A favorite coaching client describes her job as a suckfest. “It’s not so bad,” she says in the same breath, “as long as I have two glasses of red wine every night.”
Her job is isolating. Enervating. The place where ideas go to die. It’s killing her soul, she says with a laugh, as if that’s not true. I’ve been working with her on finding a new job.
I have a theory about career success. A lot of it has to do with ability and preparation and persistence, of course. (When did you eat the marshmallow?)
And some of it has to do with luck.
I believe you can help luck find you. As I was talking about this with my client I had an image of her throwing open a window and letting in streams of bright sunlight.
And with the sunlight comes luck.
For her, opening the window translates into lots of informational interviews and telling a lot of people why they need her – not tasks that are particularly easy for her.
But if she doesn’t open the window, she gets the suckfest. Unless she’s very, very lucky.
I like the sunny window image. I’ve used it since with other clients. I’ve used it on myself this gray January:
What am I doing today to open the window?
Maximize Your Career in Your Current Organization
From a University of Washington Professional and Continuing Education webinar: Prospective clients sometimes ask me how I have the credibility to coach senior executives in industries I know nothing about. Challenging question, right? So I have a choice here: I can answer in a way that risks sounding defensive, talking about my experience and my degrees. I like to do something really unexpected instead.
I like to talk about knots.
