The show’s guest in this episode is Randi Roberts. She is an executive and career-life coach of Randi Roberts Coaching and a former C-Suite Executive now helping fellow leaders and executives navigate their careers.

—

Listen to the podcast here

When Your Career Starts to Itch, Ya Gotta Scratch with Randi Roberts

Hello, it’s so exciting to be with you here live today. I’ve been thinking a lot about how leaders present themselves to the world. I have clients who come to me because they want to up their game, probably because they want to change jobs, make more money, those kinds of things. And so I’ve been spending some time, you know, looking at resumes, resumes and all, that’s fine. That’s fairly traditional in the world of job search, and, and all of that. But one of the things that I’ve been doing that I think is really interesting is helping people understand their own values, and understand what their stance is that they can go and talk to a prospective employer about. So what are they bringing to the employer that doesn’t already exist? How can they talk about something in a way that the employer really understands it in a in a new way that they bring something to the job conversation, and it may be that they don’t get the job, but they will have taken a stand for something that’s important, they will have informed the job and I must think of it as what, something that Arnie Mendel might call world work, that you’re actually moving the world into thinking differently, because of what you bring to a conversation and an interview is a conversation.

 And so I love this work. I love this idea that by getting deeper into your own thinking, you can actually be taking a stand for something during a job search process. And this doesn’t happen in a job that’s, you know, things are known. But in leadership, it does, because things are unknown in leadership. And so it can also be done in the job that you’re in. And so you can start to figure out what are the principles that you want to bring to the role that you’re in? And so I really challenge you to start to think about this. It’s not a fast like, Hey, by next week know what all your leadership principles are, but what makes you the leader that you are? And and how would people know it? What are the behaviors you do that show the principles that you have as a leader? So I’ve been thinking about this is, you know, sort of what I’ve been thinking about in my work lately, and even over the holiday, and it’s pretty interesting stuff.

And I’m super excited about our guests today. We have a very exciting guest. Her name is Randi Roberts. She’s an MBA and a PCC. A Professional Certified Coach from the International Coach Federation. And she is the president of Corlin Roberts coaching, and the founder of fulfilling career happy life, community, and she’s an executive and career life coach, and she helps people love their work as they achieve their career goals. She’s seen too many people develop solid career plans, put a tremendous effort over many years at significant acts, significant sacrifice, and then achieve their goal only to find that they might not be as satisfying as they had hoped. I’m super happy to have Randy on my show today.

—

Welcome to the show, Randi.

Thank you, Melanie, it’s really nice to be here with you today.

Yeah, well, it’s great to have you. And we’re also doing book club on on the experimental leader podcast right now. So we’re talking about the experimental leader book, and this month, which is a short month, and it’s kind of a difficult chapter, the intense at all levels. And I’d love to get your take, I know that you looked at this chapter. And I’d love to get your take on it. And then I could read a little bit of it, as well. What were your thoughts as you were, I was like asking leaders because they always are like, Yeah, and it made me think of this and this or whatever. I don’t know what you’ll say.

But it made me think of a lot of things actually. It’s very intent is very connected to something that’s very important to me in my work. And in fact, it was in the introduction that you used for me, which is people that may work very long and hard towards a very specific career goal and may get into it. And it’s not necessarily the right thing for them. And that kind of goes to something that chapter Ford made me think about with intent itself, where intent is really, you know, what you want to achieve what you’re, I don’t even want to use the word goal, what it is you want to achieve for yourself. And it puts you in a very nimble framework, versus a plan that can be a little more structured, and it’s focused, but it may put you into a little bit more reactive mode. So bring it back to your career. There are people that I’ve worked with, back when I was in corporate certainly in and as clients now, that may have a very specific job in mind. And sometimes we work towards these jobs for 20 years. I mean, I always knew I was in the pharmaceutical industry, I always knew I wanted to be a franchise head, I wanted to lead sales and marketing to bring them together. But had I had have had, I thought, No, I want to be French, I said in this particular area, it would have led me to something that by the time I got, there may not have been the right thing for me. Whereas if I had thought more broadly more, my intent was wait a minute, from a commercial standpoint, bring the sales folks the sales effort and the marketing effort together, so that they’re informing each other learning from each other and things are actually getting implemented. So if I had had that sort of greater intent in mind, versus a very specific goal, I’d be more likely to be satisfied landed in the right place when I got there. So like your your question?

Yeah, no, I think I think it’s a great answer. And that’s exactly why intense, I believe, are important. When I was working with PR when my book came out. They said, What are some of the things you say that are outrageous, and I don’t really say I mean, I say some things that are outrageous, but mostly at cocktail parties. And when my husband started saying it’s time to go home. But one of the things is that I don’t like strategic plans. And I don’t like strategic plans, because by the time you get to step three on the strategic plan, the entire landscape scape has changed. If you’ve already implemented step one and step two, and time has passed. So intense, allow that nimble framework that you intend something to happen, but you revisit it. And you can have a new intent if you do a five year strategic plan, you should revise it every year because your new current reality will change every year. And so your plan will be stale after you implement the first year, and your organization will no longer have the same needs. So for maybe I’ll read a little bit from the book right now. Rather than just talking although it’d be interesting just to talk to.

“Intents are exactly what they sound like, what you aim to have happen different from a plan which is specific about the future and explicitly outlines how a goal will be met. An intense path toward a desired outcome is intentionally undefined. It tells what will be accomplished, but leave space for others to determine the how. This is so the feedback and incoming information can be integrated into the work to meet the end goal. Intents follow the structures of the vision mission and values of the organization and address it’s work on a day to day timeline.”

So in in the framework that I I use, but they’re not mine. They’re a lot of what I use around intense come from the art of action by Steven Bungay. And then, but his is all war metaphor. And I thought people might like another framework that isn’t a war metaphor. So I included them in my book, and then included other things around mission and vision that sort of dovetail in, but the idea is that there’s a strategy layer of an organization that sets the strategy, and then there’s there’s organizational intents below that. And then there’s tactical intents below that, and that a good organization will have someone setting the strategy in collaboration with the those who are doing the operations of the organization. So the operational intent is just below that. And the person setting the operational intent will be looking up and down to the strategy and the tactics. And then the people who are setting the tactical intents we’ll be doing that in collaboration with the operational level of the organization. So it’s like a woven. It’s a woven tool. where people are communicating about the intense but without a plan that takes years of meetings in order to do which then becomes obsolete the day it’s written. So, there you go. That’s, that’s my take on intense, but I do think they’re difficult. But so our strategic intents like its strategic plan. So it’s, it’s, they’re not any more difficult. I think running a strategy through an organization is a difficult concept. And I love the idea of flexibility, especially around organizations that innovate, because you don’t know what will happen.

Absolutely. And it just, it allows for space, I mean, the whole premise of your book about having an experimental mindset, in terms of being willing to test some things and learn from it and adjust. And so you, you have to have sort of that flexibility built into your culture, I think. And the work that I do with clients often takes that same thinking into their career planning, mind the learning from what you’ve done, what lights you up, what works for who you are now, and then test some things and be willing to adjust. You know, it’s not necessarily we, you know, people usually have what we call a career plan. But I often advise taking your career more than two year chunks, then what’s the job you want to retire from? Because you are trying things on and seeing what fits and potentially making some changes. And then if something happens, it’s out of your control, companies restructure people get let go, all of that, you have that mindset from the beginning of, well, I’m just gonna have to pivot at some point. This isn’t the earthquake, it could be. If I plan to stay here my whole career, and you’re better able to shift. I think that that nimble mindset and that I never until I read your book, I never thought about bringing an experimental model to leadership. It’s kind of the way I think naturally, because I have a scientific mind. But I think it really works. You know, one question that I had Melanie, because as I was reading, it occurred to me, what’s the possible downside of not having a strategic plan? And I kinda got to thinking about accountability within an organization and an organization that’s really hierarchical. And how it may be, it’s harder to hold people accountable in a world of intents versus strategic plan. It seems to be a problem worth working through, but I don’t know what your thoughts are.

I think accountability is really a problem in organizations. Anyway. So maybe I, I think I think that when you say that I go, Yeah, that might be a problem with intense but the problem is true. Either way, because holding someone accountable to a plan that doesn’t make sense is also difficult. So you might want things not to happen. I think that I think that meaningless work is a problem, no matter how you do it. And and strategic plan. I really don’t like strategic plan, yeah…

I can, I’m getting that.

I really don’t like them. I feel like somebody in the organization is going to be there like going, you didn’t do your part in the strategic plan. And they’re going to be like way more tied. So there’s just no emergent process with a strategic plan. And and that’s fine. If the organization is really that staid and boring that you can nothing changes year after year. But then why did you need a plan in the first place? Because you were trying to do something, I just they don’t feel like they fit our time. They feel like they fit like consultants who want to charge a lot for strategic plans, but they don’t fit nimble organizations who are innovating.

Yeah, I mean, I can see that I think there’s an element of that that might be more of a check the box, we’ve got this done for the year. Now we can move on to the next thing. And that may shut down a growth mindset, then that openness that you need to learn.

Now, I think the same thing that people benefit from with creating a strategic plan is that everyone comes together to talk about it. If you set the intents in that way, or you had a conversation about what you want to have happen in your organization, the plan is the least valuable part of the whole thing, but it’s what people believe is what they should do. So they invest in the process. So if they would invest in a different process, which is hey, can we all come together to talk about what we want to have happen this year? That feels too nebulous to people so they the strategic plan has become the top stone for how we talk about that. But I think we have other things we could do to have those conversations because I think those conversations are Earth shatteringly valuable.

Yeah, you know, it occurs to me that one of the things because I, my career was in big pharma companies and the strategic plan process was, it had its own gravity, it was an important process, what came out of it, the plan did not get implemented the way it was laid out to your point. But what came out of that was the resources we got from senior management to bring in our business for the next year. So it was almost I mean, maybe it did go back to check the box, I think there’s a lot of layers, if a company was to move more to intense, there will be a lot of things that need to change around that. Yeah.

And it’s and you and what you’re speaking to is a budget allocation is an operational intent, from my point of view. So hey, we know we want to grow our business in this area in such and such territory, we’re going to allocate X number of dollars to that territory to invest in to me, budgets are all about operational intent, we intend to grow here, we’re gonna budget here, we intend this to happen. So you’re not you’re not in a in an operational intent, you’re not saying exactly how you’re going to apply it, like you’re going to spend X dollars on social media, because that gets that at the tactical intent. Because if Facebook changes their algorithm, you want to be able to have the flexibility to reallocate your dollars at the tactical level. But you do want to budget the amount, so that you can decide and then some dollars, if Facebook changes their algorithm and the dollars don’t get spent, you want to be able to reallocate those dollars on the ground during that year and reallocate to another territory or to another spend or something else because you intended to grow in a certain way. But you decided to use them differently. Yeah,

I mean, it’s great point, it just occurred to me that it like connected to the work that I do of helping people love their work while they’re achieving their career goals. It goes so much to alignment with their values, which some change to some extent over time. And living in the world of intent, I know that at the base of that pyramid values is certainly there. But take that, aside from the pyramid and the leadership stand for an individual in managing their own career in their own happiness. Talking intents can help them connect it to their values a little bit more and maybe know more quickly, whether they’re in the right place or not.

Well, and even just living your life in in a way that you’re, you know, fulfilled is an intent. At the very base of it, like I’m not living my life in a way that I’m going to maximize income for my family, I’m living my life in a way that we’re going to meet our bills, and I’m going to seek fulfillment, you know, there’s, like getting those statements right in your head is is deciding what you prioritize. And those those we do this all the time. We just don’t do it. We don’t know that that’s what we’re doing. But, you know, we we could, we could all choose careers that are more money minded or more, you know, that we could sell our souls. But we find that juxtaposition in career between doing work we love, I feel like my whole stake in the ground for my whole career can be framed by I want people to love their work. So I feel this alignment with you. And, and no competition at all. Because there are so much work in the world in this area. Trust me, we need both of us. And more and more. Yeah, just like there’s not enough people in the world to do this work. And, and so I just feel this alignment around, like I want people to love what they do, you know, all the time, not all the time. They’re not always going to but most of the time, I want them to, to at least have the choice of loving their work everyday.

Absolutely. And you know, something you said sparked an idea for me to when you talked about people who may be solely Money, money motivated and making tons of money as their priority. And for some people that is right, maybe in their whole career, but what what I find, you know, my clients will come to me maybe at different phases in their career, different seasons, if you will. And making money may have been really important early on when they’re building their career and their family and kids in school and all those things. And then later on they start to realize that wait a minute, maybe that’s not the most or the only important thing anymore. For me personally, I know my you know, one of my missions, I guess has Oh He’s been, I need to do some good while I’m doing well. And so that’s one of the reasons pharmaceuticals was so exciting to me all the good we do for patients. And now in my second career owning my own coaching business, the good idea is helping other people achieve their goals. And it’s tremendously satisfying. So it almost goes to intent. My intent is to do some good while I’m doing well, the doing well, part is a little more clear, but the doing good part can look different at different times in my life, but I need to have it.

Absolutely. And I think that I think that people, when, if they’re not living within whatever their set of values is, whether it’s money or not money or whatever, if they live outside of that they’re more susceptible to burnout. So there may come a day, where they can’t just push themselves through. So they, they, they wake up one day, and they, they just can’t go anymore. Or they have a life event of some kind, and they just can’t quite get their feet. And those are really scary times for people. Yeah, I was working as a mortgage broker. years ago, man, this is over 20 years ago, and I ended up getting divorced. And I just couldn’t do the work anymore. I just didn’t, I couldn’t, my soul didn’t want to do the work. And it’s when I found coaching, I wanted to be doing something that mattered in the world in a different way. And, and for me, it wasn’t that and I just, I just couldn’t do it. I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. I couldn’t, I couldn’t go and build the business in the way that I had, I’d always been a top producer. I just couldn’t anymore. And so I changed careers. And luckily, I found coaching, but it was interesting to find that out about myself, I couldn’t push through.

Well, and that goes right to like what I mean about when your career starts to itch, you got to scratch it. Like for you, it was a major life event that happened and you know, your career starts to attribute another way that I think about it is like, you go from jumping out of bed in the morning to hitting the snooze button, you have to pay attention to those things that that are coming up for you and do something about them. For you. It was a major career change. For other people, you know, it may be making a change right where they are in their career. But that’s why the values and that inner work is so important. Because if something is missing, is it fitting right with your career anymore? You have to get to the bottom of what the issue is to know if you’re fixing the right problem. Yeah, I love doing that work.

What what do you say to people who, you know, have been loyal to a company and then get downsized? That’s in the news right now? I think I almost think that tech people are cynical and plan for it. I just had a conversation where, you know, the I can quit fund was mentioned with one of my clients.

I have a little more crude name for it. But yeah, I get it. Yeah.

Yeah, well, feel free to use your name. I love swearing on my podcast. But the but so I think the tech industry sort of plans for this, but other people don’t. And they’re shocked by it because they’ve been loyal to a company and then they get downsized sometimes at inconvenient times in their lives. What do you say to them as they come to you trying to write their worlds?

It’s a really important question. And for most of us that have had long corporate careers, some version of that has happened. And so the first thing that I would say is there is no shame associated with it. You know, it’s important to figure out how you want to tell that story and figure out what you want next. But the first thing is kind of to deal with the feelings around it. So that you can get yourself into the right mindset to interview well, and even before that, figure out what it is you want. It’s normal to feel angry, hurt all of those things. But it happens to a lot of us. So, you know, it’s interesting, I had a session with a client earlier today who had recently been downsized and was going through that. And one of the things that I talked to her about what I really encouraged her to be open to the fact that this might be the best thing that ever happened to her. But she can’t know that today. She you know, to the whole thought of an experimental leadership mindset. She doesn’t have the proof of it today. So rather than judge it, stay curious and find the ways that it might be the best thing. It’s an opportunity to think about what you want next. And it’s hard because we all want to be making these major decisions for ourselves. We don’t want some went off to make them for us. But I think knowing that you’re not alone, taking the moment to figure out what it is you want next and being open to the fact that it may end up being a really good thing that can really help you and reach out, like talk to people tap into your network. It’s amazing how much that can help when people get into their own heads too much, or thinking can get insular. So obviously, I have a bias towards working with a coach, not because I am on but because I see the importance of it, I have my own coach, but just talk to somebody. So you get out of your own head, share your ideas, get their perspective, it really helps unlock things.

Well. And I also think that it’s you can’t underestimate your the strength of emotions and times like that I’ve had, I had one client who was essentially leaving a career that she had loved. And it was devastating to her. And I actually sent her away for a month she had contracted with me, I had actually asked her to go back to her employer and ask for funding for us. And she had secured that. So it wasn’t a lack of money or anything else. But it was I just said you need to take a month. And, you know, I really highly suggest to just let your give yourself time to grieve before we start trying to trying to find a path forward. And I think that’s really important as well. Like, sometimes it just takes some time. And I have seen clients who don’t take that time settle for jobs too quickly. They don’t dream, they can’t dream yet, because they’re still they’re trying to fix something as opposed to dreaming something up. And and I don’t think that they benefit from that they may benefit in, you know, if they’re trying to feed their children, that’s fine. But if they have any kind of financial stability, where they can give themselves the time to heal, to walk in the woods to go swim to, you know, depending on the season, to care for themselves. And they I believe that it’s worth that time in the in the interim, to heal a little bit.

I think what you’re saying is really wise. And so in the times when clients have come to me with that kind of a situation, it’s a, let’s figure out the fundamentals here. Financially, can you take a little bit of time off, figure out what that looks like? And then for a lot of reasons, how much time would be the right time? Like, what how much time do they think they need to heal, get past it do the things they’ve been neglecting in their lives. And so there’s one client that comes to mind, he’s like, you know, I want to take off the summer, it was two more months of the summer great than what we decide he he was feeling uncomfortable that he wasn’t, in his words doing anything. He wasn’t moving forward with his plan, his job search, he’s always been busy. What’s he going to do? So what we did was part of his plan was he’s taking two months off. He can think about things he can journal a little bit, but he didn’t have to take any action until after Labor Day. And so if he ever started feeling guilty that oh my gosh, I’m out of work. I’m not searching, he can wait a minute. Nope, the plan is I’m not doing this until after Labor Day. And so like that’s, it’s a silly game, those type Bay’s of us play in that. No, this is part of the plan, I have a plan. And the plan is no actions taking place for this length of time. That mindset, it seems like such a silly thing. It makes a difference. It really does.

I think it makes a huge difference. What else makes a difference? As you know it, what else do you how do you how else do you help clients? What do they think about what? What’s important to you, and your clients as they do this?

Yeah, I love that question. It’s, you know, it’s interesting, because five years ago, when I went through my coach training and totally changed gears opened my own business. I thought it was going to be this. I thought it was going to be solely focused on career. What’s my next move? How do I get there? And what I’ve realized more and more is, it’s about mindset, it’s about values. It’s about what’s inside. And you have to get in touch with that a little bit first, and for some of my clients that feels a little woowoo it feels a little loose because it’s not as directly tied to what’s their next career move. But it’s the foundation upon which you make the right decision. You know, as you said, So you don’t jump at the wrong job, because what I know is that I work, this is who I am. That’s how I identified myself. So, you know, if I’m right that an earthquake like that in your career can be the best thing that ever happened to you, it may be up to us to find the meaning for ourselves. And to do that work and to make sure you know, check in is this time for a big career pivot? Or should I stay the course? So I think, you know, those are some of the things that are important there. And I find the work over the last five years, the work I do with clients has evolved a bit and included more of the values and mindset and what do I really want? What makes me happy? The stuff that doesn’t feel like it’s directly in the lane of career decisions. But it’s so is and I think, you know, as that has evolved, I think my clients are making more meaningful transformations in their work with me, and really ending up in the place that suits their intent, even if it didn’t suit their plan. So just, you know, it’s very motivating to see them make those changes.

How are you experimenting in your life and your work right now?

Oh, that’s, I’d love that question. And it in a couple of different ways. So the way I manage my business look, after a 30 year, corporate career where I was crushed by the weight of the hierarchy, to some extent, which is one of the reasons why I got out of it. In the end, I now run my own business, I have people working with me and supporting me, but I get to make the decisions. And so what I do is, and you may not, you may rent a rally against this, but I do have a strategic plan for my business. But really what it’s based on what I want to accomplish, so maybe it is more of an intent. And I take a look at how can I play with my business to better meet the needs of my clients. So, for example, my one on one coaching client roster has been fairly full the last two years, I can take new clients when someone rotates out, but some of my clients work with me for years. But I knew I wanted my impact to be bigger, I wanted to help more people. So I formed a coaching group last year, and that was shaped in a certain way. For this year, I’ve shaped it in a different way, it’s more a hybrid of one on one coaching with the group dynamic because I think that will better meet the needs of my clients. So that’s available now. It’s an experiment. And I’m totally open to changing it. If if there’s ways that I find if I get data points that shows that something else will better serve my clients. So and also aligned with that intent of playing bigger, I have my own podcast, fulfilling career happy life, which is my my business mantra. And I’m, you know, happy to be invited to guest on podcasts like yours, so they can sort of, you know, expand my impact a little bit. So those are some ways that I experiment with my own business. And it’s what keeps it interesting and fresh for me, in addition to better serving my clients.

That’s amazing. And I don’t mind if you call your strategic intent, a strategic plan?

How do you experiment with your own business, Melanie?

Um, well, I also have been like, my practice is also full. And so experimenting with sort of one to many models has been what I’ve been doing for years. So I have, we have a program for emerging leaders. And so that’s our experimentation, we just, we keep doing the same different experiments to bring that to market and to, to keep finding our clients for that over and over again. And so we we work on that a lot. In fact, we have some amazing Webinars coming out that we’re experimenting with around impostor syndrome. So we’re excited about that. And if anyone wants to be on our mailing list, so you get those, send me an email at Melanie at experimental leader.com. And we’ll make sure you find out about those free webinars.

Yeah, impostor syndrome is an important topic. And that’s whether someone mean the way my business works. If someone’s interested in working with me, we do a complimentary session to get a feel for each other and talk about what that’s like. And whether impostor syndrome those words come up during that session or not. That concept will come up during our work together, because I think so many of us experience some degree of that. I certainly did. So that’s great. I’m glad to hear you’re doing that.

Yeah, I think it’s really important and we’re really excited about it. So we’re, we’re gonna start talking about it more. So that’s our big experiment for 2023 is to to be helping people around imposter or syndrome more? Yeah, well, where can people find you?

Well, people can find me one of the best ways to find me is through my website, which is Corlin Roberts Coaching. C O R L I N. Roberts – R O B E R T S coaching.com. And on my website, you can find links to my podcast, fulfilling career, happy life, as well as some other resources like a career satisfaction assessment. And you can get on my mailing list which I’d love to see people you can find me on YouTube. Anywhere you find fulfilling career happy life, you put that into a podcast, YouTube, Wherever you’ll find me.

Perfect. Thank you so much for being here. It’s been such a pleasure to get to talk about career with you. I think we we love some so many of the same things. It’s just really been a joy for me to get to meet you.

Thank you, Melanie. It was my pleasure.

—

Well, this was a fascinating day at the experimental leader podcast. I really love talking to Randy and I’m really thinking about career development both in the time that you’re in a career is that the right place for you? What do you intend for your career? And then if you decide to leave, how do you intend to leave? What do you intend to create for yourself? It’s been lovely being with you today. Go experiment!

Important Links: 

• Randi Roberts – LinkedIn
• Corlin Roberts Coaching – Website

Randi Roberts

Randi Roberts, MBA, PCC, is the President of Corlin Roberts Coaching, LLC and founder of the Fulfilling Career, Happy Life community. Randi is an Executive and Career-Life Coach, helping people love their work as they achieve their career goals.

She has seen too many people develop solid career plans, put in tremendous effort over many years at significant sacrifice, then achieve their goal only to find that it may not be as satisfying as they hoped. The work her clients do with Randi allows them to explore new possibilities, assess their framework against who they are and want to be, and find what truly fits.

Before becoming a certified coach, Randi had a very successful 30+ year career as a Pharmaceutical Executive, working for both large companies and a small start-up. She has also founded two of her own businesses. She skillfully combines significant business leadership experience with exceptional coaching skills to help her clients love their work as they achieve their goals

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join The Experimental Leader community today:

• melanieparish.com
• YouTube