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You need to love the process over the result
„This project is hell“, my colleague concludes. Many months the whole team is working hard. Some meetings are okay, most of the meetings are hard – sarcasm raises to a peak to deal with the daily nonsense. A few years later, 50% of the team is still doing a career in consulting, and the other 50% went into a more regular job. If everybody was happy at this point, the decisions were fine. But unfortunately, the cap in learning curve and slower promotion cycles in a corporate position hit hard on the colleagues choosing this new path. As I have seen these pathways again and again, I was wondering what…
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Be aware: you are being copied!
“Bye bye”, my colleagues closes the meeting in a quite melodic way. I need to smile. He just copied tone and text from his boss. Probably unconscious. He just imitated what he had heard like a million times. Although we all want to be unique, it is quite human to mimic people with whom we interact often. This is how we are created. Children learn by mimicking their parents. Later they copy teachers, their peers or their sports mates. There is no offense in acting similar to the people around us. This is also true when it comes to leadership. As leaders we don’t need to tell our people how…
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Why you don’t have to be a boss lady to do a career
“I don’t like to turn into a stereotype boss lady”, my mentee sighs. “That is not me. And I feel, I have to become such a person to do a career.” This conversation happened over 10 years ago – and it stuck with me. Why do people – and mostly women – believe that it is necessary to turn into something that they are not in order to achieve an undefined thing like ‘a career’!? I guess, it has a lot to do with role models. Women who did their careers in the 90s and early 00s were often quite similar to one another – leading to a limited variety…
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How my mindset influences my skillset
“I am such a looser.” “Everyone else gets the tasks done – but I am again running detours.” “Of course, this bad luck happened to me. As always.” Do you know any of this negative self talk? If you ever say these sentences aloud, chances are high that your inner talk is filled with messages of self-doubt. Have you ever wondered why you think this way? Our brain is amazing: once we start thinking certain messages, our brain learns that we need this information and builds its network accordingly. It gives us quick access to certain thoughts until they become routines and we need less energy to access them. Unfortunately,…
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Your detours write history
Every good storyline evolves around a person who needs to overcome challenges – a big loss, an unfortunate turn in life, a challenge too big to overcome alone. We get intrigued by those kind of stories and suffer with the main cast until the (happy) end. Yet, in our own lives, we are quite upset once even a single little step doesn’t work – the delayed promotion, the reduced bonus, the unfair feedback. In movies, we can acknowledge how obstacles strengthen the hero of the story. In our own lives, we cannot even accept a little hurdle. We feel that the missed chance to get to the one great university…
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Your passion is welcome at work
“Are my passions relevant for my job?” “What if Excel isn’t my hobby?” “What does it mean to bring my whole self to my workplace?” Maybe you are familiar with those questions. Since school we get taught that there are topics for which we are graded – and only these topics seem relevant for getting a job. Consequently, we devide our life in school and hobbies – and later in life in work and hobbies. Unfortunately, during this process we miss to find out which passions actually drive us. We somehow feel unfulfilled in our day-to-day job but we cannot articulate where the reason is. Hence, many people start questioning…
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What should I do next?
„What should I do next?“, the applicant asks. „What does my CV need?“ Although I highly value that people want to get good degrees and the entry ticket into certain jobs, I am wondering whether these are the wise questions to ask!? Because ‚your CV‘ is a reflection of your life and the time you spent in certain tasks (job, univeristy, family). And I am wondering whether ‚someone‘ should tell you how to spend your life. And even if it might be smart to ask good mentors for advice, the question must be asked when you will stop asking ‚what does my CV need‘? What isn’t transparent to students and…
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What will last?
Recently I was hit by a picture on social media: a man being honored by his company for his 85th aniversary within the firm – he being 100 years old, sitting on his desk with a certificate smiling into the camera. Although I get the beauty of the value ‘loyalty’, this picture moved loyalty to a certain level of absurdity. Absurdity because you could see that his tasks were done at a desk – but all the colleagues and people who got to know him along the way were missing. If you look back at the years, you have been working so far: What do you remember? There might have…
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“All my team meetings are crap”
She is so disappointed. Although there is a common vision and the team members like each other, another team meeting went down the line without people contributing or a fruitful discussion. Stress is high these days and time is precious. It makes it even worse that the time of the team meeting doesn’t seem to be used well. She sighs. What is going wrong? I am asking, whether I might share my perspective. She nodds. “Do you remember coming on very last minute into the meeting?” – yes, she admits. There are always many topics and she always runs into the meeting in the last moment or sometimes late. Although…
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What to do when a team member quits
“I need to leave the team”, she sighs. After training her the past year in different roles, I have offered her a leadership position in the team. And while she was thinking about it, she realized that she needed to focus on another role in her life. And that role is not in my team. I have mixed feelings: I am more than proud that she thought deeply and made a decision (these are the type of people I want in my team!) all while I am sad because I will not work with her in the future anymore. Did people quit in your team, too? It is very easy…