Push the boat out

April 26, 2020April 26, 2020Leave a comment

Words and image by me (Fiona)
Words based on an interview with Johnathan

Johnathan is a serial ‘step out of your comfort zoner’, but shared with me one of his 9 career transitions!

He was working as a recruiter: “I’d recently removed from New Zealand to Australia. So I was very fortunate enough to come over with a job when we moved here. I was working in in recruitment but my heart wasn’t really in it, I was getting frustrated with how recruitment worked. But one night I thought I know what a good CV and a good LinkedIn profile and I know what a bad one looks like. No one’s actually telling the candidates this we’re just rejecting, rejecting, rejecting. We’re not actually saying ‘hey, this is what you are doing wrong’, there was nobody providing sort of feedback. I felt that everyone was working for the client as a recruitment consultant, but no one was working for the candidate.

“And so I had a like an epiphany moment as I was sitting on the couch off to the shower and I thought, I’m going to try something tomorrow and I’m going to push this boat out as far as I can before it sinks.”

Johnathan ran with his epiphany immediately, talking ‘the mother of all epic sickies’ the very next day and calling a local school that taught Microsoft technical education. He was able to secure a meeting with the head of the school for that afternoon “I said, ‘hey, look, I’m a career coach. And I specialise in helping people build their technical careers. I’d love to come in and talk to your students, if I can, about how to set themselves up for success.’ “

“He said to me, ‘Well, this sounds like a really good idea. When can you come in and talk to one of my classes and share these tips?’ And I say, well, as luck would have it, I have some time available this afternoon!”

Once there Johnathan told the head of the school about his background and his idea – and found himself in front of the students that same visit!

“The guy said to me, ‘this sounds amazing. Tell you what, I’ve got a class running right now. Do you want to jump in right now and just have a bit of a chat to these students?’”

Despite having nothing prepared, Johnathan continued to push that boat out and spoke to the students for an hour and a half!

“I walked out of there really, really invigorated because I kind of reconnected with my passion. So the interesting thing is that he said to me, at the end of it, ‘look, that was fantastic. When can you come in again, we’d like you to develop a programme.’ And I thought to myself, ‘okay, look, I’ll come back to you on that one’ – because I knew I had to go back to work the next day.

“I was so far outside my comfort zone, but I was being kind of propelled by this energy in this interview. And this, this wow feeling. And at the same time I was also had that voice in the back of my head going, What the hell are you doing?”

This huge day led eventually to the business Jonathan now runs.

Johnathan has some great advice for people thinking about stepping out of their comfort zone “One thing that I teach people is reframing the comfort zone or reframing the tasks that you want to accomplish. We’ll call it an experiment, which means if you think about your career, and it’s on a long sort of line, why don’t we take a small part of where you’re sitting at right now, and let’s just extract it out. Let’s find something that you can do. That is not going to impact in your career. If it doesn’t work, we’ll try another approach. So this is not the be all and end all of your whole entire life. But most times we put in a good framework and we set the experiment up for success.”

Johnathan had other great techniques for stepping out of your comfort zone, but instead I am going to share with you his final words – you can always contact Johnathan to find out more!

“Sometimes getting outside your comfort zone means confronting yourself and your professional self in a mirror and going, what am I? Where do I want to go? How do I need to position myself to get there? How do I understand the full range of what who I am and what I do and the value that I bring to an organisation?

“So part of getting out of your comfort zone means going on a journey of figuring out and finding out who and what you are. And that can be an incredibly rewarding experience and one that can really build and foster a greater sense of self confidence in people. So getting outside of your comfort zone can produce an enormous amount of reward, career acceleration, and purpose and fulfilment.”

Thank you so much Johnathan!

About Johnathan:

Johnathan is a Career Consultant who specialises in Professional Identity and Personal Brand Management. Using a structured method, he enables his clients to de-clutter their heads so they can gain a greater understanding of who and what they are, their capabilities and most importantly what makes them valuable. He also helps them increase their professional self-awareness so that they can move their careers forward with greater confidence and clarity of direction. Johnathan typically works with professionals at mid-career phase (Gen-X), to define their professional identity and then build a powerful Personal Brand to help them re-energise their careers and attract exciting opportunities. You can read more at johnmaltby.com. au or connect with him on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnathanmaltby/

Support is everything

April 21, 2020Leave a comment

Akansha came from a “bubble of not knowing how to do things on my own” to move to Australia to complete her Masters!

Akansha had never stayed anywhere without her immediate family prior to making this momentous decision.

“In my mind for first couple of weeks it kept feeling as if I was on a on a sleepover with the people [new roommates] and it felt like I was on a long holiday.

“And after a while, once uni started, that’s when it just all came out at once like ‘oh my god, I miss everyone.’”

Everything was new – from grocery shopping to living with strangers. That was mixed with studying and having to earn money to live on. The smallest thing was an adjustment – learning that ‘ta’ meant thank you not good bye for example! The stress was overwhelming, and for the first time since she was born Akansha found herself in hospital. This added to her financial stress. To top it all off, she is working on getting her permanent residency to be able to stay in Australia. The process is very expensive and lot of jobs demand PR which is career limiting.

So, with all the above – plus regular racism – why would Akansha persevere?

“First of all, I had taken this decision that I wanted to experience what it is living outside of home and in a new country altogether. That kept me going.

“There’s always light at the tunnel and this is what my mum told me. My parents have been biggest support for me.”

Akansha’s parents continuously reminded her of her achievements – passing exams despite being hospitalised, getting her internship at Telstra – and also that she just had to keep at it.

Her sister also moved to Australia which helps a lot!

When I asked Akansha if there were benefits from stepping out of her comfort zone her whole face lit up with joy and pride! “I have grown in last three years so much that I did not in last 20 years of being India. I have learned finances, time management skills, and life experiences. I feel mature.

“From the time I stepped in Australia to the time right now I have grown mentally. And it doesn’t mean that there are not many challenges that keep me thinking and trying to get better. My attitude has changed. The way I look at things or the problems. I’m not saying it’s perfect all the time. Absolutely not. But definitely when I compare myself to what I was like in 2017 to what I am like in 2020… I guess I feel like I’m not a child. “

The advice Akansha has for people considering stepping out of their comfort zone is to just go for it. If you over think it you will see all the issues, if you focus on your end goal you will resolve those hurdles as you go “I have to paint that thing. And if you don’t have brushes, that’s the problem. And then you keep thinking ‘I don’t have brushes, I don’t have brushes.’ But if you if you think ‘yes, I will paint’ then you will go and buy brushes!”

Akansha’s last words were to create a support group and then include them in your celebrations! “I celebrate every year, so in February I was celebrating 3 years in Australia, and I had a celebratory dinner”

Thank you Akansha for sharing your story!

Just pick up the toothpick!

April 5, 2020April 5, 2020Leave a comment

Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash
Words by me (Fiona) based on an interview with Sarah

Sarah agreed to be interviewed as she is trying to say yes as much as possible, she has found that stepping out of her comfort zone encourages her to do it more often.

We spoke specifically about Sarah learning Taekwondo. A few years ago Sarah was challenged by her coach to “do something that I wasn’t comfortable with doing”. Sarah is an outgoing person and often pushes herself, but she “tend[s] to do it in an area that I’m still quite knowledgeable in or experienced in or doesn’t fill me with too much fear”.

So at around 40 Sarah started learning Taekwondo. It was not just out of her comfort zone to learn something new, “I’ve never had really had a hobby, never really committed to anything that consistently I am entirely not sporty. I have a terrible memory and I’m not particularly coordinated.”

Sarah even found that there was a challenge within her challenge. “One of the biggest challenges I had was as part of doing Taekwondo. You shout to help signal when something’s completed, or when you hit someone if you’re sparring. And then despite being very vocal, and despite being very comfortable with being loud and singing to have quite a strong voice, I actually found that for a good six to eight weeks of me doing Taekwondo, I couldn’t do the shouting.”

When Sarah took on her coaches challenge, she didn’t even consider the benefits of doing so, she just accepted the challenge. But on reflection there were definitely upsides. Learning taekwondo had its own perks – fitness, improved coordination, an hour where work is not even considered, and meeting new people are some of those – but there were also benefits that were outside of those. For Sarah she learned that the initial discomfort doesn’t last very long, and you might get something fun from the experience! “And I think this stepping out of the comfort zone just made me realise that you know you never too old to do it either. So you are never too old to try a new career, try a new sport, pick up something new”

I asked Sarah (surprise!) about advice for someone else considering stepping out of their comfort zone “The same advice I got given, which was just pick up the toothpick. My coach taught me a game… where you picking up toothpicks, and get little bits of feedback every time until you pick up the correct toothpick. And when kids play the game, they just play it really quickly. And they just take the feedback and they just respond very quickly. But the older we get, we have more fear and there’s more embarrassment that stops us from doing things like stepping out of your comfort zone or trying new experiences or new jobs or new careers or whatever it is that you’re doing. And she has constantly said to me, just pick up the toothpick, just pick up the toothpick and I, probably on a weekly basis, think to myself just pick up the toothpick, Sarah, just have a go. And if it doesn’t work out, you don’t like it or you find that you’re not particularly good at it but you love it, then you’ve got more knowledge about yourself than you did before. So my advice would be the same that she gave me which was pick up the toothpick and you might get something great come out.”

Thank you, Sarah!