Category: Change Management

What Is Your Personal Value Proposition (PVP) Equation?

Untitled front coverKnow Yourself, Grow Your Career

Are you ready to create a self-guided vision for your career? Would you like help doing that?

Do you want to discover your own personal value proposition (PVP) equation and how it can help give you clarity and increase your professional worth?

WHAT IS A PVP EQUATION?

A personal value proposition equation takes into account your interests, values, preferences (collectively priorities), skills and talents (collectively strengths) and combines them with existing or potential roles that benefit from what you offer (market needs). 

Here’s the equation:

Your Priorities + Your Strengths +

Market Needs =

Your Personal Value Proposition

Often we are hyper-focused on one set of factors, based on our current situations and outlook for our careers, such as:

  • our strengths (actual or perceived),
  • our own needs and priorities, or
  • what we expect (without outside verification) is needed by employers or clients,

without truly understanding any of these in depth or considering how they work together. Know Yourself, Grow Your Career helps you analyze and synthesize each part of the equation, so you can bring your highest personal value to the marketplace. As a bonus, Units 9 and 10 of the book show you how to take your personal value proposition and turn it into an authentic and compelling brand and elevator pitches.

Anne Marie Segal is an executive coach, author, resume strategist and member of Forbes Coaches Council. She is founder of Segal Coaching, author of Master the Interview: A Guide for Working Professionals (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and through local booksellers) and a frequent public speaker in New York, Connecticut and beyond.

Image credit: Adobe Images.

On Forbes: The Emotional Life Cycle of a Major Career Transition

Clients often ask for a roadmap for career transitions, whether they yearn for more meaning at work or have other motivations. While I can ask the right questions to uncover their passions and talents and how these intersect with the marketplace, paths taken vary widely and can be entirely unexpected.

 

Eco concept

Jake worked for five years as a transactional attorney and then turned to real estate, managing his family’s portfolio of rental properties. From there, he launched a third career as an artist, painting large-scale murals for corporate offices and collectors.

As an executive coach, I have a front row seat to major professional transitions of brave souls such as Jake. Clients often ask for a roadmap to make such a change of their own, whether they yearn for more meaning at work or have other motivations. While I can ask the right questions to uncover their passions and talents and how these intersect with the marketplace, paths taken vary widely and can be entirely unexpected.

Please click on the image of the caterpillar below for the link to the rest of this article, originally published on Forbes.com.

Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar On Milkweed

Anne Marie Segal is a career and leadership development coach, author, resume strategist and member of Forbes Coaches Council. She is founder of Segal Coaching, author of Master the Interview: A Guide for Working Professionals (available on Amazon.com) and a frequent public speaker in New York, Connecticut and beyond.

Image credit: Adobe Images.

Achieving Gratitude in a Macho Work Environment

Young woman showing her heartfelt gratitude

For professionals who work day-in and day-out in a macho work environment – where you  “eat what you kill,” and if you don’t produce, you don’t eat – gratitude is often a foreign notion.

More common are words like merit, grit, earning and climbing.

Gratitude can seem soft, vulnerable and passive.

Yet the more mature we become as professionals – and, in fact, as people – the more we can appreciate, if not “what we have been given” (which sounds as though we had no hand in it) then “what we are fortunate to have” (which is the result of luck and hard work).

While we may have made many of our own breaks, we still caught breaks.

Gratitude can indeed be strong and active, as can we when we invite gratitude into our lives. Meditation, playing with young children, hiking, singing, surfing… There are many ways to get ourselves into the right mindset to drop the macho masks we must (or fear we must?) wear every day.

When we are vulnerable, we are also open and approachable. 

We connect with others through shared purpose.

We have the capacity to create, integrate new ideas and expand from our current point of view.

We break out of the negative feedback loops that often plague us.

We can achieve change that is the necessary element of growth.

We realize that we are not in control of every detail in our lives. Rather than fighting against the current, we learn to live and breathe in the natural flow.

What will gratitude teach you this Thanksgiving?

How can you bring that feeling into the rest of your year?

Copyright 2016 Anne Marie Segal. All rights reserved.

 

Five Ways to Recover from Anxiety

Stress, pressure and anxiety

Stress, panic, anxiety, sadness, fear….

Once in a while, we can become so overwhelmed by our thoughts, feelings and emotions that we can’t even think straight.

Sometimes these emotions creep up over time.
At other times, they pop up in reaction to an event, with no warning whatsoever. 

There is no quick fix, but here are some ways to cope:

  1. Identify what you are feeling. Let yourself acknowledge and experience all of your emotions. The range may be larger than you realize. Journaling, drawing, recording yourself speaking or having a conversation with a trusted person can help you pinpoint the triggers and unearth layers of triggering thoughts.
  2. Create a “bigger space” for your feelings. This may be psychological or physical space or both (such as a yoga class). If you are in a cramped room, like an office or bedroom, try spending some time in an expansive museum or other building with high ceilings or the great outdoors. Even a walk up a staircase and some deep breathing can open things up for you.
  3. Be with people who can help you through it. Sometimes commiseration is helpful, and at other times a new topic can give you a mental break. 
  4. Give yourself room to have fun, even if it is a quick 15-minute break. Make sure to choose something that recharges you. Physical activity that charges up your endorphins is a good break. 
  5. Channel your negative energy into something positive. How can you create what you want to see in the world?

Anne Marie Segal is a career and leadership coach, author and resume writer who works with executives, attorneys and entrepreneurs on change management, career transitions, personal branding and professional development. 

Above: Shutterstock image.

Election Day 2016: Bring Your Excitement, Not Your Venom

Election Day 2014 - Republicans and Democrats in the campaign
Adobe Stock/Elio Gutzemberg.

On this Election Day 2016, most of us have clients, vendors, suppliers, employees, supervisors, colleagues, family and/or friends on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican. And some independents, too.

Professional development tip:

If someone’s giving you a hard time about the election today or acting over the top, there’s a simple response:

Bring your excitement, not your venom.

(In some cases, you may need to say it more than once.)

Be a leader for the greater cause. Tomorrow, we are all one nation again.

 

Where and How Do You Find Wonder and Inspiration? A Photo Essay

As I enjoyed a beautiful day outside in perfect weather yesterday, I started reflecting on the times I am most creative and what inspires me: when time slows down and I am able to think expansively. It’s a goal of mine to have more of those moments in the coming year.

Seljalandfoss waterfall at sunset in HDR, Iceland

Creativity – where and how do you find it?

As I enjoyed a beautiful day outside in perfect weather yesterday, I started reflecting on the times I am most creative and what inspires me: when time slows down, I wonder at the beauty of the world and am able to think expansively. It’s a goal of mine to increase the frequency and intensity of these moments in the coming year.

Is creativity a top value for you?

Does you need to consistently refuel your creativity to do your best work?

Where do you find that you are most creative?

Do you need to step out of your regular life to achieve it?

Where and how can you increase your opportunities to find wonder in the world?

Does exposure to the creativity of others fuel your own?

Can you generate more to fuel yourself and others?

How can increased creativity drive positive change in your life and career?

img_2570-waterfall

img_5059-butterfly

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Top image: Seljalandfoss waterfall at sunset in HDR, Iceland (Shutterstock).

Text and bottom images (taken in Tampa, FL; Norwalk, CT; New York, NY; and Cruising Altitude, Somewhere, USA; respectively) copyright 2016 Anne Marie Segal.
All rights reserved.

Inspiration and Time Management: Can the Two Ever Be Reconciled?

Coaxing inspiration to fit into the ins and outs of modern life may be one of the hardest things that we need to do as human beings. It is akin to shaping glass – you need just the right amount of heat, skill and supple touch – and you need to risk that your project will be a bust. Yet the more you practice, the better your results will be.

Time and idea

 

How can you successfully manage your time when the next great idea could strike at any moment?

How do you make time for inspiration in any already busy day?

As a coach, I provide answers. As an individual, I have my own questions. One question that I have been struggling with this past year is how to foster inspiration while maintaining a sense of balance. I must admit that these two goals often work at cross-purposes in my life, as they do for many others who are blessed with the creativity bug.

Often the more I am inspired I am, the harder it is to be at peace. Channeling inspiration is a nagging, messy, guarded and complicated process. It makes me want to wake up at the wee hours of the morning and start going, and it propels me to extend my day much beyond the time my body is telling me that I need rest. It urges me to skip lunch and feed it instead.

Inspiration says, “don’t stop and eat lunch, feed me instead!”

I can set a perfect plan – at 10 am I will be doing X, by 11:30 am I will move to Y. But inspiration is jealous. It does not know how to share. It threatens to abandon me if I leave it on its own for too long, so when I return at 12:30 pm, it may be grumpy like a child.

Of course, I need inspiration as much as I need water, and I am sure you do too. The more inspired I am, the more I find passion and meaning in my life and the more energy I have for the other tasks in my day. On the days that I am most inspired, my output can be 20x the days that I am not.

To that end, I have become a huge fan of energy management rather than time management. If you focus on energy management, you channel your activities with the end game of increasing your overall energy for the day, so you can be at your best in each task. This matches many of us more than straight time management, in which we try to fit inspiration into a set of pre-programmed times.

Yet our days don’t always work that way either. Inspiration on one topic may strike at 1 pm, and a critical meeting on another may start at 1:15. So the question may become how to push and pull inspiration, weaving it into our free hours (however many or few those may be) without dampening those very creative ideas and the flow that can accompany their execution. 

This is hard. In fact, it may be one of the hardest things that we need to do as human beings. Coaxing inspiration to fit into the ins and outs of modern life is akin to shaping glass – you need just the right amount of heat, skill and supple touch – and you need to risk that your project will be a bust. Yet the more you practice, the better your results will be.

I have found something that has worked for me, so I wanted to share it. It’s a cliche, but made new again in this analogous context. Here it is:”If you love something, set it free.”

I love inspiration, so I have set it free. Right now, for example, I am writing this post at 9:50 am. I will stop at 10 am to prepare for my next meeting. If it means that I lose my train of thought, there is always another train. I cannot control inspiration, but it doesn’t control me either. We live in harmony with each other.

Inspiration will not leave you if it knows you are coming back.

If you live in the world of inspiration long enough, it starts to feel like home. It’s like an old friend with whom you can pick up a conversation started 15 minutes or 15 years earlier. Or a child who knows that although you have left the room, you will always return. If you trust inspiration, it will trust you back.

9:58 am. Inspiration, it’s almost time to go. It’s farewell and not goodbye. See you soon!

Anne Marie Segal is a career and leadership coach, author and resume writer for attorneys, executives and entrepreneurs. Her book on job interviews, Master the Interview, is available on Amazon.com. 

Image above from Adobe Images.