Thriving not Surviving

Strategies to go from merely surviving to THRIVING for women in STEM

What Do You Want from Your Career?

career career path Nov 02, 2021

I hated it when my boss asked me “What do you want to be when you grow up?” as part of our conversation about my career. I had no idea what I wanted from my career in the long term. I kind of knew what I wanted to do next, but 10 years down the road was not visible to me.

    What I’ve found to be most important is to understand what you are looking for in your career. What are your expectations around roles, responsibilities, location, hours, and culture? These are the questions that need to find the answers for in the present and near future, say 1 – 2 years. Things change as we grow and learn, so don’t think more than 5 years out unless you really have a driving vision for your career. Some people do.

    As these answers become clear you will be able to see what your next step looks like. When you have no definition on what you want it’s easy to get stuck in place because there are too many options. Narrowing your...

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Bringing Curiosity to Work

Uncategorized Oct 19, 2021

     After doing the same job for 3 years I had gotten into a serious rut. I didn’t care about it anymore. It felt like everyday was a repeat of the day before. I was burned out and checked out. When the assembly line would call me with an issue, I would ask a couple of questions and then go out to talk to the operator I knew caused the defect. Too often I didn’t even go look at the part, I jumped to who made the mistake, instead of looking at the situation.

    Most of the time I was right about my assumption as to the cause of the issue, but not always. One morning the production supervisor called me as I sat down at my desk. Ken was having a fit because the assembly line called about a bad part. Both he and I knew they had to be wrong, we had seen the part in question and knew it had been dealt with prior to being sent to the line.

    Well, it turns out we were both wrong. We went to the operations manager’s...

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What is the Point of Your Worry?

awareness focus worry Oct 05, 2021

     We had an issue as we closed one of the production departments. The processes used hazardous materials and we had to be very careful to dispose of them properly. There was a treatment system in place that got overloaded, so we had to stop and figure out what to do.

    As I walked into the meeting to figure out our game plan I looked around the room. Michelle was sitting at the table wringing her hands and lamenting the situation. She was responsible for the treatment process while I was responsible for the operations of the department. The error was on my end, the piping did not go where I thought it did, so we ended up with too much material to treat properly.

    We had to come up with a plan for fixing it and safely disposing of all the materials. Bill had previously worked with the treatment process and was the one who figured out what had happened. Michelle was paralyzed worrying about what would happen, how much trouble...

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Am I Burning Out?

      Last week I decided to take on an extra project that I’m passionate about right now. I’m rolling out a new program on creating a plan for your career. I’m really excited about it and yet it’s taken a full plate to overflowing. Last month I challenged myself to create 20 YT videos in 20 days starting when I got back from vacation. All of this aligned to the same week. {Sigh}

    One of the risk factors of burn out is a heavy workload or working long hours. Wow that sounds a lot like what my world looks like right now. I do run the risk of burning out right now, however I do have control over my work so that mitigates the risk.

    Early in my career I had no control over my work and the workload was insane. We were working 7 days a week because we need testing time on weekends. The days were long, and it was going on and on. I felt unappreciated and was treated like a drone who was there only to...

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Helpful Habits to Create Success

Uncategorized Sep 14, 2021

Well, on vacation I found out that I had picked up some bad habits. As I’m building my business I’ve been using social media to connect with more folks, so I am on my phone more often than in the past. Well, when you go to the middle of nowhere, land without cell service and poor internet you find out just how much time you spend mindlessly scrolling. Now mind you, all my time on social media is not wasted, I’m connecting, meeting people, learning about challenges my clients are facing, and talking about what I’m doing. That’s all-good stuff. The impulsive need to see what friends are up to, to look at new reels, or scroll through my feed isn’t necessarily helpful.

     Once I realized how often I was picking up my phone only to be frustrated by the lack of service it was time to be mindful about what I was doing. As I started to pay attention to when I was accessing social media and why I could start to make it valuable time,...

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Handing Off Tasks at Work

     It’s shocking how many people are experiencing overwhelm right now. WE have become a society of “busy” people. It’s almost like it’s a badge of honor to have too much on our plates at work. It’s not healthy so let’s look at how to hand of some of the tasks you are hanging onto.

     First let’s look at what makes good things to hand off. Some tasks are great to hand off and others are ones you need to keep, even if you don’t want them. The best tasks to delegate are ones that can be done effectively by someone else and will help the person grow. If you have someone newer on your team and they can compile the data for the monthly report, hand it over to them. It can give them insight into what’s happening on the project. If you have a new team member have them verify the status of subcontractor documentation to help them understand who is on the project and what the subs are...

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Be Kind not Nice at Work

confidence kindness Aug 24, 2021

     It’s interesting to me how many people confuse being kind with being nice. If you look at the definitions of the two words they are similar but not identical. One definition of nice is amiably pleasant/ kind so I can see why people think if you are nice you are kind as well. However, if you look at what it means to be kind you will see a difference.

      Nice is about being agreeable, pleasing, or pleasant. Kind on the other hand is about being considerate, helpful, or benevolent. For me there is a nuance here that is important to note. Being agreeable is not the same as being considerate. Nice says I must go along with you, kind says I must consider your perspective. They aren’t equal.

     Here’s what the means at work. If I’m being nice, I won’t correct bad behavior, I won’t hold people accountable, and I will put other people ahead of myself. This is very passive behavior. If I’m nice...

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Balance Emotions at Work

When I was the Supply Base Manager there was a period when we were dealing with steel and shipping surcharges. Every month I had to reconcile the surcharges from my key suppliers. It was a pain to do, and I hated it. Nothing like having to report on cost increases when you are evaluated on cost reduction.

I found myself gripping and complaining every time I was running the reports. I would be in a foul mood for several days getting it done. People started avoiding me at the end of the month because I was awful to be around. This task made me miserable, and I shared it with those around me.

One month I was grumpy as I worked on the data and made a comment about how I hate doing this. The guy sitting next to me responded with “I know, you say that every month”. Well, that was a wake-up call. I didn’t realize how much I was gripping about it or the impact it was having until Lee commented.

I was typically upbeat and positive while at work, easy to work with and highly...

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Fear of Speaking Up

My second boss after graduating told me I was brutally blunt. He wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t being mean, yet it took me about 5 years to figure out the real message behind this comment. The idea that I was too blunt kept me quiet for several years so that I didn’t screw up and hurt my career chances.

What he wanted me to learn was that I could communicate a message without hitting everyone over the head with a 2x4 every time. I needed to learn how to better deliver my message based on the audience I was talking to. Simple in concept, harder to apply.

I’m not saying that, as a woman, I had to change everything about how I was talking to people. That’s not the case at all. This is something we do naturally in our everyday life, and we need to be intentional with it at work. How we talk to our kids, our spouse/partner, our parents, our siblings, our neighbors, the barista at the coffee shop varies because we have different relationships with each of them. When...

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Claim Your Work

assertive innovation Aug 03, 2021

So, there I am sitting in a conference room listening to this guy share an idea for how we can improve a process. Okay, that’s wasn’t out of the norm for me, but what he’s talking about was an idea I had shared a couple of weeks prior, and one he poo-pooed with that hated phrase “that won’t work”.

My temperature is climbing as my blood boils. How dare he dismiss my idea and then present it as his own. This is so not fair. I’m sitting there plotting my revenge and totally missed that he actually took a piece of my idea and made it better. Sigh.

At the time I was so angry and frustrated that this guy had dismissed my idea and was really rude in doing it. He never liked anything I suggested. In reality he had a serious case of the not invented here syndrome. He spent close to two years attempting to prove me wrong at every turn. It was exhausting. All of this explains why I was furious that he was using my idea.

Now, being the very direct...

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