Redirect Seminar in Lake Mary

We are well into our Spring 2014 Redirect seminar, delivered  at St Peter's Episcopal Church in Lake Mary, FL.

This seminar, which we developed in 2012, is focused on goal-setting. It's not meant to be a complete introduction to career development, the field where we have more than 40 years of experience working with clients from around the world.

Czechoslovak executives at The University of the South, Sewanee, 1992

It is, instead, a quick 4-session seminar that helps participants determine just one goal, work-related or not, that can guide them for the year to come.

So far we've been guiding our participants through the foundational sessions of the seminar, helping them in these areas:

1. Establishing that they have a sincere interest in setting a new goal for the next year, and beyond.

2. Examining their past accomplishments and evaluating, from them, their preferred skills, motivational patterns and definition of success, as well as looking for roadblocks that may prevent them from reaching their goal.

3. Exploring possible goals and choosing just one.

 We've been talking about the seminar and our participants this week and have come up with two more short exercises that we think will be helpful to them. This is their homework!

Where have I been happiest?

 Looking back at your life, where have you been most happy with your circumstances? Think of a particular place, maybe a house, cottage or apartment, where you really enjoyed your life.

• describe this place in some detail--how it looks, where it is, how you happened to be there

• note what you did on a daily basis in this place

• list the people, animals, and so on that lived with you or were frequent guests

• try to say, in 20 words or less, what it was about this place that made you happy.

The point of this exercise is to pinpoint the factors that make you happy, and incorporate as many as possible into your goal.

What do I want to do with the next 20 years?

 

 Start counting the years to come by adding 20 to the current year: 2034. Now think about these question::

• where will I be living? with whom?

• what will I be doing every day?

• what kind of person will I be? what will I have accomplished in my personal life, my professional life, and the life of my community?

• how can I get there from here?

This is a big assignment and will, no doubt, change shape as time goes by. But if you have no clear idea where you're heading, you might find the years slipping through your fingers. The best place to start planning the next 20 years is where you are right now. Giving a long-term perspective to your life can help you use your time more carefully and with more gratitude for having the gift of a future.

Successful 21st century leader is not just a "play-it-safe" spectator in the stands,
but the "let's take a chance" player who is fully involved in the game. As a contestant
and participant, he or she does not postpone tough decisions but makes a commitment
to succeed. He or she is not afraid of criticism knowing that just as criticism and
opposition will come from unknown and unexpected sources, so support will come,and
often "just in time" for the leader to accomplish his or her task successfully.

ILI: 25 Years of Focus on the Czech Republic (1989-2014)

When the Berlin Wall was dismantled in 1989 with much fanfare and no violence, the world rejoiced that the Soviet bloc had finally collapsed. Since WWII ended, the nation states caught between politically free Western Europe and communist Eastern Europe had suffered a kind of colonial captivity*. Seen as the price of cooperation to end WWII, the giving of formerly-independent nations to Soviet control became the new normal. All US post-war diplomacy and military development was juxtaposed against Soviet power, leading to a theory that the Soviet bloc nations were a sad but necessary buffer between the two world superpowers. Very few gave serious thought to what would happen if the Soviet bloc nations were again free to participate in European economic, political and financial life.

Then the unexpected became reality. In the space of months, borders opened and people could move wherever they chose. The closed Soviet-modeled economies were thrown open, Russian soldiers went home, and anyone could get a passport. This sudden shift left the US in a state of shock and left these countries vulnerable to anyone with the will and means to imposed a new system.

Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel, 1989

ILI (the International Leadership Institute) had a stake in all this. President and CEO Jaroslav Tusek was a former citizen of Czechoslovakia, born there in 1941 under German Nazi rule, educated and employed there for 27 years until he left in 1967 to study in Norway and did not return. He came to the US in 1968 and gained citizenship in 1975, building a life in academia and business. But he never believed that the Soviets would hold power forever, especially when his studies and research at Columbia University (NYC), the World Council of Churches (Geneva, Switzerland), the International Peace Research Institute (Oslo, Norway), and the World Without War Council (San Francisco, CA) convinced him that economic stagnation under Soviet policies was eroding the ability of the Russian government to hold on to its empire.

When the Wall fell, Jarda went to Prague right away. He saw his parents for the first time since 1983 (their passports has been confiscated, and he could not return without paying a huge fine and being imprisoned immediately). He visited with his friends and family to get a picture of the country as it stood at the moment. He witnessed the impact of 40 years of neglect on the buildings, streets and parks of Prague. He made up his mind to do something significant for his native country, and to use ILI as his vehicle.

At the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Prague, signing the protocol for the EEP-CBL programs, 1993

By 1990, ILI was in negotiation with the Czechoslovak government to work as partners on the Executive Education Programs for Czechoslovak Business Leaders (EEP-CBL), a project partly funded by the Czechoslovak government and American business firms who took on the visiting executives as business interns. This program received significant support from US and European Chambers of Commerce (in Jacksonville, FL and Bratislava, Slovakia after the 1993 split of Czechoslovakia into two countries). It also received help in program content, logistics, social events and marketing from the World Trade Center, Chattanooga; the Chattanooga Business Journal; Covenant College; the University of North Florida; Jacksonville University; a group of volunteer host families in North Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and New York ; a group of volunteer Business Seminar presenters in North Florida; and a group of Business Intern sponsors that stretched across the US.

For ILI, the years 1989-2006 were devoted to helping Czechoslovak business and professional leaders make a successful transition to a market economy operating in a political democracy. In those years, ILI also worked with US AID, an international development project from the US Department of State, in which ILI assisted business and professional leaders from Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Lithuania and Macedonia in their transitions from the Soviet closed model to the free world’s open model. ILI programs helped more than 450 post-Soviet bloc executives in this way, with over a billion dollars in US-European business resulting from the business and personal relationships built by the executives.

USAID executives from Bulgaria in St Augustine for their ILI program

In those 17 years, ILI also assisted young aspiring leaders from the former Soviet bloc through American English Language Immersion Programs (AELIP). These young people had the chance to improve their English language skills, learn some leadership essentials and be challenged by life in a new environment. From these programs came inspiration to build international careers in Asia, Europe and the US, as well as enduring friendships and marriages.

AELIP participants ride Florida-style 

From 2006 on, we shifted our focus to finding ways to assist in the establishment of what former President Vaclav Havel termed “civil society” in the Czech Republic. He urged the society to pay attention to morals, values and ethics while it was developing in more materialistic ways. Havel specifically noted the weakness of spiritual life among people living in the Czech Republic, and we decided to investigate his claims. We moved the ILI headquarters to Prague from August 2010-November 2013, living in that glorious city and doing all we could to understand the state of spiritual affairs there. Our conclusions are outlined in the report we are preparing (ILI: 25 Years of Focus on the CR), and will be expanded in our next book, 21^st Century Christianity.

All in all, we at ILI have built many meaningful and lasting relationships with people we’ve known and worked with in the Czech Republic. This country has been the focus of nearly everything we have done for 25 years, and we appreciate the opportunity to make a contribution to the lives of people who live there. The report will detail some of our accomplishments, analyze their impact, make observations about the current situation in the Czech Republic and offer some ideas about the near future. It will be available on our website, www.ili.cc, on January 15.

*Soviet bloc states were Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, East Germany, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Hungary and Lithuania.

Recently I had an opportunity to discuss the current political situation in Czech Republic with two young Czech executives. They both characterized the current leadership vacuum here is an absence of sustainable leadership. One of them suggested that countries such as Czech Republic are full of people who have reasonable material comforts, and yet lead lives of quiet, and at times noisy desperation. Like in neighboring Germany, they increasingly are becoming "nichtwahlers" or non-voters. In terms of how happy they feel to live in their own country, according to a world wide poll, Czechs now rank on 39th place, Poles on 51st place and Hungarians on 110th place.

So I asked them what do they think may be wrong with their country in terms of the leadership situation. First they hesitated for a while. Then one of them suggested that old, worn out totalitarian thinkers are no longer able to inspire the new generation of young, educated voters. They only appeal to those still thinking in totalitarian terms, and prefer to think only about themselves, not about the needs of the rest of citizens living in the country.

So I told them about the International Leadership Institute's programs we have been organizing for years (ever since the collapse of totalitarian communism in East and Central Europe) for leaders from post-communist countries, and about what we learned from those leaders over the years. Together with participants in the ILI programs we came up with a profile of a successful 21st century leader.

St Vaclav, Duke of Bohemia in the 10th century

Here are some typical observations:
We agreed that successful 21st century leaders typically encourage and lift others from where they are to where I
t is their potential to be. They do not aim for mediocrity but for excellence. They serve in their leadership roles with energy, intelligence, imagination, diligence, wisdom and good will toward others. Such leaders do no evil and do not condemn their neighbors but keep their oath even when it hurts.

They protect the weak and the needy from those who malign them . They are able to correctly discern their priorities and focus diligently on key tasks for the good of their country.

Then one of the two future leaders asked me, how can the country find such leaders.  I suggested that a healthy country, with a healthy society should be able to produce them.

Fortunate are people whose top leader's lifestyle is a demonstration of can-do attitude combined with good will toward people, understanding, compassion, diligence, high energy level and a heart for social justice.

Such a leader can and will attain a deep inner state of quietness in order not to become prey to tension, worry, fear and ill health. Such a servant leader is also wise in that which is good and simple concerning evil, and will seek counsel regarding every circumstance that confronts him or her.

Such a leader does not accept conditions of any kind that would mar the well being of the people he or she leads, and does not accept the rejection, the bruising or the piercing of negative words and actions by the leader's enemies or opponents.

Redirect is now open for new participants!

You have just one life, so it's in your best interest to make the most of it. No one can do this for you! Take charge of your life, one decision at a time.

After our successful organizational meeting at Bio Zahrada on Tuesday, we are excited to be offering the late summer 2013 Redirect seminar to our new participants! We have also decided to open the seminar to other people living in Prague who are interested in making a change in their lives.

What you have done in the past can be reshaped and refashioned into something new, better and different. We especially want to recommend this seminar (delivered in 4-2 hour sessions) to people who find themselves complaining about their job, feeling that they are not challenged and are not using all their potential.

Seminar Details:

Redirect Seminar, Session One of four.

Tuesday, August 20 at 18:15

at Monolok Cafe on Moravska 18 in Vinohrady (Please ask for Tusek table)

http://www.monolok.cz/

Cost for seminar: 1800 kc for four 2-hour sessions (8 hours total of meeting time).  

Our book, 21st Century Jobs, is needed for the seminar; cost for the book is 200 kc.

If you think this may be helpful to you, please join us. We will have extra books and other materials for any new people who come to this first session.

New "Redirect" seminar for August!

We have recently met several people who live in Prague and are considering major changes in their lives. Some of them need a new job; one is graduating from high school and getting ready for university studies; one is discouraged and needs to believe that she can get "the job she can like and do best."

So we are inviting these people to a small meeting at Bio Zahrada at Belgicka 25/33 in Vinohrady, on nam Miru, at 5: 30 on Tuesday, August 13.

http://www.bio-zahrada.cz/en

We would welcome you, too, if you are ready to get some help with deciding what to do in your career! Czech and English-speakers are all welcome.

Why work?

There are so many different reasons that people give for why they work, it is worth  taking time to ponder why you work. The obvious answer is "to make some money" and the obvious next statement is, "I wish I was so rich that I didn't have to work."

Could it be that there are other reasons to work besides pure necessity?

I am going to suggest the making money is not the only reason, or even the most important reason to work. Here are the three top three reasons why people work:

1. to interact with and influence their surroundings
2. to make friends and develop new interests
3. to organize your life and bring meaning into each day

To interact with and influence their surroundings
The concept of "the idle rich"may seem attractive, especially when you watch rich people play and live on TV or in movies. Lounging around all day, being waited on hand and foot, never worrying about paying bills--all this seems wonderful.

But look at the downside--if all you do is lounge around, how can you connect with your surroundings other than passively? If you never work, never do anything that brings you into a creative or productive relationship with people beyond the few who serve you or live with you, doesn't that leave a gap in your life? You may be happy enough with idleness, for a while, but if you don't work--take on some responsibility for some aspect of the culture around you--I think you are missing a key pathway for making a mark on that culture.

Being an observer, not an initiator, is a boring and unfulfilling life. Your life may be comfortable (if you can be sure your money will last as long as you live!), but you are simply living on the surface if you don't work. Even rich people usually have to work, anyway, to manage their wealth and make sure no one is embezzling all their funds while they sit on a tropical island drinking pink beverages with tiny umbrellas. So if you have to work, why not work at something you care about, where you can have an impact for the good?

Photo shoot in the Old town, Prague

To make new friends and develop interests
It's fairly easy to make friends when you're young, in high school or college, where you spend a great deal of time in common activities such as attending classes and doing schoolwork. If you never leave the place where you made these friends, and they never leave, either, you will most likely stay friends.

But if you move, you need some way to make new friends right away. Working is the ideal way to make friends, as you are teamed for projects, seek new clients, develop and implement plans, and so on. The time spent working with colleagues usually is enough to build friendships, many of which may last a lifetime. The emotional and mental energy spent in work often spills over into work-based relationships: you work many hours together, find solutions for tough problems, and celebrate accomplishments.

You can also easily find new hobbies and outlets for your creativity with your colleagues who become friends. They invite you to their meetings, outings, and so on; some of these new interests may be a great fit for you, giving you a more diversified life.

Cleaners take a break

To organize your life and bring meaning into each day
Most people who work love to moan and groan about the absurd amount of time works eats up, what with commuting, work itself, after-hours work events, preparation for the next day's work, etc. Yet having a working schedule brings benefits as well. Unemployed people, or people who are "stuck at home" all day, often dream of working so that their days don't seem do random or purposeless. Work gives you an anchor around which to organize your life; without work, your empty calendar may, after a while, look pretty pathetic.

And each day brings its end. What did you do today? "Not much" is a poor result if you are a reasonably energetic, talented human being. On holiday, doing "not much" seems like an amazing luxury, but as a steady diet, "not much" is starvation rations.

Sleeping on the tram...not too exciting

I believe that human beings are social creatures (some more so than others, but everyone needs company sometimes!) In isolation, humans get strange. They develop obsessions and weird theories; they neglect their health and get sick; they lose their connection to other people and suffer intolerable loneliness, which can get warped into all kinds of sociopathic and actual criminal behavior. We need other people to shake us up when we get strange. There's no better way to be shaken up than by work, which forces you to confront reality, in one way or another.

I also believe that people need to know their lives have meaning. There must be more to life than the brief span of time on earth--your life needs to mean something to someone, or why live? The most consistent meaning in life that I can think of is to influence and be influenced by other people.Work does just that.

Back in Prague!

We spent the past winter in Florida, catching up with friends and taking care of some business. That time was a holiday for us, in terms of delivering our career development programs, though we continued to think about (and offer free advice to our friends and family regarding) the relationship between your career and your purpose in life.

Since returning to Prague in the spring of 2013, we have spent considerable time in redefining our own purposes, as our lives have changed and developed. 2012 and early 2013 have been busy and eventful times for us in our professional and personal lives, calling for a review of our previous goals and a thoughtful analysis of potential new goals, as we refine our purpose. We've started a new blog on the topic of purpose (determineyourpurpose.blogspot.com).

Just this past Saturday, we held a reunion for our 2012 Redirect participants. This meeting was a time to reflect on the changes and accomplishments of the past year, and to begin to set new goals. We talked about the importance of knowing your purpose in life, and that fact that purpose often evolves over time into something new, as we achieve our goals and set new ones.

From the Redirect reunion came one key insight into the concept of defining and fulfilling your purpose:

Having a clear purpose does not put you into a straight jacket, unable to respond to new opportunities!

In fact, having a clear purpose will help you recognize and sort out what opportunities come your way. Each day brings its share of ideas and chance encounters that may be developed into something exciting and rewarding. It's simply not possible to respond with equal enthusiasm and energy to every attractive or important chance that you may spot. Having a purpose gives you a framework and point of reference form which to evaluate opportunities, so that you are not overwhelmed and indecisive about ideas that are clearly not for you, at the moment.

Our participants gave us positive feedback on their Redirect experiences and urged us to keep offering the program. They found it interesting and useful to take time for analysis of their past accomplishments, skills and values, and to set one major goal for the coming year.

Our Redirect participants gave us some career and personal updates:

• One Redirect participant left a business job that was unsatisfying and made a career change to university teaching. She is pursuing a PhD to help her advance in this new career and is steadily making her move into entrepreneurship, balancing this with personal and family decisions.

• Another Redirect participant is directing an exciting new project in her career field, while still completing her education and continuing with her previous job. Some changes in her personal life gave her the time and energy to pour into building her career, and to carefully consider some options for a semester or year of study in another country, to enlarge her vision.

• Another Redirect participant is moving from volunteer work to a business career, using her past experience and skills in another country to set up a new business venture here in Prague. She is also refreshing her abilities in her third language, in anticipation of future business endeavors.

With all this in mind, we will be offering the Redirect program very soon. Please check back here to find out the dates, or email us at purpose@ili.cc for more information.

What activities make you feel great about yourself? and so on...

REDIRECT: 15 KEY QUESTIONS

Feeding the ducks on the Labe River

If it’s true that we only live once, then it’s important to take our lives seriously. Too often we get so caught up in what we’re doing that we don’t take time to make sure that we’re spending our time in ways that harmonize with our values, skills and major goals. This exercise will help you think about your life from various angles.

1. What makes you smile? (Activities, people, events, hobbies, projects, etc.)

At the Museum of Play

2. If you unexpectedly had a little extra money, what would you buy?

3. What activities make you lose track of time?

4. What makes you feel great about yourself?

5. Who inspires you most? (Anyone you know or do not know: family, friends, authors, artists, leaders, etc.) Which qualities inspire you, in each person?

6. What are you naturally good at? (skills, abilities, gifts, etc.)

7. What do people typically ask you for help in?

8. If you had to teach something, what would you teach?

Beautiful fall colors in Trondheim

9. What would you regret not fully doing, being or having in your life?

10. What are your deepest values?

11. What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?

12. What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?

13. If you had $10,000,000, and never had to work again, what would you do with your life?

14. If you had 24 hours to live, what would you do? With whom?

15. You are now 90 years old, sitting in the sunshine. You can feel the spring breeze gently brushing against your face. You are contented and happy, and are pleased with the wonderful life you’ve lived. Looking back at your life and all that you’ve achieved and acquired, all the relationships you’ve developed; what matters to you most? List them out.

The power of Redirect

The power of a goal is quite remarkable.

 

Sara and I just had a stimulating conversation about the current status of this year's primary goal, which we agreed on in our January 2012 Redirect seminar:

 

To build a home in 2012

 

 

We discovered that, although the year was not at all what we planned or expected, it has been nevertheless been focused on building a home. The goal was always present in our minds and hearts, guiding us in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to make many small decisions along the way. Here are three of the ways that our goal influenced our choices and was itself influenced by the events of our lives.

1. We have strengthened some wonderful relationships with family and friends, while making new friends and enlarging our horizons geographically, prefessionally and spiritually.
2. We've decided to stay in Prague for at least two more years, and not to move from our little flat, which has been so pleasant and convenient.
3. We are still writing "21st Century Christianity" and hope to publish it next year.

 

All of these people, events, activities and experiences have molded our thinking and impelled us toward our goal, even though we didn't recognize it while it was happening. How?

1. Because of our focus on building a home, we lavished time and attention on the people who were interested in what we were doing. These people challenged our thinking and helped us dig deeper into what "home" really means. We're grateful for their support and the ways they've helped us refine our goal. Our travel this year has also been anchored in our goal, as have our professional choices and spiritual development.
2. We've decided to stay in Prague for at least two more years, and not to move from our little flat, which has been so pleasant and convenient. We thought in January that we'd move back to the US and buy or build a house there. But events and circumstances changed our thinking dramatically. Having our goal helped us frame these events and circumstances in such a way that they became guideposts and mile markers towards our goal.
3. We are still writing "21st Century Christianity" and hope to publish it next year. This book defines our original mission in Prague and points us to our next big idea/goal. Knowing that we want to build a home has added urgency to the completion of our book.

 

The key words here are challenge, focus, time, attention, checking our progress and a sense of urgency. All of these are elements in goal-setting and working towards a goal. Think about an athlete who wants to compete in the Olympics. First, the goal is set. Then the details are put into place, resulting in a timetable, a support team (emotional, physical and spiritual), a fitness regime, a plan to find financial resources, and so on. All of the details support the goal, which is the heart of the entire effort.

 

 

"Without a vision, the people perish," as Proverbs 29 notes. Without a goal, life is a featureless plain upon which the individual is moving without purpose or destination. He or she is vulnerable to the weather, to the intentions of the people he or she may meet, to predation by wild animals, and to discouragement and loneliness. Without a goal, life is like the bumper sticker--"you're born, stuff happens, you die."

 

We designed the Redirect career development program with simplicity in mind--one goal for the year. This simple idea has turned out to be far more powerful than we had imagined.

 

Our last Redirect starts October 7, 2012;

we'll resume offering it 

when we return from the US in January 2013.

 

 

 

Next Redirect program, in September in Prague

We are announcing our next career development seminar, Redirect, in Prague. Here are the details. If you are interested, please send us an email at stusek@ili.cc. You can go to our website, www.ili.cc, for more information.

Redirect: a new approach to life and work

Are you using all your talents, experience, dreams and personal abilities to the maximum?

Sometimes you can get “stuck” in a way of living that’s less than what you know you can do. If you are feeling that you haven’t fully developed your unique set of possibilities, the Redirect program can help you assess what you have, what you’ve done, and where you are heading.

Redirect offers assistance to you in five important areas:

1.      Redirecting your current career: changing the direction of your stalled, stale career

2.      Becoming an entrepreneur: finding ways to bring your career and personal dreams into reality

3.      Using your education and experiences to help the people you care about in their areas of need

4.      Making a fresh, new start after a major life change

5.      Getting to know yourself better so that you can create a life of purpose and meaning.

Cost for seminar per participant is 800 Kč (includes all four 2-hour group sessions and one individual follow-up, scheduled to suit both seminar leaders and participant). Our book, 21st Century Jobs, is recommended to all participants: seminar plus book costs 1000 Kč. You may pay in cash or by bank transfer

Redirect for Fall 2012

There are four sessions; you attend all four, as each one builds on the previous sessions. Dates are September 3, 10, 17 & 24

 Monday, September 3, 7-9 pm. Why do you need to redirect your career and your life? What do you have to work with, in terms of skills, professional goals, and dreams?

Monday, September 10, 7-9 pm. What have you loved doing in your life? How can you do more of what you like and less of what you don’t like?

Monday, September 17, 7-9 pm. What prevents you from doing what you really want to do? How can you change this?

Monday, September 24, 7-9 pm. What one major career/ life change are you willing to commit? How will you make it happen?

Seminar location, to be arranged according to enrollment

Sorry, no guarantees

In a consumer society, it's quite customary to expect a guarantee when you buy a product or service. My new Hyundai water boiling pot, for instance, has a one-year guarantee, with conditions spelled out in a tiny book.

I can't say how easy it would be to collect on the guarantee, but it does exist. If my dentist makes me a new crown, and I pay a lot of money for it, I expect it to stay in place for 10 or 20 years, and would go back to ask for free repairs if it fell off in two weeks. Again, I can't say he would fix it free, or at all, or even that he'll still be a practicing dentist, but there's some reason to think he will try to fix his work if it's unacceptable.

So it's not unexpected that people would like a guarantee when they get help finding a job, especially if they are paying for the help. In fact, some trade schools do make guarantees: many TOEFL language instruction courses guarantee that the school will get you a job offer. Whether it's a job you'd like, or will accept, is another story.

In New York City in the 1980's a time of recession, I co-founded a career counseling firm that helped laid-off and/or fired high-level excutives make a career transition. If, as was often the case, a firm hired us to do outplacement for its "excess" executives, we would help the people in these ways:

• to come to terms with losing their high-paying jobs,
• to do a personal inventory of skills, talents, accomplishments and values,
• to decide what career and job to pursue next,
• to strategize and develop their job campaign,
• to prepare effectively for interviews,
• to do all that was necessary to get offers for new jobs, weigh the offers and accept the best one.

Nowhere did we promise to get anyone a job. In fact,we stressed in every counseling session that no one can get you the best job for you except yourself.

We also had private clients who came to us for the same kind of career help as individuals. Again, we offered to help in any reasonable way we could, but did not promise that the client would end up with a job.

In this sense, our counseling firm offered no guarantees, only that we would help as best we could, under the conditions outlined in the contract we signed with the client. We guaranteed that we would try to help, but that's a weak kind of guarantee to a desperate person who needs a job right away.

rushing to get a job

Because the rather bitter truth is this: no one can guarantee to find for you, much less give to you, the job that you can like and do best. This is something that only you can do.

Or, to put it another way, you will never be sure of getting the best job for you until you decide to do it for yourself--to do the necessary work of self-exploration, career research, networking, getting interviews, analyzing your suitability for and interest in a particular job, and so on.

One of our clients, a Frenchwoman living in Prague who wanted to establish her own design firm, got the message loud and clear--she commented after going through two career seminars with us, "it's up to me to take charge of my own career. No one can do that for me." She's launched her firm and is well on the way to building a clientele.

No one can guarantee to you that you will do something that you must do for yourself. A coach, for example, can urge an athlete to get into good physical shape, exercise properly, get enough sleep, keep learning new skills, and so on...but in the end, it's the athlete himself or herself who must make the mental and physical effort to succeed in athletics. The coach can make no guarantees to the athlete other than guaranteeing his or her own good will, successful experience as a coach in the past, confidence in the coaching techniques he or she uses, and sincere desire to see the athlete succeed. The rest is up to the athlete.

Barbora Spotakova, 2-time Olympic Gold Medalist in the javelin event

Thereare no guarantees for the most precious things in life: no guarantees that the people you love will always by in your life, that your best efforts will be immediately rewarded, or that you'll even live to see another day. No in one can guarantee you the job you can like and  do best, but you can get solid professional help to envision, design and carry out your career goals.

Patience and Good Manners

One precious asset in the job search is patience. By patience, I mean the ability to work steadily toward a goal in spite of an unreasonable emotional desire for immediate results. Very often, the most valuable things in life come about only after a long period of sustained work, sacrifice and humility. Getting a university education, building a marriage, raising children and developing a career all call for tremendous, ongoing patience.

The patience of nature: centuries are needed to produce a waterfall

Nothing is more harmful to a job seeker than displaying impatience. No one is interested in working with a person who can't control his or her personal feelings, unless that person is immensely talented or pays his or her employees very handsomely indeed!

Closely related to cultivating patience is the use of good manners. In any culture, good manners are based on putting the consideration of the needs, feelings and responsibilities of another person above one's own needs, feelings and responsibilities. Many years ago, the Copy Center of a university where Sara worked had a sign:

"Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

For the job-seeker to be able to act with good manners (rather than harrassing people to do what he or she wants them to do IMMEDIATELY) requires patience. And patience requires developing the ability to stand back from one's own situation and consider the pressing needs of others.

Patience also require faith that all will work well for the job seeker. Religious faith is quite helpful in this case, but other kinds of faith are also acceptable; faith in one's own capabilities, faith that good manners and courtesy will be rewarded, and faith that the current "crisis" is not so very important in the overall scheme of life.

a patient, old tree produces new growth

Another word for patience might be "perspective." By removing oneself from the center of the universe, a more balanced perspective gained, one in which it's apparent that personal desires are just that: personal. Such desires are not the responsibility of others, and should not be insisted upon, if one is to be taken seriously as a potential employee.

If patience in social situations is not possible, then the job seeker is best served by scheduling some quiet time alone.Taking the time to consider one's problems and opportunities in a peaceful, serene setting is very healing, and helps one develop patience and faith.

Patience and good manners are ancient virtues, but never more up-to-date than in the job search. Practicing patience is good practice for successful living! and good manners are just plain good sense.

The basic problem of job-hunting

This morning, Sara and I were talking about some of our friends who've had their fair share of job-hunting challenges. I have been thinking about this situation, and have come up with one basic problem:

"lack of fit between the dreams, values, skills, goals, and experiences of the job-seeker and the identified needs of the organization."

Organizations must be careful to hire people who will perform the functions and duties that the organization has earmarked as most crucial.

The job interview is the venue for finding out if various candidates, who may "look good on paper," really have the qualifications and skills needed for the job in question, as it is envisioned by the organization.


Due to this narrow focus on finding the candidate who is exactly qualified for a job, the interviewer has no time or interest in finding out the candidate's full range of abilities and skills. The successful candidate must severely tailor his or her "job profile" to fit the job description as it is written.

Of course, this presents an enormous problem. No human being is made for one job, and one job only. Every job-seeker has a multitude of job-related ideas, capabilities, experiences and potential for growth. The hard part is for the interviewer to see beyond the urgent needs of the moment (as the organization has perceived them) and probe to find out about the real person whom he or she is interviewing.

For the job-seeker, there is a very delicate balance between presenting himself or herself in the precise terms of the job in question, and revealing other important assets that may be of immense value to the organization, even if not at the moment.

Then there are the factors of chance, serendipity, conincidence, unconscious prejudice (on both sides) and just plain luck that usually tip the balance in any job-interview process. Even such intangibles as mood, the weather, and "chemistry" usually have more influence on the hiring decisionthan simple facts and verifiable skills.

The lesson is not to be discouraged if you are not chosen for a particular job. So many factors are in play that no one can predict the outcome of an interview. The best procedure is to review the interview with a trusted friend, to see if any glaring mistakes were made.

If you believe you did your best, but were not selected, let go of that job and move on. Time spent in self-recrimination, bitterness, anger and envy of the person who was selected is time that is mush better spent in refocusing of your job campaign and moving ahead with vigor and determination. Good luck!

from our files: a real-life job-seeker's dilemma

(Here's a real-life interview dilemma. It's based on a CV and cover letter sent to us by a person looking for a job. Only the name is changed!)

Dear Jan,

You have given me an interesting situation to consider! Thank you for letting me assist you in your job search.

Here are some quick observations. Please remember that these are just my opinions, but they may have some validity, as I have been reading resumes and advising people in the job search for 27 years!

1. Your writing style is very good. It flows well, and is easy to understand without being overly simple.

2. You have a real challenge in this job ad because it is so non-specific:

Vacancy description

XXX company is looking for bright, energetic, positive and determined people to join our vibrant multicultural team!

Experience is not necessary, but we do require:

- Fluent Czech speaker
- Open minded
- Positive
- Flexible
- Driven to succeed

Nowhere can I see what kind of job they are offering. I wonder if this is just a "catch-all" ad to gather resumes and review them, at leaisure, to see who looks interesting. This makes your job much harder, as you don't quite know which skills to highlight.

3. Which brings me to your personal dilemma. Your cover letter and resume portray a highly-qualified person with extensive experence as a translator, writer, crafter, etc. But you don't know, because the ad is so general, what to stress.

4. Therefore I suggest the obvious! Send them a letter which mirrors their ad. Without being a parrot, use their language to write your letter. At the same time, severely edit your letter and resume, omitting anything that's not asked for. This is a counter-intuitive exercise, as most people feel obliged to state everything about their abilities. However, if you do, you may end up overwhelming the person who's screening resumes, and portraying yourself as someone who is a potential disturbance to the balance of the organization.

5. So, if you decide to go with point #4, you will end up with a shorter, snappier cover letter--about 3/4 page at most. It will mirror the job ad, but do so skillfully. It will also offer intriguing hints that you may have more to offer than what's being stated. Your resume will be one page, at most, with only relevant information, written in bullet points. At the bottom you can say "complete CV available upon request."

6. In all my experience, both in my own career and in helping 1000's of people in their career development, I have found four key truths:

• your resume will most often prevent you from being inteviewed, not help you, as it will always include something that the employer finds irritating or irrelevant. You can't avoid this.
• employers decide on whom to interview by factors that are unpredictable--usually something that's familiar or that reminds them of someone they like.
• since you can't control most of the factors of interviews, don't take rejection personally. Just keep looking. The best way to get a job is by hearing about it from a friend, or by chance, before it is advertised. Circulating socially in a variety of situations is the best way to get an interview.
• to get a job, you first need an interview (see above points). But people hire people, not resumes, so the interview is your chance to listen carefully, find out what the employer needs, and communicate to determine if you can help.