“I can’t help but wonder what he’ll do once he isn’t working here anymore. This place seems to be his whole life; what happens when it isn’t?”

I bet you know him. He comes to work early and stays late.  He’s known as a company man. He’s dedicated, loyal, with a work ethic that challenges the most diligent. His only fear is failing health even though he’s never had a sick day. (He’s never had a day that he stayed out sick. He’s had several sick days.)

His children have grown up without him. He tries not to think about that. They speak of him with respect but without warmth. They don’t really know him. They ask their mother if she does.

“No,” she says, “not really. But he’s always been a provider, and he’s respectful.” She says it could have been worse. She’s known of worse. She’ll take what she gets. What good would it do not to?

He’s starting to think about retiring. Not that he wants to, but he’s starting to lose his edge. He’s slower than he was, more forgetful, less enthusiastic. It takes energy to be enthusiastic. He’d rather save his energy for the nights that he works late, even if he no longer has to, or wants to.

Retirement. The word makes him tired. There’s nothing that he wants to do in retirement but maybe sleep. But he gets to sleep on weekends and still wakes up early. What does that leave? A lot of nothing. And nobody to do it with. His kids are grown and haven’t talked to him about anything important in years. Maybe never. They’re nice kids. Good kids. Kids with their own kids. But they all stay away.

His wife’s been a good sport. A good mother. She’s never demanded much. She’s stayed loyal. But they don’t have anything to talk about. What does he care about her garden or her garden club or her garden club friends? He’s never met her friends. At least he doesn’t remember meeting them. Maybe he did once, at one of the kid’s weddings. He doesn’t remember.

Volunteer. Someone at work told him that he would make a good volunteer. He doesn’t want to be some old coot who’s taking care of other old coots. That’s for somebody else.

What is he going to do when no one at work wants him anymore? He’ll have to be. And he doesn’t know how to just “be”.

If this all sounds like I’ve been watching you, I have. And I can tell you, you’re not alone, but there’s not much comfort in that, is there? The good news is, you still have time to figure this one out. Use your time wisely.

Where should you start?

Your family. Reconnect now. You want them to welcome you home. You want to have a place with them,  and a part to play. You want to be as vital to them as they are to you. You’ll want to be a wise listener; an empowering husband and father. You’ll want to learn about their life’s lessons, their struggles, and their successes.

Take your time and stay the course. It won’t happen overnight. You worked your way out of their lives, you’ll have to earn your way back, one day at a time.

Your community. Take your time and learn where you can contribute most. When you combine who you are, with what you do, and where that combination is needed most, you will have a match that gives more to each than either will gain alone.

Your mind and your soul. When is the last time you read a book for no reason other than it told a great story? If it’s been a long time (or you’ve never been a reader) you’re in for quite a surprise. There’s a world of information waiting for you.  Turn off the computer and experience learning where other people go to learn. Go to the library, go back to school,  go to a play, go to concert, go to a parade.

Take care of  your heart, your head and your feet. If you’ve avoided check-ups rather than have doctors tell you to slow down, check-in. Tell them you’re ready to listen. And if they say it’s OK, lace up your walking shoes and head outside. Go to the park because it’s there. Walk alongside babies in strollers, and dogs on leashes. Wave at children on swings and families on cookouts.

There’s an extraordinary world out there just waiting for your visit. But don’t wait until you retire.

You have time to figure it out, if you’ll start right now.

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Yes! You may use this article in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Joyce Richman (www.richmanresources.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts conducted seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.

In the last few weeks I’ve had questions from four people, each from a different part of the country, all having an identical complaint: No one  is willing to say you’re in trouble until they’re ready to fire you.

Four people are on the termination bubble: A senior vice president of a heavy machinery manufacturer; a manager of a retail outlet; a marketing director of a technology company; the head of housekeeping for a large hotel chain. Two men and two women. Too little, too late and all four know it.

What are their stories?

The Senior VP is told that he’s rude, arrogant, abusive, and dictatorial. He has sixty days to turn himself around or he’s history. How long has he been rude, arrogant, and all the rest? Since he joined the company, right out of college, 22 years ago. What are his chances of redemption? Slim to none.

The Manager of a retail outlet: loud, boorish, egotistical, and blames others for his mistakes. He makes a lot of mistakes. He has 30 days to take corrective action or he will be terminated. How long has he been acting this way? Since he joined the company five years ago. Can he turn himself around in time? Probably not.

The Director of Technology: Brilliant, temperamental, impatient, intolerant. The company has just informed her that her entire department has petitioned that she be terminated. She has thirty days to make her case and prove them wrong. It’s taken her 15 days to feel sane enough to even think about it. What’s the likelihood of success? Not a snowball’s chance.

The Head of Housekeeping for a major hotel chain: A perfectionist, demeaning to her subordinates, discriminates in hiring practices, micro manages. Her manner was tolerated until it was witnessed by an influential patron who insisted she be terminated. The hotel has agreed to either transfer, demote, or let her resign. They have allowed the employee to choose her preferred option. She has an attorney and is threatening to sue. Chances she’ll land on her feet? Wobbly.

Two of the four have received superior ratings when given written performance reviews. One never received a review but has received promotions and significant salary increases. The fourth of four is a close relative of the company’s president who recently lost a takeover bid and has been made “redundant”. No one is flying cover for #4 anymore.

Why don’t their bosses tell them how bad it is before it gets this bad? You know the answer. Most people don’t want to argue. They’d rather sidestep the issue and wait for the problem to resolve itself, even if they know it won’t.

Not everyone avoids the inevitable. They just avoid the particularly thorny problems: employees who are out of line and are highly creative and  productive; employees who behave inappropriately and make a lot of money for the company.

Most problem makers don’t know why their colleagues are so put off by them. They don’t know what they are supposed to do in place of what they’re doing and why they ought to bother.

In their words:

“Sure, I’ve been told that I threaten people. I assume that means I’m smarter than they are. I am. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’ve been told to change my attitude. Change it to what?”

“People try to dumb me down to fit into this place. Well, I call ‘em like I see ‘em and I’m the only person who has the courage to do it!”

If you want people to act and believe as you do in order to fit in, they must have a compelling reason to change from who they are to a copy of someone else, particularly if they see themselves as successful.

They need to know how their behavior gets in the way of their own success; why they should change behaviors if others aren’t going to; and where the big pay off is going to come from if they do.

They need to know that whoever was protecting them isn’t protecting them anymore.

What can you tell them besides “you’re fired!” or “do it because I said so!”?

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Yes! You may use this article by Executive and Career Coach, Joyce Richman, in your blog, article in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Joyce Richman (www.richmanresources.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since she started her own practice in 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.

If you’ve been looking hard, and haven’t found a job worth cheering about, it’s time to return to job search basics. But before you dig in, look around and see where you are:

Are you sending out dozens of resumes and getting no responses? Are you toying with giving them out at basketball games? Have you tried billboards and carpet-bombing?

When is the last time you wrote an original cover letter? Are you still mailing that worn out one-size-fits-all  you used when you graduated college?

Are you sleeping in longer and staying out later? Remember, if an aggressive search doesn’t cut it, try a passive approach. Dream about it.

Are you sleeping in longer and never leaving home? Never meeting people will lead to never getting a job. If that ‘s what you want, you are right on track.

Are you finding reasons to not accept very acceptable offers?

After you’re out of work for awhile, you can get squeamish about taking a job that looks challenging. Take a pass on all of them.

Are you seriously considering positions that lack challenge but provide temporary shelter?  That’s the old “Please Under-Employ Me” story: take what’s so safe you’re bound to be sorry.  Don’t go there unless you absolutely have to.

Are you talking yourself into jobs that you and three tackles couldn’t manage on a good day? That’s the “Of Course I Failed, Who Wouldn’t?” game.  Don’t go there either.

The longer you look, without success, the more likely you’re backing yourself into a cave of your own making. That cave can get mighty comfortable, particularly if you like sitting around in a bathrobe, sipping coffee, and surfing the ‘net.

So what’s a person to do? Well, it begins with mind set. Think failure, and you will. Think success and you’re off to a good start.

The trip from thinking success and becoming successful takes planful action: getting out of your head and out of your cave and into the world where it is riskier. Taking risks results in either winning or losing. Minimize your losses by strategizing a plan that moves you forward.  Maximize your wins by getting advice from people who know and have a track record to prove it.

About your resume: Whether you go to a pro or write it yourself, be sure to test it out on folks who hire and are successful at it.  You’re bound to know them: a trusted colleague, a friend, and a neighbor. Ask: “What am I missing?” and  “How can I improve it?”

About your presentation: Go to a career coach. Test your interviewing and negotiating style, skills and techniques. Role play, and have the courage to let go of what doesn’t work by replacing it with something that does.

About your networking: Learn to network effectively and purposefully. Identify successful people you know personally, and whose opinions you trust. Tell them what you want to pursue and why. Describe ways that you can make a difference. Ask how they have managed their careers. Ask what they’ve done that’s worked, as well as what hasn’t. Learn from their experience. Ask for suggestions in marketing yourself and your work.  Listen to what they say.  Confirm your understanding of what they are telling you. If their ideas take you down a path you don’t want to go; ask them to elaborate. Take your time before disagreeing (which can end an otherwise productive opportunity). You may benefit from a shift in your thinking.

About your interviewing: Know your strengths and what you bring to their table before you walk through the employer’s door. Be able to say what you mean, convincingly. Ask good questions, probe for deeper meaning, and know what to do with what you hear.

If you want the job, ask for it. And work hard to prove that they made the right decision when they hired you.

* * * *

Yes! You may use this article by Executive and Career Coach, Joyce Richman, in your blog, article in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Joyce Richman (www.richmanresources.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since she started her own practice in 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.

Are you into lists? How about Ten Gonna Getchas for Managers:

You’re always the boss. You’re an “in charge kind of person.”  Everyone comes to you with work site problems because you can fix anything. You wear your tool belt at work, home, and in public gatherings. No matter who has the problem, you have the answer.

What can go wrong? Your colleagues pass their work off to you and then get offended when you do it.

You’re everyone’s shrink. You’re the warmest, most comforting listener in the business. Your eyes mist over as you hear about your employees’ worries, frustrations, hopes and desires. You really, really, really want to be there for them.

What can go wrong? You can’t get a lick of work done for all that listening. If the situation isn’t an emergency, and it seldom is, defer the conversation to a more suitable time and place. And don’t be surprised or disappointed when that needy employee finds someone else to talk to.

You just can’t say, “No!” You have an endless capacity to help others. You also have an endless need to be approved of by others. Instead of saying “no”, you answer with the emotional equivalent of “pile it on, I’m not dead yet.”

What can go wrong? You can get buried in all the projects that others are happily deferring to you. You’re still at work long after they’ve gone home. Bottom line: You resent the very thing you have given them permission to do.

You don’t ask questions. You figure that if you act smart, and don’t ask questions, no one will know what you don’t know. And you don’t know a lot.

What can go wrong? Everything. You become so concerned that someone will ask you a question that you begin to withdraw and then isolate yourself from others. That’s a sure fired way to get more attention than you want or need.

You can’t be bothered. You are busy. You are doing seriously important things. You cannot be bothered with other people’s problems.

What can go wrong? Their problems are going to be your problems. Blindside is written all over this one. If you don’t know what the problems are, you won’t know what to do, delegate or defer.

“I’m smarter than you are”. Yes. You are the smartest person walking around. Ask you anything and you know the answer. And if you don’t, you’ll make something up.

What can go wrong? No one is listening.

“Do it for me, please.” You like to play it safe. You learned a long time ago that acting helpless and deferring to others gets them to make the decisions you don’t want to make. No accountability, no blame.

What can go wrong? It’s getting harder to duck responsibility. Once you’re found out, you’re probably going to be out… of a job.

“That’s not my job.” This is my job. That’s your job. Don’t touch my job with your job ‘cause you’ll make a mess of my job.  I get paid to do my job. I don’t get paid to do your job. What is your job? Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.

What can go wrong? What part of TEAM don’t you understand?

You’re all style and no substance. Yep, that’s all you. You’ve got the clothes, the moves, the gift of gab. You can talk with anybody about anything as long as it has a punchline, isn’t too deep and you don’t have to do anything about it.

What can go wrong? Schmoozing and snoozing went out with 3 piece suits, 3 martini lunches and  40 hour workweeks. You’re all style? Go be a model.

You’re all substance and no style. You work hard and keep your head down. You’re directed, dedicated, and determined. You have no time for small talk, meetings, questions, or discussion and easily dismiss those who do.

What can go wrong? Your employees expect more from you than you’re willing to give. They need your insight and involvement in their professional development. Without that, they’ll leave the company for a manager whose style acknowledges their strengths as well as their deficiencies and provides opportunities to improve both.

* * * *

Yes! You may use this article by Executive and Career Coach, Joyce Richman, in your blog, article in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Joyce Richman (www.richmanresources.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since she started her own practice in 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.

Reinvention, entrepreneurial maturity, communication, and community are words to pay attention to in the coming year. Here’s why:

Whether you’re Linsay Lohan, Toyota or Bank of America, you’re reinventing, changing, upgrading yourself and your company to get ahead and stay ahead of the competition.

No matter how complex or simple the switch, your goal is to drive change instead of being driven by it. If you believe there’s an urgent need, you’ll establish a coalition of groups responsible for making it happen, specifically, the visionaries, strategists and implementers. For that coalition to be effective, you’ll need to communicate, again and again, the “why, what, how and how come” of the change effort.

Don’t ignore those who ask “Isn’t this change for change’ sake?” Recognize that they’ve had to endure unsuccessful innovative spirits in the past who insisted on throwing out the old, just because that’s what it was. These trouble shooters have grown tired of “ready, fire, aim” managers and want to be part of the solution instead part of the problem. Their input is important and their experience critical to the success of the mission. You can get them on board by including them in planning and problem solving. You can take their concerns seriously by getting in the trenches with them. Implementation from where they sit looks much different than it does at 30,000 feet.

Going back to how things were or wanting things to stay the same aren’t options. They never have been. In fact, if “necessity is the mother of invention” we’re heading for the mother of all periods of change not because we want to, but because that’s where tomorrow is.

Entrepreneurial maturity. The two words are not as contradictory as they might appear. As markets cool, venture capitalists tighten their money belts, becoming more selective in awarding their hotly pursued financing to start-ups that have the greatest probability of success.  Expect these moguls to more closely scrutinize resumes, infrastructures, and business models, looking for quantifiable winners who have not only led the charge in the past, but have proven track records for delivering on their promises.

Communicate, communicate, communicate has replaced location, location, location, as verbal triplets that bear repeating. No matter how often it’s said, most people don’t do a good job of asking questions and listening to the answers they get. Instead, they keep pounding until the answer changes or the questioner goes away.

If employees are the first casualties of mishandled communication, customers run a close second. When either group is left to figure out what they don’t understand but need to know, they not only lose their connection with the larger organization, they lose their will to connect. With brand and company loyalty at a low ebb, communication is a three-peat worth listening to.

Community. Employees are working more and want more than a paycheck in return. They want their opinions considered, they want to make a difference. The want to fit in, they want friendship and support. Simply stated, they want a sense of community. The workplace is starting to meet them halfway. It’s more casual, hierarchies are flattened, and teamwork is an expectation instead of a slogan.

There’s an old expression, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Reinvention, maturity, communication, and community speak to basic needs we all have. We want to find a connection between what the world wants and who we are, what we seek in ourselves and what we’re willing and able to give to others.

In our determination to be more than what we currently are, we’ll have to grow and give others the space and the grace to do the same. Inevitably, we’re going to make mistakes. Our success will be measured by our ability to learn from them, regroup, and move on.

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Yes! You may use this article by Executive and Career Coach, Joyce Richman, in your blog, article in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Joyce Richman (www.richmanresources.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since she started her own practice in 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.