Laura McCaffrey

Coaching

Latest Posts

Planning For Success

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As discussed last week, I’d like to talk about some skills and strategies for your career and life that will set the foundation for a successful 2019!

The first of these skills that I’d like to talk about is planning.  I’m going to share some of the tips and strategies that I use for laying out my plan so that I know what I need to tackle each and every day.  This methodology works for me, and I encourage you to give it a shot and see if it works for you too!

First, I like to do high level planning using my monthly desk calendar.  I break my planning down by terms for school, which for me is 2 months at a clip.  Use whatever span of time works for you.  For most people a month at a time would probably make sense. 

On the calendar I make note of all of the due dates for assignments and discussions for class. 

Next, I’ll put in family obligations (parties, parent-teacher nights, date nights) as well as any events for my day job that fall outside of normal working hours. 

Last I’ll put my client calls for my coaching business on the calendar.  I like to see all of the high-level items in one place. 

Next comes the weekly planning.

On a weekly basis, I’ll make a master list of everything I need to get done in the four areas of my life: school, business, work, and home. 

This is my brain dump of everything that has to get done that week. 

It’s really important to get all of those to-dos out of your head and written down somewhere that you can keep track of them. 

They take up too much valuable brain space, and they act kind of like an app running in the background.  All of the to-dos use up your battery if they’re all just hanging out in your mind.

I like to use 4X6 sticky post-its in pretty colors, one color per area (school, business, work, and home).  I keep these master lists and plan my days out using these. 

And then!  Now this part is critical…I schedule out each day down to the half hour.

Ok, at this point you’re definitely thinking I’m insane, but listen, it works. I put down all of the meetings for work, all of the commitments from my monthly calendar, and then pick out the priorities from my master lists and it all gets scheduled into the daily planner.

Literally everything goes in there.  All together.  My commute, picking up the kids from daycare, exercise, and rest all go in along with the actual time to work on each of my to-dos.  Both for the week days and the weekend.  This allows me to see, realistically, what I can get done every day.

I do my planning on paper, so the master lists get stuck on the page in my planner opposite of whatever day I’m on.  This way if something takes me shorter than I had expected, or I end up with a cancelled meeting I always know what to-dos are next on deck.

Once you put something on your calendar, commit to sticking with it.  This is where discipline comes in.  We’ll talk about discipline soon as well.  

And listen, of course life happens.  You’re not always going to be able to execute on your plan perfectly.  But with this methodology you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get back on track.

This may seem like a lot of work, but having a strong plan in place is the start to actually making progress on goals and giving yourself that amazing feeling of accomplishment!  Also, doing the planning work up front will help you save time down the road when you’re actually executing tasks since you don’t have to decide on the spot what you should do next.  You’ve already batched your decision making and your tasks are as good as done!

Exercising Emotional Adulthood in Your Career

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Let’s talk about emotional adulthood.  This concept was introduced to me by Brooke Castillo, and it has so many applications across all aspects of our lives.

Emotional adulthood, in general terms, means that we take complete responsibility for all of our feelings.

We have control over how we feel.

How empowering is that!?

Those feelings that we’re having, they were created by our thoughts. They were created by what we’ve decided something means. They were created by the story that we’ve told ourselves.

We can decide not to let something hurt our feelings.

This doesn’t mean that we’re passive when someone violates our boundaries or does something that we don’t like. What it does mean is that we get to choose how we react.

So how does this apply to our careers? Some of the connections are super obvious. Something a coworker says or does has no power to make us feel bad. That piece of feedback from our boss? It can just be business and we don’t have to make it mean something about us as a person.

It goes even further than that too. It means that we don’t expect anything to be handed to us in our careers. We are responsible for figuring out what our next step should be in our careers. No one else can do this for us.

Emotional adulthood in our careers also means that we take care of our careers by actively developing and nurturing relationships, working on our core competencies, documenting our career accomplishments, and staying organized with our tasks and goals!

In the next few weeks we’ll do deeper dives into strategies for how to get each one of these areas in your career in shape so that you’re ready to kick of 2019 with a solid base!

“Constructive” Criticism

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“Well that didn’t go so well.”
“This isn’t what I wanted.”
“You’re just so…unapproachable.”

How often have you heard this kind of criticism?

As working women, we’re statistically proven to be given less concrete, actionable feedback than our male counterparts.

So what do we do when we get this kind of feedback?  How is the most constructive way to receive it?

Here are the steps to getting the most out of what starts off as a very uncomfortable situation:

First things first.  You must thank the person.

Not a sarcastic thank you, but a sincere one.  You have to take out the sting and the emotional charge.  Practice this!  It’s not easy to do.

Next, you have to get beyond the vaguely worded criticism and find the behavior that the person objected to.  By doing this, you can understand specifically what behavior you exhibited that prompted this person to criticize you.

A way that you could do this is by asking a question.  This could sound like “Could you please tell me specifically what part of my presentation didn’t go so well?”.

By asking some clarifying questions, you can get to the bottom of why this criticism was delivered and understand some actionable takeaways on behavior change that could make you even more effective.

Now, I think it’s important to note here that if the person gets defensive or can’t come up with specifics after a few layers of questioning, it’s ok for you to decide that their feedback isn’t valid!  Sometimes the reason that a person criticizes has more to do with them than you.

Not every piece of feedback demands that you change your behavior.

You get to decide, ultimately, what’s valid for you.

If you decide that the criticism is valid, best to make the most of it.

Think to yourself what you could do differently next time.

If it was your boss that criticized you, after you get the clarifying details that lets you tease out the behavior, you should commit to your boss that you will change the behavior in the future.

How you receive feedback is a critical piece of how you are perceived as a leader.  Use these opportunities to you advantage to continuously improve your own performance whenever they arise!

Success Mindset

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This week I want to talk about success mindset. I know we’re all ambitious, and we have big goals laid out for ourselves.

But sometimes, we get in our own way!

I know that I can get wrapped up in my own thinking and self-sabotage my way to not getting to my desired end point.

This is where developing a success mindset comes in. Based on what I’ve learned through research and my own coaching experiences, my thoughts are what ultimately create my results.

If the thoughts I’m thinking are crap, I’m not going to feel great about what I’m trying to do, and I’m probably not taking the action I need to get the results I want.

To get the results I want, I have to create a positive thought that’s going to drive all the other components to the end goal!

This is how I like to do this:

First, I like to find evidence in my life that I’m capable of success. This can be in any arena of life. Find something you’re proud of.

This reminds yourself that you can do hard things.

Next I think about some setbacks and obstacles that could occur on the way to achieving my goal. I write out each of these and describe how I would handle every single one of them.

Thinking about them ahead of time helps me feel really empowered, and like I’m ready to tackle the tasks ahead of me.

I use these two steps to create that positive thought about my capability to achieve any goal that I have set for myself.

And any time I catch myself thinking the negative thoughts that aren’t helpful, I just tell myself that the thought isn’t useful and purposefully replace it with a positive one. No judgement, just replace it.

Build your own confidence. Your goals are do-able. You can figure anything out.

Are You Trading Yourself For Your Career?

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Just a few short years ago, I used to joke around that being an engineer stole a little piece of my soul.  I felt that it made me hard, and slightly uncaring.

That analytical piece of my mind was always on the go, and I rarely stopped what I was doing to really feel my feelings or think about how my actions at work were impacting other people.

As women in STEM, often we get sent the message that we have to be unfeeling to be successful in the careers that we’ve chosen.

But many of us chose these careers because we care about the impact our work has on the world.  On people.

Being in STEM doesn’t require that you edit out your feelings and compassion.  All STEM asks of you is that you apply logic to solve problems.

We can be ourselves at work and still be exceptional at out jobs.  Emotional intelligence is recognized as one of the biggest predictors of success in any professional field.

Once I integrated my more emotional, intuitive side with my logical side, I found that I was even more effective in my work.

How are you editing out parts of your personality at work?  How can we begin to re-integrate those pieces?

Uncomfy Conversations

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In one of my favorite quotes from Tim Ferris, he says “A person’s success in life can be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have”.

And oh how true I have found this to be!

Early on in my career, I would try and avoid uncomfortable conversations. I felt that I should just suck it up and deal with whatever was going on.

Once I started supervising other people, I had a completely different perspective! Lots of uncomfortable conversations were needed to:

1. Communicate clearly what my expectations were

2. Give feedback (as is expected from a manager)

-and-

3. Have my people’s backs when they needed me. I had to speak up and be an advocate for the people that work for me!

Having uncomfortable conversations as a supervisor helped me, in turn, to be more ok with advocating for myself.

At this point in my career and life, I have to say that I actually enjoy having uncomfortable conversations. I know that if I’m starting to get those butterflies in my stomach I’m on the right track. I’ll only feel better, be more productive, and have better outcomes and understanding on the other side of that conversation.

So here’s what I’ve found works for me in my approach with uncomfortable conversations:

1. If I’m feeling emotionally charged, I’ll take as long as it takes to calm my mind.

2. I think about why this is important (to me personally or to the goal we’re trying to achieve).

3. I think about how to deliver my message with compassion, since the ultimate goals is to have a productive outcome, not to flatten the other person.

4. I think about what my ask is, or what my desired outcome is.

5. Then I go do it.

When I’m nervous, that’s my cue that I need to have that conversation. When it feels like there’s a lot on the line, like there’s potential for me to mess it up, that’s when I push forward because that means it’s important.

And when I’ve had that conversation, I’ve never regretted it.

What uncomfortable conversations do you need to have?