241: Mastering Mid-Career Moves: The Power of How You SHOW UP (The Authority Podcast)

Today, you are going to hear my conversation on The Authority Podcast, where I was interviewed by host Ross Romano. You may remember Ross because he was a guest of mine on Episode 220. 

Navigating the complex terrain of mid-career development requires a balance of self-awareness and tactical communication—a theme we explore in depth. I delve into the power of career transformation and advocate for clear expectations and feedback that pave the way for powerful collaborations.  Ross Romano and I dissect the nuances of expanding your professional network through LinkedIn connections, and emphasizing the endless opportunities for growth no matter where you stand in your career journey.

We discuss Brene Brown’s quote, “Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just SHOW UP,” and why it means so much to us. We also discuss how you can SHOW UP at work more confidently and without fear, how to build your brand and leadership presence, and how to own where you are and create those new opportunities as you build Your Mid-Career GPS.

Check out The Authority Podcast and connect with Ross Romano on LinkedIn. I’ll include that information in the show notes.

Click here to download your free Mid-Career Job Seekers Checklist and join my free email newsletter community. 

Connect with Ross Romano
LinkedIn | The Authority Podcast | Website 

Transcript

John Neral: 0:11

Hello, my friends, this is the Mid-Career GPS Podcast and I'm your host, john Nerrell. I help mid-career professionals like you find a job they love, or love the job they have, using my proven four-step formula. I have a different type of episode for you this week, but before we get there, I want to share some news with you. Things have been very exciting here and I am beyond grateful for all that is happening. Quarter two is typically a busy quarter for me and once again, I am honored to serve as one of the coaches for NextUp's Rising Stars Conference. This means that I've recently welcomed eight mid-level leaders from some wonderful companies and organizations across the country and I'm honored to serve as their coach for the next three months. Additionally, I've been doing some meeting facilitation work with the DEA that's, the Drug Enforcement Administration and I'm currently planning a full-day workshop for a small sales team I've been working with for the last few years. So why am I telling you all of this? Well, it's simple. It's because of listeners like you who are referring me to people to be their coach and to come and work within their organizations, and I want you to know I am grateful for each and every one of you and all of this work has made me take a step back to look at my business and evaluate what I'm doing each week. Know that I love working with my one-on-one private coaching clients. They give me such energy and I'm so excited to see the progress they make each and every week. And I absolutely enjoy working with organizations to help them grow and develop their emerging leaders, as well as to help people work more effectively and cohesively. So if you would like to talk with me about how I can specifically help you as your coach, or perhaps come into your organization for a variety of professional development opportunities and topics, please reach out, connect with me on LinkedIn or message me there, or you can simply email me at john at https://johnneral. com, and let's have a conversation to talk about how I can help you and your organization.

John Neral: 2:31

But given my increased workload and opening up some space for some new projects as well as doing some self-coaching here, I've made a decision to bring this podcast back to once a week. I've made a decision to bring this podcast back to once a week. There is simply no way that I can keep up doing two episodes per week and doing them in the way that I want. Come on, after 240 episodes, it is fair to say that I have learned a few lessons about what works for this podcast and what doesn't, and what works for me as its host. But I want you to know I have no plans to stop doing this podcast. When I started this podcast over four years ago, my primary goal was to serve you and put information out there to help people like you navigate your career and leadership journeys, to help you build your mid-career GPS. I'm not going to stop doing that. So, as I'm shifting my schedule back and I'm going to tell you I have some incredible interviews lined up over the next few months. I can't wait to share with you. I'm doing something on this podcast this week that I've never done before. It's called a podcast swap, so here's how that works.

John Neral: 3:49

Today you are going to hear my conversation where I was interviewed on the Authority podcast by host Ross Romano, and you may remember Ross because he was a guest of mine a few months ago in episode 220.

John Neral: 4:07

In this conversation, we talk about Brene Brown's famous quote sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up and Ross and I talk about why that quote means so much to us.

John Neral: 4:22

Plus, we talk about how you can show up at work more confidently and without fear, how to build your brand and leadership presence, as well as how to own where you are and create those new opportunities as you build your mid-career GPS. Now make sure to check out the Authority podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and connect with Ross Romano on LinkedIn, and I'll have that information for you in the show notes, don't forget. You can visit my website at johnnarrallcom where you can download a free copy of your mid-career job seekers checklist and join my free email newsletter community. But for now, I want you to enjoy my conversation with Ross Romano and I'll be back with you next week with another wonderful episode. But until then, remember you'll build your mid-career GPS one mile or one step at a time, and how you show up matters. Enjoy my appearance on the Authority Podcast and make it a great rest of your day.

Ross Romano: 5:47

Hi everybody and thanks again for being here for this episode of the Authority Podcast on the V Podcast Network. I had a chance to have a really nice conversation with a great guest for this episode and I'm excited to bring that to you. I think it'll be really valuable. No matter where you are in your career or whatever your upcoming goals are, john really has ideas to help. My guest was John Narrell. John is a certified professional coach who helps mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued and underutilized show up to find a job they love or love the job they have. And we get into that from all different angles whether you're looking to advance within your organization, maybe get that promotion, move into administration, maybe you're looking to just continue improving your efficacy and performance in your current role, or maybe you're interested in moving into a completely different role, maybe outside of the school system or a new school or any variety of things, opportunities that may present themselves or you may want to pursue. That's what this really is all about, because we all want to kind of have ownership of our own career, our own trajectory.

Ross Romano: 7:00

John's professional work has included a 25-year career in education. He was a longtime teacher himself in northern New Jersey and he also has been a longstanding corporate consultant for the Fortune 500 giant, casio America, and he hosts a podcast called the Mid-Career GPS Podcast, which we'll mention at the end here and link to below. It's something that could be a really valuable resource to you if you're thinking about decisions you want to make in your career. He is the author of today's book that we're discussing. It's called Show Up Six Strategies to Lead a More Energetic and Impactful Career. So I won't delay any further.

Ross Romano: 7:41

I want to bring you my conversation with John, and I hope you enjoy and please do you know, send in any notes, feedback. The podcast has been going really well. We're really pleased with the guests we've had and with all of you who have been listening. But, yeah, let us know what did you take away from this episode? What was most valuable? What have you been thinking about? You know the variety of guests we've been having lately and what can we do to continue to bring you more valuable content. So please don't hesitate to reach out. But until then, here's my conversation with John Narrow. John Narrow, welcome to The Authority Podcast.

John Neral: 8:18

Ross, thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Ross Romano: 8:21

Yeah, it's great to have you here. So many things in your book that really resonate with me and then, I think, will be super beneficial to our listeners in all kinds of roles and with all kinds of goals. So, you know, one of the things that I wanted to kind of touch on first, because I thought this would really be something that our listeners can immediately relate to, is the Brene Brown quote that you share early on in the book about showing up. Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up, and I know every one of our listeners likely has had days like this. Right when it's, I just don't want to go in there today. I can't face it.

Ross Romano: 9:01

Yesterday was terrible. To face it yesterday was terrible, you know, and that really and truly like sometimes not only the bravest but that most important part particularly when we're dealing with students and kids and the things they're going through that you never know what the day is when your presence is going to be critical. Just the fact that you're there and that you're willing to show up made you you know what made this stand out to you, and this was, I think, in the introduction. So, of course, one of the pieces that you're using to lead off the book. But why was this important to you? To kind of include this and then think about it?

John Neral: 9:42

Yeah, so when we show up, we're vulnerable, and that's one of the biggest takeaways from Brene's quote is that there is so much power in how we show up, and I often say that how we show up matters, and we are a very highly driven, product-oriented, results-focused culture and society, and so we can often expect so much from ourselves in terms of what we think we should be doing and what showing up looks like for us, how much we're getting done in a day and how many people we're impacting, and you know how many vanity metrics we get on social media with everything. Sometimes showing up is like gosh, dang it. I just got out of bed and I went to work, you know, and I did my job and I did it well, and that just needs to be enough today, because your point, which is so well taken, is that we often don't know what a lot of people are going through or dealing with, and so how they're showing up may be absolutely at whatever best they can give us right now.

Ross Romano: 10:55

Yeah, what does showing up mean to you, and not just I mean you can certainly define it as you write about it in the book, but I'm also thinking specifically about the personal versus the professional right, identities and showing up and how in your mind, how much they should overlap or not overlap right, and what that really means when you show up every day.

John Neral: 11:21

Yeah, well, when we're younger, how we are told to show up is often ingrained to us by our parents and the people who are closest to us. They set the ground rules for what they believe to be best, and so that's how we kind of formulate our structure and our belief system in terms of how we're expected to show up. And as we get older and we start learning more and we begin to question things and we have our own experiences, we often find a different, yet more specific way that we as individuals show up. So to get really personal with you for a minute and your listeners, so when I was 10 years old, I grew up in a very loving, yet an in parentheses staunch Catholic religious family. This was 1979, so we'll kind of put that in context there. But my mother looked at me and she said, john, if you ever go to bed with a woman before you're married, I hope you see my face instead of hers. Yeah, like big ew ick kind of moment there, right. And so I was like okay, and as I got older and started figuring out who I am and everything and realized that there was probably going to come a point where I was going to quote unquote disappoint them. I didn't come out to them until 18 years after that. I didn't even come out to anybody until I was 26.

John Neral: 12:54

So for me, showing up was defined as this is what we expect you to be and this is how we expect you to not screw up.

John Neral: 13:04

Now I will offer and share with you that I honestly believe it came from a very good place because that's what they knew, but it was also really detrimental and harmful in a lot of ways, and so what I learned through those experiences and also as I got older, was that showing up could be defined in six specific strategies, and those strategies are setting ground rules. That's the S, the H is having intentional conversations. The O is owning where you are. The W is welcome new opportunities. The U is use your genius and the P is protect and promote your brand. Those six strategies have served me incredibly well, both personally, in my relationships, my friendships, how I've navigated my own life and journey, but it's also served me incredibly well in my career, and looking at those principles through that lens to realize how I want to show up. I want to lead, I want to make my career moves that ultimately let me have the greatest and most powerful impact I can.

Ross Romano: 14:28

Yeah, and I definitely want to take the time to touch on each of those strategies. And, you know, for listeners who are thinking about, maybe, where they are in their career and what their objectives are, or where they interested in getting a new job or potentially even changing careers entirely, somebody else who wants to advance within their current organization, and then maybe another person who wants to stay in the role they're in but just wants to continue getting more effective and not feeling like it's a status quo thing, right, but that this is my intention. This is where I wanna be, but I also wanna continue to take on more responsibilities or have more leadership in the way. But are there other scenarios that come to mind or anything within that's worth describing to people to contextualize it, as they're listening to us talk about these strategies to say, okay, this is how it might fit in for me.

John Neral: 15:30

Well, one of the things you touched on, ross, is that it is about fit. If we don't feel like we fit in the work we're doing and where we're doing it, and also with the people whom we get to work alongside of every day, something's gonna feel off and it's going to absolutely impact the way that we show up at work. I had a 25-year career in education before I launched my coaching practice full-time, and I remember teaching a mathematics lesson to my middle school students, going, yeah, I can't keep doing this for the rest of my life. I worked in a wonderful district in Northern New Jersey. It was the kind of district where teachers go and they retire from there. And I remember, like on the first day of school, someone's like you're going to retire from here and I was like, well, that's a long time. And I remember getting into that like especially it was around the nine, 10, 11 year mark and going, okay, I think something needs to change. And so showing up and thinking about what that kind of move is really kind of hits into owning where you are and owning the situation you have.

John Neral: 16:43

So how much do you like going to work every day and how much do you enjoy the things that you're doing. Where do you see yourself adding value? That is, moving the mission of the organization in this case, say, the school district forward because of what you're doing, but then also, what are the new opportunities that could be out there? So, if you're feeling professionally unfulfilled, what's going to light you up? Professionally unfulfilled, what's going to light you up For me? One of the things I found out was that doing some consulting work and partnering with educational companies really energized me in a way I hadn't expected. So sure, there was a monetary benefit from doing consulting work after school and during the summers and all but what I was learning I was able to take back into the classroom, so it was making me a better educator in that process, which, had I just gone about my day to day and taught my classes and went home, I never would have had that opportunity to really welcome those new opportunities that were going to better me as a professional.

Ross Romano: 17:59

Right, yeah, I mean, similar to you. I have professionals in a whole bunch of different industries and roles on performance, coaching and, a lot of times, on career, and one of the things that I always start with is not making any assumptions about what their next move might be right, even if they have in mind a lot of times. Well, I think I probably need to change jobs, because I'm frustrated by X or Y, that we always go through the entire process and figure out okay, well, what's in your control, right? What are the actions you can be taking, you can be doing to potentially create a better environment for yourself where you are or to improve your experience there? What are the things that you can't control? What are your core values? And I know that's part of showing up too. Right is honoring who you are, living in alignment with your core values. But what are those? How are they represented in your organization or not? And sometimes, of course, the conclusion is in order to really be fulfilled and do what you wanna do, you need to work in a different company. It might be you need to. The job you're doing is just not the right job for you, or it might be if you're working in a great organization and you're just not feeling that happy.

Ross Romano: 19:12

There could be things that you could be doing differently or better, and you know, I think so much of this too is helping people understand what are those things, what are the internal factors, what are the external factors around ownership and creation? Right, how do I own my career, own my actions, own my decisions and create what I want to create in my career and understand. Maybe I can do that where I am, or in this role or in this profession, or maybe it's something different. But you know so many and I think this is, I mean, it's becoming probably less and less common. But, just as you mentioned, right in the district where you taught, for example, it's the kind of place that you retire from, meaning that a lot of people will have been there for 10, 20 years and that's the only place they know. So let's say, somebody doesn't like it there, right, and they've been told what a great place it is that their only conclusion based on their experience might be well, I guess I shouldn't be doing this job because I'm not happy here, but maybe, you know, maybe there's different environments better for them. So it's all those things, but you know.

Ross Romano: 20:29

I think that's something that's important as we get into these. To kind of highlight for folks is that it's about your. You know your unique interests, preferences, what motivates you, what you find purposeful, right and what you want to create in your career. And sometimes, when you really know that and define that, you can then say, look, the place where I am right now is in conflict with that, because my values don't align with their values. Or but you may also say you know it's, maybe it is me, maybe I should. I just need to try this thing that I haven't been trying, or look at things in a new way, because I really am in a great spot and I would like to succeed here.

John Neral: 21:19

Well, and one of the things you said that I want to just go back to for a moment is about how, in order for us to really be successful in our careers, we have to own it a hundred percent, and that's just not saying look, here's what I'm going to go ahead and do.

John Neral: 21:37

If we've seen anything as a result of the now almost last four years of the pandemic, is that we saw people take greater control of their careers in ways where they said I'm out, I'm going to take a break, I've got the financial resources to do that.

John Neral: 21:58

And we saw other people who may not have had the financial resources to do that, but do some truly incredibly hard work and soul searching around. What do I want to do? And the people whom I help, we oftentimes have to, like break down some of all of the outside influencers that they have to process, where it might be a spouse or a family member or a colleague that'll say to them oh, you're stupid for doing that. Why would you want to leave? You've got this great salary, you've got flexibility, but they're miserable inside because they're not happy with what it is that they're doing and they can't show up in the way that they really want to, because they don't feel like they fit inside of that organization anymore. So, if anything, we see people either going ahead and making those bolder moves or preparing to make those bolder moves, because they realize, yeah, I spend a lot of time at work, I need to be happier.

Ross Romano: 23:04

How do organizations of course you're operating from the position right that individuals showing up in the right way will help them to get ahead, and organizations create the environment whereby one, the organization, is benefiting from people showing up right.

Ross Romano: 23:23

They're creating a way where they're incentivizing that and they are reaping the rewards, but also I think it's recognizing and um prioritizing authentically showing up right versus. I think there can be, you know, particularly in this day and age, where companies, either through their know, realistic interest in diversity and inclusion or just because they're feeling pressure, can sort of have some superficial embrace of showing up and you know different identities, but it doesn't necessarily reflect in the work or the way work is done or the nature of you know that you can be whoever you want to be, but there's only one way to do the job kind of thing which, again, like one that would not benefit the individuals and but also the company, would be missing out on a lot of unique contributions from people who may look at things and approach things very differently, who may look at things and approach things very differently.

John Neral: 24:31

Yeah, and when we think about owning that career path, one of the things that's often so frustrating about school districts and smaller organizations is that there typically is only one person who is in charge of writing your annual performance appraisal, and it becomes a very binary decision on your part as the employee, in that you either like them or you don't.

John Neral: 24:56

You don't have flexibility to get somebody else to give you another review or give you additional feedback. That's gonna impact in some way, and so when teachers transition out of the classroom and they move into a more corporate environment, they often don't know how to play very strategically in terms of advocating for their career growth. The thought of saying, hey, is there any chance I can report to a different manager never crosses their mind, because they think, oh well, this is the way it's supposed to be. This is the organizational hierarchy. But if you're truly advocating for your career and your career growth, you've got to pull people in and find those people who are not only going to challenge you and champion you, but are truly going to advocate for your career growth for however long they have you in terms of either you're reporting to them or you're within that organization, because so many times and how often do we see this? Where people don't leave organizations, they leave bad leaders.

Ross Romano: 26:03

Yeah, that's so true, and I don't think that can be any truer than it is in the education world, where I've seen time and time again I love what I do, I think it's important, I love the kids, but you know just, the environment has become such that I can't be here anymore, and you know.

Ross Romano: 26:21

So this is important for yeah for, whatever your role is, if you're in the quote unquote leadership position, if you're not, if you're managing up. And that leads us, I think, pretty naturally, into your strategy number one, setting the ground rules, because this is something that you know. Often we feel like it starts at the top, but it needs to be kind of a mutual process to really make it effective. But can you, in brief, sort of define what this strategy is about?

John Neral: 26:45

Yeah. So setting ground rules is your opportunity to partner with a colleague, supervisor or leader about what your day-to-day interactions, including feedback, look like. So it doesn't and shouldn't be top-down, but if, say, let's, for example, somebody's in a leadership role and they're managing a team of four or five direct reports, one of the things you can do to set ground rules that is going to help you build a better relationship with them is simply asking them what's their preferred method of communication. Right, are you going to respond to an email? Are you better with a direct message or a text? Would you rather me call you? Right Knowing those kinds of things? Start setting the framework about what your interactions are going to look like and what that day-to-day looks like even stronger because of you setting to agree to those kinds of ground rules.

John Neral: 27:50

You know one of my favorite books is called how to Say Anything to Anyone kinds of ground rules. You know one of my favorite books is called how to Say Anything to Anyone by Sherry Harley, and she's got some great tips in there in terms of helping leaders kind of build those kinds of protocols with their direct reports. I remember reading her book years ago and implementing that with a team that I worked with. It was so, so helpful. But one of the things just real quick here, though, is that you've got to adopt that mindset that setting the ground rules is an agreement. It is between two people, so you can't set ground rules one way and say, well, this is the way it's going to be, unless you're taking a dictatorial approach and saying, all right, look, this is how it's going to be. There are times when that happens, like in performance improvement plans. That's a whole nother topic, but you set the ground rules because you are making an agreement about how you want to work better and more efficiently.

Ross Romano: 28:48

Yeah, no, I mean, that's makes total sense. And that was the first thing that came to mind in starting this chapter was. It stood out to me as a great opportunity for both parties to exercise are governed by expectation, which is a lot of assumptions. Sometimes it's what's implied or what we believe is implied. But even when it's explicit, as you said, even if the principal says we're going to communicate exclusively by email, right, I mean, okay, it's clear. But I might say, well, I respond a lot better to text. Can we agree that we'll try that? Okay, yeah, that's you know. But I might say, well, I respond a lot better to text. Can we agree that we'll try that? Okay, yeah, that's you know. But and and again, that this is mutual, it's a mutual agreement, is mutually beneficial. Right, that that sometimes it's.

Ross Romano: 29:44

It's not necessarily intentional on the part of the manager to not pursue agreements, but that it's just that they haven't done it before or haven't thought about it. But to say, when we have no ambiguity about what are our protocols about, what does success look like on a particular project or in the bigger picture? Right, when we are 100% clear and we both have had a chance to verbalize what it will require to get there. Okay, we can have the right resources, we could be on the right timelines, we can do things in a way that everybody's happy. And then, one, we have a strong framework for accountability.

Ross Romano: 30:25

Okay, we have an agreement and if somebody is veering outside of that agreement, we can hold one another accountable. But, two, we can have a lot more certainty and confidence and lowered stress levels about what's going to occur, because we know that we understand one another and we're not. You know, we're more than likely. The way I've said it a lot in the past is that you're probably, when you're hiring somebody for a job, one of the competencies you're hiring for is probably not their ability to mind read. So you know why put them in a position where that's the core competency, right?

John Neral: 31:05

Yeah, even think about the way that we use the telephone right. Years ago we didn't have answering machines, so you would just call somebody. If they answered, great. If they didn't, you'd call back. Then we got answering machines right and be like, okay, I'll just send it to the answering machine. Then we got voicemail right, then we got the ability to text right.

John Neral: 31:25

And so now and I see this with even some of my friends and stuff and they'll be like are you free to chat? Like they're setting that ground rule, and be like, hey, I don't want to bother you, but like I'm just going to check in if you've got a minute, like I'd love to chat with you. But in work, especially when we're all at the work site together, we just like show up at somebody's door and be like all right, we need to have this conversation. No, wait a minute. You just came into my space and I'm not really ready to process this.

John Neral: 31:53

And I remember saying to people on my team I'd be like look, I am here to help you. I will drop everything when I can. It would really help me if you show up at my door and say do you have a few minutes. If you show up at my door and say, do you have a few minutes? Because I said if you just come in like a steamroll and like let's get this thing done, I can't help you as best as I can because you've now caught me off guard. It was one of the ground rules that we set for our daily communication and even when I was working with satellite teams and things like that, it would just be like do you have five minutes to chat? Like it just made the relationship better in that regard.

Ross Romano: 32:33

Yeah, and before we move on to I do want to briefly, you know, for listeners mentioned back, john mentioned earlier feedback, right, really big one, with the setting ground, rules and agreements, and this came up. This was a core topic one of our earliest episodes of the show, with Matt Renwick and his book Leading Like a Coach around what type of feedback is helpful to you, what would be useful? Because I think, as leaders, you know, most leaders would agree that the purpose of the feedback we want it to be useful and actionable. It's not really to anybody's benefit to deliver feedback that somebody can't do anything with and that's just going to be frustrating, anxiety-inducing and ultimately unproductive. So having those agreements around how and when feedback is delivered so critical, and also having that humility to understand whatever you're observing is only one slice of things, so you can't draw every conclusion from that. So it is a dialogue, you know, asking questions. Oh, I thought I observed this. What was your experience of that? And coming to, you know better understanding.

Ross Romano: 33:40

So just wanted to make sure to highlight that before we moved on to strategy two here, having intentional conversation.

Ross Romano: 33:47

I guess that could be an intentional conversation there, but it also stood out to me. You write about setting the intention before the conversation and reminded me of one of our very recent episodes here with Hesha Abrams and her book Holding the Calm Around Conflict Resolution, and one of the things that came up in that conversation that stood out to me is in so many cases we may have to resolve a conflict because we created one where none existed, because we hadn't yet clarified what we wanted. Right, and so we're going into it and maybe there's something we don't like or that we're frustrated by, and then we initiate a dialogue around that without having clarified in our own minds okay, what outcome do I want here, so that I can go into this with intentionality and say, look, here's what I'm thinking, here's what can we work toward this? And we're just kind of creating more of a muddle than not when we don't have that intentionality and we haven't set the intention before we pursue that dialogue. But can you talk a little bit more about this one?

John Neral: 34:52

Yeah. So the primary goal of having an intentional conversation is to always move the relationship forward. Now, moving the relationship forward doesn't mean that it's always positive and cheery and rosy. Sometimes moving the relationship forward means you agree to part ways, but having that intentional conversation is what allows you to get the information you need, versus the information you want in order to make a clear decision. So getting the information you need is going to help inform those decisions. Like, for example, when we think about somebody's professional brand and reputation.

John Neral: 35:34

Usually what we want to hear are the really nice things. We want to hear that we're a great employee, we're very proactive, we're a great communicator but what we need to hear are some of the things or the things that are really holding us back from being our best selves. So when we have that intentional conversation, we do so by being very clear about what the goal of the conversation is right, setting almost like a business meeting and having an agenda for what that conversation's going to be, and always doing an intentional conversation with somebody you trust, especially when it's around things related to your career, growth trajectory, your professional brand. You only want to engage people with whom you trust because they're going to be able to give you the information you need to help you decide what your next steps are going to. Be able to give you the information you need to help you decide what your next steps are going to be.

Ross Romano: 36:30

Absolutely. That's wonderful. And so next, oh own, where you are we're actually going to. We'll come back to this one in a bit because it relates to a bigger picture idea, but I want to go to four welcoming new opportunities and how to create them, and particularly for me, this is so relevant to those who want to advance, who want to get a promotion. And creating the right opportunities. Right, the opportunities that I would say that show what you can really do beyond your current role, versus opportunities that quote unquote opportunities that may actually kind of make you stuck in your current role. Right, there's, sometimes there's just taking on more of the same that almost makes people view you as your most valuable where you are, because it hasn't necessarily demonstrated. So, you know, what do you think about in this regard? And not just the welcoming part, but creating new opportunity and creating the right opportunities to get where you want to go.

John Neral: 37:28

Yeah, and those opportunities can be big or small depending on how you look at it. So that opportunity might be getting that promotion you've dreamed about, and that opportunity might be reaching out to someone on LinkedIn who you've been wanting to connect with and building a relationship with them that ultimately leads to, say, an informational interview. The opportunities that you welcome are designed just like an intentional conversation. They're designed to move you forward, but it's also around having the career clarity and the growth mindset about where you want to go. So, even if somebody who's listening, let's say they're not entirely sure what their next job's going to be or what their next career move might be, or it's somebody in education that's thinking they might want to step out of the educational arena, whatever that is, you have an end goal in mind for what that opportunity might be. But what I want to offer them is to pull it back, pull it closer. What's a small step that you can take and welcome that opportunity to get you some information you need that's going to help move you forward, right? A lot of times we think, oh, these opportunities have to be so big. They don't right.

John Neral: 38:49

I coach my clients, like when they go to a networking event, have a number in mind about what a really good networking connection is, and whenever you meet that number, leave, right. Right, that's the opportunity, that's there, right? I've gone to networking events and I've been like, look, if I can make one really good connection here, I'm good, right, we were talking a little bit beforehand too. That like, sometimes you know, being extroverted can be a little draining, and sometimes I find networking events can be a little draining for me, right. So if I set a ground rule for myself and be like hey, my opportunity today is I'm going to get two really good business connections and then I'm done, whenever those two happen, I'm out, I'm done, right. But that's the thing we have to calibrate what the opportunity is and then be open to see and welcome what we're going to learn from it, right?

Ross Romano: 39:42

Yeah, a great example of how these all go together. Right, because you can create opportunities with ground rules. Yeah, and you know, and also use your genius and strategy. Five right, exercise our uniqueness part of this, but yeah, can you describe this a little more?

John Neral: 40:00

Yeah, so your genius is the thing that you are so good at, almost to the point that you are better than anybody else at in your circle. That makes you valuable, right? So what I wanna offer people is to really think about who you help on a day-to-day basis and what you help them do specifically. That is the beginning steps of tapping into identifying what your genius is and then identifying where that can be of value to somebody else. So I made a decision to teach mathematics in my career, and that was because I just love the way numbers connect and I love how it's logical and it's a puzzle, and two plus two is four and it's not five, and I don't really care how you feel about it, it's very concrete in that regard, right, there's a reason why I didn't teach English language arts, right. Part of the reason was I didn't want to have to grade papers all weekend long. So I mean, it was that kind of thing in terms of I knew that my fit, where I could add the most value, was helping kids where math was maybe starting to get a little difficult for them. Start to pull it back and let it make some more sense for them so it could set them up for success in high school.

John Neral: 41:22

That was my genius at that time. Today, my genius is helping mid-career professionals who feel stuck, undervalued and underutilized show up to find a job they love, or love the job they have. So when you can tap into that thing, that you're exceptional at doing it, double down on it. We hear so much about closing skill gaps and work on your deficiencies. Yeah, it's all part of our own growth and development. But if you are not leveraging your strengths which ties directly into your genius you will never be able to clearly communicate why you are valuable to a current or future employer.

Ross Romano: 42:04

Right. Right, and it relates both to, I believe, our ability to achieve to our true potential as well as to to be truly fulfilled in what we're doing. When you know, as I've kind of gone on and learned about myself throughout my career, I I learned that I have no interest in doing jobs where the way I phrase it is, if it doesn't matter that it's me doing it right, for me it has to matter that it's me meaning that it's something where there's a variety of different ways it could be done. It's not about who's better or worse, but that I could have my own unique approach, my own way of doing things, my own creativity. That if it's something that there's only one way to do it, everybody would do it the same, that it just doesn't interest me, and that might not be the case for some people, but still, you know, there's a level of fulfillment right In things where you can affect your own unique approach and genius on it. I think also a related idea, something that's come up in a previous episode of this show, is, you know, rudy Caffele's mission statement, right Of saying as an educator, as a school leader, but my students will be at an advantage because I'm their teacher, for example, not meaning that I am better than any other teacher although my goal is to be excellent but that because of who I am, because of the level of care and purpose and mission and you know, and my perspective and experience, unique approach, that I will create an advantage for those I serve, because it's me and having that level of ownership over it, but also saying that it's my genius right, it's the things that I'm good at, that I am going to make sure are present in what I'm doing, that I'm not just going by kind of the step-by-step, paint by numbers approach, but I'm also, I'm bringing myself, I'm showing up, but you know, something that everybody can think about in their roles. So then we have RP protect and promote your brand.

Ross Romano: 44:17

And I do think it's important to touch on this because it's something that I think you know a lot of people, particularly anybody who's pretty, anybody who's not in marketing, hears brand.

Ross Romano: 44:26

Or if they're not in marketing or they're not a social media influencer, they hear brand and they think, oh, I don't know about that, but I love I did love this jeff bezos quote because I think it means a lot your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room right, and this is something that I say a lot to companies when I'm consulting them on their you know their brand and marketing strategy and say your brand isn't what you say it is, it's what your customers say it is. So your goal is that your customers will say the same thing that you say, but that's only through consistency and getting out there and communicating and demonstrating and showcasing, because otherwise they're going to have whatever their own perception same thing as us as individuals, right that we? Yes, I think my goal is that when I'm not around, other people are saying about me, the thing that I believe about myself and the thing that I think they're saying. But if I'm not showing up consistently and I'm not demonstrating who I am, it's unlikely that they will.

John Neral: 45:30

Yeah, yeah. And that quote about your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room by Jeff Bezos. I often like to say to your reputations how well you deliver on it. And I remember before I launched my coaching practice full-time, I had been working for an educational nonprofit great organization. I just hadn't survived the last reorg particularly well and I started having what I was calling branding conversations with people inside the organization that I trusted. And I remember a very powerful conversation I had with my vice president that one day. And I remember a very powerful conversation I had with my vice president that one day and I walked into her office and I said do you have a minute? I need to talk to you about something. She said yeah. And I said I've been having a lot of thoughts about the recent reorg and where I landed, and I trust you enough that if I ask you this question, you're gonna give me an honest answer. May I ask you this question? And she's like, yeah, go ahead. And I said I'm kind of thinking about where my career path is here and at best I see my career path as horizontal. So while I'm not at risk of getting fired today, the result is that I'm kind of stuck on an island to do something that has a minimal scope and that means never getting promoted, not going to get a raise, certainly not getting a bonus. How accurate am I? That question asking how accurate am I? Gave me the information I needed Because she looked at me and she goes John, they just don't get you. She's like what you want to focus on, she goes. They're thinking differently. She goes. That's their business decisions, you know she goes. I try to champion you, she goes. But you're right, and I remember that conversation and the ones I had leading up to it all confirmed part of my brand within that organization, which was I'm great at what I do, I'm well-respected and regarded, but my focus and what I wanna do is not as important right now, giving the overall growth plan that the organization had. And so I was left with having to make a decision about whether I was willing to stay or not, and I will always be grateful for the fact that I had a runway. Like I said, I wasn't at risk of getting fired at that point, but I did have some time to kind of figure out what my move was.

John Neral: 48:12

Six weeks later I quit. I went in and announced I was leaving, and I left because I had an opportunity to help more people outside of the organization than inside of it. Had I not had those branding conversations, I wouldn't have realized the information that was there, which, in all honesty, was like 85% positive right, but we just didn't align. So if I'm a hundred percent responsible for my career and I'm going to own where I'm at, I either stay and go through the day to day or I take a leap and do something that I'm ready and well-positioned to go do, and that was seven years ago.

Ross Romano: 48:59

Yeah, I think that's a great example of what you know those are hard conversations to have, but how much they reveal, because it could also reveal the opposite, right? Oh well, and the importance of having the conversation before you make the decision, because the other case could have been oh my goodness, is that how you're feeling? Oh, we have to make sure to show you otherwise. And, and you know, and again that's consistent throughout, I think this entire conversation, all these strategies, is having, you know again, having those agreements, having intentional conversations, all those things about that. Realistically, when we're doing these things effectively, we typically don't even need somebody else to tell us, right, like if we have an agreement around, what success means in our role. I don't need my boss at the end of the year to tell me if I got that promotion or not, because I will already know I've either done what I needed to do to earn it or I didn't do that. Now, you know I'm not saying that's all easy to do, because you have to have both parties participating in that, but we can certainly work toward it, john.

Ross Romano: 50:11

So the last question I had here to kind of tie this all together and part of the reason why I skipped over the O, own where you are before, because I think it just kind of relates to a story you shared about that in the book, about when you did leave the teaching profession and how that wasn't your original plan, right, you had to adapt to some circumstances after that. But it's how to exercise these strategies without fear, the fear that many of us may feel around being truly assertive in in our professional positions or around maybe taking a chance based on what we really want to do, but we're not a hundred percent confident in the outcome. But you know, but about what would it really means to own something? Right that there's pressures and fears that come along with that, but the upside is, you know, is incalculable in some instances.

John Neral: 51:12

Yeah, I mean we never want to shame fear. You know fear. Fear is a natural response to things and when we're talking about making a career move in some way, it is absolutely understandable that we'll be fearful or nervous or trepidatious about what's going to happen. What I would offer in that is to really own where you are, get really clear about what's working well for you and what isn't, and, when you think about both, pick one thing that you want to work on, whether it's you want to double down on something that's working really well for you or you want to pick something that's not working well and implement some kind of change. Let the show up six strategies essentially be a mirror to kind of look into and simply say, okay, which one of these is going to give me an opportunity to maybe be a little bit uncomfortable but make a change that could ultimately make things better. It doesn't always mean that you have to engage with somebody on it somebody at work per se. It might mean something as simple as I'm going to make a new connection on LinkedIn. I'm going to have an informational interview with somebody, right, it doesn't have to be anything grand, but it does need to be something that at least lets you take a small step forward that starts letting you build momentum. Right, there's a wonderful sports psychologist named Dr Dean Hinnitz who works a lot with athletes in individual sports, and I remember hearing him talk one time and he said trust is repeated behavior over time. So, whether you think about playing a sport or you think about your relationship or you think about going to work, think about that. Trust is repeated behavior over time. He worked with athletes where it's like well, how do you know you can just make a shot in the moment. Well, it's trusting your abilities through your training that allow you to show up and play full out in that way. So where do you learn to trust yourself in your career path that you've repeatedly over time reinforced something that you know that works. That's going to allow you to make a more confident and competent decision. Works. That's going to allow you to make a more confident and competent decision. We're always going to be scared, right, it's just a matter to what degree are we willing to really lean into or embrace that kind of fear, because career transitions can be very fearful. Right, there's no guarantee.

John Neral: 53:55

With 48 states right now who have at-will employment, you can be let go at any time for any reason. There's no guarantee. With 48 states right now who have at-will employment, you can be let go at any time for any reason. There's no guarantee. There's no certainty. What is certain is that you know how you're going to show up. You know you're valuable. You know that if a company says, look, we're making cutbacks, we need to let you go. Somebody else out there is going to want you right. Somebody else out there is going to want you right. The more confident and the more you can trust in your ability, the greater you own where you are and you make some really great changes. Perfect, well listeners.

Ross Romano: 54:28

I hope you've gotten a lot out of this episode. You can find John's book Show Up on Amazon. You can also learn more on his website. We'll link to the website below. John also has a podcast, the Mid-Career GPS Podcast, where you can learn more about a lot of these ideas. Anything else you'd like listeners to check out, learn more about your work or any resources that would be helpful to them?

John Neral: 54:49

Thank you so much for all of that. I'd be thrilled if people connected with me on LinkedIn. Let me know that they heard our conversation here on the podcast and it'd be great to connect and expand our networks on LinkedIn as well. So thanks again for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Ross Romano: 55:05

Excellent. Yes, we'll put all those links below so you can check out those resources. Don't be shy. Go ahead and connect with John if you feel like that would be helpful to you and, as we've talked about in this episode, regardless of kind of where you are in your career, what some of your goals and objectives are, there's different things you might want to try to reach, whatever your next level is. So please check out those resources. Also, if you're not yet subscribed to the authority for in-depth author interviews like this one, we'll continue to bring you a variety of different perspectives every week. Or visit bpodcastnetwork to learn about all of the shows in the network. John, thanks again for being here. Ross, thank you so much.