Transitions, hope, and career planning

Canada is home to many who came here by choice or happenstance. When all we have at hand is a bag full of undefined goals, learning to adapt and succeed in a new culture can be a daunting process. The road sure gets bumpy. While our goals start forming at an early age, they are mostly similar to daydreams about what we want to be when we grow-up. As time goes by and we develop, surrounded by a microcosmos of familiar things, actions, and people, these goals get to reshape, be reimagined, and reinvented. Even though our macrocosm pertains to a bigger picture of the world as a whole, we are still seeing it through the specific cultural lenses we have at hand. Our culture will always define us. It is normal that we, depending on our background and our personal perceptions, will get to see a slightly different picture. Our microcosmos, which includes the customs and traditions linked to our smaller circle, our family, friends, or mentors, or even our entire family tree, will serve as the lens we use to look at the world.

Even if this is a multilayered and complex situation, we can quickly see what can happen when we move to a different demographic area while carrying this precious microcosmos on our shoulders. Those goals are now getting pulled off, they are uprooted. Restoring them requires some meticulous planning. The planning doesn’t happen. We’ve packed clothes in a suitcase and moved money into an account and we think that’s enough. As the suitcase gets really heavy, we will just push those other thoughts away. At night, when we rest, we feel this invisible load pressing heavily on our chest. The thing is, all that carefully programmed cultural background cannot be simply deleted. Our system sends desperate warnings. It reminds me of that computer warning we receive when we’re deleting something major – a big red “STOP” sign pops-up and opens a window reading “are you sure?”

In a beautifully exhilarated state of mind (normally called courage) we quickly click “yes” and dismiss the “are you sure?” question that popped up. It’s done. We’ve decided to start over. New everything. As our courage and spirit of adventure takes over, preparation is either forgotten or left behind. But this is a real world. Not only everything is new, but everything gets very real, very fast. No matter how prepared, we all know that flawless transitions are a myth. Yet again, we like that saying so much (“if you don’t get hurt, wet, hungry, and lost – you can’t call it adventure!”). And we forget how different we are. We forget that not all of us are necessarily adventurous. We forget that what makes people beautiful is their diversity. Yet in the end, it is acceptance that makes us glowing and successful. Acceptance of cultural diversity and understanding of all those different people that surround us.

Supporting young talent throughout this big transition has inspired me in ways I did not foresee. Several work scenarios and life experiences I have encountered in one or the other of the many roles I’ve taken up along the way (student, mother, homemaker, daughter, immigrant, worker, manager, coach, educator), made me reflect on the importance of using personalized approaches when trying to support those who have a cultural background that is different than mine and whom struggle to identify their career goals and reconnect with their true calling. Driven by a tool used to measure hopefulness and hope-centered competencies, the Hope-Action Inventory,[1] I’ve started to encourage international students to use self-reflection in the process of finding their career goals. Direct feedback from international students indicated that this approach has supported a better management of their own career expectations. This career development tool, called the Hope-Action inventory, is based on the following elements:[2]

  • Hopefulness
  • Self-reflection (identifying what is important to you, what you value, what skills you possess, and what you want to develop further)
  • Self-clarity (developing answers to the questions arisen from self-reflection)
  • Visioning (considering future possibilities that are desirable)
  • Goal setting and planning (identifying meaningful goals using the answers you’ve clarified)
  • Implementing (taking action)
  • Adapting (re-evaluating when there’s new information)

Reading ‘Hope-Filled Engagement’ (Amundson & Poehnell), has enriched my understanding of the powerful role hope plays along our life happenings: “We believe that people have been created to be people of hope. It may be very difficult to see hope in some lives; it may be hidden beneath layers upon layers of hopelessness laid over the years, as if they were layers of wallpaper or paint. But it is there. One just has to look at young children to see that hope is a gift given to us at birth”(p.52) [3]. If you just went through a significant change or transition, or had to swim against the current for whatever reason, it is normal to feel hopeless. Use self-reflection to return to your roots, values, dreams, and hopes, and the process will empower you to move forward and clarify certain questions. Find appropriate supports in your immediate network, talk to a coach, and take action to discuss the future possibilities you envision for yourself. Not only you can set meaningful goals, but you can do it with grace. Bristle at prejudices, buckle up, and enjoy the journey.

[1] Niles, Spencer G., Yoon, Hyung Joon, & Amundson, Norman E. The Hope-Action Inventory. Online assessment, ©2017, hopecenteredcareer.com/hai/login.php

[2] Niles, S. G., Amundson, N., & Neault, R. Career flow: A Hope-Centered Approach to Career Development. Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall, 2011.

[3] Gray R, Poehnell, Norman E. Amundson. Hope-Filled Engagement: Creating New Possibilities in Life/ Career Counselling. Ergon Communications, 2011.

Informational interviews: why and how?

A career specialist’s guide to securing a meeting—and making the most of it

Interview originally published on SFU’s Career Blog.

Why are informational interviews so important during your career planning process?

Real resources are always human, so interviewing an industry professional is most likely the best way to learn about a specific role or an organizational culture. You gain information otherwise unavailable while growing your professional network. Informational interviews are perfect for those who want to enter a new industry, relocate, change careers, or even progress in their careers with another employer in the same field. I usually advise job seekers or career changers to use this tool after completing a full labour market research, just so they feel comfortable with the theoretical knowledge they’ve acquired on a certain position or role.

I am intimidated by cold-calling. Is it realistic to get an informational interview via an email or social media request?

The best way to get your first informational interview is via someone who knows the person you need to talk to. Social media channels, especially LinkedIn, work very well with these third-degree connections. Yet when you send a direct message to someone, mentioning the person who has referred you can make a huge difference. Yes, some may reject your invitation for various reasons, but don’t take it personally and never stop trying; move on to someone else. In a cold-call situation, my advice is to avoid leaving a voice message and instead try your call at a different time.

How can I successfully set up a meeting with a person who doesn’t seem interested in meeting with me?

Practise your introduction (remember that elevator pitch you’ve been working on?) and have ready an articulate reason for your meeting request. Don’t babble. Be flexible in terms of time and mention from the outset that you’re open to a short meeting over a coffee break, during the next two to four weeks. Just move on to someone else if the person does not respond or seems to be too busy. There are tens or hundreds of professionals you can approach, so don’t get stuck just because someone says no. Be prepared to thank them politely and move down your list.

What are the must-do’s of a successful informational interview?

Do your research, be professional and be concise. Find out as much as you can about that specific organization and write down 12 to 14 questions. Ponder them well and bring them to the interview. This will help you focus and keep the meeting short. Respect the time frame agreed upon (time is a very sensitive matter, so don’t risk making a poor impression and ruining your networking chance). Make some of your questions specific to the role and some to the organization. But don’t ask “lazy” questions, i.e., don’t request answers you can typically find online. Not only will you fail at making a good impression, but people may think you’re wasting their time.

What is inappropriate to ask during an informational interview?

As long as you don’t mention you’re looking for a job and don’t take out your résumé, everything else should pass. Those two faux pas are incurable mistakes. Emphasize that this is your research time. You are gathering information in order to be able to make a good decision later on. You’re analyzing your options. Ask about the workplace culture, benefits, turnover rate, the background of the two latest hires, and so on. But remember, you only have 12 to 14 questions.

What are the right ways to keep in touch after the interview?

Have a networking business card on you and ensure you exchange cards at the end of your meeting. Send a thank-you note (or card) and use the occasion to reiterate a point from your discussion or mention how something you’ve just learned may change your perspective for good. Connect on LinkedIn. Offer your help if you can, i.e., contribute ideas to an ongoing project, volunteer with a task, or help facilitate the completion of a project. Show that you also have something to give, as everything involving people is a two-way experience.

(with Magdalena Mot)

An Era of Cultural Relativism?

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Many of us grew up in a communist country, so I can’t say I’m unique that way. But on top of being constrained by nomenclature, I was also born to a small ethnic group that spoke a different language and kept traditions a little different than the surrounding majority. As a child, I quickly learned to accept that this group’s culture was validated only by insiders. In our family bubble we would talk about anything and listen to my grandmother’s striking stories from her past, but as soon as we walked out we knew we had to change and readily fit the mainstream. Just like a chameleon. We were taught not to bring-up our culture, native tongue, or religion in conversations set outside the group. Today, looking back at those moments in time and trying to re-organize my life experiences, I see how people’s understanding around what’s acceptable and what’s not can be uneven and it often bends with the majority. With very few exceptions. It took years to move on and leave behind everything I could leave behind. It feels like it happened in a different life, yet that’s a baggage I carry. I’ve learned to understand and love the place I call home today. It’s good to be able to embrace harmony and live in a safe place. A place where several different cultures and traditions coexist, share, and mix their values.

I like to think we now live in an era of cultural relativism. If agreed, all we need is to understand the culture of a people before applying a label to an action or an affirmation belonging to someone whom identifies with that group, because every standard is culture-bound1. The same applies to any cultural or ethnic group. If we favor this argument, would then the truth become relative and reliant on one’s cultural environment? For example, if a woman does not have a say in deciding her own path in life, because her traditional culture would rather have others decide for her, then the truth would be that she isn’t deprived of any human rights, but merely following her traditions. Of course, many argue the truth will always be absolute and, while cultural diversity is a beautiful concept to share, certain practices oppose each other and quite frequently have a hard time co-existing with those preserved by other cultures or religions. And soon enough we will be notified of big moral conflicts and turn for help to the universal declaration of human rights. I’m always amazed by the number of people who haven’t read it yet.

All around the world, most issues connected to culture are relative. This makes cultural and religious diversity a slippery and rather difficult to navigate matter. Rooted in a certain culture or religion, traditions may at times interfere with basic human rights or collide with simple safety requirements. Or frustrate political views. We’ve all seen, on occasion, duplicitous practices hiding behind a cultural or religious tradition. There are issues we don’t often want to discuss, or talk about over dinner, because they are uncomfortable topics and there is too much we don’t know and we don’t want to be ‘culturally’ wrong.

Usually very careful when it comes to accommodating people belonging to other cultures (small ethic groups, refugees, new immigrants, foreign workers, international students) we want to ensure they feel accepted and included. We make a number of supporting services available and consider they have a fair shot at learning about their new local culture and people’s values. But what about those of us who live here? Do we have access to support services or educational programs? What’s available to us to support our understanding of the process our newcomer neighbours are going through while trying to integrate? The effort cannot be the same on both sides, by all means, there is a fine balance and we all know that the big lap has to be covered by those who came in last.

Yet, I’m wondering, how many workshops on “The Cultures and Religions of the World” have we recently seen to be offered? It would be refreshing to see a community college teaching a course on this topic. We live in an era where the study of cultural anthropology, the study of first nations’ arts and history, the study of world’s mythology, are all at fairly incipient stages. My intent is far from ignoring those who have been deeply involved in researching these topics at an academic level, but we need to acknowledge that they are only a handful of people and they are not riding the bus.

When we think about what do we know about legends and traditions of other people, we realize it’s not too much. This is quite understandable when considering that nowadays a degree in arts or history won’t pay someone’s mortgage and people know better than that, they cannot afford to waste time and money on unnecessary cultural or mythological nonsense. They have to make money. And that begs many other questions, but I will stick to this one: if we see ourselves as a tolerant people, and agree that other cultures are not ‘wrong’, but ‘different’ then isn’t it time that we start offering more accessible tools to support a growth in our understanding of all the cultures around the world?

1 John J. Tilley, Cultural Relativism, Human Rights Quarterly, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 22, Number 2, May 2000, pp. 501-547

Tourist or Traveler: that’s the Question!

Tourist or Traveler

Sharing about myself was never easy, even though I’m a talker. This is a story of change. Too short to call it a story, maybe just a tale of change. How do our travels and our destinations change whom we are? And so I start.

Who doesn’t want to see the world? Wonder around, see all those intriguing, faraway places, and post pictures to make everyone else jealous. But have you ever asked yourself: are you cut to be a tourist or a traveler?

Several years ago, when I met my former partner, I had many dreams about traveling and visiting places shaped  by hundreds of years of history, places I’ve been inspired by from many old books I’ve read: Paris, Athens, Rome, London, or New York! Imagine how thrilled I was when I found out my partner and I have in common this big desire to see the world. How long, would you think, until we realized how different our travel styles were? Well, after a couple of short trips done in the sweet honey-moon style, we went on our first real vacation. This was a four-week road trip, which took us from Munich, Germany, to Check Republic, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, then over the longest combined road and rail bridge (the Öresund, between Malmö and Copenhagen), on to Denmark, then hopped on the ferry and back to Germany. No guessing required, during this adventure we clashed a few times quite badly and it was all because we didn’t even consider to talk beforehand about what our travel styles are and figure out how they differ.

The first long stop was in St. Petersburg, only about 2,500 KM and five countries away. We stayed here, in this gorgeous “Venice of the North”, five days. After which we drove to Helsinki, Finland (only four hours away). To me, the highlights of this trip were supposed to be those big cities loaded with history. I left home with my mind set on certain places I had to see. A checklist. Obviously, my expectations took away some of that innate to a natural traveler flexibility. Yes, at the time I was more of a tourist.

When we entered ”the land of a thousand lakes” in Finland, spread between the cities of Kuopio to the northeast and Savonlinna to the southwest, I almost didn’t know how to open up to that kind of natural, wild, beauty. Breathtaking. And they call it “a thousand lakes” only metaphorically, because in fact there are over 187 thousand of them!

These were places I haven’t visualized on my little travel itinerary.

One evening I went to the Finish sauna. Being accustomed to the culture in Germany, where men and women like to sweat in the sauna naked, I wasn’t expecting to hit any other surprises here. But since I didn’t speak Finish, the Innkeeper treated me like a tourist and said there is just one big sauna room, but it follows a schedule:  from eight to nine it’s women only and from nine it’s men only. This kind of startled me, but I thought… ok. I went to the sauna at eight, only to find myself all alone in a hot room that could fit up to fifteen people. At this time it was pretty clear he served me with the tourist “Menu” and everyone else knew that the time to go to sauna was actually nine. And sure enough, as I was walking back to my room, a jolly group of about ten men and women were heading out to the sauna while making loud jokes and laughing. Oh, well, missed my window!

Moving north, we crossed the border into Norway, drove past the Arctic tree line, and went all the way to Nordkapp, the last piece of land you can set foot on in Europe. Here we spent a couple of windy hours just gazing into the Arctic Ocean and looking at peculiar tiny flowers growing bluntly on rocks, a myriad of colors. So, question: be honest and tell me, wouldn’t you be happy to be there right now? But I wasn’t. Nope, not me. I was this miserable tourist, complaining about how windy and cold it was and wondering how much longer until we get to a decent coffee shop.

And that question pops in again: tourist or traveler?

A tourist’s plans for a trip include places to visit. A traveler’s plans include tips on how to stay alive. Time and again I was taken out of my comfort zone. Overall, this whole trip was one cold traveler’s drop – added to my touristy garden. When I look back at it now, I see a lot more than a charming vacation. I see a discovery journey, where we’ve learned about secluded places, tried local foods, but most importantly, discovered each other.

At the end of this trip I was still a tourist, but perhaps a better one. My partner and I continued to disagree on vacation styles until life shaped us into the travelers we’ve become. At some point I made it to the point where I could understand Henry Miller’s remark: “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

What about you, are you cut to be a tourist or a traveler?

Bristle at Prejudices

More often than not, prejudice takes in several aspects at both individual and group levels, making it rather difficult to determine what causes it. Are we prejudiced? Yes, naturally. Most of us wouldn’t be very enthusiastic to reveal some of our disheartening prejudices, let aside analyze the reasons behind their inception. And sometimes we don’t even know we have them. Generally speaking, we’re getting prejudiced through past experiences and these opinions are molding as we grow, being influenced by our learning, everyday happenings, and our incessant efforts to fit in, to meet the demands of the societal group we belong to.

Discover Yourself

One of the first American psychologists to focus on the study of human personality, Gordon Allport, often referred to the fact that from the beginning of time, all societies have experienced, to a certain degree, some form of prejudice (The Nature of Prejudice, 1954). It’s been always there. According to Allport, prejudice actually emerges as a result of normal human thinking. It looks like when we, as small children, start to make sense of the world around us, we begin to sort information into mental categories, which start serving as a foundation for normal prejudgment. Allport affirms that it is practically impossible to avoid this process.

However, we can improve our ability to avoid negative prejudgment in a variety of ways. As these thoughts were too big for my head, I tried to break them down into very small pieces and that’s how the word “prejudice” came to be part of my personal branding message. Later, this formed the name of this site: bristle at prejudices. Many questions similar to “how can we bristle at prejudices?” have started to come to mind. And even more possible answers. Perhaps, I thought, we can try harder at turning “differences” into a more organic part of our life, so when our brain is only starting to form the above mentioned categories, we are better equipped to see a variety of colors instead of just black and white; maybe we learn to see that something that’s “different” is not necessarily “bad”. Small groups and societies around the world have made extensive efforts to prioritize learning that moves away from the old fashioned ways and embraces a state of acceptance. Despite all the efforts, I’m sure we can all remember that faded smirk on the face of someone we were talking to at some point; it happens when there is too much bias around the topic at hand or even around the person. In a book I totally love, Jane Eyre, I came across an affirmation that triggered this whole idea of starting a “Bristle at Prejudices” online conversation. And it’s true, almost everything circles around our prejudices. They shape us. Yet, of course, while enjoying this unique crescendo we call life, unfolding under our eyes just like a pianist’s hands dazzled by Chopin’s Nocturne, it should be us shaping whom we want to be.

Going back to Jane Eyre, this is what Charlotte Brontë wrote (back in 1840s): “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” When I first read this book in my early twenties I didn’t stop along these lines, didn’t feel their heaviness. But years later, when I took Brontë’s book in my hands again, I suddenly paused: hmm, prejudices, I thought. And I went searching for a dictionary definition. I’ve learned that prejudice is an opinion we form about something or someone without having any evidence, an unreasonable bias. If we’d look into more definitions, we’d find more common features of prejudice, such as negative feelings, stereotyped beliefs, a tendency to discriminate against others. People are naturally driven by pride and vanity and it seems so ordinary to us to have an opinion and then turn it into a prejudice, which somehow ends up growing roots within us.

Being an incurable optimist, I do believe that knowledge, self-learning, and our willpower, can drive us away from negative prejudices. With that, I’m calling on you, my reader: bristle at prejudices! We all get hurt in one way or the other, we fall, we get up, it’s how we grow. But we can learn to avoid letting those feelings drain us and move our energy in all the wrong directions. We can choose to stop and consider them carefully, we can choose to envision ourselves as someone with a purpose, as someone with a map to follow, as someone whose energy is focused towards shaping a life story worth sharing.

…saddle up, and enjoy the journey!