Not every rule is in a text book, and in fact, most of what seems to be really important can’t always be found between the covers of a book. For the big stuff we need someone to take us by the hand and show us the way.
      The working world is filled with treacherous waters and no wo/man is an island, having a seasoned professional to help us chart our career course prevents the occasional upsets and storms so often faced by workers.
     Ideally a mentor should leave you with a sense of overall wellbeing and the unshakeable belief the things in your working life that seem complicated are manageable. That your goals are not only within your reach but a great mentor pushes you towards them. A mentor should allow you to feel like the amazing person you find yourself to be. To see you as you want to be seen but, sometimes in the blackest lil-o-pit of your heart, fear you are not. In short, a mentor sees the greatness in you, even when you are unable to see it yourself and pushes/coaxes/nudges/leads/just plain brow beats you towards your betterment.
     I’ve had the great fortune of being on the receiving end of mentorship several times. These relationships have proven to be a proving ground and a test site for professional behaviors I later developed. I would like to publicly acknowledging the mentors in my life who have acted like midwives, and occasionally like wet nurses, to the major births in my life. Here they are in no particular order of importance:

John channeled a hundred years of psychological knowledge through himself, into me while coaxing me into becoming a better man.
Thomas pushed me to grow up.
Deb helped me find a shred of myself in the midst of my childhood.
My Dad taught me the power of wonder and work.
Nick taught me about what lays hidden behind the driving forces of workers.
Matt taught me to argue and to win.
My Mom taught me the power of beauty.
John taught me the weight of duty and the cost of patriotism.
Tracy is teaching me how to be a college professor who inspires.
Mark teaches me about professionalism every day.

     None of the folks I listed above were, or are, islands unto themselves. Quite the opposite. Every one of them had mentors throughout their lives, most of them still do. In a very in-your-face way my mentors channeled the teachings they received that were handed down to them. At times when I feel disconcerted from the world, it’s a great comfort to remember the line of wisdom at my doorstep has spanned the ages. Each pearl of wisdom or wit gently polished over the course of a lifetime until presented to the next person in the form of a pearl necklace to be repeated over and over again.     
      The weight of such a legacy can be make for heavy thoughts and, at the same time: duty. The duty I have is to pass on the gifts of mentorship I’ve been given to others around me. Here are some of the more practical benefits to securing a mentor:

•    Getting better: A great mentor facilitates a smooth flow of knowledge from one source to another in a helpful and powerful way. I should also say that by powerful I mean not with sledgehammer force but with meaningful impact of a precision strike.
•    Spotting blind spots: A better understanding of upcoming barriers experienced at the lower rungs on the cooperate ladder.
•    Increase in morale & engagement: A fair mentor facilitates, but a great mentor inspires you to not only dream, but to also reach for those dreams.
•    Perspective: A good mentor can lift us up out of a trough of thinking to see issues clearer.
•    Exposure to opportunities & people: Mentors will open our eyes to things not readily apparent, including people. A wisely chosen mentor will openly push you, or gently lead depending on your needs, towards career building avenues and people.
•    Leech off of someone else’s prestige: If someone respected shows their colleagues (which we will assume are higher up the job food chain than you are) that they see something worthwhile in you, then the higher ups are more likely to take a second look at you.
•    Trust: The importance of knowing someone is there for you, regardless of how storm tossed your career becomes, can’t be underscored enough.  
•    A sounding board: Having a seasoned hand to test run new ideas or proposals before having to attach your name to is vital. Just like a wave that has passed; once something is out in the working world it can’t be called back.  
•    Work on communication skills: Similar to having a sounding board but more subtle. An impartial judge to point out the points in your dialogue that may send out unintended messages. A somewhat small matter that can lead to large divides.
•    Save time & money: Mentors can walk you through processes with fewer mistakes, or at least drive the errors made home, in a productive way, so they are seen and recognized for what they are: lessons.
•    A pusher: I need someone in my face who doesn’t bandy words. By fortune or design, I don’t know or particularly care which, I’ve found several people in my life who are more than willing to tell me what they think of me. While still giving me a verbal kick in the pants.
      Find a mentor that works with your personality. Not always being the master of subtlety, I need someone in my face and willing to argue for me to see their point. Understanding not everyone else on the planet works the same way I do; find a person (or persons) with an interaction style that works best for you. I’ll discuss how to find and secure a mentor in more depth in the next few weeks. Until then I’ll leave you with a tidbit of wisdom in the form of a Chinese proverb:

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back”

     The emotions that flit across our faces impact what people think of us even more than our mouths can according to a recent study. Judging people by their expression men were believed to  be more dominant when they showed a neutral expression but the same wasn’t said for women. Men were also viewed as dominate when they expressed anger or happy emotions rather than sadness or shame.

     Finding work bliss is a sweet science. “Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life” was penned by Confucius but exemplified in a BBQ stand I stumbled upon. Dream jobs do happen, but not nearly often enough for most of us. Or is that we just don’t see it? I found one man working his dream job out of the back of a smoking trailer.

     Coming across a worker following their bliss can be a balm to the working soul. I stumbled across just such a worker in Russellville Arkansas dishing out the most incredible BBQ that has ever found its way out of a smoker. Willy’s BBQ didn’t look like much when I cruised by it on my motorcycle this week, in fact it looked like less than much. Just a little trailer painted bright red in an abandoned lot surrounded by upscale hotels. The smoke coming out of the back of the little red wagon was the first giveaway I was dealing with the extraordinary, the second being the amazing aroma drifting on the breeze.

     The smell of hickory and honey haunted me the entire time it took me to find a hotel, settle into my room, wipe the sweat from my eyes, and the dust from my throat. I ended up braving the heat just to get a better look at the trailer, because who wants to eat BBQ in 102 degree heat?!? I found a lump of metal belching black smoke on the back of that spiffy red trailer; it had to be the most sophisticated meat smoker I’d ever seen or the crudest particle accelerator in the world. Either way, I found myself drawn to it, which is where I met Willy.

Feel like your job search is going nowhere? That no matter how many resumes you submit or interviews you go on a job always seems just out of reach? Check out these common mistakes to avoid:
1.    Failing to network: More people get jobs from networking than any other job search strategy. It is an employer’s market and networking is king.
2.    Becoming a couch potato: Wallowing in self-pity only works for poets. Get out and mix it up! Join associations related to your career field, hobnob with people already working, just get involved!
3.    Not calling after submitting applications: Sitting eagerly by the phone waiting for an employer to call is pointless if you haven’t already contacted them. Be proactive and call then!
4.    Ignoring social media: Linkedin.com, Facebook, and Twitter are becoming more and more the norm for finding work. These sites aren’t the end all be all, but they carry heavy job search mojo. Use em!
5.    Applying for every job under the sun: In our society more is better, and that should work with submitting resumes right? Wrong. Being focused in a job search avoids spinning wheels and wasting time.
6.    Expecting your job search to be easy: Looking for a job is a full time job and spending time wishing for something that isn’t is a sure recipe for unhappiness.
7.    Using a less than professional email: Email addresses like: OneHotMama@getaclue.com  or StudMuffin@notachance.com while cute and funny with friend are job search suicide.  Keep it professional.
8.    Having mistakes on a resume: A sure method to get your resume filed under “T” for trash.
9.    Not researching a company before an interview: Going in blind only works for surgeons. Oh wait, it doesn’t work for them either. Know what you are getting into before you start the interview.
10.    Prep for an interview. In this economy a job seeker may only get one shot at their dream job, so make it count and be being ready.
11.    Trying the same stuff and expecting different results: Besides an alternative definition for insanity, this little piece of wisdom will guarantee to make a job search harder, more frustrating, and just plain crazy.
12.    Not sending a thank you card after an interview: A little piece of civility in an otherwise rude world makes a strong impression on an employer. In a good way.
13.    Putting faith in job search engines only: Use job search engines to find a job but then try and get on the companies website for the most current info.
14.    Staying busy: Gaps on a resume aren’t instant death, but they aren’t great either. Keeping a hand in something shows motivation and determination to employers.
15.    Be strong: Don’t throw in the towel, no matter how tempting. Still against the wall? Then it might be time to see a professional career counselor.

     If you find yourself contemplating less than stellar job prospects right out of college don’t let the bad economy get you down. Check out this article by Forbes on CEO’s first Jobs and rest assured in the knowledge that all that glitters isn’t gold. Here is another article to the same effects but as a bonus you can see a mug shot of Bill Gates. Scary!

    “Can you be happy and not realize you are?” was the question posed to me by a career counseling client last week, unsure of her meaning I asked her for more information. It turns out she felt so miserable about her life she quit her job and found another, figuring that it would fix the void in her life. After three weeks at her new job she realized how great her last job was and she had made a big mistake in leaving it. Even worse, she had burned bridges to get out of her last job and wasn’t able to go back. Her plight made me think of cows and dogs.
     I’m not calling this client a dog or a cow, or even suggesting human behavior can be easily generalized to that of a cow: far from it. What I am suggesting is that for many the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
     Pick any highway leading out of Kansas City and slow down long enough and you’ll see cows straining their neck through barbed wire to munch on grass. My dog has a condition affectionately referred to “dog on the wrong side of the door-itis”, which means he begs to be let out and then promptly begs to be let in, where he then repeats the whole cycle until I throw him a bone.     
     There is a tendency for people to generalize their unhappiness, to say if I am unhappy it must because of _____________ when the real reason can be something else entirely. A psychological defense mechanism called displacement can kick in when somebody finds themselves faced  with something unpleasant they feel they can’t change. When displacement hits instead of trying to find a way to face the real problem they look for something they feel are able to change. Work fills that role for many, because of how much it impacts our lives. 
      According to a recent study from the University of Aberdeen, job satisfaction more than any other factor determines overall life satisfaction. In other words, how happy we are at work has more impact than how healthy, wealthy, or well liked we are.   The same study found that in “most of the countries studied” workers with more education reported less job satisfaction than workers with “low education” and workers unable to be employed fulltime reported a large increase in life satisfaction when able to work at least part-time.
     A good bit of what makes up job satisfaction is attitude. We can rarely change what happens to us, but we can change how we react. That’s attitude. It may have been too late for my client to go back and enjoy her last job, but it wasn’t too late to try and find what good she could out of her new job. I was told this joke or bit of wisdom by a friend and it seems to sum up how attitude influence work far better than I can, and the more I think about it, good jokes have a way of doing just that.

"Once there were 3 bricklayers. Each one of them was asked what they were doing.
The first man answered gruffly, 'I'm laying bricks.
'The second man replied, 'I'm putting up a wall.
'But the third man said enthusiastically and with pride, 'I'm building a cathedral.'"
~Author unknown

     Finding work that reflects a person’s values is essential for job satisfaction. New research on values and the workplace has teased out what makes us love, or hate, what we do. The study reported a “small but significant” connection between how workers feel about the level and quality of communication, predictability, interpersonal attraction, and trust a person feels towards their job greatly effect work job satisfaction, organizational identification, and an intent to stay in an organization.
    The more of ourselves we put into something, the more we get out. Or, the more we are our genuine selves while working, the more satisfaction we get out of what we do. I would like to have seen more in the study about what people could do to positively impact their own work happiness, but a study too broad misses the minutia. This study is just that: an attempt to break large ideas or feelings into manageable plug and play chucks we can use.
     In an intense economy more and more people find themselves staying at jobs not because of job satisfaction, but for stability. Hopefully recognizing what we can change, such as our level of communication with coworkers, can influence the enjoyment we can get from our jobs. 

5. Ask for it: If we don’t ask for feedback we can often end up getting it when people are angry and angry people don’t give feedback very well. Which, interestingly enough, often confirms our not wanting to get feedback. The more you ask the less likely, hopefully, feedback given to you will be delivered in anger.
4. Avoid being defensive: Let the other person finish. Look the other person directly in the eye in a nonconfrontational manner without interrupting and don’t rationalize or deny. Don’t interrupt or push for the other person to defend their position.   
3. Think about it before responding: Feedback can be an emotional process so be aware of whether you are responding from an emotional or logical place within yourself. Paraphrase what the other person was saying to you before responding, just to make sure you are on the same page. Take time after the feedback session to think about what was said and come up with specific actions  
2. Don’t sulk:  If needed, take a little time and cool off. But if you mope around or throw a temper tantrum the only thing accomplished is looking childish.
1.  Say thank you: As simple as it is, and as hard as it is to do sometimes, these simple words convey the idea that no feelings were hurt in the process and it was a helpful. Saying thank you also has a way of facilitating repeated feedback sessions.

       Envy is one method of stalling someone’s career and preventing promotions. Jealousy so strong rarely is confined just to someone’s work and in the amounts needed to effect a working environment it is safe to say such people are in dire need of therapy to tighten their loose screws.
     The depths of such envy isn’t regulated to a single setting but a way of seeing the world at large. For such individuals, jealousy comes out as a constant comparison between themselves and the entire world as a way to understand their place in the world. In as group, this type of envy turns into a leveling force by corrupting the mindset of “we are all in this together “ into a twisted form of “we must all be equal”. And as birds of a feather flock together people with the same issues also tend to find each other and form a shared culture. Jealously within cultures (a work environment is just one example of this) can be a shared sickness among coworkers that limits everyone who shares the same world view.
    A set of expectations to live up, or down, is formed in an attempt to define what is “normal”. Constructing such a culture is an attempt to make sure everyone colors within the lines of office expectations and knows their place within the confines of work. Such self created norms limit people by preventing growth in any direction away from the expected norm. 
     Within an envious work setting such coworkers try and prevent everyone within their sphere of influence from  ranging too far away from the norm. This leveling can seem warm and supportive in the early stages of a job as coworkers pull a new person up. But even while pulling someone up such coworkers may not give the gift of their experience freely for fear of being surpassed by an new addition to their work force.
     By the very definition of envy it’s sufferers seek to inflict their unhappiness on others. Check out this quick test to see if you or your environment suffer under the lash of the green eyed monster:
1.    Does everyone within the office talk trash on each other?
2.    When someone succeeds rather than celebrate it, do coworkers bash it?
3.    Coworkers “lulz” all over each other. (A New York Times article defines lulz as “the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium.”)
4.    Coworkers express embracement about something they may not see as top of the line.
5.    Instead of complimenting someone on an outfit coworkers will make a comparison to something they own.
6.    There is a worry when someone stays away from the group.
     If you answered the majority of these questions with a “Yes” than it is a safe bet your work environment is attempting to keep you at close to the norms they’ve created, or is trying to keep you exactly where you are. Sure, at times we all wish we had something other than what we have, but comparing ourselves constantly  shapes how we see the world it becomes a big problem. When a group of people with the same messed up world view gather together for an purpose they tend to strengthen the sickness rather than lessen it.
      When a person tries to get out of an envious work setting. If a coworker doesn’t buy into the belief of a group norm it threatens the very foundations of everyone else’s world view, not to mention it means they are getting away from the norm. Unless a worker is willing to look towards greener pastures there is no simple skeleton key answer to fit every workplace but an increased awareness of the problem and the impact on ourselves lessons the impact. 

     A rose by another name smells just as sweet? I guess not. Evidently Shakespeare had it wrong because research out of the University of British Columbia suggests employers may be weeding out applicants with non-English names. Check out this excerpt:

“The study, which sent thousands of resumes to Canadian employers, found those with English names like J  ill Wilson or John Martin received interview callbacks 40 %  more often than identical resumes with names like Sana Khan or Lei Li.”