A week ago, my cousin Jeanine posted this Facebook status: “January is passing by like a full bus!…A-A.” Heard in her distinct St. Lucian dialect, and imagined in the context of island life this is as good an editorial humor pick as you can find. It is also true. 2010 came out the gates, gangbusters, stamped itself in the annals of time with the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. Now the month of January is moving on in the wake of record philanthropic giving via text messaging, followed by a sobering State of the Union address. This could be the defining moment of this new decade, a reminder of the capriciousness of life, and a shift towards the importance of community. It could also be an opportunity to rise out of the dust of crumbled economic structures to rebuild with eyes on a better, stronger future based on a real economy.
Times have changed, but then again we are back at a new frontier. Back to basics coupled with a need to learn how to make our new and emerging technologies work for us, not just be caught up with them. The aptitudes and verve called upon in facing uncertainties and opportunities are exactly the kinds of elements engaged in Planned Happenstance®, The WOW Factor, and Find Your Strongest Life. All three of these concepts are well treated in their own forums. Here we will present and use a few highlights to the theme for the past month, People that Matter: the people that are important to us, the people that need us; and the ones we sometimes forget in the equation--ourselves. First, we will look at The WOW Factor, the book and all of your New Year/New Decade verve, while they are fresh in circulation. We will also examine how it ‘fits’ (pun-intended) with Planned Happenstance®, and close out with Find Your Strongest Life.
The WOW Factor
Frances Cole Jones (FCJ) describes The WOW Factor as “developing habits, skills, and disciplines that will stand you in good stead regardless of the playing field.” As you get to know the author through her writing and her tweets you will learn that she is an accomplished marketing professional who takes conduct and polish seriously. The WOW Factor deals with the critical factors in making a strong, clear, and positive impression in professional and personal aspects of your life.
The WOW Factor begins with a fundamental, bracing concept:: “you can retrain your brain.” Don’t glaze over just yet. This is perhaps the most transformational finding of our time. Essentially, throw out the old aphorism ’you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and replace it with the realization that life-long learning and adaptation is a reality. Ms. Jones reiterates a digest of scientific findings that “even small changes begin to retrain your brain...you teach yourself resilience.” Once you’ve fully embraced this ability to adapt continually the rest is just a matter of preparation and practice.
In the manner of a technical expert and personal coach, The WOW Factor, is a compendium of coaching advice, tips, and lists, easily navigated as a briefcase or desk reference. The WOW Factor covers every essential area of self-agency from soft skills to strategy, networking, and the gutsy ‘do it, delegate it, or delete it’. The AFGO approach has bite and summons your marketplace mystic warrior archetype. FCJ says, “life hands you many challenges and opportunities or as we call them in yoga AFGO - another freakin' growth opportunity.” AFGO defines your ‘frontier’ adapt-itudes--your aptitude for developing your ability to adapt), for example:
- Create your own structure.
- Pursue multiple interests.
- Don't wait for others to tell you you're qualified - trust yourself, back your own talent, push yourself to the limit of your potential.
- What other people think about your choice is none of your business.
- When you encounter negative press FCJ offers a clarifying question: does this person motivate and stimulate me to be my best?
The key to troubleshooting and honing The WOW Factor rests on two things:
- To succeed in communication sometimes you want to stand out, and sometimes you want to fit in.
- Favor the moment - every encounter is an opportunity to strengthen your connections, develop your personal database, burnish image, further your dream.
The WOW Factor empowers your traditional knowledge, skills, and interest inventories with strategies. Its format works well as an executive companion to Planned Happenstance® which stresses “creating and transforming unplanned events into opportunities for learning."
Planned Happenstance®
Most of what we learn about being human is distinguished by studies of outliers. On a spectrum of either being unbreakable--resilient, or shatter to pieces with each breath (grossly exaggerated for emphasis)--debilitating; somewhere between making all the right decisions with perfect timing, and screwing up every chance you get is what is considered normal--human. In Social psych you learn how much we are influenced by factors and forces in our environment; Cognitive psych gives a sobering appreciation of some of the human “hardware and processing issues” that affects our developmental possibilities. You also learn that typically when things happen to us we blame it on external factors, but see inherent faults in others when they are facing similar adversity. These perspectives gained from studying the two disciplines simultaneously was when I became a truly compassionate person.
Among the theories of change, happenstance theory appeared most relevant to the normalcy of being human. Originally proposed by John D. Krumboltz as a social learning model of career counseling (Serendipity is not Serendipitous) happenstance was revised to the Learning Theory of Career Counseling (LTCC), and finally along with Kathleen Mitchell developed into Planned Happenstance®.
If the goal of planned happenstance intervention is to assist clients to generate, recognize, and incorporate chance events into (life)/career development then consider the following:
As companies, employees, displaced workers, and graduates respond to economic threats and realities, counselors face the inexorable challenge of directing and redirecting the lives and careers of the workforce and their families. A significant change in the employment marketplace is the outsourcing trend which is shifting numerous manufacturing and technology jobs to countries outside the United States (US). As a new wave of lucrative products and services have yet to emerge and replace the plateau-ed technology and “dot-com” era, masses of displaced workers in the US face the uncertainty of where to ply their skills and career aspirations.
Sounds familiar? It is perhaps even more relevant today as when written in grad school in the early 2000s. As well…
One of the consequences of the repeated breach of the psychological contract between employees and employers is a lasting, albeit minimalized, incongruence between employee values and organizational culture (Bocchino et al, 2003). No longer can organizations guarantee paternalistic values such as long-term employment, career advancement, and loyalty as they change strategies to meet global competition. Occupational insecurity among the workforce is a prevalent reality leading individuals to set aside idealism and be more pragmatic in career decisions (Zunker, 2002). Individuals in the employment marketplace must develop adaptable occupational orientations and be versatile in working in diverse employment settings in order to thrive. Mitchell et al (1999) makes clear that “traditional career counseling interventions are no longer sufficient to prepare clients to respond to career uncertainties.”
In essence, traditional “fit” theories focus on static profiles for determining fit into an ideal environment with work hygiene and motivational reinforcers no longer guaranteed in the changing workplace. Alternatively, Planned Happenstance® favors an opportunistic approach that meets the organizational culture and work requirements of flexible corporate strategies. Planned Happenstance® is to “fit” theory (person-environment-correspondence) what sculpting is to clay. The divergence of these two theories is the difference between being told “you can’t” versus “Anything of worth is possible once you decide to work for it.”(FCJ)
Find Your Strongest Life
There are fundamental concurrences between The WOW Factor, Planned Happenstance® and Find Your Strongest Life. You may have heard before, the point of all human striving is to be happy. What it takes to make us happy from one moment to the next is unique to each individual as their own finger print. There is no predetermined blueprint of what it will take to make us happy, and how quickly unexpected circumstances can change that blueprint (Haiti.) What we do know is that when we are “growing and learning, feeling effective and capable, when our needs are being fulfilled, and are instinctively looking forward to tomorrow,” then we can objectively say that we are happy. That, Marcus Buckingham identified as finding your strongest life.
Buckingham, author of Now, Discover Your Strengths and Find Your Strongest Life says, “identify your strengths, take them seriously, and offer them to the world." He also encourages you to “integrate may passions into one life.” Find Your Strongest Life is a sequel publication and includes the Strengths inventories from its predecessor the bestselling Now, Discover Your Strengths. For example, researching and writing this blog engages all of my key strengths which fell into easy acronyms: ACE, or ACET if I include interchangeable strengths A and T. Take the Strong Life Test to find out what the letters correspond to when you check them out for yourselves. Although written for women, I take the perspective shared by Hillary Clinton in saying that "where the well-being of women and girls are supported, growth and societal harmony ensues” (paraphrased). Basically, this is saying that finding your strongest life is relevant to both sexes, particularly for dual career/dual income relationships.
One thing has been evident to me for sometime, and was brought home in President Obama’s State of the Union address last Wednesday: things changed, we can’t go back to the way things were, yet moving forward is complex and requires full engagement with what life is calling forth from us. It calls for the self-agency of “Yes, we can,” the American spirit. There is every reason to feel energized and optimistic about our opportunities. Our ability to learn, grow, adapt, is unlimited and has no expiration date! The keys are to correctly read the signals from your environment, knowing how to and when to respond appropriately. The WOW Factor is that you can set yourself up for opportunities beyond your expectations, and transform the unexpected into your own ’reality’ challenge to demonstrate "adaptitude” and preparation. As well, we optimize resources when we join with others in support and collaboration. We cannot discount anyone in the process, no matter how inconsequential or vulnerable they appear to be. Each person you encounter or have connection with is a potential link to your fulfillment, be it to open a door, or help you unlock creativity through service.
That, my friends, concludes our January wrap-up. I didn’t mean to introduce so much in wrapping up previous topics, but it’s food for thought. That’s what we do here on DeepDish. In any case, it gears us up for our theme in February (will post in a week). I would love to hear from you. Have a great week and thank you for reading.
P.S. Speaking of food for thought, how do you like the new DeepDish avatar? It’s a representation of a Chihuly bowl from the SpiritVision© photo journal. Lots of symbolism.
Resources:
4. Krumboltz, John D. (1998). Serendipity is not Serendipitous. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 45 (4). 390-392.
5. Joseph, G. E. Lois (2004), Stepping Out On Faith: Planned Happenstance &
Person-Enviroment Fit Factors in Vocational Development.
6. Gati, Itamar et al (1996). Using Career-Related Aspects to Assess Person-
Environment Fit. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43 (2). 196-206.
8. Zunker, Vernon G. (2002). Career Counseling: Career Counseling: Applied
concepts of life planning. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole.
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