Experiencing “you” in a remote setting

Here’s the scenario I’m working on:

I can’t experience everything that you are, and everything that you bring, in our office. As a company, we’re either transitioning to becoming fully remote, or we have a hybrid setup in place. You, being out of sight as you do your work successfully and without problems, become “out of mind.” You may have become the best performer on the team, but I won’t think of you when it’s time to look at performance-based promotions.

So, what do we do to remedy this?

Well… I’m working on an idea.

Open communication and “writing as a leader” are two skills that we seem to be asking of our remote teams today, based on everything I’m seeing.

But what if there’s another skill that we can lean on: creating an engaging experience through our remote work environment?

Or, going one step deeper, what if we’re already creating an experience for our teams as remote leaders?

What if we just haven’t put that name on what it is we’re doing, when we become open communicators or when we write effectively?

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

The Experience Economy

I wrote an email to Jonathan Stark, asking if he had any resources handy on the topic of selling transformation. He generously responded by sending me two podcast links - I’ll include them both here if you’re interested in listening. (Podcast Episode Uno and Podcast Episode Dos)

I’d heard of Joseph Pine’s The Experience Economy as a student, but I didn’t know what it was about. I’m looking at the book again right now, and I’m almost jumping out of my chair with excitement. I’ve felt this way about the idea of intentionally creating experiences for years and years. You even saw me write about it a few days ago.

Look at the subtitle they used for the 1999 edition of this book: “Work is a Theatre & Every Business a Stage.” So wild.

I just bought the Kindle version. The last time I was this excited to read a book was when I was recommended So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. (This is among my top 5 favorite reads of all time.)

I’ll finish tonight’s email by saying that I am wicked, wicked happy by what feels like a beautifully timed resource. Will keep you up to speed on what I learn.

What are your all-time favorite reads? I always love and welcome book recommendations.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Slowly letting go

I’m in the process of slowly letting go of an identity that I’ve held for several years.

Back in 2014, frustrated by the pharmaceutical playing field, I decided that I was going to try and obtain some control over my career. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a scientist. I didn’t want to be someone trapped at the lab bench. So, taking some perfectly timed advice from a wonderful colleague, I dove into networking.

From networking, I learned how to write a resume that managers wanted to read. From there, I learned how to interview. I found that I was pretty damn good at negotiating the salary that I wanted. ;)

I job-hopped quite a bit at the beginning, and it gave me plenty of room to practice at what would eventually become my craft. I helped my colleagues land the jobs that they wanted. From there, I slowly started building a list of references for “career services” - and then, the day came when I sold my first resume package.

And now, here I am, sitting at the dining room table, typing an email to my list, and thinking about what the next step in the journey is going to look like.

I think that I’m so protective of my “story” because, for years, I didn’t have support for anything that I’m doing today. I kept the resume writing a secret for two years. (I might talk about this in a future email.) When I finally started sharing what I was doing with my colleagues and family, it wasn’t pretty. The stare that a person gives you when they think you’re doing something outrageous doesn’t leave the mind easy.

But, I think that I’m finally ready to let this story go. I want to do something new, and I really like the idea of leaning into transformation work for clients.

I still don’t know what that looks like for me yet, but I think I’m on a healthy path to figuring it out.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

The desire to have an experience

I read a small paragraph from one of Farnam Street’s latest emails that I really enjoyed. It’s a quote from a “fireside” chat that Jeff Bezos participated in back in 2012. The question asked was, “What’s going to change in the next 10 years?”

What I really liked was how Bezos flips the question around and instead talks about what’s not going to change 10 years from now, and why it’s the more important question we should be asking ourselves.

In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, “Jeff, I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher.”

When I sit down to start working on a client’s LinkedIn profile, I want to know a few key things about the audience that’s going to be visiting the page.

Are we writing the page for recruiters? For a person’s established network? For members of a new industry or niche that we want to get in front of?

Then, keeping in mind my client’s overarching career goals, I think about the goals of the audience who’s going to be visiting the page.

Are they looking for something in particular on your page - a specific experience or accomplishment? Are they checking to make sure that you’re bringing the “right” professional presence online? Are they curious to learn more about you, and they want to see what you’re about?

No matter what the answers look like to any of these questions, there’s one thing about my process for building a LinkedIn profile that’s never going to change.

If I want my client to be memorable to their target audience, I need to make sure that the audience walks away having had an experience worth remembering.

I’m sure this is plain marketing 101 to anyone reading this, but this aspect of creating profiles - or creating resumes, or planning out interviews, or setting ourselves up for promotions - will always take the top spot in the work that I do.

I believe that 10 years from now, the one thing that won’t change for audiences is their desire to have an experience.

That means creating a profile banner and headline that immediately answers the question, “What’s in it for me?”

Using the spark of excitement that takes place when we find someone who could be a benefit to us, we read the profile’s summary to gather more evidence that we’ve found who we’re looking for.

Then, either at the very bottom of the summary or listed directly in the featured section, we plant the first seed in the audience’s mind by including a call-to-action.

After that, we pause - a call-to-action requires work, so we gather more evidence before taking the step. We review the next section in the profile, which contains the work history. We find even more evidence that we’ve found who we’re looking for.

And then, having enough evidence to take the step, we engage in the call-to-action: messaging about a job opportunity (if we’re a recruiter), sending a connection request, sending a friendly message to begin a new professional relationship, grabbing some time on the person’s calendar - whatever it needs to be for our audience to feel good about engaging.

What are your thoughts on the idea of creating experiences? What likely isn’t going to change for your audience 10 years from now?

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Abundance

One of these days, I’d love to sit down and talk about the role that abundance has played in my life. When I say “abundance,” I’m referring to a habit of mine of planting seeds long before I’m ready for any kind of harvest, and then cultivating the garden in preparation for what promises to be a feast.

If you know anything about me, you know that I still haven’t figured out how to manage the actual “harvest” part. The result of this is basically what happened to me this past week, where I was completely and unexpectedly overwhelmed by the number of signups for resumes and LinkedIn makeovers.

There’s a part of me that sees all of this and thinks, wow, what a blessing. And there’s a part of me that realizes that I can’t sustain this at the rate I’m going - at least, not without help. So, I made a few tough choices today: raising prices, putting people on waiting lists, and even entertaining the idea of hiring. There’s a former physician-turned-resume writer (yup, you read that correctly) that came to my rescue more than a few times last year that I want to message. She sees the same thing that I do - that resume writing is a life-changing and highly worthwhile path to take.

And then, here’s where things really became wild. I’m an independent contractor with LinkedIn, and I work with them on a career services program that has been growing nonstop since they first launched. A few days ago, I received an email requesting that I take on more of the load for the program. However, what they’re asking me to do isn’t going to take up too much time in my week, but the compensation being offered is surprising. I crunched a few numbers, looked over my calendar, and thought to myself, “Oh my God. It’s the solution I’ve been waiting for.”

It is amazing to me what activities are considered deeply value-adding and monetarily worth investing in. It’s also amazing to me that I can decide how I’m going to structure the world that I live in, and still live in abundance.

So, where does that take me from here? Now that I’m going to have time to myself again for research and writing, I want to start off by talking about LinkedIn.

“I’ve heard that LinkedIn is the place to be if you want to land a job. But honestly, Gabby, I have no idea how to wrap my head around that website.”

I used the LinkedIn platform to plant some pretty important seeds early on during my time in pharmaceuticals, and then I used it again to build a business from scratch. I want my upcoming emails to talk about what I did - why I did what I did - and how you can use the platform to achieve your career goals.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Circle of competence

I recently learned this phrase from Farnam Street. I’ve been thinking about where my circle of competence exists, and how I can expand on it to better serve my clients.

Today, at the drop of a hat, I can help you with:

• Writing a resume and cover letter that can catch the attention of the hiring manager we want to impress - even if we don’t know who this person is yet.

  • We can make a number of educated guesses as to what they’re going to want to see on the resume/cover letter based on the job posting, company website, company blog posts, and Glassdoor reviews from current/past employees.

  • We can structure the document for two different reading styles - skimming and in-depth reading.

• Creating/optimizing LinkedIn profiles that attract the attention of recruiters.

  • Similar to the resume, we can create a narrative and an experience out of your LinkedIn profile that will leave a lasting impression on the minds of visitors to your page.

• Researching target companies and identifying any possible areas that a person could leverage for their career goals.

• Interview practice and thinking through what the interview could be like.

There are a number of other things that could have made the list (i.e. networking, career coaching, headhunting). But if you asked me where my true, all-day-every-day circle of competence exists, it’s in these four bullet points.

People whom I love and trust have told me I could summarize them all and say that I’m competent at professional branding. But it’s here that I hesitate, even in just writing a sentence like this.

When I think of professional branding, the first images that pop into my head are the LinkedIn “influencers” who preach about professional branding on the platform. It’s a sticky, mildly sleazy, cringe-inducing image that frustrates me when I think about it.

Would it be fair to say that I do professional branding that’s based on substance and value… or am I just being too judgmental when I think about things like this?

I don’t know. Tonight’s email is turning into a bit of a mess, so I guess I’ll stop for now.

But I’m genuinely curious to know what you think.

Even if I couldn’t call my circle of competence “professional branding,” would it be fair to say that what I do is in that ballpark? And if so, how could I expand on it for the benefit of my clients?

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Talking it out

My two favorite experiences as a business owner are hearing from my client that 1) they secured the interview, and 2) they landed the job. It is sheer joy for me to receive messages like this, and it’s a source of pride for me that I’ve never been able to explain. Everything I do - from writing resumes, to hopping on Zoom calls, to digging for any leverage I can find on company websites and blogs - is all for my client’s happiness and success.

I decided to take on this long-term research project for the same reason.

I mentioned yesterday that I wasn’t satisfied with the direction I’ve been taking in my writings. While I was half-asleep and in wicked pain as I cranked out the email as the final item on my to-do list, I did fully mean what I was saying. ;)

There’s something about the research that has stopped feeling like I’m doing the right things or exploring the right questions. The only way that I know how to rectify something like this is to journal about it. I figure, rather than journaling, I’ll use the time here to try and explore what’s going on.

What are my goals?

I want to be a trusted resource for my client whenever they have a problem that they’re trying to solve for their career.

But, if I really stop and think about it, what I actually want is for my client to be able to take control over their destiny.

If they want a successful job search, I want them to be able to make it happen. If they want an internal promotion in their organization, I want them to have an understanding of what the playing field could look like.

The number one thing that I want everyone to know is that they have powerful tools in front of them to make their career aspirations happen. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and company websites/blogs are the combination that I swear by when assembling a strategy for achieving our career goals.

That strategy leads to positioning power, which leads to increased visibility. The visibility ultimately leads to a cautious trust that we can then build upon through our continued displays of competency, reliability, and (servant) leadership.

(As much as I’m a die-hard fan of servant leadership, I recognize that not all organizations value servant leadership as their preferred expression of leadership. The leadership skills we need to express all depend on the companies we’re looking to build trust with and what they value.)

What am I doing to make my goals a reality?

That’s where I’m staring at my raw notes in Obsidian and scratching my head. I began with a research topic on exploring promotions for remote working professionals, particularly during the pandemic. I loved what I was doing, and I found a tremendous amount of information and clues that I could keep digging at for the rest of the year and beyond. But, is this what I want to do? Is this the best use of my time?

As I’m sitting here and typing out this email, I’m realizing that I might need to pivot. I might need to explore what positioning power looks like for professionals who need to “market” (market?) themselves in order to get ahead in their careers.

Hmmmmm…

I’m going to keep exploring these thoughts. But right now, I’m feeling a sense of peace that tells me I’m on the right track.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Tired

This week was one of those wild, nonstop, who-knows-what’s-going-to-happen-next kind of weeks. I accomplished everything that I needed to do for the Florida move. I completed all my client work. But wow, I am a special kind of tired. I have just enough energy left to type out one final email to send to my list.

Tomorrow, I’m back to dedicating time to do research on my big career-related questions. I’m not satisfied with the direction I’ve been taking in my writings.

I feel like there’s something deeper here that I should be exploring, but I don’t know what that is yet.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Leveraging LinkedIn for promotions

Could we leverage LinkedIn as a tool to help us land our promotions?

We can use LinkedIn as a tool to land jobs within companies that we admire. I’d even go so far as to say that LinkedIn is the most powerful tool in our job-seeking toolbox. We can create a narrative, an “experience,” and an expectation for hiring managers and recruiters through our LinkedIn profile and posts.

So, why couldn’t we use it to steer a promotion decision in our favor?

I have a sneaky feeling that we could make this work… Will continue to chew on this.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Moving to the beach

It’s been a pretty emotional day for me. I finally (finally!) found a place to live. Next month, I’ll be packing my things and moving to Florida.

The place where I’ll be living is a stone’s throw away from Tampa/St. Petersburg. It’s an 8-minute drive to the ocean down a single street and a 15-minute drive to a sand-covered beach. There are so many preserves and parks near where I’m living that I’ll be spoiled for choice whenever I want to be in nature. One of my all-time favorite wilderness areas will only be 10 minutes away.

I say that today’s been emotional because this is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. For the first time in my life, I’m able to live in a place because I want to live there, and not because it’s where there’s work, or because it’s a hub for pharmaceuticals, or because it’s the cheapest place to live.

There’s a lot to process, and so many blessings to be thankful for.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Feedback is scary

“Feedback is scary - and it’s just as scary when you’re giving feedback as it is when you’re receiving feedback.” 

“My performance evaluation wasn’t graded fairly. My supervisor didn’t take into consideration all the changes that took place during the pandemic and how it affected our team.” 

I have a survey floating around on LinkedIn, asking the community if they were happy with their performance evaluation in 2020. It’s a pretty tough thing, asking a person how they feel about a grade attached to their performance and contribution. 

Gallup wrote a great article just a few months back about workplace insights from 2020, and one paragraph in particular stood out to me:

“Prior to COVID-19, traditional performance management was plagued with infrequent, irregular feedback and goal setting that became irrelevant before the next annual review came around. The pandemic ended up exposing the flaws in this system.”

It makes me wonder where the infrequent, irregular feedback is coming from.

Is it fear? Are we afraid to tell our employees that they’re doing (or not doing) what we ask of them? 

And if that’s the case, what exactly is it that we’re afraid of? 

I have a feeling that answering this question will help me answer a few other questions related to promotions within remote teams. 

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Your 2020 performance evaluation?

Did your team transition to a semi-remote or fully remote environment as a result of the pandemic?

If the answer is yes, (and I’m fairly certain it’s a yes for many of us), I’d love for you to send me a message.

I’m interested in finding real-world answers to one primary question:

Were you happy with your performance evaluation for 2020? 

Whether the answer is yes or no, I’d genuinely love to know why. I’d also love to know if there were any changes made to the performance evaluation process, perhaps as a result of the pandemic, or perhaps due to any additions (or removals) of team performance metrics. 

I’m interested in learning more about what performance management is looking like today, and I particularly want to know if you felt that your evaluation was graded fairly. 

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn 

Moving

I spent the morning looking at different apartments and communities across the country, and I found myself looking at a map of St. Petersburg, Florida. I daydreamed about what it might be like to live there, right next to the beach. 

Just for fun, I looked up the colleges in the area. Twelve colleges are currently listed in Google. 

I don’t think that I’ve ever told anyone this before. On my profile, I’ve privately listed to the LinkedIn recruiters that I’m open to work for one specific job title only. And that’s career advisor positions within community colleges and universities. 

I don’t know how to explain why I chose to do this. I haven’t started an active search or messaged my network for any opportunities. But there’s a part of me that feels that I would be so thrilled and so deeply moved to be able to do work like this. 

It is the privilege of my life to be able to serve as a resume writer and career coach. I’m convinced that I found what I was called to do on this earth.

And yet, somehow, the idea that I could bring this to a college community takes the work to a completely different level.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

5 years down the road

The resume you used to get the job today could be reviewed again 5 years down the road, by a boss two levels up, who will never tell you that they looked at your resume. They’re thinking about you for a future assignment or possibly an upcoming opportunity for a promotion. And so, without you ever knowing, they’re loading up the PDF on their desktop and reading what you’ve written for your work history.

I don’t know about you, but the idea that a promotion I might’ve been wanting for years could have a starting point like this drives me a little bit crazy.

When I think about the supervisors I’ve had in the past, only one person comes to mind who I remember insisting that I submit an updated resume alongside my annual review. 

This might be a worthwhile topic to bring up to your supervisor the next time you both get together for a performance review. 

Supervisors, what are your thoughts?

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Skills worth mastering as we build remote careers

I spent a large chunk of time today looking at some of the skills that we’re being tasked with mastering if we want to take on a leadership role within a new remote team. 

From the many skills that are being offered up, I’m identifying four “broad” skills below. I believe that pursuing mastery in these skills will make a difference for us professionally as our work environments continue to evolve. 

1. Open communication

2. Emotional intelligence (which I see as being related, but different from open communication)

3. Thought leadership

4. Writing as a leader (which I see as being related, but different from thought leadership)

Even if we didn’t want to land a promotion, I’m convinced that it would amaze us - what we could achieve as professionals - if we spent a bit of time understanding these four skill areas. 

I also believe that even if we’re currently working within teams that are resisting the change to go remote, these are skills that we need to be cultivating today. 

What are your thoughts on the topic of remote career development? 

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

An old topic in leadership circles

I’ve been struggling with the idea that a person’s ability to be a great remote leader could be seen as threatening to existing management teams. But I’m starting to see that not only is this an old topic in leadership circles, it’s also been studied extensively. Managers will ostracize subordinates if they feel they are a threat to their position. It shouldn’t be surprising to me that this same thing would happen within a new remote work environment.

I think that I’m going to be spending quite a bit of time exploring this topic.

- In order to land the promotion, is our goal to be a great remote leader, or is our goal to fit in with the management team?

- If my management team isn’t interested in evolving their leadership styles for remote teams, how will this affect the way that I need to present myself virtually?

- How do I cultivate remote leadership development in an environment where there’s serious resistance to go remote?

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Being a great remote leader could be seen as a threat

Sometimes, you go down a path in the research, and you’re certain that you’re onto something. And then, almost out of the blue, you find yourself staring at an article, and you’re completely blown away by what you’re reading. Everything changes, and you find yourself going back to the drawing board, scratching everything out, and starting down a brand new path.

I’ve been sitting here and thinking about landing promotions within leadership in today’s new remote work environment. But it never - and I mean absolutely never - occurred to me that there might be serious resistance within company leadership circles to promote anyone who might be highly skilled in leading remote workforces. 

In fact, showing that you could be a great remote leader could even be seen as a threat to the status of the current leadership team. 

“A large number of managers that had all the right traits to be successful in-person leads are now feeling something is missing as remote leads. Lacking a model to explain this gap and how to fill it, the simplest answer is to just go back to the office — where their leadership isn’t threatened.”

There’s too much here to unpack for one post. I’ll keep you up to speed as I dig into this more. 

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

A change in the way we present ourselves virtually

Landing promotions within our newly-remote companies could necessitate a change in the way we present ourselves virtually and the “reputation” we cultivate within our remote teams. 

Here’s the logic that I’m going on.

1. I want a promotion. Promotions tend to be performance-based and require a certain “perception” of you as an employee. 

2. To be perceived as a strong performer within a virtual team, I need to engage with my supervisor and team on a regular basis.

3. However, strong performers aren't necessarily the ones picked for promotions. 

I can hit all my numbers, regularly share updates with the team, and my supervisor could be thrilled with my performance. But I’m still not the one picked for the promotion.

So, what else could I do?

1. I could change the way that I present myself. I could try to understand how the management team has evolved during the pandemic, and I could model their example. 

2. Rather than putting my focus on being a strong performer, I could cultivate a reputation for being transparent and open. I could be “the” Agile employee.

3. With everything I’m seeing and understanding, this is what will need to take place to land the promotion within today’s newly-remote companies. 

What are your thoughts on landing promotions today? 

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn

Offer the best future

I’ve been thinking about what it would take for a remote employee to land a promotion in this new age of WFH. 

To help me get a few clues, I’ve been digging into Donald Asher’s book, “Who Gets Promoted, Who Doesn’t, and Why.”

In order for you to get promoted within your company, you have to offer the best future out of all the available candidates. And employers want proof that you can deliver a specific, clearly targeted future.

However, perception plays a huge role in your ability to be considered for a promotion. You won’t land the promotion if the perception of you isn’t aligned with where the company is heading.

So, what would it take for you, a remote employee who no longer has a physical presence in the office, to be perceived as the best choice? 

What are your thoughts on this topic?

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn 

P.S. I've been working on a collection of notes and links that I decided to make public today.

I think it’s four things

I’m slowly starting to form a hypothesis on how internal promotions are awarded within fully remote companies. I don’t have all of the pieces yet, but I think it has something to do with:

1. The role that management and senior leadership teams play in a fully remote company.

2. How an employee builds upon their existing education and niche-specific knowledge. 

3. The visibility that an employee has on the internet outside of their work contributions. 

And there’s a fourth piece related to the “cost” of promoting an employee in a remote company, and if it’s worth it to a company to pay that “cost” through offering that promotion.

Will keep you up to speed as more of this evolves.

—

Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn