The Career Edge™

Mentors are a great source of guidance and advice on navigating our careers to realize our goals. They are generous with their time to share their experiences and lessons to help us accelerate our growth and avoid missteps. These exceptional connections start slowly and blossom into valued, long-term relationships. 

Leslie talks with Scott Montgomery on this topic. They discuss the seek-out versus attract mentor approach, the mentee's and mentor's responsibilities, and the benefits they've experienced, thanks to their mentors

After just buying her first home with her new husband, Leslie, Bright & Wize host and Brize Founder, was laid off. With a higher mortgage on top of car payments and other financial responsibilities, to say the stress and anxiety she was experiencing was extreme is an understatement.

But thanks to a commitment to her career growth and development, Leslie was able to land a new job within just about a month. You never know where a focus on career wellness will lead, but it is always worth the investment. 

Listen to hear how Leslie’s investment quickly led to an unexpected career opportunity, further supporting her goal of learning as much as possible about other functional areas.

It contributes to the great job performance opinion divide.

It is not a new phenomenon, but its reasons are evolving. There is a great job performance opinion divide. Many individuals can overestimate how well they are performing at work. They may believe they are producing superior quality, but their manager disagrees. This Bright & Wize podcast episode explores why many of us think we're knocking it out of the park, on top of our game, or accomplishing great things when our manager or boss has a different opinion.

Professional athletes have performance coaches. So should corporate professionals. Coaches guide a self-discovery process, helping us understand how we show up for work and growth opportunities that lead to stronger job performance with less stress and anxiety. 

In this Bright & Wize episode, Scott Montgomery joins Leslie again to share how career performance coaches significantly changed their careers and led to their passion for helping others experience the same benefits.

As they start, Scott clarifies the difference between a coach, mentor, and advisor. They then go on to discuss the benefits and some pitfalls of each.

Talking about pain and healing in the workplace may seem out-of-place. But that is the point, to shift our thinking about how we think about our pain (stress, anxiety, hurt) at work to clarify how we can address and manage it.

 In this episode, Dani Doucette, Modern Healing Artist at Healeology, joins Leslie to talk about pain and healing in the workplace. Dani shares his views on this unconventional but highly effective approach to work. 

The evolution of how we show up for work has transitioned from showing no emotions to the opportunity to bring our whole selves. When we do, we demonstrate vulnerability, which is positive. But it also brings the chance of feeling hurt, aggrieved, or harmed.

In this episode, you’ll hear how healing, pain, and forgiveness lead to greater individual and organizational productivity. And with that higher quality output comes lower work-related stress and anxiety.

What you’ll hear:

• How to categorize pain (stress, anxiety, hurt, etc.)
• How to identify the true source of pain 
• How to correct misunderstandings

Scott Montgomery, Chief Customer Officer at Worldgate, certified Leadership Coach, and author of a new book, How Did You Get Here? Lessons of Unconventional Success joins Leslie again to discuss how setting goals contribute to attaining our personal definition of success and the need to establish positive habits to support their achievement.

Have you heard about the new trend at work, quiet quitting? If you are not up to date on this latest viral trend, quiet quitting is not about leaving a job but a process of starting to do the minimum amount of work possible while keeping a job.

Like most human-related topics, this one is complicated and can have long-term negative consequences if we do not carefully consider why we might opt to take this approach to work. 

We need to remember that Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

In this episode, Leslie explores the longer-term impacts of deciding to practice quiet quitting. She also shares a personal story about how to reframe the "Above and Beyond" mentality, which led her to accept a job with an almost 50% pay cut.

Now that we know The Formula For Providing Value at work, it is time to dissect what each means. Pamela Coleman-Davis does just that in this episode.

We all want to understand how to measure our value at work. Pamela Coleman-Davis provides guidance on how to self-evaluate our contributions and actions to increase the value we provide to our organization.

If you want to Get A Head at Work  you need to provide value to your organization. Individuals who do so are seen as essential or indispensable. But to be seen as valuable does not mean:

• Doing our Job Description Responsibilities
• Reacting to Requests 
• Being Busy, Doing Stuff
• Attending Meetings

At least not in the way we typically think of these actions.

The formula for providing value is:

Knowledge + How We Work + How We Relate

Pamela Coleman-Davis joins Leslie again to explain what this all means and how we can measure ourselves throughout 3-episodes. In this episode, Leslie outlines the formula components and skills contributing to each.