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Filling the Void: How to Make the Best of Down Time

When it comes to travel, it’s all about the bag you carry. Take two identical suitcases. Despite weighing the same, the one stamped to a Carribean vacation feels infinitely lighter than one ticketed to a sales meeting in Des Moines, Iowa. Traveling for fun and traveling for business can look very similar, yet feel very different. For vacations, we count down the days until we leave, for work trips, the days until our return.

Why do we hate business travel of all sorts? It’s not the work. Selling makes each day go faster. Conversely, it’s the dead time in-between the work. Whether it’s time spent driving, flying, or in hotels, it all feels useless, and for good reason. By driving 30-40k miles, I spend an estimated 50 working days a year, staring through my windshield. Other salespeople leave town for weeks at a time. Either way, it amounts to valuable time siphoned right out of our lives!

Still, we all accept sales travel as necessary, but does it have to be a necessary evil? Thanks to technology, we have more choices to pass the time than ever. Unfortunately, they’re not all created equal. Some time-killing activities make us feel and perform better, and some ultimately make life more difficult. Below is a guide to help salespeople make the most of down time. Consider avoiding the bad behaviors and replacing them with the better options provided.

AVOID THIS: Unhealthy or Dangerous Habits

Yes, ideally, we’d all snack on quinoa and green tea all-day. Back in reality, we satisfy ourselves, on occasion, with unhealthy habits. Afternoon escapes to our favorite drive-through or retail wonderland can have harmful long term consequences. In fact, one habit is likely to feed the other (I love puns, please don’t judge!). Other habits, like texting and driving, put our lives at risk and should be eliminated. It’s helpful to remember the quicker the satisfaction arrives from a given activity, the quicker it leaves..

REPLACE WITH THIS: Learning and Creating

Consider the following temptation-inducing situations. Stuck in an airport terminal? Grab a book! It’s one of the best ways to sharpen your mind for selling. Have a long drive ahead of you? Download and listen to an audiobook! You’d be surprised how much time you can fill without extra calories or credit card bills. And what the heck do I mean by Creativity? Travel time provides the ideal environment to brainstorm! In fact, many of Meaning2work.com’s posts started as dictations to my iPhone while driving. The key, I’ve found, is to learn and write about subjects you enjoy. You’ll arrive at your destination, refreshed and fulfilled instead of haggard and annoyed.

AVOID THIS: Co-worker Gossip, Office Politics

Photo by Axleandre Boucher on Unsplash.com

Nobody’s perfect and we all need to let off steam, on occasion. It’s nice, at first, to know someone else shares your sorrow and frustration. As an ongoing topic of conversation, however, commiserating does little to make us feel better. We all know, that at times, life sucks. Why should we waste time bringing ourselves down? After all, bad luck has a way of interrupting us whenever it wants.

REPLACE WITH THIS: A Focus on the Future and Collaboration

Relax, no pom poms are required! Without using false positivity, we can acknowledge current problems and direct our conversation to actions. This is one of the most powerful ways we can use down time. Your mood will lift when you focus on what can be done instead of what can’t. And, talking through alternatives forces us to organize thoughts into logical form. In this way, the practice of verbally responding to a customer problem, in the safety of a coworker phone call, helps bring the solution to light. In my experience, trusted colleagues have helped to formulate my best ideas!

AVOID THIS: Negative Self-Talk

We’ve all done it. The minute we’re out of a bad sales call, we review it in our minds repeatedly, and experience the same pain, repeatedly. We know something must be our fault, so why not everything? Refer to “Your Worst Sales Manager: A Survival Guide” earlier in this blog for more on negative self-talk. Stories abound of perfectionist types, like Steve Jobs, and how much they accomplish. Does anyone ever ask them how happy they are? It’s good to be driven, as long as you also enjoy the journey itself. Sorry perfectionists, instead of making us better, self-criticism usually makes us worse.

REPLACE WITH THIS: Stoic Philosophy

Stoicism is the belief that we don’t control others, only our own choices here and now. And, not only do our choices include our actions, but also our feelings. Try listening on your podcast player to Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic. Each episode lasts less than five minutes. Neither pro or anti religeon, Stoicism is simply an empowering acknowledgement of reality. Learning it is like being handed something you’ve tried to find for years, the rules to life. The choice of what to do with the wisdom is yours.

Getting Started…

There are many books and courses designed to help us optimize our down time. Some may be quite effective, given the time and effort. To get started, I offer a much simpler idea; use positive habits to crowd out negative ones. Think of your time like a garden. If you fill it with good things like seeds, fertilizer, and water, you can grow a bountiful crop. Otherwise, the weeds take over. Let’choose to spend our downtime wisely and cultivate the lives we want!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Salespeople, Choose Wisely: Your Employer Represents You!

Photo by Zany Jadraque on Unsplash.com

“When you’re out in the field, make good decisions. After all, you not only represent yourself, but the entire company!”
A common sales mantra

Does any of this sound familiar?

It should. Many companies close sales meetings with this message for the same reason, it’s true. Often we act as a customer’s sole point of contact. As such, in their eyes, we ARE the company.

Hiding in plain sight, however, is a more startling truth; our companies also represent us. Our family, friends, and customers, are all aware of our choice of employer. Whether we like it or not, we’re often judged based on this choice. And, complain as we may about our company’s policies, it’s still our choice to follow them – and our customers know it.

Therefore, when our employers make serious mistakes, we, in our customer’s eyes, take on some of the blame as well. Any salesperson who’s had to deliver bad news knows this is true. Even if we voice disagreement with our employer to our customers, the reality of the situation fails to change. Thus, as sincere as it may sound, complaining directly to customers is mostly selfish. Doing so, for us, feels good and for the customer, accomplishes nothing. Even worse, when we publicly complain about our company, we invite customers to do the same.

And therein lies the problem, how can we be honest and helpful to our customers when we don’t agree with our own company’s policies? How can we sincerely represent our employers in a positive manner when they fail to do so for us in return?

To break from this blame trap, we can resolve to do two things: internally advocate for the customer and make more thoughtful career decisions. When our company fails our customer, we need to bravely advocate on behalf of both our customer and our company. This can include being transparent and offering ideas for comprise. If our ideas fall on deaf ears, we should reformulate and try again. If our requests continue to fall on deaf ears, we can then consider working for an employer that better aligns with our values.

What are your values? It’s a worthwhile question to consider. Ask yourself this, if you left the field for an extended period of time, how would your company treat your customers? If they would make efforts to mimic the service you provide, you’re in a good spot. If not, your company may not fully appreciate you or your customers.

Would you want that kind of a firm representing you?

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

To Sell, Or Not to Sell: 5 Reasons Not to Act Like a Salesperson

“All the World’s a stage and the men and women are merely players.”

-William Shakespeare

Are you a real salesperson? If not, could you at least act like one? For customers, we play the passionate, yet in-control, sales consultant. Over an entire 10-hour workday, we struggle to say the right things, to the right people, at the right time. If we can just get our message accross, the customers are sure to give in – or so we think. And, at day’s end, like faithful zombies, we eat, stare at the TV, and wander to bed. What if we have it all wrong? What if all our focus on pulling off the perfect, line-by-line, sales pitch is actually hurting us? Read on and decide for yourself.

Why we feel we must play a role.

As early as the 1700’s, makers of household items like soaps sent independent pitch men to roam the countryside to pray on the ignorance of farmers. At the time, an aggressive approach paid dividends. After all, the rural folk had little to no exposure to the wares of traveling salesmen and could be pressured into buying them. Therefore, as companies began to bring salespeople in-house, they encouraged (even expected) them to act like their high-pressure, high-performing predecessors . And thus, a belief in a “sales personality”came to be.

Despite modern, solution-oriented, empathic sales training, salespeople are still expected to aggressively handle objections and ask for the sale. When a customer has a concern, we have handy acronyms to feed us our next line. And if the customer accepts our semi-scripted answer, we go in for the fully-scripted close. As a result, acting is fully baked into what we do.

Here are five reasons this approach needs to change:

1. Acting prevents us from learning.

If we train like actors for long enough, we also become apt to learn like them. Even the most skilled salespeople can occasionally be seen, in sales meetings, asking other’s to repeat lines they deem effective. Sadly, when we could be armed with additional value for customers, we arrive home poised to put on a play.

2. Acting wastes time for customers and salespeople alike.

Alas, sales thespians, our lives don’t consist of repeatable scenes. When it comes to real life and what people actually say, no script exists. Therefore, even our best attempts to plan calls are doomed to partial success, at best. In reality, over specific words or phrases, we’re better served preparing for the content of a discussion. We can answer many more questions when we don’t need to memorize deliberately phrased answers.

3. When we act out a role, we miss opportunities to sell.

According to scientists, it’s impossible for the human brain to hold more than one conscious thought at a time. Therefore, when our mind is stuck on our script, it cannot take in the customer’s mood and the moment itself. The result? We miss the chance to empathize with clients and solve their problems.

4. We don’t want actors to sell to us, so why should we do it?

Would you rather work with a salesperson who hears what we say, or an actor struggling to stick to a script? The answer is simple, we need to stop acting and start selling. In doing so, we can have direct and candid conversations with our clients and be ourselves. In the place of canned closing techniques, we can ask targeted and specific questions based on what the customer tells us in real time.

5. The direct approach: why it’s hard and why it’s easy.

Shifting away from a script-based selling approach has both immediate challenges and benefits. Without the structure of memorized lines, we can firstly feel exposed, even lost. When listening intently, one cannot plan what to say next. It’s both scary and exciting. Fortunately, compared to memorized sales pitches, unscripted conversations can achieve a much greater depth . They often enable us to find the crucial pieces to closing sales such as hidden objections.

Let’s leave acting to those at the community theater. We have selling to do, and our customers are waiting!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Stop Repeating and Start Reading – How to Practice Selling Like a Pro

Can you sink a put like Brooks Koepka or Tiger Woods? Why not? Many salespeople play golf multiple times a week. In some sales jobs, it’s a crucial way to connect with customers. Why then, aren’t more salespeople graduating to the PGA Tour? Surely, if time was an issue, retired people, golfing everyday, would make the Senior Circuit. Perhaps there’s something in the way pros practice that sets them apart? If so, how can we in sales benefit?

Can Salespeople Truly Practice?

Seriously, is there a driving range equivalent to what we do? Is there a place where we can work on specific parts of our approach? The best we’ve come up with is sales training, sales meetings, and actual sales calls. Given the brevity of the first two, salespeople typically have to practice in real sales calls, with real business at risk. And often, in the moment, developing a skill is the last thing on our minds; we want to make the sale.

According to Dan Coyle, author the bestselling book, The Talent Code, expert performers in a variety of fields, grow into greatness with focused-practice, not talent. Sure, we’ll likely focus on skill development at our next meeting (when our manager is looking), but not in the regular practice of our job. For the busy salesperson, the drive for results supersedes the need for growth.

For salespeople, what does growth even mean?

One might suggest the abilities to listen, speak, make decisions, and read non-verbal cues as crucial to sales. These, however, are only manifestations of our skill. If we dug deeper we’d find one skill driving all the others: the ability to think. Grow this skill, and all the others benefit.

It’s been said there are 70-90 variables one can change in a golf swing – a grip change here, a stance change there. A salesperson’s variables, (their skills), are internal. What we say or do in front of customers is a mere byproduct of the beliefs we hold and decisions we make. For people like us, thought hopefully precedes all communication.

How on Earth does one practice the mental skills needed to sell?

One important practice method is what you’re doing right now. Reading is one of the best workouts for the mind. At its base level, reading forces us to make a choice; think about the information presented or go away. The minute we focus on the words and their meaning, the workout starts. In doing so, we build the mental strength to understand, analyze, and solve our customer’s problems. And in sales, the bigger the problem we solve, the more we and our customer stand to gain!

Do hard-working salespeople have the time to read?

Absolutely not, most have administrative work and activity metrics to worry about. Sadly, our bosses may be right, we may have more free time than we realize. For example, many of us fill the gaps between sales calls with things like talk radio, social media, or idle phone chatter. Why not forego ONE conversation or radio program a day and listen to an audiobook in the car? Some of us, while stuck waiting for our next appointment or flight, can read books or articles instead of vegging on People Magazine or cable news. The time is there if we truly want it.

Good news! You’ve already started!

You’ve made it this far. Why not read another article or pick up a book on sales? Then read another. Read until you have opinions on your profession you’ve never had before. Heck, you may even find yourself inspired to write!

The real challenge of our jobs is not how much we can sell, but how much we can learn about selling with the limited time we have. Therefore, the endless loop of call after call is not enough to sharpen our skills.

Agree or disagree you’ve made the right step in reading this. Why not continuing growing your mental muscle by reading more? Who knows? Your competition may be doing that right now.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Being Realistic About Sales Success: A Lesson From Gamblers

One step up to the roulette table and we can imagine our winnings. Who doesn’t want extra cash when on vacation? Still, do we expect to win? Do we decide that nothing less than a fistful of cash? Of course not. That’s not realistic. Nobody likes losing but, instead of raging at its unfairness, we accept it. Otherwise, casinos couldn’t stay in business. We knew walking in the casino door that we could, and probably would, lose money.

We’re Not Factory Workers

As salespeople, our mind is often on where we deserve to be, not on where we are. We see the hard labor we put into selling, and therefore, think we deserve success. We imagine we work an assembly line where one’s work translates into tangible pieces. We forget that, in sales, there’s no guarantee that anything comes out the other end of our effort. Therefore, if it’s not us at the top of the year-end rankings, we think a crime has been committed. Someone has cheated. These results can’t be true!

We’re All Playing the Odds

Consider a random salesperson, (we’ll call her Mary), and put her in a company that compensates its top 10% of performers highly, and the rest modestly. Not knowing anything about her, what realistic chance should we give Mary to make it into the uppermost group? A statistician would tell us 10%. Still, would knowing her skills, experience, and work ethic change her chances? Based on this information alone, no. After all, we know nothing about her co-workers!

If that’s the case, why do we expect our own chances to be any different? There are many moving parts to a sales organization: each rep and their motivations, each manager, and hundreds or thousands of customers. Even so, having observed our own work and no one else’s, we expect to top the rankings. Why else are we angry when someone, other than us, achieves success? That success should be ours!

It’s Time to Get Realistic

Humility is important, but so are realistic expectations. Unfortunately, the term realism is often looked upon as an excuse for negative people. Ironically, in the place of stress, realism gives us practical ways to move forward and avoid further losses. No, it’s not giving up or admitting defeat. Instead, when we’re realistic about success, we finally open ourselves up to finding it.

All that we can do is hope for the best possible return in exchange for our finest work. Lamenting the luck of others only closes us off to how lucky we are. Many of us leave casinos feeling unhappy about losing. Few of us leave feeling cheated or wronged in some way.

Why? We walked in the door with a realistic outlook; we wanted to win, but were willing to lose.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Your Worst Sales Manager – A Survival Guide

Think about the worst sales manager you’ve ever had. What about them irked you the most? Did he compare you unfairly with others? Was no accomplishment ever good enough? Did she monitor your every move, never allowing you to ever feel in control?

Relax. Put that person out of your mind. You’ve had worse.

Our worst manager is probably still with us.

Indeed, that jerk that we slaved under years ago may be gone. But someone more ruthless may have stepped in to take her place. It’s the one person with the ability to always slip past our defenses – ourselves.

Our problem is not in handling poor managers, but in being one.

Think about it. Managers grow frustrated with employees who can’t take criticism. And, we employees despise being crticized unfairly. Yet, as evil as this atrocity is, we freely commit it on ourselves. We search far and wide for managers who don’t micromanage but ironically expect our days to go perfectly to plan. We hate when the boss plays favorites while, at the same time, we put others on a pedestal as somehow better than we could ever achieve.

Doesn’t criticism make us better?

No, improvement does. That doesn’t mean all criticism is bad. When it originates from and is delivered with respect and care, criticism can be life-saving. The problem is in the packaging. When used correctly, criticism is a fire that can forge us like steel. Shame, on the other hand, is a gas can to be thrown on that fire, only more dangerous. If we allow it, shame triggers our internal tyrant to take over and magnify any criticism to harmful and unproductive levels.

Self-criticism: we don’t wear it well.

Your worst managers (the external ones) may have also been critical of themselves. Does that make their actions any easier to take? Humility and self-acceptance, can free our minds to focus on others. Conversley, what good are we doing anyone else when we down ourselves? We may even risk becoming someone else’s worst boss.

Don’t criticize, Accept.

Upon admitting we have a problem with negative self-talk, we can start the challenging process of accepting ourselves and others. Psychologiy pioneers like Albert Ellis and David Burns have done some life-changing work in this area. Anyone who lacks the patience to read their books should subscribe to this blog where I often summarize their findings.

Accepting yourself, regardless of faults and mistakes, will make you both a happier and better person. And yes, this will help you be a better salesperson as well. We may indeed still be our own worst sales manager. Now, at last, we can do something about it.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Winners Beware! Why Losing is Better Medicine

“Son, if you ain’t first, yer last!
– Reese Bobby (Father of Ricky Bobby) in Talledega Nights

It’s easy to love winning and envy winners. That is, until it’s us on the podium. In the meantime, we like to play the victims of circumstance. Do we ever consider how much we, as losers, have to gain?

Consider the following pitfalls of winning:

Winning never lasts

The one thing in common with all wins – in sales, in sports, in career pursuits – is brevity. The victory party may last for days, but it always ends. The money gets spent. The trips get taken.

If winning was measured solely by what is kept for the long term, everyone’s true prize would be expectations. “Nice job! Let’s see it again – only this time faster, better, or more,” is what we eventually hear from others and ourselves.

The immediate aftermath of winning feels a bit like throwing your own birthday party. We seek reassurance from others that our accomplishment is worth celebrating. Many salespeople will attest, the lower the value delivered by a product, the harder one must work to sell it. As I write this, I just finished the third quarter at over 114% goal attainment. High value products, like the one I currently represent, are easy to sell. But, besides being able to pay more bills, what did I accomplish?

Winning helps us deceive ourselves

The most valuable reward I’ve ever received in sales was the permission to think of myself differently. My first good year gave me a clue that perhaps I wasn’t an impostor after all. Maybe I actually had learned how to do this job? Maybe I was even…an expert?

Unfortunately, just as thinking I was an impostor was ironically false, so was the value in being an “expert”. Dr. Carol Dweck, has gotten much well-deserved attention for her research into mindsets. A fixed mindset entails believing that one’s abilities are static. We’re all novices until, one day, we magically become experts. Therefore, the entire game of life is pass/fail. Conversely, a growth mindset comes with the belief that there’s always something new and interesting to learn. Happiness is about remaining a hopeful student and not becoming a disillusioned master.

Winning distorts reality

“There are no moral victories!”, is a common slogan recited by coaches and athletes alike. Eliminating failure as an outcome sounds good in TV interviews and on Investor conference calls. In truth, they might as well say, “I want success so badly that I will use magical powers to get it!” In reality, all the begging and manipulation of 1000 salespeople can’t force a customer to act. Therefore, in sales, failure IS always an option.

Yet, we persist in thinking we have control over others. As a result, we sweat and stress in the name of winning. This hyper-focus closes us off to our own empathy for the customer and problem-solving creativity. While we are busy go-getting, our customers are for-getting both who we are and what we sell.

It’s time to re-visit losing

Winning gets us noticed. It might even earn you a promotion. If you like, it’s the ultimate validation of whatever you did before. So why change? Just keep being an expert! This is the downfall of many salespeople. We can’t look beyond our wins. Instead of improving, we stagnate.

In response to the traditional, closed-minded lust for winning, we can develop a secret crush on losing. This means admitting that the number next to our name on the sales report is an outcome, not an identity. Remove self-judgement, and losing becomes an opportunity to truly learn and become better.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Always Late? Flow is Your Best Excuse

Isn’t is ironic? On one hand, we blame poor time management when someone else arrives late. On the other, one could waste a lot of time reading up on how to manage time. What if wasting time could be valuable? What if our tardiness is trying to tell us something? The answer may lie in what diverted our attention and “made us” late in the first place.

Distractions – they’re NOT all created equal

It’s common to read and hear about the deleterious effects of distraction. Most of us agree, it kills productivity and can put us in serious danger (ie. distracted driving). But, can we blame social media, texting, and other forms of light entertainment for every missed commitment?

Society trains us to regret every digression from what we’re “supposed” to be doing. Are we procrastinating? This would explain why we avoid doing the things we hate. What about when we miss the commitments we tolerate or even look forward to? Surely some stronger force must be at work to tear our attention away? Think of the favorite hobby or activity that immerses us so fully an hour can pass without notice. Do we feel guilty afterward because of the commitment we missed or the enjoyment we felt in doing so?

Flow – A Good Kind of Distraction

There is a mental state we enter we enter when doing something that grabs our attention, causes us to forget time, and brings us sheer joy. Social scientist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, calls it “Flow”. Think of how we feel enjoying intense hobbies or performing jobs we love. There’s an unmistakeable focus that can be seen on the face of Olympic athletes, surgeons, musicians, and others enjoying their craft. It’s as if a bomb could go off behind them and they’d scarcely notice. They are experiencing flow.

Think of flow like going to one’s happy place. One can access incredible reserves of energy when in this state. “Even if I’m tired I always find the energy to …”, might be a good way to describe a flow activity. Needless to say, they are usually pursuits we are good at. Positive Psychology pioneer, Martin Seligman, goes further to explain that, when people use their strengths everyday, their overall level of hapiness improves. And, happier people are healthier and more productive at work.

The People’s Joy Experience

Make no mistake, we have good reason to regret lost productivity. Most of us need to work to survive and that entails being on time and on task. And, we can’t just quit our jobs to knit sock monkeys or do whatever else we truly love. That’s the stuff of millionaire entrepreneurs and celebrities, right?

Not necessarily. Flow activities don’t have to require career changes or large-scale interruptions. Assuming one works 40 hours a week, and sleeps 7 hours a night, we have over 175 days left over for family and flow. We all have free time whether it be in the morning, evening, or lunch hour. Ironically, (again) encorporating flow into ones life may just be a matter of time management.

The clock is ticking!

We know we have plenty of time to experience flow, and that’s why we put off doing it. Still, forty minutes of screen time per day can use up almost 11 days per year (Thank-you Apple!). Our daily commutes may also steal as much or more time. Our hobbies are never going to demand our attendance. It’s only when we remember time’s scarcity that we free it up for things that make us happy. Until corporations allow us mandatory flow time (I’ll pause for laughter), we’ll have to carve out our own. And, we can also choose to cut ourselves slack when we miss commitments for good reasons like flow.

Our charge is not to be selfish and blow off obligations. Instead, we can re-commit to being more happier and motivated versions of ourselves, all by allowing ourselves to flow.

Now, stop feeling guilty, get out, and waste some time! (In the right way, of course)

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

Your Future: Friend or Foe?

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death…”
– William Shakespeare

We humans area future-oriented species. Upcoming events come to mind, not just in sound and light, but in sentiments. We assume what we feel now about the future to be a mere sample of what we’ll feel when it arrives. Often we fail to notice ourselves using phrases like, “I’ll be so happy when…”, or “I would die if..” to describe how we will feel about something. Even though we can’t plan our emotions like calendar entries, we still try. It’s a phenomenon known as Impact Bias.

It’s Not Our Fault

Thanks to evolution, humans can, at will, think of the future and feel it’s anticipated emotions. Perhaps, when our ancestors began imagining the pain of a fall from a great height, they stopped jumping off cliffs. Sadly, this evolutionary safeguard isn’t the gift it once was. In today’s domesticated world, impact bias hurts rather than helps us. Although most of us no longer fear being attacked by a lion on the Serengeti, we still find the future too agonizing (or exhilarating) to pass up.

For example, our fear of poor job performance may be driven by the imagined sting of a manager’s reprimand. Interestingly, to our bodies, the emotions experienced in the imagined event are as real as any felt here and now. It’s as if we’ve fool ourselves into thinking the event has just taken place, every time we think of it. And, impact bias is not restricted to negative events. In a similar fashion, the mere purchase of a lottery ticket can elicit for us the joy of winning instantaneous wealth.

Herein lies the problem: our brains are not very good at predicting our true feelings in the future. The scorn of a boss. The joy of a win. When these events actually occur, our emotions tend to be less intense or long-lasting than we imagined. How can this be? Our emotions about the future are the culmination of oft-replayed scenarios in our mind. Most of us will never experience winning the lottery once – let alone, over and over, until we hear the results.

Even When it’s Good it’s Still Bad

Quickly, we let the highs and lows of current events wear off, replaced by new imaginings of the future. This pattern, albeit natural, is not helpful. Stress, fear, and other negative emotions carry well-documented negative side effects on our bodies. Why should we choose to feel them over and over?

With positive impact bias, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Even wedding days, when they arrive, are fraught with feelings of nervousness and relief, in addition to the joy we expect. It’s simply not possible for our most anticipated events to live up to our internal hype. We waste hours immersed in the ecstasy of winning better jobs, owning dream houses, or finding ideal mates.

Make Friends with Now

So, our challenge is to plan for the future without emoting for it. None of us are immune to impact bias. Our best course is to recognize it and rationally dial back our emotions. We don’t control what we’ll feel in the future. Let’s choose not to bury the feelings we could have about the present under worries or daydreams.

Otherwise, we risk missing the most important emotions – the real ones.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Didn’t get the job? Fix These Mistakes to Feel Better

Ever have your spleen with cut out with kindergarten scissors?

Anyone who’s lost a bid for a dream job may consider the above statement a minimization of how they feel. Exaggerating aside, we’ve all been there and never want to experience it again. And, an endless stream of recruiter listicles (ie. The Seven Must-Do’s Before Your Next Interview) do little to prevent the pain. To retain our sanity, let’s disregard them for now. Instead of gaming the decisions of fickle hiring managers let’s focus on what we can control – our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.

The following are common mistakes we make during and between interviews, and after the process ends. Avoiding them will not guarantee us the job. Then again, that may not be what we want anyways. Read on to learn why.

Mistakes DURING the Interview Process:

Missing Negative Signs

For a hiring manager, the purpose of an interview is to measure our worthiness for the job. It’s a problem when we, the candidate, rely on the interview for the same thing. When we only seek validation, we often fail to catch negative signals because too afraid to see them. Did the interviewer give us positive verbal and nonverbal cues? Did he proceed with a head-down, list-following approach or did he show real interest? Managers hire people they trust. Often this equates to someone they know. They tend to bypass formality for candidates they really like and follow procedure for interviewees who are placeholders (additional candidates used to make the interview process appear legitimate when a target candidate has already been selected). Sadly, any of us can fulfill the placeholder role at any time in the interview process.

Mistaking Friendliness for Approval

Surprise! We may not be the only person in the room looking to be liked. That’s right, hiring managers want validation as well. And, there’s no easier way to win someone’s favor than praise. Some interviewers are looking simply to get through the process unscathed. Making everyone feel like a viable candidate may be their way to accomplish this. Isn’t the ego are marvelous thing? Outwardly, it may be difficult to distinguish between an interviewer’s false approval and real interest in our candidacy. Enthusiastic praise in an interview should trigger our focus to sharpen. At this point, we should ask the interviewer for specifics on how our the skills they just complimented apply to the job itself. Any vagueness or hedging in the interviewer’s answer should hint that their praise is hollow.

Mistakes Made In-Between Interviews:

The Neverending De-brief

Did they like my answers? Did make sense to tell that joke? Was it a positive sign when the interviewer said _________? MAKE IT STOP! In-between interviews, we often analyze our situation into oblivion. In truth, we know we had one or more interviews in the past and little more. What they really thought of us and our answers is likely to remain a mystery – even if we get the job. Instead, we need focus on what we learned about the job and our prospective manager and how both stand to change our life moving forward.

Choosing Fairy Tales over Nightmares

Wouldn’t it be great to be the chosen candidate and live happily ever after? Too often, we lose ourselves in this fairy tale and, in doing so, fail to consider the prospective job’s potential to suck. It’s the job search equivalent of love at first sight. Don’t know the benefits? No worry, they’re probably good! And, surely the manager will always be as friendly as she was in the interview! How easily we chose to create the architecture of our careers in crayon. In an alternate reality, aka the REAL one, we can chose to look at the downside of a potential job MORE than the upside. Until we have a formal offer, the default answer to our candidacy is always NO. Accepting this reality frees us to make an objective comparison between the shiny and new possible job and our horrible, boring, current one. Making friends with the nightmare of not getting the offer is always the better path.

Mistakes Made Post “Dream Job” Loss:

Never Deciding Whether or Not We Truly Wanted the Job

This is the post-mortem result of fairy tale fantasizing. If we never decide whether or not we want a job, we risk forever mourning it’s possibilities. In reality, the position may have made us miserable. Denying this is futile. We know, without question, winning the lottery brings life-changing riches, yet we don’t beat ourselves up over losing. Why should we persecute ourselves over jobs we never have wanted? There’s no universal law that dictates that we must win every job offer, good and bad. Having the courage to formulate an opinion ahead of getting an offer releases us from the grip of hubris.

Neglecting to Find Closure

Recruiter wisdom often lacks the sensitivity we require after not winning the perfect job. Typically they recommend thanking every one under the sun and casually annoying them over time to “stay on their radar”. If we’ve already decided we don’t want the job, why bother? Isn’t our time better spent on the lost jobs we really do want? In the rare cases when the job fit and opportunity are superb, staying in contact with the employer and fighting to work for them is the right course. Suffice to say, if we don’t want the job now that we’ve lost it, and had some time to reflect, it probably wasn’t right for us in the first place.

One last thing, believe it or not, it can be extremely helpful to find out who actually won the job. Often the answer is only a quick LinkedIn search or grape-vine conversation away. Doing so can open a window into the hiring manager’s decision process. Sometimes the “other candidate” is truly more qualified. Other times, you can breathe a sigh of relief. You just avoided working for a manager not competent enough to recognize how wonderful you are!

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

For More Advice on how to prepare for job interviews, check out my earlier post “5 Reasons to Colossally Fail at Your Next Interview“

Here are a some other post-Interview/post-mortum questions to ask yourself. Can you think of more? Feel free to comment:

Would I have gotten along with the boss?
Was the interviewer in a hurry? Did she really seem to care about answering my questions?
What did I find out about the previous person in the role?
Did I fact-check the story I was told?
Was the salary and benefits truly better than what I make now?