As a career coach, I spend a great deal of time reviewing the details of people’s lives and careers and making sense of the seeming randomness.  With clients who want a new career, I always begin by having them complete my Career Path Self-Assessment, an in-depth survey which leads them to deeply examine their early selves, their previous jobs, and a variety of other important information.  From this array of data, I uncover core life themes, roadblocks, unique skills and talents, and lost passions.  I put this all together to identify more fulfilling and exciting professional directions.

While it’s very helpful to have a great career coach, the reality is that you can do this on your own.  I’ve found after years of coaching that there are five core steps everyone can take to identify new career paths that will align more closely with who you are, and bring you more success and reward. 

Why should you take these steps? 
Because you have the right to love what you do and do what you love.  People like to claim that loving your work is a pipedream – but those who defend that view are wrong.  Enjoying your career and feeling there’s deep meaning and purpose in it is not just for a select, fortunate few.   It’s for anyone who believes in him/herself and takes the right kind of action.

CLICK HERE here to read my full article on Forbes about the top five most effective steps to take to figure yourself out and get on track to a more fulfilling career.

What did you love to do in your early years, and are you drawing on those skills, gifts and talents today?

As Christmas, Hanukkah and the New Year are happily upon us, I would like to wish you and yours a beautiful holiday season, and a New Year full of joy, peace, and prosperity. 

I deeply appreciate being in community with you, and receiving each day the amazing gifts of wisdom, humor, insight, and support from all my colleagues, friends and peers.

A Gift of Music

 

New Year’s Resolutions are promises we make to ourselves about a future vision we wish to achieve, but we often (dare I say “almost always”) lack the strategy, commitment, focus, and accountability to make them a reality. 

Here are five simple yet powerful tips to getting your groove on in terms of keeping these important commitments to your own success and happiness, and achieving true life change.

 1) Make your resolutions S.M.A.R.T.

Don’t just say – “I’m going to lose 15 pounds.” The vagueness of the “how” behind a big goal sets you up for failure.  Make each resolution a S.M.A.R.T. goal – that is, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.  So instead of “lose 15 pounds,” dimensionalize the goal and break it down into bite-sized pieces. 

 Develop a fully fleshed-out plan and articulate it in writing.  State something like: “Beginning January 7, I will follow my new plan to lose 1 lb per week. I’ll do it through my new nutritional menus, 3 days of 30-minute cycling per week, and a short hike each weekend.” Then monitor your progress each week and revise your course if necessary all along the way to your goal.  Remember: if you don’t DO anything different from what you’ve always done, nothing will change.

 2) Dream Big, But Add a Dose of Realism

It’s wonderful to dream big, but you also need to be realistic about the time, energy and commitment it will take to make your resolution a reality.

 If you want a lofty goal as a resolution such as “I will finally write my book,” first understand what you’re committing to in terms of time, money, focus, and actions that will make this goal a reality.  As an initial step, “try on” the goal (before making the resolution) by researching it online and offline, and interviewing five people you know who’ve published a book about what it truly takes to write one.  If after researching it, you feel you can and want to do it, make your resolution clear and manageable – “I will complete my manuscript by the end of 2011, finding the helpers I need along the way.”

3) Don’t Based Your Goal on the Negative – Juice it up with Positivity

If you hate your job and want out, don’t make your goal “I’ll leave my job by June.”  Reframe your goal to a more positive, expansive direction that encompasses what you truly want, not what you want to leave behind.  Shift your resolution to, “I will begin January 7^th on a path of finding an exciting new job that aligns with my passions, talents, and skills.”

Then follow it up with the actions and endeavors required today to land a great new job.  First, figure out what you really want in the next chapter of life and work (take my free Career Path Assessment to gain deeper clarity on where you want to go.).  Then, take key steps to build your personal brand and a powerful network to support you.  Revamp your resume, reach out to recruiters, colleagues and friends, get more connected on social media and LinkedIn, and request endorsements on LinkedIn, for a solid start.

4) Connect With Your Capabilities and Past Successes

Before you make a resolution, think about times in the past you’ve achieved a great goal. How did you do it?  What motivated you, and how do you persevere through the challenging times?  Bring forward those traits and capabilities you already possess, and make sure those steps and abilities you’ve drawn on before are reflected in your new resolutions. 

For instance, a client of mine wanted to raise her fees in her consulting practice this year, but was nervous to do it in these recessionary times.  I asked her to recall a time when she asked for more money, and it worked out well.  She remembered asking for a raise in her corporate job several years ago, and getting it.  She brought to mind all the steps she took to accomplish that success (outlining her key achievements, doing research about what others at her level are earning, assessing the obstacles to her getting more money, becoming clearer about the value she brought to the table, etc.).  This past process that she successfully followed gave her the courage to ask for what she deserved in her new situation, and it worked. 

Bring all the learning from your past successes forward into your 2012 resolution success planning to show yourself you can do it.

5) Get Help To Be Accountable

We don’t achieve big goals alone, or in a vacuum.  That’s simply not how the best and most powerful work and accomplishments get done.  You need a collection of different helpers to fill in your “gaps” – including a mentor, a coach (if you can afford one), and a role model who is ten steps ahead of where you are today, and who embodies what you want and how you want it.  Realize what you don’t know, and get outside help to support you. 

As Einstein pointed out, we can’t solve a problem on the level it was created.  Ask your mentor or coach to hold you accountable.  Meet with them regularly to assess your progress, share your challenges, and ask for their insights into what you could be doing differently and how you can learn, grow, and change your mindset, habits and behaviors to achieve what you want.

 *  *  *  *  *

In the end, resolutions can be empty, unfulfilled promises filled with regret, or enlivening, motivating goals that help you be all you want to be in life and work.  It’s up to you.  I’d go for the latter! 

What’s your top New Year’s resolution for 2012 and how will you achieve it?

Image by Jennifer Kumar via Flickr

I’ve heard over and over in the past several years frequent reference to the idea that professional women aren’t as ambitious as men.   Disappointingly, I even heard Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook (whom I deeply admire) mention this reported “lack of ambition” in women on The Charlie Rose show recently. To Mr. Rose she declared, “Until women are ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men.”  There have been scores of articles written on the topic, including a 2004 Harvard Business Review piece, “Do Women Lack Ambition?” 

As a very ambitious professional woman who supports the advancement of other ambitious women, I’m truly sick of this myth.  I can tell you, from working with and speaking to thousands of professional women in the past eight years, it’s simply not accurate.  Ambition is not the issue, and lack of ambition is NOT what holds women back.  It’s the COST of ambition – and the struggle women face in pursuing their ambitions — that is at the heart of why we have so few women leaders today, and why women are achieving less and not reaching as high as men in corporate America.

The more we support this incorrect conclusion, the more disservice we do to the advancement of women.  Again, ambition is not the problem; it’s the enormous personal sacrifice women today must make (that men do not have to) in order to reach the top that halts women in their tracks.  And it’s the reality that even when women stay on a traditional career path and do “all the right things” they are unlikely to advance as far or earn as much as their male counterparts (see Catalyst’s recent study The Myth of the Ideal Worker).

Only when we address the root problem that keeps women from their professional ambitions, will we pave the way to greater progress.

 The Cultural Problem with Ambition

As an executive and leadership coach of hundreds of women each year, I know this:  Women do indeed start out their careers with similar levels as men of wanting to be the best and the brightest in their fields.  However, research studies that claim to examine women’s “ambition” as a term and a concept won’t reflect that, because of the complicated nuances and connotations of the word “ambition.” 

A recent study from the Center for Work-Life Policy showed that at the start of their careers, 47% of young women claim to be “very ambitious” vs. 62% of young men.  So we see a difference in self-reported “ambition levels” here even at the beginning of their careers.  I hear from professional women each day that the term “ambitious” has negative connotations for them.  Women shy away from using this term or claiming (or appearing) to be ambitious.  They want to reach the top, but are reluctant to describe themselves as ambitious because they fear it will make them appear arrogant, power-hungry, self-absorbed, with a “win at all costs” mentality.  Unfortunately, their fears are well-founded.  Success and likability are positively correlated in men, and negatively correlated in women (see Sheryl Sandberg’s TEDTALK on why we have so few women leaders and the Heidi vs. Howard Roizen study at Columbia University).  Women must worry about how ambition “looks” because appearing ambitious negatively impacts their success.  Men do not face this challenge.  On the contrary, it is culturally expected and honored for men pursue their highest goals and do what they can to reach their highest success.

But if we were to conduct solid, well-constructed research around the behaviors that make up “ambition” – mastery of a skill and desiring outward recognition for that mastery – we would see that an equal number of professional men and women start out their careers wanting to reach their highest potential and wanting recognition for their achievements.

What Gets in the Way of “Ambition” for Women

As women age, a bigger problem around “ambition” emerges.  In corporate America today, pursuing ambitious goals and outcomes presents deeply challenging choices and personal sacrifices for women that it does not yet generate for men.  Many more women have to sacrifice marriage and children in order to become top leaders, while men do not.

Per a 2010 study of the Center for Work-Life Policy, only 32% of women vs. 47% of men over 40 self-report to be “very ambitious.”  Why? Because the personal and family sacrifices are too great for women to remain on their most ambitious track.  The CWLP study showed that a full 41% of women who actually make it to the executive suite arrive without an intimate partner, and 40% arrive without children.  

In a recent New York Times article A C.E.O.’s Support a ka Husband, the author cites a new study “The New C.E.Os,” that looks at women and minorities who are chief executives.  The study reveals that of the 28 women C.E.O’s of Fortune 500 companies, only eighteen had children. That’s a far lower rate than the 87 percent of married women in the population at large who have children of their own, according to Census data.

The NYT article states:

“Statistics suggest that aspirants to America’s top corporate jobs had better have a spouse, partner or someone else willing to be devoted to the aspirant’s career. “How do you compete without a spouse? Basically, you can’t,” Richard Zweigenhaft said. Mr. Zweigenhaft is professor of psychology at Guilford College in North Carolina and the co-author (with G. William Domhoff) of “The New C.E.Os.”

My research bears this out as well.  Unless women have a solid support network at home, rising to the top is riddled with insurmountable challenges.

What needs to change for women’s ambitions to be achievable?

Women have made far more headway in the workplace than at home.  Women are still judged harshly and even “hated” when viewed as aggressive or highly successful in the workplace.  And the pressure is still enormous on men to succeed at all costs.  Only when our rigid gender roles shift allowing both women and men to honor their authentic choices and longings will we see a change in our current professional and leadership dynamic. 

Women will surpass their current rate of 16% in senior corporate leadership in the U.S. only when:

-  Our society stops putting men down for supporting their wives’ professional ascension (and staying home to care for their children if they choose)

-  Women stop shying away from raising their hands for the most advancement-oriented and ambitious projects, goals and endeavors that will advance their careers

-  Women grow more comfortable displaying behavioral and emotional characteristics of ambition

-  Society grows more comfortable with highly successful women

-  Both men and women shake off the rigid gender role limitations in place today

-  Women stop having to pay a price of success in terms of being less accepted, liked, and supported, and having to sacrifice their family and personal lives

-  Employers start listening to the facts about the current obstacles impeding women’s success, and take powerful, positive action to revise their work cultures

-  And finally, both men and women gain more courage to do what it takes to live and work as they want to. 

In the end, how can professional women reach the highest levels of corporate leadership? 

Stay in the workforce.  Stay true to both your personal and professional goals, and find a way to balance what you need and want most.  Don’t buy into the myth that you’re not as ambitious as your male colleagues.  You are.  If you want to be the best in your field, commit to finding a way to honor what you care about most in your personal and professional life.  If it’s not possible in your current work situation, find another that will support your advancement.

Make it happen.  And ask your employer for effective leadership and executive support and training that will change your existing work culture, and modify how you and others think about women, men and ambition.  It’s up to you.

What’s your biggest obstacle standing in the way of your ambition, and what are you doing about it?

On Wednesday, I posted an article on my Forbes blog

Image by Daehyun Park via Flickr

called: “Why So Many “Experts” Are Terrible Speakers: Top 5 Public Speaking Mistakes.”

I was as suprised as anyone when this piece went viral.  Over 110,000 folks viewed the article piece as of this morning (it was one of the top three most popular pieces on Forbes the day it was published!), and thousands shared it on their social networks.  Clearly this topic touched a nerve. 

My guess is that thousands of folks have attended live and online conferences and workshops this past year, and have been as astounded as I about the lack of ability of the speaker to connect, enliven, motivate and educate us, or to leave us with anything lasting or meaningful.  It’s a great disappointment when you plunk down your hard-earned money to learn something new from an “expert” and to be inspired, only to leave feeling deflated and let down.

As a frequent speaker at live and online conferences, I’m in the company of hundreds of folks each year who are top authors, experts and consultants.  In many cases, these are great thought leaders who perform public speaking as just one aspect of their professional endeavors.   In attending these programs, I’m continually shocked at how many content experts are, in fact, wholly ineffective speakers .

My colleague, Krista Carnes, Founder of Booking Authors — a consulting firm that helps experts and authors connect with new opportunities and audiences, and a member of the Maestro Market start up team – shared this:

“One big mistake I find is the incorrect assumption that speaking at a “big name” event or two is the only way to get attention. There are no “small” events when you’re starting out.  Most people, no matter how much passion they have, are simply not ready to get in front of large audiences. In striving for those large opportunities only, many overlook exciting, creative ways to engage with their communities and tribes – ways that nurture the development of presentation skills and personal presence that are crucial in today’s digitally-driven age.”

Observing amazing speakers who move and motivate us (watch some TED Talks for inspiring examples), and comparing them to ineffective speakers, I’ve observed five core behaviors that keep speakers from achieving their key goals – to motivate, enliven, inform and educate.   Below are the top five mistakes content experts often make as speakers when trying to engage audiences, stimulate crowds, and connect deeply with others. 

I’ve made some of these mistakes myself, and have lived the experience of losing an audience.  None of us are born astounding speakers, and there’s always more to learn, but the first step is to acknowledge your own gaps.

TOP 5 PUBLIC SPEAKING MISTAKES – FAILING TO…

1. Meet the Audience Where They Are

First and foremost, speakers must remember that their deep knowledge about a topic isn’t (usually)shared by the audience.  Listeners aren’t in the same place you are – they haven’t spent years studying this area, researching it, living it.  It’s new to them.  So you must meet your audience where they are, finding a way to hook them in.  Then take them on a stimulating journey of initial discovery through full-out engagement so that your key points can be understood and embraced.   Assuming that they know what you know, or care in the way you care, is a mistake.  You have to generate a significant level of interest from the beginning, and pique that interest continually throughout your presentation.

2. Make a Heartfelt Human Connection

In the past few weeks, I’ve been a part of a number of national events that highlight speakers who are at the top of their fields.  I’ve seen evidence that being a nationally-recognized guru doesn’t mean you have any degree of social or emotional intelligence.  I’m finding that numbers of these experts simply fail to engage us on an emotional, heartfelt level – they don’t connect in a personal way, or give the sense that they truly care a whit about the audience and its ability to productively use the vast information they know and share.  In the end, their lack of a human connection makes their presentations feel overwhelming and unsettling– they push us away with all data, facts and statistics, and no heart and soul. They’re simply not likable.

3.  Show Respect for the Listener

Again, I’ve seen scores of speakers alienate an audience by expressing disdain or criticism for some common behavior or thinking.  For example, if you’re speaking to social media novices about what they need to do to get up to speed in the social media arena, you must understand that many folks are afraid and insecure about taking the plunge, and you need to be gentle with them, not judgmental, critical or flip. 

In the end, if you hate or disrespect your listeners for their lack of savvy in your area of expertise, they’ll hate you back.  And if you leave your audience feeling that they are losers, failures or unworthy of your respect, then you’ll achieve the opposite of your desired effect – you’ll bruise their sense of self-worth and create a huge rift between you and your audience.You’ll lose them forever.

4.  Inspire Follow-Up Thinking/ Action

It’s not enough to present information without inspiring people to follow up with new action or thinking.  Your words and messages simply won’t last in the minds of the audience members if you don’t motivate your listeners to DO something different with what you’ve just shared and taught.  Think about how you can connect and engage with your audience after your talk, and help them on a path of thinking or behaving differently, making use of your information in ways that better their lives.  If you don’t, you’ve missed a key outcome of serving as a speaker/presenter – to inspire positive action.

5.  Leave a Lasting Message of Significance

Finally, with the millions of webcasts, seminars, workshops and talks available today to us –either in person or online — your talk will not stand out or be effective if you don’t leave the audience with a clear message of significance – something lasting, meaningful, and impactful.  If you’re simply sharing dry information, but don’t touch on the vital “essence” of your material (the living, breathing heart of what you care about and why we should care), you’ll fail as a speaker.

In the end, it’s not easy to be a compelling speaker or presenter, and deep knowledge of a topic doesn’t necessarily contribute to your ability to reach people.  But addressing these mistakes will help you communicate in ways that make you the speaker that people ask for most and remember best.

I’d love to hear your thoughts – What is your deepest public speaking challenge and how are you overcoming it?  Thanks for sharing.

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I spent 18 years in corporate life building a career as a senior marketing, research, and product management professional. While a good portion of that time was exciting and fulfilling, in the end, my corporate life culminated in devastating personal, professional and health challenges (for more on my personal story, see my book Breakdown Breakthrough).

As a high-level professional and a mom of two young children, there were times that my working life almost broke me – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Work-life balance as I defined it – that ever-elusive juggle of contributing fully as a professional while serving as an involved and caring mother – was completely out of reach and utterly impossible.

As a result, when I hit 40 years old, I awakened to the realization that the life I’d created was unsustainable. For four years, I had been chronically ill (with a disease called tracheitis – a serious and recurring infection of the trachea). I was exhausted, depressed and overcome with the guilt and misery of letting down everyone and everything that truly mattered to me.

Now, 11 years later, my entire life and career have been transformed. I run my own career, leadership and executive consulting business – Ellia Communications – and I work on my own terms. My business is conducted from my home office, and my ability to balance my key priorities in both life and work has improved dramatically. As a result, I am physically well and professionally rejuvenated – I feel excited, passionate, and energized by the work I do and the people I serve.

I’ve directly experienced the benefits of working from home, and because of the transformation it allowed, I cannot recommend it highly enough to women and men equally. Working remotely or from a home office — either in your corporate role, or in your own small business, entrepreneurial endeavor or consultancy – is a true life-changer.

How did working from home save my career (and my life)?

Below are the 6 key ways:

1. Seamless integration of the personal and professional

As a career and executive coach, I’ve observed that working professionals thrive best when their personal and professional identities are not highly distinct or separate entities, but connected symbiotically, nourishing and enlivening each other. When I spent hours each day every day in a corporate office, I experienced my professional persona as something completely different from my personal one. Now, whether I’m working or spending time with my family, I’m the SAME person – integrated, whole and honoring all key aspects of my personality. Working from home has allowed a deeper connection to my true self, and to operating with authenticity, integrity and transparency.

2. Productivity boost

I’m immeasurably more productive working from home. I can craft my work schedule as it suits my needs, and tailor it to when I’m most energetic, productive, and focused. I’m there for my family when I need and want to be, and also available to address my work roles and responsibilities the minute I wish to for as long as I wish to.

3. Healthier, more active lifestyle

Since I began working from home in 2002, my chronic illness, exhaustion and depression evaporated. (Interestingly, my tracheitis disappeared the day I was laid off from my last corporate job after 9/11, and hasn’t returned). I sleep and nap when my body requires it, and I make time for healthy activities such as tennis and walking. I eat as my body requires, not based on a forced, unnatural schedule. I’m stronger and more energetic by shaping my day in healthier ways.

4. Family focus

Being deeply involved in my family’s life – in the fabric of my two children’s daily lives – was what I dreamed of when I planned for and gave birth to them. But I could never find a way to achieve that while holding down a job that required 3 hours of daily commuting, a 50+ hour work-week, and extensive travel. Being able to serve my family in ways that honor my unique values, needs and priorities has made all the difference in my life.

5. Well-defined boundaries

In my marriage and family therapy training, I learned about the power of personal boundaries to create a happy, healthy life, or impede it. Boundaries are the invisible barriers that separate you from your various outside systems (work, family, church/temple, school, friends, etc.). Your boundaries help you regulate the degree of input and output between you and the systems with which you interact. Boundaries can be measured on a scale from diffuse (overly-permeable) to rigid (impenetrable, preventing the necessary flow of input/output). Working from home, I have strengthened my boundaries – I know where I end and others begin, and I control the flow of input and information in ways that are most beneficial for me and my family.

6. Control

The quality of my life is directly proportionate to the degree of control I have over my time, the people with whom I interact, and my endeavors and activities. In my work, I’ve seen the damaging effects that loss of control brings about in life. Feeling out of control leaves people feeling victimized and powerless over their fate and their future. Victimization often brings with it illness, depression, rage, and disengagement from life and work. Working from home gives me a direct line to greater personal and professional control.

In the end, running a business from my home that I’m passionate has given me a new lease on life and allowed me to contribute at the level I long to, to both my family and my work.

National research confirms the innumerable benefits of remote working for both individuals and enterprises. There is no longer a question about its positive outcomes. The more we can create new pathways for successful remote working, the greater the opportunities for success, growth and innovation for individuals and businesses around the globe.

For more information and support for remote working, download free resources and join the conversation this month at http://msft.it/YOYTM and try Office 365 for free today http://msft.it/try.

Fortune Magazine just released its “40 Under 40” list – a collection of the brightest and best innovators, leaders, “disrupters,” and job creators in the world under 40.   These folks are truly changing life and work as we know it.

But there’s a deeply disturbing problem with this list – where are the women?  The first woman listed is #20 – Marissa Mayer – VP of Google — and there are only 5 more.  Also extremely curious is that Fortune chose to feature on the cover two women (out of three individuals), when their list was only 15% female.  What were their reasons? 

You can’t imagine what it’s like to be a career and executive coach and trainer for professional women, and see a list like this.  It fires me up – makes me furious, motivated, frustrated, re-committed – a full gamut of emotions.  All of us who care about the advancement of women want to do more, impact more, change more, so that women — who are 47% of the U.S. labor force today yet only 15% of corporate leadership — aren’t grossly underrepresented in a list of top young movers and shakers in the world of business.

How can more women advance to the top of their fields?

Those who work intensively with professional women know there are key reasons why women are not making in large numbers to the top of their fields today.  Gender roles at home and the highly disproportionate distribution of labor around childcare and domestic responsibility is one.  And we also know there are critically important shifts that have to occur in women’s behavior, thinking, and actions to catapult them to the top.

These changes will not happen overnight, or even in our lifetimes.  But we can’t let up – we have to create new pathways for women to rise to senior leadership in every field and every industry.  Most people on the planet understand why it’s vitally important to have more women in leadership.  But very few know how to make it happen.   

8 Essential Steps for Women to Rise to the Top of Their Fields

Click below to read my latest piece on Forbes.com about the 8 essential steps for women to rise to the top:

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ON FORTUNE’S “40 UNDER 40” LIST

Please let me know your thoughts – share your candid opinions.

Arriving at the top doesn’t just happen.  Women have to commit themselves to being the best and stretching beyond all imagining.  And we need empowering programs and initiatives that help train women how to overcome their challenges to rising to the top.

Are you ready to do what it takes?

I’ve been utterly floored this past month by the volume of requests I’ve received for FREE help from complete strangers, and by the nature and content of these requests. 

The bulk of these requests have come in from readers of my article LinkedIn: Busting 8 Damaging Myths About What It Can Do For Your Career, that ran on Forbes.com on September 13^th.  It surprised all of us (the Forbes editors and me) as it blew up on the front page and was viewed by over 60,000 people.  

That week, I literally heard from over 150 folks asking for all sorts of free help and I continue to get requests, including my review and recommendations on: their LinkedIn profiles, resumes, job or career options, potential career changes, interview approaches, how to get testimonials, and on and on.

What I’m stunned about is that in all of these requests for free help, not ONE person offered to pay for my time, or suggested bartering with something of value.  They simply wanted help without offering anything in return.   Perhaps I’m crazy, but I would never ask a stranger for help in this way.

Further, a good number of these requests for free help were:

1)      Urgent – “I have an urgent career decision to make. Can you respond asap?”

REALLY?

 2)      Disrespectful – These folks didn’t care or consider for a second that I make my living offering career counsel.  I’m not a non-profit or a charity; I’m a business owner.  And I’m really good at what I do, after years of training and experience.  It takes a significant amount of time and energy to review someone’s information/situation and offer tailored recommendations.  I deserve to be paid for my time and effort. 

(For the record, I do offer my time for free, but on a very selective basis to organizations and non-profits that have a broad reach and help hundreds of people through their services.)

 3)      Narcissistic – It’s all about them, and what they need and how soon.  Never a second thought about what I might need in order to be of service to them.

4)      Clueless – It’s clear that these folks hadn’t a clue that theirs was one of hundreds of similar requests, and as such, impossible to accommodate without their becoming a client of mine, and having time scheduled in my calendar.

Please don’t get me wrong.  I’m truly honored and excited that my writing touched a chord and resonated with so many people, and I certainly hope that trend continues.  And I do LOVE to be of service to people, helping them make positive change.  And I love hearing from folks about how my writing impacted them.

That being said, I’m tired and fed up with free help requests.  It remains shocking to me that so many people all across the globe who want help forget to be considerate and respectful of those they’re asking support from.  Come on people!  Let’s reverse that trend.

My hope is that going forward, anyone who asks another individual for free help will be more considerate and thoughtful prior to making the request.  Think about what the helping party deserves for his/her support, what it will take from them to give you the help you want, and what you can offer in return.  If you can’t offer money, think about what you can provide that would be meaningful.  NEVER ask without considering these issues beforehand.

One more thing – for every request you make for FREE help, offer someone else free help instead.

On September 13, I posted an article on Forbes.com about LinkedIn.  I covered what I felt were the 8 myths about what LinkedIn can (and can’t) do for your life and your career.  At that time, I was a contributor on ForbesWoman through the blog of my favorite women’s organization 85Broads (see their terrific ForbesWoman blog).

Here’s the piece:
LinkedIn: Busting 8 Damaging Myths about What It Can Do For Your Career.

This article truly struck a chord like no other piece I’ve written to date.  It became the most viewed piece on Forbes.com that day (more than 60,000 views!), and landed on the Forbes homepage.  Over 12,000 people shared it on LinkedIn, and the feedback I received was nothing short of astounding.  I was invited by over 300 folks to connect, and received 200+ emails, as well as speaking inquiries, blogging opportunities, consulting queries, requests for profile edits, and more. 

I was truly shocked that this little, informal piece about LinkedIn would be so hungrily consumed.  From the feedback I received in the days following the post, I now know the following about LinkedIn:

1) When over 100 million people engage in something, it’s a massive force of nature.

2) While so many of us use LinkedIn for hours each day, there is still rampant confusion and overwhelm about how to make it work most effectively.

3) Millions of people are hoping it’s some kind of a magic bullet – that it will fix things (like get you a job, or make your career better) that a professional networking tool simply cannot.

4) Rules of effective engaging (in life and on LinkedIn) are still a mystery to many.

5) Making the most of LinkedIn’s abilities is still out of reach for most.

6) As evolved as we are, humans still need a lot of help in learning how to meaningfully engage, connect and be in mutually beneficial community with each other.

I also learned a thing or two about writing.  Here’s what I gleaned:

1) When you write about something 100 million people care about (and happen to be a part of a large media platform), you get read.

2) When you share authentic views and aren’t afraid to be seen as a “contrarian” (and add to a national conversation), you get read.

3) When you aim to help people understand something important that’s hard to understand, you get read.

4) When you write something that just flows out of you quickly and easily (and don’t over-agonize or worry if it’s good), you write better.

I’m so grateful that this little piece just came pouring out, and that I didn’t over-analyze its merit.  I just offered it up to the editor, and hoped someone, someday might enjoy it.  From this, I got my own ForbesWoman blog (thank you, @ForbesWoman - here’s today’s piece).  And I was lucky enough to experience having a piece published that happened to be useful to good number of folks, and was a blast to create.

But I’m still scratching my head a bit about the appeal of this piece, and I’d love your feedback to help me understand it.  Can you please share…

1) Why do you think this piece struck such a chord?

2) What have you thought about the other information/pieces you’ve read about LinkedIn (have they been helpful to you?)

3) How have YOU felt when something you wrote or created surprisingly reached thousands of people?

Please SHARE your candid (and contrarian) views! I’d love to know…Thanks, my friends.