JobsWorth

JobsWorth: OVERTIME- How to Get Clearer on the Career You Want

• John Hawker • Season 2

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Confused about your next career move? Let Dr. Hayley Lewis, a distinguished occupational and organisational psychologist, be your guide to unwrapping the layers of your professional aspirations. In a deep dive that transcends sectors and career stages, Hayley walks us through five transformative steps, rich with personal narratives and coaching triumphs, that will equip you to carve a path to career clarity. As a bonus, get a sneak peek into her personal journey and the pivots she made while forging her own career.

If you've ever thought that making a collage was just child's play, prepare to have your mind blown. Our conversation with Hayley unlocks the surprising power of creative exercises in professional development, proving that even the most analytical minds can benefit from a splash of creativity. Discover how a simple collage can lay bare your deepest career desires and help you rekindle job satisfaction. Plus, we're sharing how these methods have sparked radical changes for clients, like the local government worker who transformed into a social media maven.

Remember, whether you're taking your first steps or are mid-journey, the path to a career that resonates with your deepest aspirations is within reach.

The JobsWorth website is here www.jobs-worth.com

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Speaker 1:

Jobs worth overtime. How to get clearer on the career you want.

Speaker 2:

Each person is beautifully unique. Each has their own context. It's really important as a coach not to judge and just to create that space of curiosity and Okay, well, how could you make this reality? How near or far are you to this? What might be getting in the way? How might you be getting in the way? What's the first step you can take towards this? So, just through asking non-judgmental questions, we kind of get to, hopefully, some very practical, not overwhelming initial steps.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another edition of Jobs Worth overtime, a shorter podcast episode where one of my previous guests Shares tips, insights and advice on a specific topic. After a much-loved episode on the fundamentals of feedback, I invited Occupational and organizational psychologist Dr Haley Lewis back on to discuss a question many of you may have asked yourself at some point how do I get clearer on the career I want? During this conversation, haley and I discuss five things you can do to help answer it. If you're stuck in a rut at work, lacking engagement in your job or looking for some encouragement to try something new, then this is well worth the listen, okay, so, first off, thank you so much for coming back on and giving up some of your time, because I loved. I think you are fast becoming my Favorite person both on LinkedIn and Instagram and the.

Speaker 1:

Honestly, the feedback to your episode on feedback Ironically was them was amazing, like so many, people got so much value out of it. So it just made complete sense for me to invite you back for an overtime episode, and what we're going to be discussing today is Based on one of your articles that are on your website now. I'm assuming this started off going out to your newsletter Subscribers, did it Haley, and then ends up on your website.

Speaker 2:

No, my blog posts go out to everybody.

Speaker 1:

Okay so.

Speaker 2:

I did the other way around, right, because I don't believe him in kind of necessarily being a gatekeeper of certain knowledge. Okay and so. I always write a blog post first and then I'll whack the link to it on my, on my, newsletter. There are certain things my subscribers Get that others don't get, as you know. But yeah, blog posts are always written first, so yeah so this this. This is out there and has always been out there before the newsletter.

Speaker 1:

Understood, right, okay, so I was. I was doing a bit of a deep dive through some of. I mean, you've got a an extensive back catalog of Blogs on your website, which is fantastic and it's very easy to find Different blogs on different topics. I'm doing a plug for your website now you are Thanks. What it's all about?

Speaker 2:

165 blog posts, wow, okay, yeah, and they're very easily.

Speaker 1:

They're compartmentalized into different topics and subjects on a very user-friendly website listeners anyway, but this particular topic is One that resonates a lot with me and a lot with both the audience of Jobsworth and the people that I deal with day to day. The title of the blog was five things you can do to get clearer on the career you want, and it just seemed like the perfect fodder for us to try and dissect and go into in a little more detail, if that's all right with you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's fine, fantastic, okay so first off, when you wrote the blog, Did you have a specific audience in mind where you used to be?

Speaker 1:

You have a specific audience in mind. Were you thinking about people just starting out in their career, people wanting to switch lanes, or those that just wanted to get more engagement or there I say, enjoyment out of what they were doing for a job? Did that come into mind when you were writing it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so my I've always been crystal clear on who my main audience is. So my main audience and the people that I've always kind of focused on, our middle managers in the public sector, in particular, local government. However, I work with managers and leaders at all levels across all sectors, and so Really, we're talking about middle managers. There are a couple of things that drove me to create that blog post. First, as you'll have seen because you've read it, I drew on several case studies, so these are real-life case studies of things that clients, some of my coaching clients were grappling with, so people who are middle managers either unhappy in their organization, or thinking about and struggling to think about the next five years or so, or just wanting to explore their career in a in a more structured, thoughtful, safe way. The second thing is, not everybody can afford to work with someone like me, and I don't mean that to sound as policy as it does, but it's true.

Speaker 2:

Some organizations won't support their staff and pay for a coach or for training, and One of my core values is helping is helping people, and so I thought it would be really helpful to share some of the techniques that I've used with clients in order to help people To do some stuff themselves. So if they don't have access to a coach For whatever reason, or or they're not being given Access to certain resources will let me share with you some things that you might be able to do yourself Based on what I do with my clients. So there were there were kind of two focuses, if you like okay, fantastic, that really helps.

Speaker 1:

and I did want to ask as well have you ever used these exercises or activities yourself?

Speaker 2:

Oh, yes, john, I have, yes, yes, okay, I've used, I've used pretty much all of them.

Speaker 1:

Did you use them when you were transitioning to working for yourself and setting up on your own? Is this an exercise or a number, a selection of those activities that you went through?

Speaker 2:

no, not, not when I was not, not when I set up my own business. That's a tale for another day. I did everything wrong when I left court, life and self myself. I just ignored all the things that you should do, which is why I struggled in my first kind of few months. These are things that I used at different points when I was inside organization, so. So, for example, that first activity where you're kind of which is a strengths-based activity where you're mapping out on a Scala one to ten and blah, blah, blah, I used that when I was really struggling in my most senior role. So it was the final role that I had in local government before I set up on my own, and actually I was. I was really unhappy in the role, and so I used that activity on myself just to, because my confidence was really knocked I I started to degenerate into really negative self-tall, which became a vicious circle that I'm rubbish at my job and blah, blah blah.

Speaker 2:

And so I used this strengths-based activity, which comes from the School of Positive Psychology. It's one that I've used many, many times over the last 25 years with with clients and staff, and I thought I use it on myself and I just found it really helpful to Just make sense of the mess in my head when, whenever I use the scaling technique, which is what it's called that first activity on the blog, whenever I use that people or I teach people how to use it, every single person always says it's helped, it's given me a framework, it's helped me make sense of everything that was just jumbled up in my head and actually, I had the answer all along, and now I've got a very simple first step to take.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, I use that on myself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, thank you for that, and I think it's important to. If you are talking about activities other people are doing, it's always nice to hear about your own experience in having used those yourself and the value you've got from it. But you've talked about that first exercise and, if it's okay, I thought you know a fairly typical format if we're going to break these down into five things that you can do to get clear on the career you want is go through them chronologically, if that's okay.

Speaker 1:

So now the first exercise. You title, or you describe as really go deep on the things that matter most to you in your work life. Now there are a few steps to this exercise I think there are 10 all in all, which may not translate so well if we're doing this over audio, but what I will do is ensure that the link to the blog is included in the episode description for this.

Speaker 1:

But can you just tell us a bit more about the exercise, shine a light on it and then what hopefully the benefits of doing it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So, as I say, it's a strengths-based approach. It's very much about tapping into your values and surfaces those. So often when I use this and again when I did it on myself many of us we say we know what matters to us and what our core values are, particularly in relation to work, and we'll rattle off really quickly with verse three or four, and that happens every time with clients. They'll be like yeah, I know what matters to me. What matters to me is fairness at work. What matters to me is work-life balance and blah, blah, blah. And then when I become that annoying toddler who just keeps asking the question, so they get, they rattle off the full fun and I say and what else?

Speaker 2:

That's when you get the longer and longer pulses where people are having to think deeper and deeper and deeper, and so the aim is to kind of come up with a list of seven or eight, and, if people found that annoying, waiting to hear it to the next stage, which is then you're having to make a choice. So then I ask the question okay, you've got a job offer in an organization that is all about fairness, you've done your due diligence, they've got a real reputation for treating people fairly, but the work-life balance not so much. You've heard some bad stuff about that. And then you've got a job offer from another organization where the work-life balance is great, but you've heard stories of unfair decisions at times.

Speaker 2:

And which one do you choose? And so I always tell people go with your gut. And so what you're then doing is getting the person to choose. So you work through the values and then you'll have a grid, so I do like a little tick or a cross, depending on which one they've chosen over the other, and by the end of that activity we'll have a clear sense of so there'll be a score, so that in terms of the number of ticks, against each value and that will then give us an idea of the rank order of priority.

Speaker 2:

So all of them are important, but at this snapshot of time, this is the order of priority of your values and these are the top three. For example and I tell you what, john, I've used this a long time, I would say nine times out of ten the three most important are often the last ones on the list where you've gone really deep and people are always really surprised and you ask the question well, what's the purpose of this?

Speaker 2:

and it serves a number of purposes. It can help people make sense of, maybe, why they're unhappy in their certain situation. It might be because their values, particularly those three top ones, whatever they might be, are being trampled all over or they're being asked to compromise on them so it just helps people make sense of that, because some people come to me and they don't know why they're feeling so angry or stressed or unhappy.

Speaker 2:

The other thing is it gives you a, it gives you your personalised framework of what matters to you, which helps you be much more thoughtful about the jobs and organisations you apply to so if you're clear on what you stand for and what matters to you, it helps you be much more careful in the organisations you apply to, the kind of jobs.

Speaker 2:

it helps you with your due diligence, if you like. So, if I know, you know, one of my top three at this point in time is fairness, then I'm not necessarily I've got to be careful not naming organizations, but there's certain organizations who we know have a reputation for treating their staff like shit Of course and not being very fair and so, okay, I might be headhunted for a job with that organization.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to think really carefully about whether I go for that, Because it's going to potentially be a price I pay for my own values.

Speaker 1:

Yeah does that make sense? Completely make sense, and I think this is stuff that I would have benefited from in my last job too, Because getting into a point where you just feel completely lost and actually being given some structure, rigidity, guidance and a framework to go through as to why do I feel like this would have been so incredibly helpful for me? I do want to ask and, as I said, I'm going to include the link to the blog in the episode description so people will be able to see those 10 steps very clearly and be able to go through

Speaker 1:

that exercise, but when you've been going through this with clients, I don't know if you can give it a percentage or how much you're even able to share, but do you find that there is a leaning one way of people that sit there and go it's time for me to leave because the organization I'm in is not aligning with the values and the things that I hold important. Or do you find a lot of people feel that they now feel empowered to change something about the organization they're in?

Speaker 2:

Really great questions. I've used this with hundreds of people over the last couple of decades and I think I would say about 20% of the people that I've used it with are like. You know what this has given me? Closure on its time to move. Right, that's what I was getting at, yeah and then I would say, yeah, the other 80% or so. It's so wonderful the way you've put that job and I'm like this makes sense to me now.

Speaker 2:

It's not that I'm rubbish or that I'm bad at my job, or that I'm a bad person, or that my line manager is a bad person. Oh, this makes sense, and now I'm going to do XYZ to try and improve things. So yeah, so I say that's. That's the rough split.

Speaker 1:

Okay, because I'm thinking from an employee retention perspective.

Speaker 1:

Having those exercises being carried out could save companies, so many people just buggering off without really fully understanding whether there was some a conversation that could have been, had lines drawn, boundaries built, something that could have been done in existing organizational role that would have kept that person there. So, interestingly, you say 20% closure. In your experience, 80% tend to want to stick it out, way of that aha moment and move forward. So thank you for going into that in more detail. And number two, the point you make is use your creativity to tap into thoughts that have lain dormant. Take us through the exercise first. I've got a couple of questions on this, haley, but can you, can you take us through? I know it involves collage, which I haven't done since, I'm going to say, secondary school. So take us through that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's something. There's a brilliant coach she's very active on LinkedIn called Andrea Watts, and she uses a lot of art in her coaching with clients. She's absolutely brilliant. I mean I just dabbling this stuff, john, the art side of stuff with clients, but what I found, so I had before I started using something like collage with clients.

Speaker 2:

I'd used it a lot in things like team building as a way to particularly in teams facing conflict. It's a non, it's almost like a non verbal way to get across how you're feeling and there's something. There's something so powerful and freeing in kind of immersing yourself in the act of finding the images and cutting them out and sticking them on and making them kind of make sense to you, and it just taps into a different part of our psyche from our day to day, unless, of course, you're in a creative environment where you kind of you're doing art, like things. But for many of my clients they're often in very serious, very analytical roles where it's not that you're not being creative, but you're being creative probably in a very traditional, structured way let's brainstorm in this meeting or you know, so on and so forth, and so I sometimes find it really helpful with clients to disrupt that and just do something a little bit different.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes being nudged a little bit out of our comfort zone can open up thoughts that we weren't even aware are there, and so the few times that I've used something like collage with clients who are grappling with their identity maybe they've ended up in a career because their parents expected it of them and they're now appointing their 30s or 40s where they're like I don't know who I am and actually using using some kind of artistic type of activity can be a safe way for them to express that and then my job as the coach is to get them to talk through what the images mean, how they fit together, what insights they get from that, and yeah, and so use the collage as the basis for exploration.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So from a psychological perspective, are we tapping into different sides of the brain there when we're doing something in a more creative way?

Speaker 2:

So the whole right brain, left brain thing is a complete nonsense. It's just neurobolics, pop psychology. Just ignore it. If you see nonsense like that on Instagram or stuff like that, just ignore it.

Speaker 1:

Brilliant, I will take that moving forward Definitely.

Speaker 2:

But it does. It does. It just allows us to be more creative in our expression and, as I say, it can be really helpful. I like to think about where the client is coming from, what kind of environment, what they're used to and if they're stuck on an issue, or potentially doing the same thing that they're used to isn't gonna unstick them.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes we need to do something different to unstick their thinking and, as I say, just because of the nature of many of my clients, the sectors they work in, the kind of jobs they do, actually that disruption comes from a really creative activity. The converse might be true for people who do art and stuff day to day. Actually doing something different from the norm for them would look very different perhaps.

Speaker 1:

So you've got an exercise as well that might appeal to people like that, but it can be used. There's a lot of parallels, a lot of synergy between point number two and point number four that we'll obviously go to in a second too. So if you are a more creative person and you're working in that world all day and the thought of doing collage is not what you need to break the cycle, there's another thing that we can suggest in a moment too. Okay, this is completely a thought I've just had In terms of the source. Where are in the sessions you're running where you're asking people to do collages, where is the source for these pictures? Because I'm thinking they go and find them themselves A cult. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2:

So, and obviously it's with their. I don't force people to do stuff, but maybe in a coaching session we talk about the things that they could do ahead of the next session. So I always I think I've said to you before that I always kind of couch the space between coaching sessions as experimentation. I avoid the term homework, which is what some coaches use call it experimentation and so I might give suggestions.

Speaker 2:

And so if a client's like yeah, yeah, actually I'm really interested in that, I'll give collage a go, send up to them to source the images. They might have magazines, they might have a look online. Obviously, since the pandemic, I've had some clients do an electronic version, or they might set up a Pinterest account and use Pinterest, which is great. Some people like the tactile experience of actually physically touching and doing so, whatever works for them. But it's up to them to go and source the images Understood In my head.

Speaker 1:

I had it as in, like if I had to go and do that homework and that just, it's an awful word to use, isn't it? So I understand why you say experimentation. I'd go home and I'd literally have an Argos catalog as a physical thing. So and I don't have many aspirations that align with an Argos catalog.

Speaker 2:

But you don't know until you flip. I mean, there's a thousand pages in an Argos catalog.

Speaker 1:

It's true. I mean, it could be the inspiration I never knew I needed. Basically, Haley but I thought I'd ask, moving on to number three, so you've got think big, start small. So talk us through what that means and again the exercise you can do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so this is probably one of the most common ones I use and there's different variations. I was running a pardon me, I was running a program on Tuesday, a women in leadership program, and one of the activities which touches on this is begin with the end in mind. So what do you want your legacy to be? What do you want people to be saying about you at your retirement? Do and then reverse engineer from that. How near are you to achieving that? So that's kind of one aspect of this activity.

Speaker 2:

And then developing a plan. If I want people to be saying about me at the end of my career whenever that might be that I knew my stuff, that I was really innovative, that I was really fair and respectful. Actually, if I look to now, like 30 years ahead of that, how near am I to having people say that about me? And it might be that I think, oh, people might say I'm at this point in time, I might say I'm not very creative and so, okay, let me develop a plan to start to work on that. So that's kind of one aspect.

Speaker 2:

The other is doing forward thinking on a less grand scale, more about where do you see your life going. So, as I say on the blog post, one of the clients I was working with, she, wanted to do it all now and I asked her to kind of think. Well, I think she ended up thinking she focused on being 50, that seemed to be a pivotal age for her. And so we broke that 18 years or so down into a number of boxes and it's like okay, so imagine you're 50, what kind of life are you living? And she said well, actually I'd have two children. You know I want children. I'd have two children and they'd be teenagers by that point. I you know where would you be living. Okay, my aim is to live here. Okay, what kind of work would you be doing? What kind of organization would you be working?

Speaker 2:

So you get the person to kind of imagine and then we reverse engineer from that and so we work backwards and it's like, okay, if this is the job or organization you imagine yourself being in at 50, what would be the job or organization prior to that? That would be the launchpad to you going in. So, for example, she said, well, I'd want to be in the previous job a few years brilliant, so you'd be 47. What's that role look like? Well, nice. Actually, I'm thinking I need to be in X role in X kind of organization in order to have a hope of getting that role of 50 great. And what's the role of organization or kind of life you need before that role at 47. And so you just keep going until you get to where you are now and it just gives you a bit of a map of things to think about.

Speaker 2:

The thing I like about this activity and a thing, more importantly, that clients like is it talks about your life as well, because we have to think about that. You know, we don't. For many of us, particularly if we're in some kind of partnership, if we've got caring commitments, whatever that might look like, we can't make these big decisions about careers just as islands. We have to think about the other things as well, and that's what this activity does. And hopefully, when people are listening to this because I'm conscious some people might be listening going I haven't got a clue how to do this. All the instructions for each activity that John and I are talking about are on this blog post, yeah exactly that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think it would just be doing everyone a disservice if we just read the blog post out like an audio book.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, we're just trying to give some context and, I guess, the bit of insight into the real value of carrying these exercises out. I think what I mean. I'd go as far to say that every single point that you make of the five within this blog and I think really is you have to think about life outside of work. It's so blended that the lines are so blurred between each of these things. I very much doubt someone goes and makes a collage of where they see themselves and what their career looks like without thinking about what that career affords them to be able to do.

Speaker 1:

That spills into life. No one's coming back with just a very career focused image of image set. I would imagine.

Speaker 2:

so Absolutely, spot on, john, absolutely, spot on on. And that's what I love about that kind of activity as well. Is it also for some clients? They're surprised at how much life stuff is on their collage and it gets them thinking a bit differently and helps them think about the kind of decisions they might need to make.

Speaker 1:

What I love about point four is that it resonated with me from a career that I had a long time ago as a personal trainer, and we talked about periodization of training. So you're looking at things like your macro, mezzo and micro cycles. So you look at an end goal. How do you block that down and start to compartmentalize that into smaller achievable steps. And that's, I think, as we go with goal setting. It's pretty much common knowledge that you should break it down into more achievable targets in the pursuit of one larger, much more, I don't know, probably daunting goal. But smaller steps, break it down. I love the points you make about doing the boxes there to show as well the number of years or number of months you've actually got to take those steps moving forward. So it's a really lovely point, I think. So that was point three. Point four write your ideal job description. I loved this one I have to be honest with you. I thought you were just with your expertise.

Speaker 1:

I mean, yeah, I mean my job descriptions or adverts, I should say, are very weird and wonderful, but I think actually doing this could be super powerful. And this is the one that you say if you're not into the collage one, then maybe try this one too. So just take us through. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but talk us through the exercise and then what you see your clients get from it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I imagine many of your listeners are familiar with job descriptions. They've got one, they've written them.

Speaker 2:

All you're doing is writing one for yourself, I think that you have control of what's in it, and the thing I always say to clients is don't limit yourself, don't edit yourself. This is not a corporate job description. You're writing it's your dream, so allow your imagination to kind of run free and then we can explore that and explore the reality around that. Even making up a job title, even if it's one that doesn't exist, who cares? Actually, it gives us some clues and insights as to what matters to you and what doesn't.

Speaker 2:

One client I worked with she had a major breakthrough doing this activity, to the point where she completely changed her profession and she is thriving now. So she had gone into local government, family had been in local government. She went into local government and then, but there was never any joy when she talked about her work. She just felt and came across as so utterly miserable and she was doing a lot of project management and stuff like that, and so she did this activity. Actually, she did a couple of them. She did this combined with the Create your Ideal working week, and she came to our next session and she'd actually created a physical ideal working week and she'd stuck things on and all sorts which I had suggested she do. She did that herself and she had her job description and she I remember where we met as well.

Speaker 2:

We met in a restaurant that we that we would meet in for our coaching sessions and she literally bounced in. She was giddy and she was glowing and she was so excited to show me and talk me through this job description and her ideal working week and fast forward a few years. She's completely changed her profession. She now works in communications as a social media expert. She's completely changed sector. She moved to a different part of the country and she is thriving. So don't underestimate the power of putting pens on paper and just thinking about your ideal job description. If you could control every aspect the salary, what you do, what you don't do, the skills that you would need to kind of bring to the table, it can be so powerful.

Speaker 1:

I'd also say in the current market there's. So I think employers I always get it wrong consider our work in recruitment. That's a real concern. But employers now are showing so much more. They're so much more malleable when it comes to making jobs work for you. If they are finding the right people, you'd be amazed at how much job crafting you can actually be the catalyst for. But the only way you do that is having a very clear idea of what you want from the job, so that as an exercise, I think, is brilliant. I imagine that it leads to the same sort of aha moment, or your rica moment that is.

Speaker 1:

I need to get out as the example you've given there, or, with a few tweaks, a few transparent conversations, this environment could be the environment for me, but I need to make some change happen.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which is the example I give in the blog post. So the client I refer to, she had this ping moment where she's like, actually what I want isn't too far away from what I'm doing. I need to have a conversation with my manager.

Speaker 1:

I think that's great. I think, if that?

Speaker 1:

can unlock that. Very transparent, honest conversation needs to happen, and it may be that, no, there's no way that we can get you close to what you're looking for and then that gives you your answer, doesn't it? At least you're exploring it. Okay, cool, and we move on into our last point, and you've mentioned it already, but it's create your ideal working week. So, again, I think the creation of an ideal working week, I guess has to be grounded in a way that is is real to, and maybe I'm gonna ask a question about your, your role in that as as a coach. But talk us again through the exercise, if that's alright. I think you shine a bit of light on that.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, so different clients do this in different ways. As I say, the example I gave earlier. This particular client did a physical version. She went to an art shop, bought a big old kind of bit of our cardboard Thing.

Speaker 2:

You can tell I really know my stuff and she yeah, she, she, she plotted out days of the week and then she thought about different aspects of her life so work, time with her partner, rest, all sorts of stuff and she just plotted out and she broke work down into different categories as well, in terms of creative Work, relationship focused aspects of work. So, yeah, so she kind of plotted that out. The example I give in the blog post one particular client he was very, he was very technical and he created A version of his outlook like an outlook. It looked like an outlook calendar. When he showed me On his laptop it looked like an outlook calendar Because that's how he managed his time and he color coded everything. And he again it was about his work and his life and his insight was he realized that his calendar was dominated by work right and his ideal working week had as much about his life as it did about his work.

Speaker 2:

So, for example, he realized that he wasn't spending as much time with his children as he wanted to, and that was a big insight for him, and so there's a number of ways you can do that. Some clients have the insight that they no longer want to work five days a week. If that's the pattern that, they work.

Speaker 2:

And so, yeah, just just thinking about what your ideal week would look like and going into detail, what? What time would you be getting up? What would you be doing before you log on? What would a good day look like on a Monday? What would a good day look like on a Tuesday, and so on and so forth. What would you be doing after work?

Speaker 2:

Just and again, not not limiting yourself by your current reality. This is about your imagination and hope and optimism kind of shining through and just not editing yourself, because it can be very easy for us to start editing and going, oh well, that's never going to happen or I'm never going to be able to know. The aim is just to be free and put your dreams down, and then we would explore that through a coaching conversation. Obviously, this blog post was for those who can't afford working with a coach or some kind of consultant, and so maybe you want to share this with a trusted friend or a trusted colleague, or maybe you've got a mentor, actually, that you can talk things through. Yeah, I think that's really good.

Speaker 1:

I think it's not everyone's going to have access to to a coach like yourself or any other, and yeah, what I liked is. It's kind of actual tips and advice that you can literally read it, take it away, go for the exercises, but it does help if you've got someone that you trust to be able to speak through these things with my, my experience with, I guess, building the week that I want happened when I started working through my Gmail calendar and I was looking at everything that was blocked out.

Speaker 1:

At the time I was feeling burnt out and overwhelmed and I had one particular month where I was really feeling it. I look back and I color code. I'm awful at it. But I started to categorize and color code all the meetings I had and it was just swathes of work, swathes of all different types of work. Even even the podcast episodes is still work, even though it's probably the part of work that I most enjoy and I then, for the next month, started to block out family time or self care or whatever that look like and just started to creep in, and now I would say I've got quite a good balance.

Speaker 1:

whether I sometimes cancel those Right, go and do this for yourself, john. Might cancel every now and again, but it's a really powerful exercise to go through. I think your one takes takes it one step further to really focus and imagine the life that you really want to be leaving, leading in, with all the balance there, how your role as a coach is saying I was thinking about when I read your example do you find that you have to manage expectations, haley, because we're talking about a don't check yourself, don't Edit yourself. If someone says, I want three days a week, I want to get up at 10 o'clock in the morning, but they're doing this job, is it hard to, because that's not realistic for a lot of people? Is it hard to manage the expectations of people that come to you with that being their ideal goal, or do you then break it down and Okay, how do we get there then?

Speaker 2:

reverse engineer it. Yeah, my job isn't to judge so. And who says that's not realistic? Who decides that?

Speaker 1:

It's a good point. Yeah, I think I'm again, I'm guilty of it. Societally, I would say well, okay, it depends what you're doing. There's a lot of variables.

Speaker 2:

I guess it's different for each person is beautifully unique, each has their own context, and so, as a coach, it's really important, as a coach, not to judge and just to create that space of curiosity and, okay, well, how could you make this reality? How near or far are you to to this? What might be getting in the way? How might you be getting in the way? What's the first step you could take towards this? So, just through asking non judgmental questions, we kind of get to, hopefully, some very practical, not overwhelming initial steps.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just the way you ask those questions as well, haley, I'm like I got. I wish I could have you as a coach. Yeah, it's just so. You really do break it down in such a I don't know, a thought provoking way. And you're right, you shouldn't, you shouldn't judge. I think everyone has the ability to make the changes, but they need to be done in the right way and as you say reverse engineer it, make it achievable.

Speaker 1:

Let's do some goal setting and and come in from a position where you're not making any judgment, which which I think is so important. Ok, haley, thank you so much for doing this again. I honestly, I know it, just it sounds like I'm blind.

Speaker 1:

Smoke up your arse every time we speak, but you're just one of my favorite people and I love having these discussions with you, so, and what we'll do is a bit of a plug for you, and then, if there's anything else you want to mention, then you can. But I am a subscriber to Haley's newsletter via Halo Psychology and it is incredible it's once a month, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

That's right, no spam. No spam whatsoever.

Speaker 1:

Lots of exclusive stuff that you wouldn't get on the website. But mention the website already. How many, how many blogs are on your website?

Speaker 2:

As long as that's so. There's around 160 blog posts. There's also lots of free downloads. There's a couple of ebooks. Yeah, there's sketch note ebooks as well that you can request. There's all sorts of free stuff. Yes that you can pillage away to your heart's consent on the website.

Speaker 1:

And I was going to mention the sketch notes as well, because I saw one of your posts talking about if. If you are interested in one of the sketch notes, they are available in ebooks. And if you haven't seen, I've mentioned this when Haley came on for a full episode. If you haven't seen Haley's sketch notes, seek them out now. But you can get those in ebooks. And then Haley, I think, has given some guidance around how to credit those.

Speaker 1:

They're free, but just credit the, as you should do. If anyone's creating anything artistic, make sure you're credit crediting those in the right way, and also this is a mutually beneficial plug here. You can also listen to Haley's full episode of Jobs Worth via the links in the episode description, where we talk all about the fundamentals of feedback. Is there anything else you wanted to mention, haley? Anything coming up?

Speaker 2:

project wise client wise anything that you can share. Oh, no, because I've got a couple of non disclosures that I've had to sign, but I'm always sharing stuff on places like LinkedIn. John and I were chatting right at the top of this show. Linkedin is the main space that I'm in and come say hi. I like to think I'm friendly and I share lots of stuff on LinkedIn and I'm always happy to have a chat. So yeah, and thank you for listening. Well, I'm sure you could follow what the hell I was talking about 100 percent.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I know that we'll have some really lovely feedback on this episode Haley as well, so thank you once again for coming on and chatting to me. It's been an absolute pleasure and, who knows, I might get you on again at some point if you can spare the time Cool All right, it's not uncommon.

Speaker 2:

You would be the third show where I've been called back a third time. So always happy, as you can tell I love. I love a chat.

Speaker 1:

That's good, always happy. It really helps for a podcast as well. Haley, enjoy the rest of your day. I'll speak to you soon.

Speaker 2:

You too Take care. Thank you Bye.

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John Hawker

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