Are you thinking about returning to work after staying home to care for your children? You are not alone! Professional women who have taken time off are successfully re-entering the workforce in record numbers. And this trend is beginning to capture the media's attention.
Erica Noonan, staff reporter for the Boston Globe writes at length on how this trend is affecting Boston Area women. In Return Mission, Noonan writes, "Though home with children today, more college educated women are planning to re-launch careers, this time with a new perspective."
As career coaches, we work with many women who want, or need, to go back to work, but do not know where to start. Whether we work with them one-on-one or in small groups, we always begin by identifying their strengths. Women lack confidence about their skills and marketability when they have been out of the workforce for a number of years. Yet, they have more experience and skills than they think. Our process for helping women move forward with their careers is grounded in positive psychology, and one of the most important principles that we espouse is that lasting personal growth only begins when we acknowledge and embrace our strengths. Beating ourselves up by focusing on our weaknesses, simply keeps us stuck. Women need to catalogue their strengths, build on them, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to move forward in the marketplace.
Many women find it difficult to recognize their strengths. So, we begin by asking a series of questions:
-What is the one thing about yourself you wouldn't change no matter what?
-Where and when do you see yourself doing that/expressing that part of yourself?
-How do you feel when you are doing that/expressing yourself in that way?
-Can you think of a time when you utilized this strength that made you really proud?
-Now, imagine yourself at work utilizing this strength. What are you doing?
Once you begin to identify those skills and strengths that you have been using and enjoying, you can begin to focus on how to move forward in your career.
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I have a question regarding the identification of the strengths. What if the strength is a trait that makes woman's performance very successful, but damages her relationships at work? She enjoys her work but conflicts she has not even noticed end up resulting in her loosing the job.
ReplyDeleteWould that be a strength or a weakness?
If the same pattern repeats more times, how to restore her confidence in others and make her more confident and open in the communication at her new work posts.
Interesting question, with many facets to explore. Without knowing the exact situation, we can only respond in general terms. When we are in a situation where we can use our true strengths, we generally feel good about ourselves and feel happy in our work. And, when we feel confident in our abilities and happy in our work, we can usually get along with our colleagues or coworkers. If we have trouble getting along with coworkers, we have to question whether the good work we are doing is really coming from using our strengths. Or, is it coming from working hard at something that perhaps doesn't come easily, and may create tension with others in the workplace? It's also possible that we may be using our strengths, and happily so, but we are not naturally a "people person" and may be better served working in an environment that doesn't require people skills. We appreciate this interesting question and wonder what other readers think.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion is that in this case it depended on the culture of the country, or the nation. If the culture of the country expects that you build up fast, very close relationships at work, and if you are civil, and polite but you do not like to have very close relations especially at work, that bothers people. They start to believe that somehow the person regards them as not good enough to be friends, which is not true.
ReplyDeleteMy friend is now in another country in the region and there she has no problems of this kind. I am afraid I have many examples like her in my generation, and I miss them :)
I had a research on the influence of FDIs on human capital in my country, and was dissapointed on the level of activities that MNEs have in this regard. Maybe as market we are not as important for their profits, but simply they do not put a lot of attention in transferring their global culture into my country.
I do not know, maybe it is our responsibility to adapt to the world (maybe that is why we have very few MNEs in the country) ... but simply is very interesting to have more insight into this issue.