It is a big deal.

Lord almighty you don’t want to pick the wrong one.  Imagine Stone Cold Steve Austin prancing into the ring to the sounds of Bette Midler’s “The Rose”.  Who would think of him as a bad ass?  He could still pound a dude into the mat.  But you wouldn’t think it the first time you saw him or heard his music.

Right now I’m picking out music for the podcast show.  I’m close but can’t figure out what the right feel should be. Since the show is about you (or the men in your life) I want you to have the final say.  I’ve spent over 3 hours listening to 30 second samples and narrowed it down to 3 choices.  Most of it was sentimental crap or too newsy/corporatish.  Ironic since the people I work with are corporate.

However that is the point of the podcast show.  It is time for better way to view work  and life.  To find out what it truly takes have a good life and have work serves us.   Not the other way around. If we keep on going like we have we will end up with a nation of pansy wuss bags and men always wishing for something better but never having the tools or knowledge to make the changes we all desperately need.

Here is what to do:
  1. Listen to the three samples.
2. Vote by commenting below or on facebook.

Thank you everyone who helped and encouraged me in the process.  It has been empowering to hear everyone’s anticipation for the podcast show to come out.  We are close to launching.

This feels like being handed a pile of poo, calling it a road apple and trying really hard to convince you it is a real apple.  This is marketing, PR and branding gone so bad the powers that be have actually convinced themselves their ‘stuff’ smells of roses.

(3rd of 4 part series on how to find a career coach. Back to list of questions to ask.)

I recommend not directly asking if they have balls.  You can if you like.  But your coach needs them.  It is the metaphorical balls they need.  It should be easy to tell when you are out shopping.

Your coach needs to have ballsy edginess to them. (Yes ladies can have these balls. Shoot I’ve seen more women with balls than men of late.  That is another blog post.)

It’s the edginess that communicates I can do what others can not and I’m going to prove it.  The edginess is a positive confidence with challenging honesty.

Pansies do not make good coaches.  “Well that is pretty good…” is not what you want to hear when paying $125 or more an hour with hard-earned money.

You want to hear, “Improvement is needed here, here and here.  This is how we are going to do it.  I won’t let you turn into a wuss and back out.  We can do this.”

Here is another million dollar hint.

Listen to the order and frequency of the pronouns I/Me, You and We when the coach speaks.

Bad coaches say I a lot, You next and hardly ever say “we”.
Pretty good coaches say You, I and sometimes we.
Excellent obsessed coaches say you, we and sometimes I.

An excellent obsessed career coach identifies with their clients and is compelled to make a difference. That is why “we” is said the most by this type.  They believe it IS a team effort.

BTW: Team requires at least two people.

Enough said??

Here is a mistake rookies make.

A cocky attitude does not equate to having the goods. Maverick in the movie Top Gun had a cocky attitude… opps.. Goose is dead.

Epic fail.

I’m proud of Maverick. (As much as one can be of a fictional character). He unlike most people chose to learn from his failure. He did not wallow in his grief forever and become fearful by thinking he would kill somebody else if he started flying again.

Nothing is a failure if you learn the lesson pain has to offer.  Maverick turned epic failure into epic win!

Cocky attitude + I can do everything myself = Dead best friend.
Was change into
Confident attitude +  I can’t do everything myself = Kill shot on enemy.
Not
Wussy attitude + I can’t do anything right = Never flying again out of fear.

What happened to Maverick at the end of the movie? He became a Top Gun instructor… an excellent obsessed coach with the goods.

Don’t make this mistake either.

Misunderstanding can be easy.  Promise me you will not think there is one perfect personality that creates excellent coaches.

There are TONS! of excellent obsessed coaches with a mild manner exterior.  Some of the best absolutely abhor being in the spot light. They are creating space for you to shine.  Notice how it is creating space, not giving up their space. That is their gift to the world.  Take the gift if they offer it.

Only a cocky unconfident attitude says “No thank you. I have to create everything myself.”

Career coaches with balls make guarantees.  Thus you should ask…

Question 4: What guarantee do you offer?

Certification .

Certification does not mean an expert understands the real world.  I know a lot of legal secretaries who know the law better than lawyers.  Have you been practiced on by a medical professional who’s advice defies common sense?  You question their wisdom, but feel obligated to follow it because they are the certified expert.  Then they make you feel like it is your fault you are not ‘fixed’ when you followed their instructions.

Here is a story that explains it all.

In the movie “The Kings Speech” Lionel Logue a washed up actor, coaches soon to be King George VI on how to overcome stuttering. Mr. Logue has no formal training in speech therapy and can’t land a single acting gig.  Logue has success helping people other experts could not fix, and a huge well of proactive compassion.  Days before the coronation Albert “Bertie” and Lionel verbally hash out why there is a lack of progress.

Logue hits the heart of the real issue by tearing through the royal family and sarcastically ridiculing Bertie’s previous panel of medical experts. “They’re all idiots!” Enraged, Bertie lashes back “They’ve been knighted!”

“Makes it official then, doesn’t it?”  Bertie slowly sees for the first time a new perspective he is not the problem.

Good coaches cause you to see your challenges in a new way.  The best ones can do it because they once were you and have overcome the same challenge. Yes this is true for a life coach or career coach.

Street smarts checkmates certificates.

Certifications by themselves are book smarts in perfect world conditions.  What in this world is perfect? The true value you need to look for is a coach who knows the answers to questions books can never contain.  I have nothing against being certified.  It can cut years off the learning curve.  You be wary of any person who expects you to accept credentials as proof of their effectiveness.  So ask, “What makes you qualified?”  If they point to a certificate and smile, thank them kindly for the time and get thee out the door.

When a story appears of struggle, dedication and a commitment to helping you, you want to keep asking questions.  You might have found a winner.

Listen for WHY they are doing what they are doing.  I’ll take a green-horn coach who has their why is in the right place over someone with 10 years experience that believes their certification is self-evident.

Entitlement at any stage is contempt of performance… So you should also ask…

Question 3:  Do you have balls? (Posted: 10/27/11)

The best of the best have tried many approaches and techniques. Their goal is to find what it really takes to create the success their clients need.  No one approach or technique will ever fit a population as a whole.  Different people need different tools. Good coaches will adapt to you.  They will get you out of the hole, by getting in the hole with you.

Some coaches uncover industry secrets through sheer gut effort.  They are self-taught through the school of hard knocks.  Other coaches study books and are mentored by others.  They then go out and apply.

Either type of coach you want to have failed. Hopefully miserably at some point.

It is through failure excellent obsessed coaches appear.  Overcoming and admitting failure creates the humility to believe in you when you can’t believe in yourself.   The other side of failure brings the best insights and solution to problems.  A coach admitting they failed is telling you, you will be alright too. They personally know how to get to the success you need.

If they proclaim to have a perfect track record, run.  They are either ignorant, stagnate or an insecure perfectionist.  They have already failed and have not learned the wisdom you probably need to hear.

Which brings us to…..

Question 2: What makes you good? (Posted 10/25/11)

Career Coaches are all the rage. They are the latest career fashion accessory.  There is no shortage.  A google As with anything that comes in vogue (can you still say that word) knockoffs will appear. Since nobody wants to buy an expensive fake, here are some tips to find the real deal.

If you generalize these points when evaluating any expert you will save tens of thousands of dollars .

First you must understand, perhaps be reminded, there are three types to any profession.

• Those who do because it makes money.
• Those who do because it sounds fun.
• Those who do because they are compelled to, nearly obsessed with the topic.

You want the last type. If it isn’t obvious, here is why you want the obsessed. These types know all the ins and outs. They ‘have’ to know everything in their industry.  They are not satisfied with “that’ll do”.  They want to improve their system, always.

Here are the questions you should ask to find your excellent obsessed coach.
1. What mistakes have you made when coaching?
2. What makes you good? (To be posted 10/24/11)
4. Do you have balls? (To be posted 10/27/11)
3. What guarantee do you offer? (To be posted 11/1/11)

The type of research done to come up with MTBI and DISC are very different. MTBI is based on Jung’s dichotomies to explain conscious and unconscious forces affecting behavior. MTBI explain more of the inner workings of an individual.

Dr. Marston’s came up with DiSC to explain how people adjust/react to environment shifts by looking first at emotional responses and correlating it to behavior. In short DiCS explains outward behavior.

Some people try to map MTBI types to DiCS types. It is bad to this.  The reasons behind developing the assessment are completely different. One troubling crossover I see a lot by DiSC facilitator it saying D and I are ‘extroverts’ while S and C are ‘introverts’. There are extroverts and introverts in all 4 base DISC types. (Side note: most of my D clients are introverts looking for someone to help them get out of their self-perceived shell even though they interact with a large variety of people all day long.)

Another key difference is study-time you need to devote to learning the assessments before you are competent in them. The DiCS assessment has self interpreting explanations included in the report.   MBTI only returns a ‘score’ and requires a college level courses to fully understand the  results.

A couple more notes

DiSC is a personality temperament assessment.  While MBTI is a personality type  assessment.  Think of DiSC as a grouping of several personality types lumped into one heading with the same outward behavior.  A very rough understanding of how this works is each personality puts different weight on feeling vs thinking, present vs past and what stresses them the most.  People can internally process environmental input in a unique way but outwardly respond the same.  This is what DiSC does, puts the same outward behavior in one group.  MBTI is a “true” personality assessment typing out an individual to the exact way they process the environment.

MBTI does have 4 Temperament groups.  However they are NOT equal to the 4 DiSC Temperaments.  There are some similarities and those should be held loosely.  If you want to learn about MBTI Temperaments check out these books.

The Art of SpeedReading People: How to Size People Up and Speak Their Language

Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types

Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence

I find the MBTI more powerful. I’m can go straight to the ‘way’ someone is processing a situation and give them insight in how they are processing the world. MBTI helps to quickly uncover limiting beliefs and show the beauty of what an individual brings the world. DiSC is far superior in group settings and easier to master.

Here is a PDF from Inscape (Disc Assessment Provider) of their view on the difference between DiSC and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

(This is the second post in a six part series. The first three cover deadly common myths on job hunting.  The last three posts give tips on how to increase your job hunting success by 2-3 times in half the time of most job seekers.)

The Attention Slight of Hand Trick

or Myth 2: If I do what I’m told I’ll get a job.

Most people assume applying for work will be easy because everybody does it.  Each company gives instructions on how to ‘correctly’ communicate with decision makers. The faulty follow-up logic of job hunters there is something wrong with them when no body replies.  ”I did what was asked, but nothing happened.”

Will you believe me when I say there is a conspiracy against you?

Most company’s rules for applying for jobs are to filter you out. If you follow ONLY the given instructions you will be over looked.  This truth baffles and hurts nice strict rule following people.  They follow The Hand as told to, yet are greatly confused when it opens empty . Why would anybody give rules to prevent the best working with them?

If you had 1000 people applying each week for one position and only you were responsible for finding the right person, you would do the same.  This is reality for most HR departments. A very friendly HR staff person from Monsanto explained it this way.  ”I have about 8-10 seconds to look at a resume, after they are filtered to the top by key word relevance.  I want to take more time, but I simply can not. I’m required to look at all the resumes.  5-6 years ago I could spend 30 seconds to a minute per resume.  An employee referral determines what resume to focus on.”

You must do more than the required basics to stand out.  Listen closely. You could be the perfect match and the best candidate.  You will be overlooked unless you systematically learn to work both inside and outside the given rules.

There are fantastic sources on the interwebs on the extra credit you should do.  Search for them.   Rather than rehash what many experts say, in the next post series you will learn something very few career experts know.  It is not “what” you do that is important.  It is “how” you do the extra credit that will prevent you from burn out and bring success faster.

Right now understand this.  Following rules inside the family gave you what you wanted.  It was beneficial to you and your employer.  They could count on you producing work that fit in their model. Your reward was a steady paycheck. Family takes care of its members (most of the time)

Now you are outside the family.  You must learn to do Rules Plus and show you will make a good addition to the family.  Do as asked AND do extra credit.  The highest leverage extra activities are social networking, professional networking, deeper-self discovery and community service.  (Comment below if you want examples of how these benefit your job search)..

In a later post I will give specific  instructions on how to do Rules Plus to increase your productivity by 3 to 5 times.  If you don’t follow these simply steps will you likely become frustrated and become discourage.

Next Post:  Quality wins, not quantity; brute force burns out.

(Previous Post: Tip 1: Give yourself  break.)

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

(This is the first post in a six part series. The first three cover deadly common myths on job hunting.  The final three posts give tips on how to increase your job hunting success by 2-3 times in half the time of most job seekers.)

Looking for work is tiring and mind numbing work. Many job seekers express frustrations over the process of hunting down anything close to a fit. In their mind they made many more, sometimes riskier, decisions at their job without the same level of fatigue. It is confusing why a seemingly simpler process taxes them so much.

Applying for work is deceptively more complicated than its outward appearance. It also requires a higher level of willpower. The effect is a hidden double-whammy on confidence and progress. You can win the battle by simply knowing why job hunting is more complicated and requires more willpower. In this series of posts I’ll explain 3 reasons looking for work now is unlike anything you have done before. In the follow-up series post I’ll give 3 tips to keep your attitude and productivity high.

Tip 1: Give yourself a break; it’s harder than it looks

Or Myth 1: “I know how to look for work”

The difficulties of knowing where to look and deciding valid posts are obvious. Hidden behind the known is a false self-belief you can ‘just do it’ with a git-r-dun attitude. Comparing your effectiveness and competence of your profession with job hunting is ludicrous. You might as well ask a marathon runner to ride in the Tour-de-France. Both have great endurance, but the type of conditioning and ‘knowledge’ is drastically different.

One executive level client described his frustration this way. “I put in 60-70 hours a week in my last position. Sometimes I was tired, but I did not feel emotionally drained. Now when I look for work for even 20 hours I become very discouraged and want to quit life.”

There are 3 fundamental reasons many successful people feel the same. The required skills are different from what you have developed. In the follow post series I’ll cover one strategy to overcome discouragement. Right now take a big sigh of relief. Know the problem is not you. Better said, you are not washed up because you can not just do it. You have to learn new skills.  Don’t self-sabotage yourself with faulty thinking you already know what to do and can work at same level of production.

(Next Post: The Attention Slight of Hand Trick: Don’t follow the Rules)

First you have to answer four quick questions correctly to qualify.  I’ll even give you the answers.

Q:  If you want to become strong what do focus on?
A: Becoming stronger.

Q: If you want to put more rocks in your pocket what do you focus on?
A: Putting more rocks in your pocket

Q: If you want to build better relationships what do you focus on?
A: Building better relationships.

Here comes the trick question.

Q: If you want to make more money what do you focus on?
A: Having unique value.

Did you want to say “making more money”, even though you knew it was a trick question?  The answer is not natural for humans to come up with.   Making money is counter-intuitive to human logic.  Making money is counter-intuitive to almost everything else we do.

In general if you focus on what you want you will get it.   Money does not work in the same way.  It does not really ‘exist’.    There is nothing to focus on to make more of.   This is the most difficult point to prove to you.

The dollar in your hand is stored value, nothing more.  It is potential energy ready to be exchanged.  You can not focus on making more money any more than making more energy.  That is the second law of thermodynamics.  You can not create or destroy energy.  But you can exchange it.

You have to find something to exchange you have more of than most people.

What are you exchanging for money?  Most focus on the wrong thing, time.  The trouble is time is limited.  At best a person has 70 years to live.  Those aren’t even working years.

Add in everybody has the same 70ish years.  Now you are like everybody else.  Congratulations you are in same category as corn, cows, soybean and pork bellies. You are a commodity.  Did you know there are commodity markets for doctors, programmers and politicians?  (Insurance, elance.com, too obvious)

I’ll tell you what is very sad about commodities. Somebody else sets the exchange rate.  When most people talk about ‘making more money’, they are saying “I’m going to exchange a resource that is very limited to me but is everywhere for a rate I have no control over.”  That does not sound like unique value

A product or service creates unique value when it is rare or makes the life of the user easier.  I’ll repeat that last part. Value comes when a product or service makes the life of the user easier. It is easier than you think.

I will now perform commodity magic right before your eyes.  Watch as I turn an ordinary commodity into a highly paid for product.  Watch carefully or you will miss it.

Did you see that?  I turned a $1 head of romaine lettuce into a $3.99 time saving product. I’m amazing!  Now somebody does not have to have a knife to have chopped lettuce right now.  Truly a boon for the chopping impaired.  Here is the crazy part.  The most expensive parts are thrown away or happened when you were not looking.

The value is in packaging and washing and cutting up the lettuce.  It did not cost $2.99 for the bag or labor to handle the lettuce.  Crap that is approx $35 an hour for 5 minutes of work, if the bag is a nickel.  ROI comes in at about 275%.  Nice investment.

The words on the bag are the biggest value.  They tell you what you are getting, just in case you are confused or mistook it for a head of lettuce.  It is not just romaine lettuce.  That is garden fresh chopped romaine lettuce.

Our jobs are no different.  Each of us can perform a specialization which will save our company or clients time, money, resources if they knew about it.  They don’t know about it because you have not told them.  You have not told them because you probably don’t know.   Maybe you already are doing the specialization.  You could be chopped garden fresh lettuce acting like a whole head lettuce.  What a shame!

You need a bag to put yourself in and tell the world how great you are.  What is your bag and the label on it?  Look around your work place.  What do you do better than most people? Does your boss know about it?  What  need is nobody fulfilling?

There is no reason to work more hours to increase your income.  Everybody I have coached was under evaluating their worth.  Employers want to be ‘sold’ your value.  By asking for a raise and explaining how you life easier you are telling them you are interested in their success.  This is the magic packaging.   A fifty cent raise is over $1000 in a year.  What are you doing each hour that is at least $1.50 in unnoticed productivity. (You can easily ask for 1/3 of the value you bring.)

Tell me I’m wrong if you don’t believe me.  You can do it in the comment box.  Would it be helpful to have examples?  Anybody want me to draw out their hidden unique value for free?   I’ll give 30 minutes of free coaching to prove my point.  Only one condition if we are successful I will post your success. If I fail I will post my failure.