can music help you become a better listener?
How to be perfect | Doing the right thing, or why do we need moral philosophy as business leaders | I’d rather learn than be right | Try to be right 51% of the time | How to be right more often | When being right is not right
Is complexity bad? | Write boldly even when you’re afraid | When subtraction adds value | How to simplify without dumbing down | Maximize steps not taken
Examine the bright spots | Don’t give feedback, give recognition | Resist the eulogy delay | Pay gratitude visits | Write Thank You letters | Do It Often | Keep a praise file | Life’s worth being grateful for
Everyone has superpowers | Three ways to find yours | Two stories of exceptional ballet dancers | Plenty of music videos with the moves that will move you
It’s all about relationships. What are our key relationships at work? Why do they matter? Why is management one of the noblest of professions? What makes a good relationship? Which mental models can we use to evaluate a relationship? And can we build great relationships at scale?
What is good learning? How can we learn to understand? How do we learn what can't be taught? Do we need university degrees at all? And finally, do all the learning and experience guarantee us success in a changing world?
Whatever you always wanted to do, start now, be impatient with actions and patient with results, slow down to go fast, and stay in the game long enough to - maybe 😉! - see the Big Magic happen.
New Year’s resolutions are easy to make and hard to keep. In this newsletter, a few ideas that can help you stick to your resolutions and live a year worth binge-watching.
You Are Not So Smart | Beyond Smart | A Technique For Producing Ideas | Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas? | ABCD of Relationship Building | With Goals, FAST beats SMART | 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings
Making it easier to do what matters most | Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule | Eliminating Work About Work | Find a Position of Leverage
What is the one thing you should be doing right now? | How to stop languishing and start finding flow | Not languishing, but dormant | Essentialism | Everything I do is the most important thing I do
A problem well-framed is a problem half-solved | Looking at things in a different way | The 5 dollars challenge | Why can’t we see solutions in plain sight? | Usain Bolt of speed-eating | A primer on space | What’s your problem?
Everything is relative | Everything is sales | Harder than it looks, not as fun as it seems
Thinking in bets | Luck is not a strategy | How to create your own career luck | Life is luck - how to plan a career around it | How to fail at almost everything and still win big
Pay attention to your attention | Awareness | Best yoga teacher in SG | Best yoga app | Jiro Dreams of Sushi | A project of one’s own | Eye-candy: attention can affect our perception
Executive presence - do you have it? | Read children's books | The wrong way to email someone for career advice | Think fast. Talk smart | Look and sound your best on Zoom
The Storytelling Code | 3 types of stories for job interviews | Storytelling with data - let’s practice | Data visualizations - Art & Fun | Pursuing impactful careers
Relationships vs Transactions | To quit or not to quit | Pluses & Minuses of career choices | Life or work?
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If you are clear about what you really want, you increase your chances of having the work you love.