Career Stewardship with Michael Melcher

In this episode, we interview Soraya Darabi, general partner and co-founder of the venture-capital firm, TMV. We learn about how one ends up as a VC when you're from a family that never read the business section of the New York Times, the value of doing a ton of internships when young, and what it's like to work in an industry that has a lot of people born on third base who think they hit a triple. We reflect on how important relationships are for success in the tech-investment world, and also how others can denigrate your relational assets even as they are desperately trying to access them. We also learn that it can be fun, even electrifying, to be different and not like the others and that there's a lot to be said for loving the subject matter you're working in. A super-interesting episode!

How many bad, boring or ineffectual meetings have you attended this week? How many bad meetings do you expect to attend in your lifetime? It doesn't have to be this way. It's possible to have good meetings and if you know how to make them happen, your career will benefit. The question is: Do you have the courage to make this happen?

In this episode, we speak with coach and organizational psychologist Dennis Adsit about how to triumph over bad-meeting culture. We start with the interesting insight that if everyone tends to experience the same thing there is probably a systemic problem at play. We review best practices, talk about the responsibilities of meeting organizers, note that "facilitator" is a role and not a person, and discuss how you can make meetings better, even if you're just an attendee. We make the point that "inclusion" and "going to lots of meetings" are not the same concept, and how one of the most liberating things you can do for someone is to tell them they don't need to be at the meeting.

Age doesn't mean what it used to. The current workplace contains as many as five generations. It's not uncommon to work alongside people who may be the age of your grandparents – or the age of your grandchildren. It used to be that you would move from being middle-aged to old, but now we have a whole new stage of life called "Middle Adulthood" – the period of life from 50 to 70+ when people are still very much engaged in the workplace and in living. In this episode, we speak with Marci Alboher, a writer and expert on the intergenerational workplace. We learn about the idea of "stage not age," examine our preconceptions on what we thought aging would feel like, and look at the various ways that we self-segregate by age, even when it's not good for us. We also ask a key question: are you just a one-channel communicator?

Do you feel uncomfortable with self-promotion? Join the club. Lots of people have hesitations, discomforts, or hang-ups about American-style career self-promotion. Yet talking about yourself, your capabilities, and your interests are not optional. It's a requirement of career stewardship. In this episode, Michael is joined again by his colleague, Leslie Hom. They talk about the particular cultural choices of "American-style self-promotion" (and how shows up quite distinctly in the Netflix show, "Emily in Paris"), discuss why it doesn't come naturally to everyone, and analyze some of the specific reasons we can get skeeved out by talking about ourselves. And then they offer some suggestions about what you can do to feel and get better at this.

Season 2 of the Career Stewardship podcast kicks off with a bang. In Episode 21, we introduce a new, occasionally recurring feature: coaching realness. Michael has a coaching conversation with Liz, a 31-year old who is at a professional crossroads, and the convo is real, unscripted and human. Among other questions, Michael and Liz examine what she's passionate about vs. what she knows, how to deal with family opinions and pressure regarding career options, and how a big new relationship does or doesn't fit into career planning.

Season 2 of Career Stewardship starts on January 6! In the meantime, here's one of Michael's favorite episodes from "Meanwhile." He speaks with noted author, teacher, citizen of the world, and now writer on the HBO series "Calm," Faith Adiele, who also happens to be his close friend of 30+ years. Faith helps to examine what we mean by creativity, how we can misconstrue it and recover it, and what it means to express our creativity – whether in our day job or elsewhere else. Plus she has a really cool exercise you can do. A funny and informative conversation.

We're busy preparing Season 2 of Career Stewardship! In the meantime, here is a bonus episode from Michael's other podcast, "Meanwhile." In this episode, Michael speaks with coaching colleague Hanna Hart about receiving feedback – why it's so important and why it can be so hard! They offer tips on how to manage yourself in the process, how to make the best of challenging feedback, and how to make feedback from any source something that helps propel you forward.

"We want to hear from people who know things. And they are a lot of different ways of knowing." - Katie Orenstein

In this episode, we speak with Katie Orenstein, founder, and CEO of the hugely influential organization, The OpEd Project. The goals of the OpEd Project are to change minds and change the world, in part by helping underrepresented voices find their platforms. In this interview, we discuss how stories are told, who tells them, and what happens when previously unheard voices take center stage. We talk about how telling your story strengthens not just your voice but also your personal agency. And we examine what it means to step forward if you have been working two, three, or four additional "shifts" in addition to your day job.

If you really want to grow in your career, it's going to take more than buying a book of tips from an airport bookstore. You need to examine your inner landscape, ask yourself what needs to change, and anticipate what's going to be hard about that change. In this episode, we speak with Pam McLean, the CEO of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, which is where Michael got his own coaching training back in the day. Pam and Michael talk about what it means to "go out onto the balcony," explain the concept of "the self as coach" and offer some guidelines for coaching yourself. We learn how coaching is simultaneously a conversation, a relationship and a space and why reflection becomes ever more important as you get older.

What do you do if what you want doesn't square with the dreams your parents have for you? This is a common problem – and it's even more intense when you are first-generation, the golden child, and the standard-bearer for an entire extended family or even community. What happens when you exchange what others see as a sure thing for something that doesn't check off as many boxes of "making it?" Do you dare not to turn in that winning lottery ticket? In this episode, we talk with Lauren Moses, a coach who is the Director of Management Leadership for Tomorrow. Lauren is an expert on this topic and also someone who has made this journey herself. We talk about how you manage the pressures to live up to the expectations of others who don't actually have your life and how you make the shift into work that actually fits your own skills and passions. An episode that is equal parts practical and poignant. Not to be missed!