While the first section of “Making a Living While Making a Difference” focused on outlining some of the numerous career options for value-driven workers, this next section is going to get to the work of discerning what work might be right for an values-minded individual.
I’ve begun reading “Part Two: The Ten-Step Program for Principled Career Development” and felt it warranted a blog-post all its own. I’ve only read the first section, but I’m already excited by what I’ve been reading! As before, what I’m sharing here are the particular snippets that got my attention. 🙂
“Making a Living While Making a Difference” by Melissa Everett
10-14-10 Step 1: Wake Up
- The leaps we need to make will only be possible when personal growth is rescued from the puritan ethic and returned to the realm of play and liberation.
- Enlightened self-interest has a lot to do with recognizing opportunities for creative work that are also opportunities to deepen, and benefit from, human connections.
- When you take interdependence seriously, competition loses its attractiveness, while negotiation and collaboration are revealed as a path of enduring strength.(emphasis added-TF)
- …some of the most potent lines of questioning for uncovering new work opportunities might be these:
- When and where have I been moved by beauty lately
- Where can I create beauty? Or preserve it, or make it available more democratically?
- Where can I ease suffering or help to eliminate its root causes?
- Waking up, above all, means noticing the richness of life around you, and realizing that you don’t have to take care of it all by yourself.
- When you come upon (news) stories that are especially moving…inspiring…wrenching…get in the habit of talking about them with someone. Ask yourself: If I were fearless and had unlimited resources, what action would this story inspire in me?
10-15-10 Step 2: Stabilize
- “So, a big step in creating more space, for me, was getting out of debt (both financially and metaphoricaly, as in : no longer mortgaging my time, health and serenity.”-Key Krecker
- But please note that bringing more balance into your life does not mean giving up on all adventure and risk. It just means choosing risks more consciously.
- Stabilizing your life means creating the conditions for long-term change in the gentlest, most coherent way possible, reducing urgency levels wherever possible and increasing your resilience.
- Let the attractive force of more interesting work and a saner life give you the courage to draw new boundaries.
- …consider what you could do with a three- to six-month Stabilization Plan, starting now.
10-17-10 Step 3: Support System
- “Build community. It will help you out a whole lot more than money when things fall apart.”-Fran Peavey, author/activist
- (Barbara Sher) She showed that, by consciously creating and utilizing a support system – relying minimally on professionals and primarily on peers who voluntarily exchange services – you can reengineer your life in keeping with your values, passion, and talents.
- “Support,” says Tova, “means getting so close to someone that the only way they can move is forward.”
- …who else wants to see the same changes I do?
- This, of course, involves building webs of relationship that include the people you don’t have so much in common with. Research…indicates that (networks) are most useful when there are several “degrees of separation” within a network.
- This brings us to the difference between utilitarian networking and community-building. The former rises and falls with your needs; the latter is sustained and sustaining.
- It is outrageous that so many of us have lost the ability to give and receive help, exuberantly and with pride. (emphasis added)
10-20-10 Step 4+5 Light of Connection + Critical Research Skills
Step 4
- Self-employment, in the highest sense, means finding or creating work that stretches you as well as satisfying you, and yields maximum benefits and minimum harm in the world.
- One way to get…into the truth of your experience is to review critical incidents in your history and consider what has motivated you in the thick of them.
- Try these questions…
- Your dream job–what is your daydream of the ideal job?
- What in your mind is a “job from hell”?
- How might you answer the question “Who am I becoming?”
- What major social and political events have had a lasting impression on you?
- What are you willing to do to have an impact?
- …I believe that what you care about is more important than what you’re good at. (emphasis added)
- What are you requirements for joy and beauty, and how will you satisfy them in your working life?
- When and where have you been moved by beauty lately?
- If you could design a fantasy workplace, furnished and decorated to make you glow whenever you walk in, how would it look?
A lot of this section was comprised of exercises and writing assignments. I’m gonna have to spend some time on those! TF
Step 5
- Becoming a bit of an information-warrior, willing and able to track down data and wrestle the meanings out of it, is also wonderfully empowering.
- “The key step in getting a grip on almost any research process is framing your questions in ordindary, simple English that is meaningful to you.”–Fred Friedman, research librarian
- when considering a company’s “green” achievements-TF…If an achievement is being touted by an organization, is that achievement required by law or by settlement of a legal claim, as many waste-cleanup and pollution-reduction measures are? Does it amount to compliance with regulations, or is it an out-front initiative?
- when researching-TF…do as much information gathering as you can be consulting nonhuman sources…nobody gets tired except you. Use meetings with people when they (the meetings) have the most distinctive benefit.
- an interview isn’t just where you try to get a “yes.” It’s where you try to get a “yes” that doesn’t launch a disastrous mismatch-for example, by discussing your honest hopes, strengths and struggles concretely with your manager-to-be; by looking at how tough dilemmas have been handled and letting those “organizational integrity” levels inform your decision about whether to take the job.
- if you open a discussion (during an interview-TF), be prepared to follow it up that shows your knowledge and mature judgment. Be prepared for success as well as barriers.
- “It is becoming increasingly fashionable to be ethical, and that’s a change in substance as well as appearance. Someone has to stand up first, but that act makes it easier for others to stand up in the future. One person can make a difference. If you find problems with an organization, tell somebody. (emphasis added-TF) Your disclosure will make it much easier for others..”-Charles Nicodemus, investigative reporter
10-28-10: Step 6: Identify the Essence
- Entrepreneurs get to choose what to call themselves.
- This seems to work best when it comes from within, authentically and easily, and when it’s held lightly. If romanticized or taken up uncritically, a sense of mission can also provide an escape hatch from the mundane but necessary day-to-day questions about how to live. It can lead to fanaticism, inflexibility, and unrealistic expectations for staying on a single track. As Rick Jarow observes, “Many people who are absolutely sure of what they want to do with their lives are clinically crazy.”
- …people who allow themselves to be led by an unfolding sense of purpose… I like this phrase, as it suggest the continuous development of a personal “mission.”–TF
- We can only pay attention and use what we know about ourselves to shape our strategies, holding onto as many elements as we can and letting go when we have to. Somehow, doing that can lead us back to new ways to make use of the experiences and commitments with which we started out.
11-10-10: Step 7: Commit Yourself
- It is a fairly rare luxury to be able to hold change at arm’s length and choose only those risks that have clear payoff.
- Unconditional commitment is not the same as addictive attachment. You can be totally committed to your work while continuing to exercise critical judgement about acceptable means for doing it.
- The spirit of healthy, Self-affirming commitment means discovering the kids of actions that let you move toward a goal with satisfaction and even joy, so that commitment to work and commitment to personal well-being coincide as often as possible.
- People who become truly caught up in making something happen often work as a volunteer and an entrepreneur at the same time.
- The bravest aspect of a commitment is often the initial decision to let it into your life. After you say ‘yes’, opportunities for action have a way of presenting themselves.
11-11-10: Step 8: Let Go of Assumptions
- “Dr. Martin Luther King did not say ‘I have a strategic plan.'”-Eric Britton
- …it is clear that the art form of this era is living with a combination of clear identity and flexible strategy. (emphasis added)
- At the root of so many battles people face in taking charge of their work is the struggle to value themselves, their intuitions, their sensibilities, and their desire to be useful, in the face of a barrage of “be realistic” messages.
- Only when we learn to hold onto the awareness of our value and vocation, can we free ourselves from the devaluing messages of the workplace where we have been considered expendable.
- “In the end it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything”-Thomas Merton
11-29-10: Step 9 Mine Your Experience
- The wizardry of crafting a worthwhile working life starts with using all the resources available to you, including your history, rough spots and all.
- Time of difficulty on the job are often times of major learning about the conditions we need in order to wrok sanely and productively, and about the ways we fail ourselves by accepting unacceptable conditions.
- Experiences that seemed like pure failure can take on a very different meaning with time.
- from poet Antonio Machado, “What will you do with this garden that has been entrusted to you?”
- She knew it was time to act, simply by directing her marketing efforts toward the clients she most wanted to help rather than waiting for business to come in the door.
- …one of the most important processes is learning to see yourself in an evolutionary sense-..
- Standard job interview guides advise you to respond to questions about your vulnerabilities in some standard ways: by describing weaknesses that will be perceived as strengths, or by deflecting the questions entirely. These are sometimes necessary strategies to fall back on. However, answers to tough questions that show courage, creativity, individuality or growth will be appreciated by some employers — including, perhaps, those you most want to work for.
11-29-10 Step 10: Be a Co-Creator
- Whatever you choose, though, you can count on its being imperfect.
- Making significant changes at work is almost never a solo act.
- Survival requires a wider set of skills than competition alone.
- “If one truly wishes to understand an organization it is much wiser to start from the premise that organizations are complex, ambiguous, and paradoxical,” from Gareth Morgan’s “Images of Organization”
- There are innumerable ways to exert a positive influence in your workplace or industry. All of these ways involve risks and unknowns. (Of course, so does passivity.) Finally, the opportunities to make a difference in an organization do not correspond in any simple way to the formal power you may have.
- Often when taking a risk doesn’t lead all the way to the hoped-for conclusion, it leads somewhere more interesting than previously imagined.
- To be a co-creator of your career means gauging risks, building a safety net, and figuring out ways to land on your feet.