Work and the Future

With the pandemic raging and organizations in flux, is this any time to think about a vacation? In North America in particular, we  have a mindset that taking vacations is a little bit lax and with the pandemic and its stresses that mindset is going into high gear. On top of that too, we can’t really travel right now, so it seems like the right thing to do to put off vacations. But is it the right thing? We don’t really need elaborate studies to tell us that working flat out is probably not the best way to get productivity higher. So what is the solution to that? That’s the subject of our discussion today, with our guest coming down firmly on the side of taking time away from work, whatever the state of the world.

Guest:

Rebecca Zucker

Partner, Next Step Partners

As an expert in executive coaching and career development, Rebecca has coached leaders across the globe, from high-potential managers to C-level executives. Rebecca’s clients include Amazon, Clorox, DocuSign, Dropbox, Expedia, First Republic Bank, Genentech, Google, The Irvine Foundation, Norwest Venture Partners, Nielsen, Morrison Foerster, The Skoll Foundation and Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute, among other organizations. She is a contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes.com.

Rebecca graduated as valedictorian from Stern School of Business at NYU and received her MBA from Stanford. She then worked for Goldman Sachs in New York and at Disney EMEA in Paris and Robertson Stephens. She received her coaching certification from the CTI and from Minds at Work.

Links: 

Rebecca’s twitter handle: @rszucker

Rebecca’s favorite leadership development resources at https://nextsteppartners.com/list/

The post Episode 26: Are Vacations from Work More Important than Ever? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

Spurred by social media, intergenerational warfare seems to be on the upswing, including in the workplace. And, given the conflict and the idea that generations are working against each other we can lose sight of the fact that we could potentially gain from each other unless we make a concerted effort to do so. Our guest on today’s episode aims to do just that. Charlotte Japp, the founder of  CIRKEL a platform that aims to bring people of different ages together with the aim of letting them get to know each other and bring different vantage points to their own work.

The post Episode 25: How Can We Connect the Different Generations at Work? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

In a world where civility is in short supply, is there a way to keep our workplaces civil? These days, politics often divides us, with feelings running deep, and the extra stress of the pandemic can bring tensions to the fore. Still, there are ways to keep things civil and to keep relationships between co-workers productive. Our guests today are the brains behind something called ‘The Civility Project’, and they have concrete ideas on how to do all of that, even at times when it seems like it is impossible to bridge the gap between viewpoints.

Guests:

Nolan Finley

Editorial Page Editor Detroit News 

Nolan Finley began his newspaper career as a copy boy at The Detroit News while a senior in college. After a brief stint with the Jackson Citizen Patriot, he returned to The News as a reporter, covering the administration of Mayor Coleman A. Young. He’s been the newspaper’s City Editor, Business Editor, Politics Editor and Deputy Managing Editor. In 2000, he was named Editorial Page Editor and his columns have appeared in the newspaper ever since. As he wrote in his introductory column, Finley is a product of The News and the Detroit community. He graduated from both Schoolcraft College and Wayne State University and in 2012 was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. Finley is co-host of One Detroit on Detroit Public Television.

Stephen Henderson

Stephen Henderson

Executive Editor, Bridge Detroit 

Stephen Henderson is an American journalist who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and the 2014 National Association of Black Journalists Journalist of the Year Award while writing for the Detroit Free Press. A native of Detroit, Stephen is a graduate of the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and the University of Michigan. Since 2015, he has been the host of “Detroit Today” on WDET. In 2020, he founded BridgeDetroit, where he serves as Executive Editor. He has worked for the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, the Lexington Herald-Leader and Knight Ridder. Henderson is co-host of One Detroit and host of American Black Journal on Detroit Public Television.

Links:

To learn more about the Civility Project, please see the links below

The post Episode 24: Can We Bring Civility to the Workplace? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

The gig economy gets a lot of negative press, but is it actually a bad thing? Although some think it is synonymous with income insecurity and bad management practices, in fact for many it is the way they choose to work. For professional workers who have in-demand skills, working on a gig basis rather than accepting one job can be more lucrative and give them more control of their time. For employers, using gig workers allows them the right workers to do the work they need rather than pay workers to be on staff and then assign them tasks. Good or bad though, the gig economy is here to stay and with the pandemic changing everything about the labor market, it is time to discuss what happens to it next.

Guest:

Marion McGovern

CEO, Entrepreneur, Author 

Marion McGovern is an expert in the dynamics of the independent talent market. She was the founder and CEO of M Squared Consulting, a gig economy firm before the term was even coined, and Collabrus, an employment compliance firm.  She sold both to an international conglomerate in 2005, and remained a board member through 2014.  She is the author of Thriving in the Gig Economy and A New Brand of Expertise and is a regular speaker at conferences on webcasts and the radio on the future of work. A gig economy participant herself, Marion’s primary gigs are her roles as a Corporate Director. She is the Chair of The Myers-Briggs Company, the foremost provider of organizational solutions and psychometric assessments in the world.   She is also a member of the board of The Front Porch, a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) with facilities in 3 states that provide a spectrum of services including elderly housing, skilled nursing and dementia care.  She is an Advisory Board member of LifeSciHub, a digital talent platform specializing in providing talent for drug development and clinical trials. She consults with the Alliance of CEOs, where she facilitates peer development for Bay Area CEOs.

Links:

To learn more about Marion and her books, please check out her website

Home

The post Episode 23: What is the Future of the Gig Economy? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

We are getting close to a vaccine for Covid-19 and a return to something approaching normal in the workforce. But will normal look like for companies? And how should companies plan for the post-pandemic future of work? Our guest today is Cathryn Barnard a Partner at ‘Working the Future’ which is UK based consultancy firm helping businesses with organisational future-proofing.’ She has been working with companies to talk about how they should position themselves to be ready for the world post-the pandemic, and what steps they should be taking now in terms of workforce strategies. Her insights about the future of leadership  are from the front lines and provide plenty of food for thought about what companies need to think about when it comes to developing the skills to guide increasingly distributed workforces through change and complexity.

Guest:

Cathryn Barnard 

Partner, Working the Future 

Cat is a partner and co-founder at Working the Future, a management consultancy helping business leaders both make sense of the multiple trends changing how we work and build easy-to-implement future-proofing strategies.

With a 25-year career in workforce planning, and experience of growing her own successful businesses, Cat recognises the criticality of human connection in accelerating team engagement and performance.

As work becomes increasingly underpinned by digital technology, amazing commercial opportunity emerges – blending the best of human AND technology to deliver highly customised client experiences that drive brand loyalty and enhanced success outcomes.

Links: 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/workingfuture1 Blogs about change:

https://workingthefuture.com/blog/post/93118/the-psychology-of-continuous-change

https://workingthefuture.com/blog/post/26910/the-fear-%E2%80%93-how-to-successfully-navigate-continuous-change 

The post Episode 22: How Should Companies be Preparing for the World Post-Pandemic? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

Are you afraid of unemployment or are you sure you are forever employable? As the economic outlook becomes increasingly uncertain, many people would put themselves in the first category but would certainly like to be in the second. Our guest today is Jeff Gothelf, author of ‘Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You’ and he believes you can be, by cultivating your strengths, growing your personal brand and figuring out how to monetize your expertise. For some that might mean striking out on their own, but even if  you stay in a corporate environment you can also build on your strengths and let people know what they are, in the process going at least some of the way to increasing your stature and becoming forever employable.

Guest:

Jeff Gothelf

Author, Forever Employable 

In Jeff Gothelf’s new book, Forever Employable, he applies the principles of continuous learning, improvement, experimentation and agility to professional development and career growth. Jeff shares his experience building his own consulting practice as well as providing tools and techniques to help you think through how to ensure that no matter what changes in your world you’re always confident about the next professional step.

Links:

To learn more about Jeff and his book, please see the links below

foreveremployable.com

The post Episode 21: Is There a Way to be Forever Employable? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

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Are there things that animals can tell us about how to cope wth work stress and ultimately how to work better? Our guest today is a psychotherapist with a passion for horses, and she has found a way to marry the two together. As she points out in this episode, human beings are mammals, but they are mammals who do not do a good job of being attuned to their own needs and acting on them. At  a time when many of us feel that our lives are not completely in control, it may be time to take a cue from that and see if there are ways that we can express our needs in the workplace and ultimately get to a place where we are both happier and more productive as a result.

Guest:

Beth Killough

Owner, The Circle Up Experience

Beth Killough is the owner of The Circle Up Experience, a consulting firm which provides leadership training and culture development to corporations, universities, teacher groups, first responders, and non-profit organizations. Circle up has trained thousands of leaders all over the country and has designed long-term culture programs to transform workplace relationships.

A life-long cowgirl, writer, professor, and a licensed psychotherapist, Beth has 30 years of experience working with people to awaken their innate leadership gifts so they can live and work with more authentic relationship and connection. Circle Up’s model of Natural Leadership and experiential learning with horses integrates human psychology, animal behavior, and natural systems to offer a unique approach to personal and professional development. This approach moves quickly through the rhetoric in human groups and gets to core human issues.

Beth owns Take a Chance Ranch in Morgan Hill, California where Circle Up hosts workshops. The ranch also hosts women’s events, recovery groups, weekly meditation with Dhammakaya monks, horsemanship events, and art programs. She and her human family live on the ranch an ever-growing menagerie of animals who support and participate in the Circle Up work.

Beth is a seeker and a truth-teller who brings heart and humor into her work. She is gifted at finding The One Question that needs to be asked and using her cowgirl courage to ask it.

Beth has an MA degree in Clinical Psychology from Santa Clara University and an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Arizona State University.

Links:

https://www.thecircleupexperience.com/

https://www.thecircleupexperience.com/courses/ (including online and onsite) Natural Leadership, Natural Grit: Building Resilience, and Boundary Bootcamp, as well as free downloadable Radical Self-Care Guide 

Beth’s social media links:

https://www.facebook.com/thecircleupexperience

https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-killough-992861132/

The post Episode 19: What Can Animals Tell Us About How to Work Better? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

Six months into the pandemic and with  more months to come, most workers are coping but not without difficulty. Whether it is stress about being home and isolated, or stress about going back to work and possibly getting sick, a lot of people are under strain, and there are indications that that strain could last for years after the pandemic is over. Is there a way to avoid the stress, or at least to  manage it? From asking for help when needed (not always an easy thing to do) to  dealing with the anxiety of physically going back into an office with the virus still lurking, workers today are facing challenges that would not have been dreamed of a year ago. Our guest today discusses all of it, along with strategies for companies and workers to cope as best they can both now and after the pandemic is done.

Guest:

Jo Yarker

Dr Jo Yarker

Director, Affinity Health at Work

Birkbeck, University of London

Jo is passionate about understanding what we can do to foster fulfilling, healthy and productive work, particularly under times of challenge. She is an award winning occupational psychologist, specialising work, health and well-being. Jo is a Director of Affinity Health at Work, and leads the Professional Doctorate in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London, in both roles she works in a job-share with Dr Rachel Lewis. Working with a network of leading academics, Jo’s research has been sponsored by the HSE, DWP, CIPD and the Mental Health Foundation. She is author of more than 150 articles, book chapters, research reports, guides and toolkits and presents frequently at professional and industry conferences.

Links 

To find out more about Jo’s  research: http://www.affinityhealthatwork.co.uk/our-research

A piece by Jo on transitioning back to the workplace: https://www.mentalhealthatwork.org.uk/toolkit/transitioning-back-to-work-after-lockdown/?utm_source=Mind&utm_medium=LinkedIn&utm_campaign=RTW

A piece about Managing remote work during the pandemic: https://makeadifference.media/newsletter/managing-remotely-it-is-time-to-rethink-how-we-manage-our-employees

The post Episode 18: How Can We Handle Pandemic Work Stress? appeared first on LINDA NAZARETH.

It may have been a bit of a struggle to make it work, but the pandemic has forced many companies to keep their teams intact even when they are not under the same roof.  As workers have de-camped to far-flung places, perhaps permanently, we are struggling with what the future of cities will be, and what offices will look like in future too. But there is another questions that goes with that, and it is how we should compensate people. If your team members are in different places, with different costs of living, should they be compensated differently?  Facebook says ‘yes’ but does that mean everyone else should too?

Guest:

Ian White

Founder and CEO/CTO of ChartHop

Links: 

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