Beverly Jones

Change Careers By Using the ‘Sugar Grain’ Principle

August 27, 2016 By Ira Chaleff

To Shift Fields in Midlife, Start with a Manageable Process

By Beverly Jones

(This article previously appeared on Clearwaysconsulting.com.)

The trick to shifting careers in your 50s or 60s or even earlier is to create a disciplined change process and stick with it.

When I work with mid-career coaching clients, I often suggest a simple process that I’ve been exploring since I was a teenager. I call it the “Sugar Grain Principle.”

As a child of New Zealanders, I drank lots of tea and liked it loaded with sugar. But during my teen years, I worried about the calories. Kicking my sugar habit seemed tough. One day, though, I came up with a way of reducing the sugar volume so gradually I’d never miss it.

Origin of the ‘Sugar Grain Principle’

As I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the heaping pile of sugar on my spoon, I decided to start by removing just a few granules. In each of the following days, I tried to remove a few more. I kept at it, progressively lessening the amount of sugar from two or three spoonful’s to none. It took nearly a year, but I ultimately learned to enjoy sugarless tea without ever feeling deprived.

I was so intrigued by the power of creating change through small, painless steps, I started applying the Sugar Grain Principle to other aspects of my life. For example, I became better at keeping my room neat by building little habits, like spending five minutes cleaning each morning.

A 7-Step Process

Today, I often suggest the Sugar Grain Principle to mid-career clients looking for a new direction in their lives. Here’s my seven-step process to do it:

1. Start with a vision of the career you want. Begin the “Sugar Grain” process by creating, as clearly as possible, a picture of what you desire in your next career phase.You needn’t define a precise destination before you get going, but you may be surprised at how much you already know.

List the elements you want in your work. One way to begin is by identifying the good and not-so-good aspects of your current situation. As you find the negatives, rephrase them as positives for your next-job wish list. For example, if you’re bored, reframe that into “I want work that’s varied and interesting.”

Think too, about new skills you’ll need to develop and embark on a plan to get them.

Next, imagine it’s three years from now and you’ve moved to a new professional path. Figure out what made those years so productive and satisfying. You may want to add some of those elements to your wish list.

Consider, too, what else you want in your life. Certain values or interests might be important in shaping your career. If you want to spend more time with your grandkids, for instance, maybe “no weekend work” should go on your vision list. Or perhaps you want to live in a different climate.

2. Organize your vision. Now, break your wish list into categories. I often ask clients to create a “mind map,” a colorful, branching diagram with the power to quickly portray complex concepts or projects.

Start your mind map with an image or keyword in the center of a page. From that center, draw main branches, spreading like the spokes of a wheel. Label each branch to represent a sector of your life and fill out the details by adding smaller branches to the main branches.

3.Add a category for your job search. Now that you have a vision of where you want to go, add a branch on your map (or a section on your vision list) related to your possible job search.

If these items don’t show up anywhere else, you may want to include: expanding my network; reconnecting with people I know; building my social media presence; developing new skills or experience or acquiring certifications and methodically exploring fields a step or two removed from my own.

4. Commit to a pace. Once your know where you want to go, decide how quickly you need to move. That will determine how many things you commit to doing each day, or week, or month, for each category you’ve identified. The power of the Sugar Grain process comes from your commitment to keep up your pace even when you feel like you’re out of ideas or don’t have the time.

5. Begin a list of small to-do’s for each category. You’ll want a list tor each area on your map. They might include sending an email to an old contact or spending an hour setting up your LinkedIn account or exercising for 30 minutes.

They needn’t be related to one another; sometimes they’ll feel pretty random. But over time, patterns will emerge.

6. Maintain records. Keeping track of the things on your lists is important to the success of your process. Your recordkeeping will help you see your progress, bring you new insights and inspire additional to-do’s. Whether you keep records on paper or in the Cloud, is up to you.

Logs often work well because you’re more likely to stick to, say, an exercise if you record each minute you spend on it. Logs can illustrate your efforts, reinforce your commitment and help you see the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

Journals are another method. They can promote self-reflection, help you explore and keep track of new ideas and give you a way to manage frustration and setbacks in the course of your transition.

7. Finally, enjoy the Sugar Grain Process. Once you get going, your small-step agenda will seem to generate its own energy. You’ll start feeling confident that it’s taking you somewhere interesting and important.

Often a client who has completed a career shift will say something like: “I’ll kind of miss the Process. It was getting to be really fun.”

8 Tips for Inspiring Employee Engagement

August 27, 2016 By Ira Chaleff

By Beverly Jones

It’s well understood that upbeat and highly motivated employees achieve more than their negative, disgruntled peers. Recognizing the link between attitude and job performance, human resources experts used to talk a lot about the need to enhance “employee morale” and build “job satisfaction.”

In recent years, however, the buzz has been all about increasing productivity and innovation by promoting “employee engagement.” Definitions vary, but the Gallup organization describes “engaged employees” as “those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.”

Your engaged colleagues are the builders – the ones who are moving the organization forward. You probably enjoy working with these animated people. Folks who aren’t engaged may do the basics, but they won’t be passionate about tackling challenges or breaking new ground. And your actively disengaged coworkers can spread their unhappiness around and undermine the whole group’s progress.

According to Gallup Daily tracking, only about 32 percent of U.S. employees are engaged at work. And, despite a wave of engagement improvement programs, that number hasn’t fluctuated much since Gallup started its measurement in 2000.

Experience shows that there’s no one simple way for leaders to jumpstart a surge of workplace enthusiasm, but many small steps can help.

My client Heidi began reading about employee engagement as she started a new assignment. She had moved out of the busy headquarters office of a Federal agency to become director of a low performing regional office.

Heidi is talented, personable and deeply committed to the service mission of her agency. To date, her rise through the government ranks had been rapid and smooth, and she’d made many friends along the way.

When Heidi arrived at her Midwestern post in the dead of winter, the climate inside her office felt as cold and frightening as her icy commute to work. Three of the top ranking members of her team had applied for the directorship, and now all three made it clear that they resented having the position go to her, an outsider. And while the attitude of those senior staffers seemed to vacillate from sullen to openly hostile, most of the dozen other professionals just seemed tired and disinterested.

Heidi developed a set of principles for stimulating new energy and commitment from her team. After a year, she has seen a mood shift, and the office’s performance statistics are up.

These 8 strategies are helping Heidi to stimulate better work from her more fully engaged team members:

Meet in person. Heidi’s predecessor, Jill, was described as a brilliant but reclusive workaholic. Jill spent long hours alone in her office, with the door closed, and she’d make her wishes known by shooting out frequent emails. Particularly during her early weeks on the job, Heidi elected to meet often and face to face with her team members. She shared news from around the agency but generally tried to listen more than she spoke. As Heidi concentrated on listening, she grew better at resisting the urge to feel defensive or disheartened from the flow of negativity
Empower the team. Jill had talked often about her own high standards, and had tried to control the workflow so that every project was done in exactly the way she would do it. Heidi looked for ways to delegate more responsibility, and make assignments that allowed professionals to show off their strengths and personal styles. She caught an early break when her embittered deputy left for another job, enabling her to distribute his responsibilities so that more people could share in team leadership.
Reward good work. As a Federal manager, Heidi had limited control over bonuses and raises. But she found other means to express appreciation for excellent work. For example, she shared an insightful staff memo with high-ranking colleagues in Washington, she worked her network to snag a plum speaking invitation for one of her experts, and she asked her people to speak about their successes at meetings with sister agencies.
Find learning opportunities. Heidi saw that many of her team members had been doing the same kind of work for years, and they were bored. She made training a top priority, and encouraged each person to commit to a professional development path. She also shuffled assignments so that most folks enjoyed more variety, and she came up with new projects that meant learning for everyone involved.
Clean up. When she agreed to take the job, Heidi negotiated a budget to improve the office’s aging physical space and furniture. Early in her tenure she involved her team in planning the modest office redesign. And she designated certain days when everybody wore jeans to work and pitched masses of old documents and other clutter. When the renovations were done, the fresh new atmosphere gave most people a boost.
Have fun. In an early meeting, one employee told to Heidi, “Once this was a fun place to work, but Jill didn’t believe in fun.” On the job, “fun” might mean that the tasks are stimulating and coworkers are good partners for brainstorming. But sometimes “fun” just means having a good time. Heidi found ways to vary the routine with surprise treats and entertaining meetings. She invited clever speakers to come to staff meetings, she encourages humor as long as it wasn’t mean-spirited and she created a committee to create events like surprise pizza parties.
Remember the mission. Most members of the staff began working for the agency because they believed in public service. But they had become cynical and discouraged. Heidi invited reports about the full scope and value of the agency’s work, and she encouraged team members to join agency-wide or other professional committees. She regularly looks for ways to remind people of the value of their work together.
Take care of yourself. Even though she had family members nearby, Heidi was a bit lonely in her new town. And after a week of struggling to be relentlessly positive, she often felt like spending the entire weekend in bed watching old movies. Heidi knew that negativity can be contagious, and in order to inspire her team she needed to remain optimistic and energetic. So a key element of Heidi’s leadership philosophy is to find stimulating activities and build supportive relationships when she’s away from the office. As part of her program of self-care, she decided to act on her lifelong dream of horseback riding. She rented at horse housed near an indoor riding arena, and she takes lessons every Saturday.

Engaged employees need strong relationships and lots of communication with their managers. To launch an effort to energize your colleagues, consider a round of meaningful conversations.

For more tips on how to engage your team or rediscover your own enthusiasm at work, check out my new book The Like an Entrepreneur, Act Like a CEO

Why Are Some Women Still Holding Back?

August 27, 2016 By Ira Chaleff

By Beverly Jones

Lately I keep finding myself in conversations about how women aren’t moving confidently into leadership within their careers. I’ve heard some worries from clients, but I’ve also encountered a rising tide of talk in other business and social venues.

This doesn’t seem to be just an us-against-them, women-versus-men thing. Insightful men have expressed concern that too few women are reaching their full professional potential. For example, two male professors recently asked me why their star female students seem to have lower job aspirations than their less qualified male classmates?

And in recent months, both at formal industry conferences and in casual chats, some of the most accomplished American women journalists have been talking about how leading newsrooms still seem to be dominated by a male culture. This seems to be the case, in both print and digital realms, despite the fact university journalism programs often have more women than men students.

Also, disturbingly, young women in several career discussions this spring told me they feel more threatened than supported by women who are senior to them in their organizational hierarchies.

Part of the problem may relate back to those of us who were among the first women to enter many professions. Sometimes we were more wounded than we realized by the struggle, and our lingering discomfort may continue to influence the wider culture of women at work.

It wasn’t fun to be on teams where we weren’t really wanted. And despite years of achievement, we “old girls” still experience surprising lapses in confidence. It can show up in little ways, such as:

Self-deprecating speech. We may undercut our commanding presence by repeatedly using phrases like “I think,” when a simple statement or request would be stronger.
Risk aversion. When law, engineering and MBA programs were first opened to women, female students might hear, “It’s important that you get all A’s so the faculty will let in more women next year.” Tiresome speeches like this sometimes translated to an unrealistic sense of responsibility, which was particularly painful if we felt like we were just hanging on. This is one reason some of us were too slow to take breakout career risks.
Apologizing. When we felt unwelcome in the first place, some of us became too inclined to say “sorry,” even when we weren’t at fault. It was tempting to waste time and energy blaming ourselves when things weren’t going well. For some, it is still a challenge to face problems quickly and move on to solutions.
Bad hair days. Appearance often seems to matter more for women than for men. So we sometimes overreact if we don’t feel at our best. It was like that when we were young, and today our appearance may seem overly important because women who don’t seem put together could be dismissed as too old.

Many women who fought for professional acceptance decades ago, and went on to success after success, say they still experience surprising flashes of uncertainty. We wanted to push the doors wide open for the future generations of female careerists. But is it possible that we also have burdened them with some of our lingering insecurities?

Yes, we have come a long way. But there’s still work to be done before we can count on an American workplace where gender seldom limits opportunities for growth. Here are things we can do:

Keep talking. There’s an absence of good research and nobody truly understands the factors that add up to the lingering glass ceiling in so many sectors. Let’s acknowledge the problem and keep up the dialogue, as we try to better understand it. This might mean new kinds of groups or workshops, or simply raising the discussion wherever we happen to be.
Create new forms of mentoring. Since the 1970s, feminist activists have looked to mentoring programs as a way to move women smoothly up career ladders. Some programs have worked well but others have floundered, sometimes burdened with over-blown expectations. It’s time to invent new ways of engaging, perhaps including reciprocal programs, where women of all ages can teach each other across generations and skill sets about everything from communicating with colleagues to managing social media.
Get over it. Our language patterns and ways we hesitate have become habits. We can move beyond them. One way to change long-held patterns, and model new ones, is to recruit friends to notice how we speak and carry ourselves. With our permission, friendly coaches can remind us when it’s time to reword our statements, or reshape our attitudes, in more positive ways.

Beverly Jones

January 23, 2012 By Beverly

“Executive Coach” Senior Associate

Beverly Jones helps executives bring new productivity to their organizations, and works with professionals to restructure and re-energize their work lives. Throughout her varied career, Bev has engaged in leadership and change management activities, and today she coaches accomplished professionals and executives who want to become more effective.

Bev is an attorney who served for 13 years as Vice President of External Affairs and Policy of Consolidated Natural Gas Company, a Fortune 500 energy company and parent of four gas utilities. Her broad management portfolio included government affairs, the CNG Foundation, and other public outreach. She also was engaged in strategic planning and other leadership projects, including corporate restructuring in the midst of deregulation of the utility industry.

In addition to testifying before Congressional committees, federal agencies, and state legislatures and commissions, Bev has developed communication initiatives ranging from public policy campaigns to marketing materials. She has written and spoken about the management of public affairs strategies in many venues, and has helped others to increase their communications skills and enhance their effectiveness.

Bev’s current and recent coaching clients include attorneys, other professionals and small business owners, and also executives with university systems, with a national laboratory, and with a major brokerage firm. In addition to coaching individuals and organizations, Bev serves as a consultant on public policy matters to Dominion, the large energy/utility company that merged with CNG. She also advises Ohio University. From 2000 through 2003, she served as special counsel to the law firm Adams & Reese, LLP.

Before joining CNG, Bev was a partner and department chairman at the law firm Wickwire, Gavin and Gibbs, PC. She began her legal career in the Market Regulation Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before law school, Bev was Assistant to the President at Ohio University, where she founded the affirmative action program and other initiatives to foster diversity and encourage the development of leaders.

In addition to reading broadly, Bev relaxes with gardening, yoga, meditation and long country walks with husband, newspaper executive Andy Alexander, and their two dogs.

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATION