“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
– Yogi Berra
There isn’t a time in life that can be much more depressing, disheartening or devastating than suddenly becoming unemployed.
Ranking up there with losing a loved one, being told your marriage is over or facing bankruptcy, hearing you no longer are wanted or needed by your employer clearly puts you at a crossroads.
John Izzo knows.
Once a vice president of a Southern California consulting company, he lost his job in a hostile takeover. When he was shown the door, his sizable and well-earned bonus was withheld and his six-figure income stream ended. Izzo was “deeply depressed that my well-laid plans seemed to have hit a gigantic ‘Road Closed’ sign.”
No one would have blamed Izzo for going home, hanging his head and saying, “Woe is me.” Instead, he traveled to a weekend retreat for a large health care organization that had booked him under his former firm, knowing he would not get paid for his effort.
Confident and robust in the way he explained what occurred and his outlook, he so impressed the host company and then most of his other large clients that they vowed to give him their business. One assignment took him to Calgary, Alberta, where he met his future wife. His firing gave him time to do something he always had dreamed of – write his first book, “Awakening Corporate Soul.”
Unknown to him then, Izzo had rediscovered his career innocence, that giddy “I can do no wrong” feeling of tackling your first job, getting that well-deserved promotion, even falling in love.
Izzo, a former minister and now author, consultant and speaker based in British Columbia, uses this and other stories as the basis of his fourth book, “Second Innocence: A Guide to Renewal in Work, Relationships and Daily Life” (Barrett Koehler). He took a moment to explain how finding your “second innocence” can boost your career.
Citing statistics that 65 percent to 72 percent of our waking lives are spent at work, Izzo observed, “Work isn’t just about making money. One-half of us see it as a central point of our identity.
“Most of us don’t know it, but we all can make a difference,” he said. He cited the case of a department manager who inherited the worst performing unit in the company – a team of losers of the first order.
“Never once did the new manager allude to the unit’s reputation,” Izzo said. “As he introduced ways to change, he also continually told them that he believed in every one of them, even though they did not believe in themselves.”
After a year of repeating the message and continuing positive training, the unit became the most productive in the company.
“Working to achieve the impossible is hard work and can be tiring,” Izzo said. “You can choose to pursue it with a sense of energy and discovery and experience a ‘good tired’ day; if it’s a sour experience, all you end up with is ‘bad tired.’ “
Take the case of a woman who, by grumbling, gossiping and complaining her way through the workday, dragged down the spirits and productivity of her co-workers. While everybody else schemed at ways to either avoid or get rid of their annoying co-worker, Izzo’s friend took another approach.
On Saturday morning, she baked a cake and took it to the troublemaker’s house. Shocked and incredulous, the troublemaker invited her co-worker into her home, where they spent the next hour sharing cake and making small talk. The next Monday, the woman returned to work, grumpy as ever, but very friendly to the woman who baked the cake.
Their friendship blossomed to the point where they could discuss the workplace. Slowly, the troublemaker started becoming more positive, even asking others for feedback on how she could become a better team member.
Izzo believes facing conflict positively will result in a more rewarding career, and by extension a more satisfying life. “When facing that fork in the road, are you going to handle it by blaming the company, your boss, your co-workers, or are you going to look inward to discover there may be something that you might improve about yourself?”
Try on that little piece of advice tomorrow when you arrive at work and see how it wears.
Write Eric Zoeckler at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or e-mail mrscribe@aol.com
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