Pack Your Bags: A COVID19 Guide For Making Big Moves
Got summer plans? The Chicago Tribune recently asked me what professionals should consider this summer and I'll tell you what I told them: if your career is a journey, use this time to pack your bags. To be clear, I'm not challenging you to leave your job. Whether you're searching for your next great opportunity, are at the apex of your career, or are on the precipice of something major, I'm challenging you to play big this summer.
With so much of “normal life” paused, some people say that nothing’s happening in a COVID19 world. I couldn't disagree more.
I have a roster of clients who have been making big moves during this “slow time” to prove it. While others have been waiting for the “return to normal” to make the moves that matter, they've been getting intentional, getting aware, getting tactical, and resisting the urge to design their lives at the whiteboard.
Here’s a guide for how you can do the same and three tips for making the most of it:
How it works: in each section you’ll find examples and journaling questions to help you build your own Get Intentional, Get Aware, Get Tactical game plan.
Approach this guide like a buffet: you’re going to see some big questions. Just like you don’t need to sample every item on the buffet to have a great dining experience (in fact: if you sampled everything on the buffet you’d end up with a food coma instead of a lovely meal), you don’t need to answer every single journaling question to make this effective. Lean into the questions that resonate with you and simply move on from the questions that don’t.
Give yourself permission to get curious here: exploration is part of the fun. Many of us have learned a lot about ourselves in this pandemic. Ditch any notions of right and wrong, accordingly. The more curiosity and honesty you approach this exercise with, the more you’ll get out of it.
Ready to pack your bags?
Let’s jumpstart your journey to the place you want to be when this pandemic is over.
Get Intentional. As I recently shared with Tammy Dain on her Talent Tribe podcast, if this feels hard you’re not doing it wrong—you’re probably doing it just right. As the women I work with begin exploring how to get more intentional about their leadership, careers, or businesses, they often get “stuck” in one of two ways. Let’s look at those before we go any further:
The first is being overwhelmed by the overwhelm itself: like a woman I recently spoke with named “Sarah.” She was absolutely sure about what she didn’t want in her next job. With “no idea what I do want next,” she had been sticking it out in a job she hated and putting off her job search…. for three years. Exploring what she wanted had felt so overwhelming that by the time she called me, she was at a total breaking point and considering quitting her job with nothing else lined up. Don’t let the discomfort of being overwhelmed scare you away from this important work.
The second (and I’m looking at you, perfectionists) is overpolishing: as one of my personal gurus, Author & Coach Tara Mohr explains, overcomplicating and overpolishing gives us a convenient excuse to never get moving on our big goals. How do you know if you’re guilty of this? As Tara explains, “This involves adding element after element to your creation, telling yourself you just need to fix that one thing or add that one feature before you can release it. Overcomplicating and continual polishing just delays putting our work out into the world.”
I’m giving you permission to let this be hard, messy, and iterative. Here are 5 journaling questions you can ask yourself to cultivate more intentionality in your work life:
What do you really want?
What would you do in your life if money was no object?
What’s important to you?
What are your values and how do you want to live them?
Close your eyes and imagine you’re at a reception honoring your professional achievements 20 years from today: what do you want people to say about you when they toast your impact?
Get Aware. Like all undergrads at Emory University, I was required to take four semesters of physical education and wellness. When I walked into the first day of Principles of Physical Fitness (or PPF as any Emory alum will know it), I met my teacher in a warm, Southern woman named Kay Stewart. As we lined up to run our first timed mile of the semester, Kay put down her whistle to offer us one last reminder, “it’s not judgement, it’s just awareness,” she told us in her slow, Southern drawl. I can honestly tell you that mantra, “it’s not judgement, it’s just awareness,” is one of the most important things I took away from college—and now I’m sharing it with you.
As you fast-track closing the gap between “where you are today” and “where you want to be,” here are five journaling questions to make an honest assessment of your current state. I challenge you to get curious here and, just remember, it’s not judgement, it’s awareness:
Where are you judging yourself in a COVID19 world by pre-COVID metrics and expectations?
What are you learning about yourself in a COVID19 world?
What can you control right now?
What are the things you “could” do if you weren’t as focused on what you “should” do?
Where are you making choices based on the expectations of others?
Get Tactical. As you start making the moves that count, be on the lookout for two places we often hit potholes when we’re getting tactical:
Jumping the gun: when we hunger for change, it can be really tempting to “get tactical” before we do anything else. Remember “Sarah” who had put off her job hunt for three years because she wasn’t sure what she really “wanted” out of a job? When she finally decided to get moving on her job hunt, she just lobbed resumes at 5 job postings a week, for jobs she wasn’t even sure if she wanted. She wanted to “just do something” about her job search, even if that “doing” wasn’t actually effective.
Designing our life at the whiteboard: like “overpolishing” our goals, that trap we sometimes fall into when we’re getting intentional, we can also get stuck standing in front of our imagined “whiteboard.” As Tara Mohr explains, trying to map every last detail of our plan before we take any action in the real world isn’t “good planning.” It’s a type of over-planning that holds us back.
I recently finished a coaching engagement with an attorney named “Jane.” During our last session Jane reflected, “I didn’t know how powerful it could be to get visionary before I get tactical.” With an unbelievably heavy workload and ambitious goals, she had been working her whole career as a tactician who could be visionary … once in a while … when she had a spare moment to think about the big picture. As a working mom in a demanding role, those moments were pretty hard to come by.
But Jane was naturally a visionary. The kind of woman who always got [stuff] done, while she was really “good” at being tactical, it turned out that being visionary was actually Jane’s professional superpower. What Jane discovered in our coaching was that the more she slowed down to contemplate the “intentional” and “awareness” parts of the equation (or getting “visionary” to borrow her words), the more effective she was when getting tactical… instead of simply playing whack-a-mole against a never-ending to-do list and Byzantine office politics.
Don’t misunderstand: Jane will always be the type of woman who gets [stuff] done and she was still getting tactical everyday. Yet the more Jane course-corrected her tendency to “jump the gun” the more her moves mattered. The way old Jane “got things done” now looked more like box-checking than meaningful work.
Still, Jane liked order and frameworks. So to avoid the trap of getting stuck designing at the whiteboard she developed a “cheat sheet” to quickly assess her plans; enabling her to get tactical from a place of being aware and intentional (or being “visionary” to borrow her words) without falling into the other trap of getting stuck designing at the whiteboard. Now, when the new Jane “got things done” she was making more impactful moves that were advancing both her goals and her organization--something that quickly caught the attention of senior leadership.
Like Jane, once you’ve gotten more intentional about your goals and more aware about your current state, here are 5 questions to help you get tactical in a meaningful way:
What does your game plan look like?
How are you going to stay accountable to that plan?
What will you delegate, deputize, or even skip to focus on the things that matter?
Where will you give yourself permission to experiment, innovate, or create?
What are you going to say “yes” to and “no” to in your life to achieve your goals?
Stepping Away From The Whiteboard. Life isn’t easy or perfect, and neither is the process of designing what we most want out of it. So wherever you are, put down the imaginary dry-erase marker and step away from the whiteboard. As Tara Mohr explains, “When we design at the whiteboard, we feel as if we are doing diligent work, but much of that work turns out to be unproductive... the whiteboard is safe for us … because it doesn’t expose our ideas to criticism or rejection.”
With regular life “on pause” it’s more tempting than ever to stay in the safety of our whiteboards.
As you take the courageous step away from the whiteboard and get tactical—putting your ideas out there, networking with new people, socializing your goals with others—you’ll be surprised by how much you learn about yourself.
It’s Personal. How do I know this stuff works? Back in 2019 when I considered taking my coaching business, Something Major, full-time I spent a lot of time at the whiteboard: I told myself I had to have the perfect business plan before I could quit my job. I had read Tara’s book, Playing Big, and I knew that hiding out at the whiteboard was my personal kryptonite. So I challenged myself to step away, which is when this “Get Intentional, Get Aware, Get Tactical” framework was born.
Focusing more on where I could meaningfully get intentional, aware, and tactical--and less on checking every last box or planning for every scenario--I can tell you I’m living a work life I could never have dreamed up at that whiteboard.
If you’re doing it right, the process will iterate continuously. It’s a virtuous cycle of exploration, development, and advancement: getting intentional and aware primes you to become more tactical. Stepping away from the whiteboard and getting tactical likewise exposes you to “aha” moments that enhance your intentionality and awareness.
For me, as I began making moves to take my business full-time, I found that sharing my early-stage ideas with a mix of trusted advisors and new vendors gave me critical feedback on my business planning--feedback that I couldn’t have developed in the solitary confinement of my imaginary whiteboard. Those conversations gave me “aha” moments about how I could be more intentional about my personal goals for the business and more aware of opportunities I hadn’t even thought about. If my life was a cartoon you could see the lightbulb going off, which only made me more effective when getting tactical on the next stage of my business plan or item on my pre-launch to-do list.
So join me in living your best work life: where are you longing to be and are you willing to do the work to get there?
This guide isn’t for people who want shortcuts. It’s for people who are ready to think big, play big, and make big moves. If you’re doing it right it will be hard, messy, and transformative. So pack your bags and get in touch: I can’t wait to hear about where you are headed.
Randi Braun is a coach, consultant, speaker, and the Founder of Something Major. Get in touch with Randi via email or social (below). Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.