Inauthenticity at work and the fast track to a midlife crisis

As a law student, lawyer, and law professor, I’ve spent a lot of time around people whose career ambitions are largely defined by others. To some extent, I have internalized some of those messages myself.

But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to pick and choose wisely among these markers of achievement. If you fail to do so, you may find yourself living an inauthentic life (at least the part spent at work), and your psyche may struggle with the grudging realization that you’re pursuing someone else’s definition of success. It’s an easy recipe for a midlife crisis.

This month, as thousands of people line up to accept their degrees at college and university Commencement ceremonies around the country, these thoughts deserve extra consideration.

Regrets

In the popular Marc and Angel Hack Life blog, Angel Chernoff writes about the “10 Choices You Will Regret in 10 Years.” The first two screamed out at me:

• “Wearing a mask to impress others”
• “Letting someone else create your dreams for you”

In graduate and professional schools, I see this process occurring all the time. It’s all about pursuing a fast track to success, and that path and destination are defined by others who have a vested interest in keeping it that way.

Especially susceptible to this messaging are younger folks who have never been afforded the privilege of thinking for themselves. And the better their grades and test scores, they more likely they are to be pushed onto certain paths.

My summer of discontent

My first major lesson in career inauthenticity came as a law student. I entered law school intending to be a public interest lawyer, and I envisioned a career spent in social and political change work. However, I temporarily succumbed to the siren call of corporate law, and I accepted a “summer associate” position with a large commercial law firm in Chicago.

Summer jobs at big law firms are a mix of tryout camp and wine-and-dining. Over roughly a 10-week period, the work of a summer associate is evaluated closely for the purpose of considering that individual for a full-time associate attorney position after graduation. In return, the law firm pays the summer associate handsomely (typically, a pro-rated equivalent of a first-year attorney’s salary) and hosts a variety of social events to sell the firm as a desirable place to work.

This Chicago law firm treated me with genuine respect and gave me a variety of challenging assignments. But within a few weeks of starting my summer gig, I knew the corporate law sector was not for me. Despite good colleagues and intellectually demanding work, throughout the summer I felt like I was giving an acting performance. It just didn’t feel right.

Although I was invited to return to the firm as an associate attorney after graduation, I declined the offer. Instead, I embraced my original aspirations and, during my final year of law school, accepted a job offer from the New York City Legal Aid Society. No regrets, not even when the student loan bills started to match my monthly rent!

Trade-offs

Of course, having and making choices doesn’t necessarily mean that we can have it all. As I suggested two years ago in a post about work-life balance, even the best of lives usually involve trade-offs. Electing to do something often forecloses doing another, at least for the time being.

That said, Big Life regrets tend to emanate more from inaction than actions, unless the latter are reckless or foolish. In her “10 Choices” blog post, Angel Chernoff warns against “(e)ndlessly waiting until tomorrow”:

The trouble is, you always think you have more time than you do.  But one day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to work on the things you’ve always wanted to do.

Not always a choice

I understand that all of the above presumes a degree of choice in the matter.

However, sometimes that isn’t the case: Jobs that pay the bills and support families are in short supply these days, and pursuing an occupation that delivers a psychological reward beyond a decent paycheck may not be an immediate option.

If you have choices that create mere possibilities for matching passions with income, consider yourself very privileged. Countless millions of people in this world do not.

Avocations

The challenges of matching dreams with paychecks are among the reasons why I’ve devoted a number of blog posts to the concept of avocation. As I wrote last year:

An avocation falls somewhere between a job and a hobby. It’s an activity that may produce some modest income, and perhaps show promise of turning into a full-time job, but which ultimately we are drawn to because it is very satisfying on a personal level. Avocations may be among the keys to individual fulfillment during tough times when jobs that deliver both a decent income and psychic rewards are in short supply.

Avocations are highly underrated as potential door openers and as satisfying ends in themselves.

If you have the gift of choices…

…make them, don’t let others make them for you. Learn from the experiences and insights of others, and then incorporate those lessons into your own world view.

It’s an ongoing process. And except for a blessed few, it involves some stumbling and bumbling along, hopefully forward more often than backward.

Nurse can proceed with age discrimination claim against employer seeking “rising young stars,” federal court holds

Despite signs of increased bias against older workers, age discrimination claims are difficult to win. That’s why a federal district court decision in Tennessee allowing a demoted nurse to proceed with her age claim is welcomed news. According to the BNA Daily Labor Report (no link — subscription required):

A 49-year-old nurse who provided direct evidence that her employer was seeking “young rising stars” to replace older workers is entitled to proceed to trial on her federal and state law claims that she was demoted from a shift leader position due to her age in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and state law, a federal district court in Tennessee held May 8 . . ..

The case is Woody v. Covenant Health, decided by the federal district court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, docket no. 11-cv-62, dated May 8, 2013. The defendant had moved for summary judgment, a procedural tool that, if granted, would have resulted in the case being dismissed even before going to trial. The court ruled the other way, finding that Nurse Woody is entitled to her day in court.

According to the Daily Labor Report summary of the case, not only did a supervisor express a “stated preference for younger shift supervisors,” but also the supervisor produced a job announcement expressly seeking younger applicants.

Age bias suits face uphill battles

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act and its state law counterparts prohibit employment discrimination against job applicants and workers age 40 or over.

The excellent Next Avenue site recently ran a piece by Penelope Lemov titled “What It Takes to Win an Age Discrimination Suit,” but in reality it’s actually a sobering assessment of the difficulty of prevailing in such a claim.

Lemov notes that age bias claims have been on the rise since the economic meltdown in 2008:

Age-related charges make up a growing number of complaints filed at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that handles such matters. Between 1997 and 2007, there were generally between 16,000 and 19,000 annual filings. But since 2008, the number of complaints has soared to 23,000 to 25,000 a year. Federal law says it’s illegal for an employer with 20 or more employees to discriminate against employees 40 or older based on their age.

Nevertheless, she aptly points out that “it has gotten harder and harder to win an age discrimination suit,” thanks to a combination of narrow interpretations of the law by federal courts and employers who are good at covering their tracks.

Obviously, in Woody v. Covenant Health, the employer was not very good at hiding its bias. Hopefully it will lead to a good result for this nurse.

America’s economic meltdown continues for millions: Articles worth reading

The human costs of our ongoing economic crisis continue to mount. If your primary impressions of the economy are shaped by the rise in the Dow Jones Average, you might be wondering what I’m talking about. But for countless millions of others who are more concerned with the challenges of paying their bills, feeding their kids, saving for the future, and finding work, crisis remains an apt way to describe this economy.

I’ve collected a number of articles and blog posts that help us to connect the disturbing dots:

Bob’s cousin

Bob Rosner, blogging for Workplace Fairness Weekly, writes about “Broken Hearts: Unemployment’s Devastating Impact“:

Last week my cousin died of a heart attack. After working continuously for the first two-thirds of his career, recently he’d bounced from short term jobs to stretches of unemployment. This cycle is tough enough on someone just starting out a career, but for someone in their early 60′s, it can literally be a heartbreaker.

Read what he has to say about maintaining hope through the 4 “Ps”: perspective, pride, pals, and possibilities.

Profits over people — by a longshot

But hold on, it’s not as if our economy remains in complete meltdown mode. Nope, that just applies to the vast millions who are struggling to make ends meet and to secure decent work. Derek Thompson, business writer for The Atlantic, sums up the situation in meaty blog post:

Here are two things that are true about the economy today.

(1) The Dow Jones industrial average is poised to set a new record as corporate profits stretch to all-time highs.

(2) There are still fewer working Americans today than there were before the start of the Great Recession.

He goes on to explain:

When the economy crashes, we all crash together: corporate profits, employment, and growth. But when the economy recovers, we don’t recover together. Corporations rack up historic profits thanks to strong global demand, cheap global labor, and low interest rates, while American workers muddle along, their significance to these companies greatly diminished by a worldwide market for goods and people.

The forgotten

Although the official unemployment rate continues to improve very slowly, overlooked in those figures are the millions who are no longer included in the counts. Annalyn Kurtz reports for CNN.com:

An often overlooked number calculated by the Labor Department shows millions of Americans want a job but haven’t searched for one in at least a year. They’ve simply given up hope.

. . . These hopelessly unemployed workers have just been jobless so long, they’ve fallen off the main government measures altogether.

. . . Five years ago, before the recession began, about 2.5 million people said they wanted a job but hadn’t searched for one in at least a year. Now, that number is around 3.25 million.

The future of retirement

As I’ve written frequently here, the demise of retirement as a normal lifespan experience may be one of the longer-term effects of our economic condition. Steven Greenhouse, labor reporter for the New York Times, offers a thorough look at the future of retirement in the U.S.:

While retirement has assumed myriad forms across the country, many economists and other experts on retirement see some common, increasingly worrisome trends. A growing number of workers are convinced they will not have a comfortable retirement. A Boston College study in October found that 53 percent of Americans were “at risk” of being unable to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living once they retire, up from 30 percent in 1989. A study last May by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 44 percent may not have enough money to meet their basic needs in retirement.

Burdening next generations

As the cost of a college education continues to climb, student loan debt rises with it. Martha C. White reports for Time on the economic repercussions of massive student loan debt:

The broader economic implications are troubling. Graduates struggling to dig out from a mountain of student debt also tend to put off getting married, buying homes, and having kids. And since a bigger chunk of their income will go towards servicing the mortgages or car loans they are able to obtain at higher rates, they’ll have less spending power when they do eventually buy big-ticket items like homes and cars.

And that’s not even addressing the psychological impact of mountainous debt and reduced hopes. Cryn Johannsen of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project writes about the spectre of suicide in connection with student debt:

Suicide is the dark side of the student lending crisis and, despite all the media attention to the issue of student loans, it’s been severely under-reported. I can’t ignore it though, because I’m an advocate for people who are struggling to pay their student loans, and I’ve been receiving suicidal comments for over two years and occasionally hearing reports of actual suicides.

Inequality = more stress and illness

America’s wealth gap is widening despite the supposed economic recovery, reports Rick Newman for U.S. News & World Report:

The problem, however, is that the recession raised the bar for success while leaving fewer haves and more have-nots. America as a whole may be just as wealthy as it used to be, but the wealth is being shared by a smaller slice of the population. And that rearrangement may end up being permanent.

In this piece for BillMoyers.com, Theresa Riley interviews epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson, an authority on the destructive public health consequences of societal inequality:

The pattern we’ve found in our research is quite extraordinarily clear. More unequal countries, the ones with the bigger income differences between rich and poor have much more violence, worse life expectancy, more mental illness, more obesity, more people in prison, and more teenage births. All these problems get worse with greater inequality, because it damages the social fabric of a society.

The end of the American dream?

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, assessed our economy in the context of the November election:

In this election, each side debated issues that deeply worry me: the long malaise into which the economy seems to be settling, and the growing divide between the 1 percent and the rest — an inequality not only of outcomes but also of opportunity. To me, these problems are two sides of the same coin: with inequality at its highest level since before the Depression, a robust recovery will be difficult in the short term, and the American dream — a good life in exchange for hard work — is slowly dying.

Stiglitz’s public policy prescriptions “include, at least, significant investments in education, a more progressive tax system and a tax on financial speculation.”

Goodbye to trickle-down economics?

The policies that led us to this widening gap between the haves vs. the have-less and the have-nots have been at least 30 years in the making, with “trickle-down economics” being the policy mantra of the era. This concept held that if wealthy people could keep more of their money and businesses could be freed of regulatory safeguards, the benefits would trickle down to everyone else. The centerpiece of trickle-down theory was that tax cuts to the wealthy would give a jump start to America’s economic engine, an assumption rebutted in a non-partisan Congressional Research Service report discussed in this Huffington Post piece.

If you’re interested in learning more, read some of these articles and start connecting the dots for yourself. We’re at a critical economic juncture in America, and the well-being of all but the most fortunate is at stake.

Retirement party

Vin Poliseno in his Con Ed office, Manhattan, Dec. 2012 (David Yamada, photo)

Will the retirement party become a thing of the past?

I just finished a quick weekend trip to New York City to attend a retirement party for a long-time friend, Vincent Poliseno, who spent 44 years working for Consolidated Edison. Vinny and I met in 1989, when we started a master’s degree program in Labor and Policy Studies at Empire State College of the State University of New York. Both of us were great procrastinators, and it took us a loooong time to finish that degree program! But this allowed us to plant the seeds of an enduring friendship.

At Con Ed, Vinny began at the entry level, did two years of military service in the early 70s, and then returned and progressed steadily up the ladder. Most of his time was spent in Con Ed’s Manhattan engineering department, where he became a union shop steward and eventually served in a management role. His tenure at Con Ed covered many major crises facing the city, including 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy.

Celebrating in Brooklyn

At the scenic Giando On the Water restaurant near the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, Vinny’s family, friends, and co-workers gathered to pay tribute to him upon his retirement. In addition to a great meal (hey, this was an Italian retirement party, after all), we were treated to a hilarious speech by one of Vin’s colleagues and brief but warm remarks from the guest of honor himself.

Vin is the kind of person who makes the extra effort to help people in good times and bad. It showed that night: He spent the last hour of the dinner posing for pictures with people who stood in line as the cameras clicked away.

Vin helped to keep the city’s lights on for 44 years. (Williamsburg Bridge from Brooklyn; David Yamada, photo)

Goodbye to retirement parties?

In many ways, Vin’s career represents a throwback: 44 years at one company, steadily moving up, and finishing with a retirement party and a decent pension.

Unfortunately, that relatively secure path — earning the benefits of hard work and long-term commitment to a single employer — is rapidly going by the wayside. Many people in the age group immediately following Vin’s have been caught in the web of nasty layoffs by employers who deem them too expensive or otherwise expendable. Others have scant retirement savings and will have to work much later into their lives than they anticipated.

Different stories

The website of “Set for Life,” an excellent documentary by Susan Sipprelle on the challenges facing middle age workers in America, has been collecting stories of people who have been beaten up by this economy and job market. Here are snippets from three of them:

It’s getting worse, I’m now 55 and have been out of work for a year, like others, living off of my retirement. When I was in my 30′s, I could find another sales position in a week! Now no one will give me the time of day. They say that employers cannot discriminate because of age, yet every application I fill out asks for either date of birth or year of high school graduation. . . .

***

I am a 58-year old female and I’ve been unemployed since Sept. 2011. I was released from my job as a website administrator with very little explanation. . . . Right now I’m living off unemployment that will end very soon, my savings, and my retirement fund that are quickly dwindling. . . .

***

55 and wondering who pulled the trap door. Worked Fortune 100 for 27 years and have been out of work since 2008 with no luck at finding anything remotely close to the salary I once made. There are no Companies willing to hire in our age group, and even entry level jobs dont exist.

I’m not claiming that life “owes us” a steady job capped off by a nice party and a pension at the end. But it appears that we are witnessing the rapid demise of the post-WWII American middle class dream. The idea of a life well lived and played by the rules, including a relatively secure retirement, has become an illusion for millions.

***

Related post

Not “Set for Life”: Boomers face layoffs, discrimination, and bullying at work (2012)

Temple law school conference examines bullying across the lifespan

Workplace bullying panelists: (l to r) Prof. Kerri Stone, Prof. Susan Harthill, and DY

I was fortunate to participate over the weekend in “Bullying: Redefining Boundaries, Responsibility, and Harm,” an excellent conference sponsored by the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first American conference devoted to examining the legal implications of bullying behaviors across the lifespan.

From children to seniors

The conference brought together academics, practitioners, and advocates from across the country who have been addressing the legal and policy aspects of bullying in different social and institutional settings.

The program took a chronological approach, starting with bullying among school kids, moving on to higher education settings, then to the workplace, and finally to seniors. The final panel examined best practices across that span. It was a great decision to organize the day that way.

The proceedings also featured a keynote address by Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones (2013), which examines the culture of bullying among teens in the Internet and social media age. Bazelon’s book has generated considerable media interest, and her address filled the room.

For a full list of speakers and their bios, go here.

Workplace bullying panel

Pictured above are panelists for the workplace bullying panel, Prof. Kerri Stone (Florida International University College of Law), Prof. Susan Harthill (Florida Coastal School of Law), and yours truly. Our panel was ably moderated by Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

• I opened the panel by discussing the concept of workplace bullying generally, then quickly summarized existing legal protections for targets before examining the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill and responses to it.
• Prof. Harthill discussed her work on applying the Occupational Safety and Health Act to bullying situations and summarized the growing list of legal responses to workplace bullying in other nations.
• Prof. Stone discussed her work on the gender implications of workplace bullying and then examined how the National Labor Relations Board’s decisions on social media might affect employers’ ability to address bullying.

Susan and Kerri have made important contributions to the body of legal scholarship on workplace bullying, and I have great respect for their work. It was very nice that the three of us finally could be on a panel together.

More to come

Podcasts, PowerPoint slides, and other materials from the conference will be made freely available to the public via the conference website. (I will post an update on this blog.) In addition, the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review will publish proceedings and essays emerging from the conference in a volume scheduled to appear over the summer. I will be contributing a piece on the emergence of the legal movement against workplace bullying.

Many thanks

Our Temple hosts put together a superb program and topped it off with a ton of hospitality. The conference attracted over 140 registrants, including a lot of Temple law students.

I’d especially like to thank Prof. Nancy Knauer, conference organizer, and law student Naveed Hassan, symposium editor for the journal, for their work on this conference. Their devotion to making this a worthwhile experience for everyone resulted in a memorable exchange of information and ideas.

***

4/2/13 update: I’ve posted a draft of my law review essay, “Emerging American Legal Responses to Workplace Bullying,” to my Social Science Research Network page. It can be downloaded without charge, here.

Recycling: Meaningful books about career and life planning

This week, something seems to be drawing me to write about authors and books! So I’ve gone back into the blog archives to dig out some posts that discuss titles that I have found inspirational over the years:

1. Seth Godin, Tribes

Entrepreneur and author Seth Godin is one of my favorites. In this 2008 book Tribes, he describes how people are coming together around common interests, projects, and values in ways that transcend traditional organizational and geographic boundaries. In this 2010 blog post, I explain how “Godin identifies three things that organizations and individuals do: React, respond, and initiate.” Reacting and responding are easy, but initiating is “what leaders do.”

2. Steven Levy, Hackers and Barbara Sher, Wishcraft

A book about the early days of the computer revolution and a pioneering self-help guide led me to the path I’ve been pursuing since 1991. In a 2011 blog post, I talk about these two books and their influence on me. Here’s a snippet:

Twenty years ago, I found myself yearning to do something different with my work life. I had been practicing as a public interest lawyer since graduating from law school, and although I liked certain aspects of the work, I didn’t see myself as being a litigation attorney for the rest of my career.

…It was around that time that I encountered two books that encouraged me to think more expansively about my career. One was Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984; now in a 25th anniversary 2010 edition).

…I also got hold of a self-help book, Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want (1979; now in a 30th anniversary 2009 edition). Wishcraft helps readers identify their strengths and interests and overcome resistances to change, a terrific mix of inspirational and practical advice.

3. David W. Galenson, Old Masters and Young Geniuses

In his book Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity (2006), economics professor David W. Galenson writes about “sprinters” who make their signature contributions earlier in the lives and “marathoners” whose breakthroughs may classify them as late bloomers.

In this 2009 blog post, I wrote how Galenson’s ideas helped to inspire me as I approached age 50.

The School of Life on finding fulfilling work

Here’s a thought-provoking question that writer and lecturer Roman Krznaric poses at the end of the first chapter of his very good little paperback book, How to Find Fulfilling Work (2012):

What is your current work doing to you as a person — to your mind, character and relationships?

I’ve heard and offered less compelling variations of questions like this one — How’s work going? What’s good and bad about your occupation? Is your job meeting your needs? — but nothing so neatly framed.

School of Life series

How to Find Fulfilling Work is one in a series of short books on practical philosophy sponsored by The School of Life, a London-based entity that offers “a variety of programmes and services concerned with how to live wisely and well.” The book series is entering the U.S., and this title will be available soon.

The School of Life sounds like a fascinating initiative. Reading its description makes me wish we had something similar here in Boston:

The School of Life is a place to step back and think intelligently about these and other concerns. You will not be cornered by any dogma, but directed towards a variety of ideas – from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts – that tickle, exercise and expand your mind. You’ll meet other curious, sociable and open-minded people in an atmosphere of exploration and enjoyment.

The quest for fulfilling work

Krznaric mixes ground-level philosophy, vocational guidance, and inspiration into this quick read. Here are the chapter titles:

The Age of Fulfillment

A Short History of Career Confusion

Giving Meaning to Work

Act First, Reflect Later

The Longing for Freedom

How to Grow a Vocation

The book concludes with helpful recommendations of books, movies, and other resources to help people in their quests for work that suits them.

But first: Basic needs and obligations

If you’re weighing your career and vocational options, especially with an eye toward pursuing more meaningful work, this book is worth your time.

But I also know that some readers are not in a position to be selective. They need decent paying work, period, and with bills mounting they’ll be grateful for whatever comes their way. Indeed, anyone who is free enough to consider options for making work a fulfilling activity in itself is very fortunate.

So, if you need to pay for food, shelter, and clothing, the type of work you’re doing may matter a whole lot less than getting a sufficient paycheck. And if your obligations include kids and/or other dependents, you may not be in a position to “go for the gusto.”

In fact, one of the few quarrels I have with Krznaric is his suggestion that financial fears can be softened by having a backup fund of three months worth of expenses in case the “dream job” falls apart. In the first place, saving up that kind of money is difficult in tough times. And secondly, a three-month emergency fund isn’t all that comforting anyway for someone who must care for others as well.

Onward

Still…my hope is that we will evolve into a society where decent pay and good work come together more often than not. Books like How to Find Fulfilling Work point us in the right direction. So, let’s put these options for individual initiative and change out there, and gravitate toward them when we can.

Popular posts from 2012

I’ve collected a dozen of the more popular 2012 posts from Minding the Workplace. Especially if you missed them the first time around, I hope you find them interesting.

1. Gaslighting as a workplace bullying tactic (December) — “It can range from petty mind games to severe, twisted harassment and stalking. The goals are to undermine a target’s confidence, keep the target off-balance, and instill fear and paranoia.”

2. Not “Set for Life”: Boomers face layoffs, discrimination, and bullying at work (November) — “The bottom line? For many workers, the American Dream is no more. The assumption that working hard and playing by the rules would lead to a relatively comfortable retirement has been demolished.”

3. Are some workplaces “bullying clusters”? (September) — “So here’s the hypothesis: Bullying behaviors are not evenly distributed among all employers. Rather, bullying behaviors are disproportionately concentrated in a smaller number of toxic workplaces.”

4. Positive qualities of my best bosses (August) — “I’ve been giving some thought to the personal qualities of the many bosses I’ve worked for, going back to high school and extending to the present day. A handful stand out as being especially good, and I’ve come to realize that they shared a lot of positive characteristics. Here goes….”

5. Do “almost psychopaths” help to explain the prevalence of workplace bullying and abuse? (July) — “While the true psychopath may have trouble functioning in regular society, the almost psychopath often can navigate life successfully, including — perhaps especially in – the workplace.”

6. Cruelty on a school bus (June) — “A group of junior high school students from Greece School District in Rochester, NY, subject bus monitor Karen Klein to a profanity-laced stream of humiliating insults and threats.”

7. A movement emerges: Will unpaid internships disappear? (May) — “Now there’s an emerging movement against unpaid internships (especially in the private sector), and here’s evidence of its coming out party….”

8. Workplace bullying 2.0: Psychology and mental health (April) — “Of all the major disciplines relevant to studying, preventing, responding to workplace bullying, the fields of industrial/organizational psychology and its emerging sibling, occupational health psychology, rank first in terms of research and practice.”

9. Maryland teachers sue for bullying and harassment (March) — “Teachers in Silver Spring, Maryland, are suing their principal and the school board for ongoing bullying and harassment.”

10. Workplace wellness and workplace bullying (March) — “When you hear the term ‘employee wellness,’ do you also think about “workplace bullying”?”

11. Burnout in the non-profit sector (February) — “Non-profit employment attracts those who are drawn to changing society for the better. . . . However, it also feeds burnout tendencies that are exacerbated during difficult times.”

12. “Puppet master” bullying vs. genuine mobbing at work (January) — “Let’s start with what I call puppet master bullying. In these situations, a chief aggressor’s power and influence over a group of subordinates may be sufficient to enlist their participation in mistreating a target, creating what looks and feels like a mob. . . . By contrast, genuine workplace mobbing occurs when the malicious energy is shared among the many, who proceed to go after the few.”

Ch-ch-ch-changes: Some books to guide us toward good transitions

As we turn the calendar to a New Year, I wanted to gather together some recommended titles for those who are engaged in or contemplating a major work or personal transition. In several instances I’ve borrowed from previous blog posts mentioning the books. If you’re in the midst of big changes, these books may prove a worthy investment in terms of your livelihood and well-being. I hope you find them helpful.

The Encore Career Handbook

Lawyer-turned-writer Marci Alboher is the author of a newly-published book, Encore Career Handbook: How to Make a Living and a Difference in the Second Half of Life (2013). In her opening chapter, she writes:

You’ve hit a wall, lost a job, or are just wondering “Is this all there is?” Maybe your retirement plan has been shattered. Maybe the word “retirement” doesn’t even resonate with you. You may be forty and thinking about planning for another thirty years of work, or fifty-five and thinking of a ten- or fifteen-year third act, or seventy and wondering how to find a part-time job that would add money and meaning to your life.

Lots of inspiration and advice on planning and doing.

Let Your Life Speak

Less how-to and more contemplative, Parker J. Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (2000) is a wonderful little book. Here he quotes a portion of a poem by May Sarton:

Now I become myself.

It’s taken time, many years and places.

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people’s faces. . . .

LifeLaunch

Pamela D. McLean and Frederic M. Hudson of The Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara are co-authors of LifeLaunch: A Passionate Guide for the Rest of Your Life (5th ed. 2011). From their Foreword:

It’s our experience in working with hundreds of very talented and resourceful people over the last twenty years that most of us spend more time reacting to changes that surprise us, than we do in the listening to our own inner stirrings and yearnings so that we might craft intentional new chapters/transitions at the inevitable crossroads in our adult journey.

Hudson also founded the Fielding Graduate University, an innovative, flexible learning school for adults that emphasizes personal and organizational growth and change.

The $100 Startup

The long tag line for Chris Guillebeau’s $100 Startup (2012) is “Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future.” As I wrote earlier this year:

If you’re serious about starting your own business, The $100 Startup is not the only resource you’ll want to consult — others will provide necessary advice on bureaucratic, tax, and legal details — but it likely will be one you return to for inspiration, ideas, and examples.

Okay, so your own $100 startup is unlikely to produce funds sufficient to earn a living at first, but the neat thing about this book is that it shows you how easy it can be to get started.

Transitions

Here’s a piece of what the blog kendrabookgirl wrote about Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes (2004 ed), by William Bridges:

When life shifts happen, there are a few “universal” phases that almost everyone goes through, whether they realize it or not. This book is not really a how-to book for facing those challenging phases, but a book to put the phases in perspective and provide clues for how to respond and accept the emotions that are likely to pop up during the transition time.

There’s a chapter devoted specifically to work changes. Thoughtful stuff.

What Color is Your Parachute?

Richard N. Bolles’s bestselling career manual What Color is Your Parachute? remains a classic. It’s affordable, thought provoking, supportive, and useful — an excellent starting place for anyone planning a vocational transition or job search. The book is faithfully updated every year, and the 2013 edition is at the bookstores. Bolles doesn’t ignore the realities of the current job situation; recent editions open with a new chapter titled “How to Find Hope.”

I’ve heard people criticize Parachute because it didn’t get them the job they wanted or needed. But like any guidebook, it can’t ensure a result. And it cannot do the grunt work for someone. While mixed with hope and inspiration, it’s a book for those who are ready to move forward in concrete ways.

Working Notes: Social media and workplace bullying, HR best practices for teachers, and midlife career switches

A few items worth noting:

1. Grad student Cecilia Akuffo’s New Journalism Project — An appreciative shout out to Cecilia Akuffo, a Northeastern University graduate student in journalism, who did a multimedia course project on my work relating to workplace bullying and the role of blogging.

Go here for her Workplace Practices blog post and here (or click above) for the interview posted to YouTube. (That’s my messy office in the background!)

2. ILO handbook on best HR practices for teachers – The International Labour Organization — the United Nations agency charged with advancing policies and practices for the well-being of workers — has published the first edition of the Handbook of Good Human Resource Practices in the Teaching Profession (2012). Even better, it’s available in a free pdf file in English, Spanish, and French. Here’s how the ILO describes the handbook:

Module 1 presents the recruitment and employment of teachers, based on the principles of equal opportunity, non-discrimination and professional competence. Module 2 further develops themes on conditions of employment, including leave entitlement and career development. Module 3 discusses the professional roles, responsibilities and accountability of teachers, while Module 4 examines the work environment, including hours of work and workload; class size and pupil–teacher ratios; and issues of health and safety. The question of teacher reward, salaries and incentives policies is discussed in Module 5, while Module 6 deals with the question of social security. Module 7 considers social dialogue and labour relations within the teaching profession. Questions regarding initial and further teacher education and training are examined in Module 8.

For school boards, school administrators, and teachers unions, it’s definitely worth a good look.

3. Marci Alboher on midlife career switches — Lawyer-turned-writer Marci Alboher writes about people deciding to pursue more meaningful work in their 40s, 50s, and 60s in a piece for the New York Times:

My reinvention wasn’t easy. After about two years, I weaned myself from the law and re-emerged as a journalist. It took a lot of work — classes, conferences, networking with writers and editors, learning from mentors 10 years my junior. In time I was getting regular assignments and writing for publications that included The New York Times. Even today, more than 10 years into my new career, I earn only two-thirds of what I was making in my last law job. But the trade-offs are worth it.

The subject of career reinvention was so fascinating to me that it’s become front and center in my current work. These days I’m working for Encore.org, a nonprofit that focuses on so-called encore careers. As people hit their 50th and 60th birthdays and realize they are far from done with work, millions are moving into new careers that combine making a living and a difference.

She is the author of a newly-published book, Encore Career Handbook: How to Make a Living and a Difference in the Second Half of Life (2013). My copy arrived today; it looks like a very useful read.