Professional Success Podcast

The Professional Success Podcast is presented by Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, Owner of Professional Success Coaching. This weekly podcast covers all things career management including job search strategies, interviewing tips, networking tools, maximizing LinkedIn, salary negotiations, and managing your mindset around your career.

What is the status of quiet quitting and quiet firing? 02/01/2023

Career and Workplace Trends of 2023 to Know! 01/25/2023

The Power of Saying No 09/28/2022

The Power of Saying No In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader is talking about the power of saying no, and how we can set better professional boundaries. Sheila is going to share some examples of how we can set clear boundaries at work and how saying no can be key to wellness and self-preservation. Episode Highlights: Sheila suggests defining your boundaries at work with clarity of purpose. Saying yes to everything is the lazy person's path and a strategic ‘No’ is the best way to maximize the value you deliver. There are a lot of subtle and graceful ways where we can say ‘No’ without being a jerk. There's a whole spectrum of responses that lie between yes and no. One of the ways to say ‘No’ would be that instead of you having feelings of insecurity with a ‘No’, be honest and acknowledge that you are not the most competent in that particular work and suggest another name who can do it more efficiently and ask if he/she can help out? If your boss asks you to take extra responsibility, then try to pose some questions to her to understand exactly what she needs. By better understanding what your manager needs to achieve, you might be able to recommend a much simpler solution to the problem. Sometimes you're asked to do something you can't manage and there may be a way to add value without taking on the weight of the entire project onto your shoulders. 3 Key Points: Instead of saying no directly, you can work with graceful responses like we want to resist taking on a cumbersome project by getting a better understanding of why it's necessary and possibly suggesting alternative action plans. Additionally, we may want to contribute a smaller percentage of our time to a project instead of tackling 100% of it. Stick with your purpose to focus on what you're uniquely hired to do. Sometimes there's an emergency, or something's on fire, or sometimes we need to earn a few points with someone who's asked a favor. In such situations where the request is a challenge and we've been trying to get our hands on it, in such scenarios use your judgment. Sometimes letting take us off purpose is the right thing to do, but this should be the exception and not the rule. If you're being asked to take on something cumbersome and it would take you days to complete what they're asking for. Your response starts with recognizing that your time is a company asset. Let her know exactly how much of your time and attention this task would require and what might not get done as a consequence. Then ask her if she’d be open to exploring more efficient ways of getting similar results. So by asking those probing questions, you might be able to protect the investment of your time and energy while also delivering real value. Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/24502383

Handling the Most Difficult Interview Question 09/21/2022

Becoming a Purpose and Belonging Informed Leader 09/07/2022

Communicating with a critical Manager 08/31/2022

Communicating with a critical Manager In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about how to communicate with a critical Manager. She discusses the ways that we can handle a very critical boss. Episode Highlights: We may have had bosses who inspired her, challenged and pushed her. She has had some that have bored her, and some that have even made her cry. Begin by understanding what might be triggering the bad behavior in your boss, so we can do this by starting with empathy. Without excusing the critical delivery mechanism, it might help to see if you can look past the criticism to the content in terms of figuring out why your boss is trying to communicate. You can say that you have some specific changes to suggest that might enhance your relationship with your boss and make both of you even more positive and productive as you work together. Make that request for better, and more balanced feedback and communication from your boss. You have the right to feel safe and respected at work, if a boundary has been pierced, don't ignore it. These are complicated times and the job market might feel a little intimidating but if your relationship with your boss isn't improving, it’s time to start planning your next move. 3 Key Points: Recently, Sheila worked with two separate clients who have brought this as the main topic of struggling with an overly critical boss. The idea is that bosses can really vary in their style and how they like to work with others. How they communicate might just come down to the fact that some bosses really are better than others. Sheila suggests that first, we need to assess the situation. Your boss does not have the right to behave badly but you do need to have some degree of control over your response to their behavior. So we can empathize with this critical boss. Sometimes understanding or imagining what the other person might be experiencing allows us to replace some of our emotions, anger, and defensiveness, with instead empathy and recognition. So begin by understanding what might be triggering the behavior and see if you're able to take some of your own reactivity off the table. At this point, use language that's typical for your company's culture. So you might say that you would like to discuss your career development, or just sit down for a one-on-one. These are all legitimate reasons for meetings. So choose what feels most authentic to you and in line with the language that your organization uses. So feeling judged and criticized all the time can really weigh on us. Your goal in the conversation is to focus on the professional impact of what you've been experiencing, and lean into the opportunity and not the complaint. /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/24222093

How to Catch Up When You Have Fallen Behind 06/29/2022

How to Make a Career Change 06/08/2022

How to Dial Up Your Confidence 06/01/2022

Master a New Skill in 30 Days 05/13/2022

Prioritizing When Everything is a Priority 05/05/2022

Prioritizing When Everything is a Priority In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader is talking about something that is particularly important because almost everyone seems to be experiencing this at least at some level of their career where we feel that everything is a priority. She discusses a few points on what we can do when it feels like everything is a priority. Episode Highlights: These days we are all feeling like everything is on fire, and as more of us are working remotely or in a hybrid fashion, we're missing those in-person cues that help us to interpret where our leaders are feeling their greatest anxiety. You're the only one who knows how much is on your plate; no one else can track that. Therefore, it's on you to step up and manage your boundaries and energy. The reality is that what's important today might be less important or even irrelevant tomorrow, the backend by or the following day, everything is relative. It's all about the context in the bigger picture and having those important conversations. Whatever tips you follow, before you start, do a little research, and dig around. Sheila’s final tip is to consider the options beyond just yes and no. The key is to recognize that there're lots of ways to add value without taking on the entire burden. 3 Key Points: The first step is to start with being bold. Sometimes overfilling our plates can leave us feeling like superheroes. Pushing for clarity takes courage and energy and it takes a willingness to be vulnerable to admit that you can't handle everything because you’re a human being. So start by recognizing, and raising the flag. If you were to look at each task on a project or everything that is on your plate, each of them would come out as a high priority. But the key is relativity, so look around you what's going on today, if anything important popped up. So, given everything that's going on our plates, we could pop into looking at what is taking place or what’s the context. High achievers are many things, but leveraging things built by others often is not one of them. We don't need to always reinvent the wheel. Borrowing from others doesn't make you lazy, it makes you strategic and it frees you up to invest your energy where it matters most. consider borrowing some of the great work that someone's already done, of course, give credit where it's due. As you look at your plate, identify if your workload is manageable, or if you're feeling overwhelmed, consider borrowing one of these strategies and test out how it works. /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/23014553

Greatest Hits: The Process for Creating and Delivering my TED Talk 04/20/2022

Greatest Hits: The Process for Creating and Delivering my TED Talk In today´s episode, host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader, talks about her process for creating and delivering her TED talk. Episode Highlights: In 2019 Sheila Boysen was invited to give a TED talk. When she wrapped her head around the idea, and she was about to get into the entire process of directing and memorizing her talk, it is then that the pandemic hit. Sadly, due to the pandemic, the event that she was going to speak at got canceled. This has been a goal for her, and when the TED talk got canceled, it really took a hit on her. She somehow managed to push through the ocean of her emotions. Sheila heard some good news in the summer of 2020 when she got another opportunity to get featured as a TEDx speaker. She knew the recording of the event was not going to take place until March. As the first step of preparation, she wrote down her ideas. The next thing she thought about was, “What she wants her audience to leave with?” When Sheila had the idea, it is, then she started writing about the script. She wrote the first draft of the script towards the end of October. Sheila Boysen got her confidence boost when her sister read the script. Finally, when she had just 2 months left for the recording, she buckled up and revisited her script. She recorder herself while practicing the script. It was a robust process, which helped her. It is then she made the first modification to her script. During her next practice, she recorded it in-camera. This gave her a new perspective about the places that she should emphasize more. At this point, she made more edits in the paragraphs. It felt like, finally, the script was falling into space. In February, Sheila got the opportunity to rehearse with the planning community of the event. Aside from her sister, this was the first time anybody else heard her script. Post that, Sheila receives some excellent constructive feedback from the planning community of the event, which helped her. She was finally able to memorize the script, and then she got to the point where it felt like now, she must sound natural. Sheila recorded the video on Wednesday in an empty hall, speaking to an audience that does not exist. It is impressive how she started to feel comfortable, and she ended up delivering the entire talk in one take. The most important thing about “Talks” is that one should always speak on a topic they are sincerely wholeheartedly passionate about. The topic for Sheila Boysen’s Ted Talk was “Change the question: What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question implies that we integrate a part of ourselves into our work. Sheila talks about the change she made in her career script instead of thinking, “What I want to be when I grow up?” She started focusing on her values and what was most important for her, and the impact she wanted to make. While doing research, she came across numerous quotes that impacted her. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” - A quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson really caught her eyes. Sheila talks about the three questions that one can ask to determine their values truly. 3 Key Points: Sheila Boysen shares detailed insights about what steps she took to prepare for the TED talk. Write down the free flow of thoughts and start to pay attention to those common threads. From the thread, think about “What do you want to talk or share about the most?” For Sheila, it was about the idea of enjoying work. Sheila is not a nervous speaker, but the process of memorizing the script under 12 minutes did not come naturally to her. Tweetable Quotes: “Start writing, don’t think about organizing or sentence structure, just write down your thoughts.” - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli “Write down the free flow or thoughts and start to pay attention to the common threads.” - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli “Speaking from memory but sounding natural; this is one of the things that she learned from the process. - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli “Many people feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled with the work that they are doing.” - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli “Fulfilment in work comes when work and life values meet together” - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli “Learning is a life-long process; speed of change is only accelerating.” - Sheila Boysen-Rotelli Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/22851320

Asking Great Questions at Work 04/06/2022

Executive Presence in 2022 03/30/2022

Executive Presence in 2022 In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, your host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about ‘Executive Presence in 2022’. Sheila thinks that 2022 is a great year for us to be thinking about our executive presence. Episode Highlights: We all have an opportunity to groom our ability to connect, work well with other people, and face challenging situations. Authenticity doesn't mean expressing every emotion you feel to the fullest extent, it means being willing to state your honest opinions. The second element in the Trust Triangle is Empathy. Empathy is essentially the degree to which you can appreciate and tend to the experiences of others. Demonstrating empathy is grounded in listening fully and actively. Stay away from the “Bumper Sticker” Ideas when you’re striving to dial up your logic. One such Bumper Sticker Idea is living each day as if it was your last; it’s inspiring until you think through the consequences. You can present a solid plan that still carries uncertainty, just be sure you acknowledge that uncertainty with a promise to resolve it, rather than pulling your way through an evasive answer. 3 Key Points: The world was a little bit upside down until the rules have changed. She also thinks the drivers of executive presence have shifted, and this is something that she often coaches people on. She talks about how leaning on three things that are key to executive presence can help you. Those three components are known as the Trust Triangle - Authenticity, Empathy, and Logic. Research shows us that it's not fair that women are disproportionately penalized for displaying negative emotions in the workplace, and black men are burdened by the false stereotype that they're predisposed to anger. So when people see you expressing yourself verbally and physically it opens the door to a true diversity of opinions, ideas, and approaches. It unlocks imagination and makes the debate industry feel safer. Listening matters now more than ever, because we're continuing to head into uncharted territory. Even the most experienced leader doesn't know what's coming next. There are a few ideas to work on or to think about to dial up your empathy. It's hard to demonstrate empathy when you're distracted and focus on what others need to get out of the meeting.] Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/22579130

Options Other Than a 40 Hour Work Week 03/23/2022

How to Explore Other Career Options without Losing Your Job 03/09/2022

How to Explore Other Career Options without Losing Your Job In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, your host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks on the topic ‘How to Explore Other Career Options without Losing Your Job’. She discusses the ways to start exploring alternative careers without putting your current career at risk. If you've been feeling stuck, looking for a change, but you've been a little bit scared about making a dramatic change, these tips would inspire you to take some low-risk action. Episode Highlights: In the last few weeks, for various reasons, Sheila has talked to people about unemployment, overwhelm, disengagement, and reprioritization of what matters most professionally. Before you jump into that level of commitment of making that career change, the first step could be talking to some teachers about their experience of what they do, being thoughtful about it. Sheila and her consultant friend had a conversation and Sheila encouraged him to register for an online introduction to analytics class. The final option is to define your passion and find your transition in the house where you are right now. See if you can start networking and learning about the different roles you're interested in and maybe make a smaller step within the organization. 3 Key Points: Sheila mentions that before you take a leap of making a big career move, choosing someone whose perspective feels relevant to where you are in your journey could be a little bit better. So, think about asking questions that will bring legitimate insights, try asking deeper questions. The answers to these types of questions might reveal a deeper layer of insight to help you make informed decisions. Remember your contacts’ answers don't have to define your choice. They're simply a part of helping you make an informed decision. If your passion or what you want to be doing might differ from what you're doing right now. It might be an option to see if you too can jump into the gig economy, without needing to make a huge transition all at once. Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/22391306

How Listening Can Help Your Career 03/02/2022

How Listening Can Help Your Career In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, your host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about how listening can help your career. She says whether your goal is landing a new job, getting promoted, building better relationships, or greater productivity, listening is something that you want to focus on improving. Episode Highlights: Famous author - Kate Murphy while conducting many interviews in her book-learned that nearly everyone can describe a bad listening experience. Key tip: Let the other speaker finish. When someone is speaking, our brain works to actively try to finish their sentence or idea. The next thing to focus on is we need to let go of pre bubbles, it is a very common practice to begin formulating a response before the other person has even completed their idea. The final tip is to summarize, it's a great way to make sure you've understood the other person. Use the language of the other person, even if it's not necessarily the language you would commonly use. Sheila talks about some scenarios about getting a new job, or getting a promotion at work. She discusses what you need to do in these cases. Half listening or making assumptions can get you to the finish line sooner but you might be heading towards the wrong finish line. Sheila refers to a story that Kate shares in her book wherein the 1950s Betty Crocker launched a new product designed to appeal to busy homemakers and how the product sales soared. 3 Key Points: Focus and try not to multitask like checking your phone. Recognize listening as an active process that requires your full attention. The truth is human beings are not good multitaskers. Our brains simply cannot listen, and formulate at the same time which means as soon as we start thinking about what we want to say, instead, what we're going to say, it cuts off our ability to actively listen. So the idea is don't think about how you're going to respond until the other person has finished speaking. It's okay to give yourself a moment to think about what you want to say before responding. Asking some questions about what's working and what's not, and then listening to the answers can provide all the inspiration required. There are many opportunities we leave on the table every time we don't ask questions and then just listen. Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/22309595

Greatest Hits: Quick Tips to Modernize Your Resume 02/23/2022

Greatest Hits: Quick Tips to Modernize Your Resume In today´s episode of ‘Professional Success Podcast’,your host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter and Talent Development Leader gives some vital tips on updating and reconditioning your resume. She stresses that it is a great time for people who are considering switching careers, to make a transition. Episode Highlights: Avoid potential things that could cause ageism. Unfortunately, assumptions that people make about age referred to as ageism becomes a problem. Drop email addresses including AOL, Hotmail or Yahoo as they are considered outdated and shift to something that's of much more importance like Gmail. Due to the recent pandemic situation, it could be a really good time to play-up your remote skills in the resume. Even if a person doesn't necessarily have experience working remotely, there are other transferable experiences to highlight in this section. “This really is a particularly good time to refresh your resume and to start looking for that new position.” It is a great time for people who are considering switching careers, to make a transition. 3 Key Points: You don't need to include every single thing you did on your resume. She says you can always include other important things in a cover letter or discuss those during an interview conversation. Other than limiting occupational history that contains dates to 10 or 15 years you also want to omit any graduation dates omitting any graduation dates. She also says that showcasing objectives on top of the resume is a very outdated practice and should not be used anymore. Beyond people switching positions within their industry, the current job market could really also provide prospective job seekers with the ability to test a new career path. This current pandemic situation is highlighting more companies to consider transferable skills and skills-based hiring, as a way to hire new talent. Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/22225478

Maintaining Grit at Work 02/16/2022

Maintaining Grit at Work In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, your host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Professor Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about ‘Grit at Work’. One common thing most successful and famous people have is that they keep going even after multiple failures. It's like they have the feeling of grit and determination that they would succeed. Episode Highlights: JK Rowling was rejected by more than 10 Publishers who just didn't see that magic of Harry Potter and Oprah was fired from her first-ever Anchor job on TV. Angela Duckworth, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania introduced the concept of grit in her 2016 book ‘Grit - The power of passion and perseverance. If you're striving to grow in your career, Grit, definitely matters, and there are a few key ways that we can cultivate it. When most people practice, they focus on the things they already know how to do but deliberate practice looks a little bit different. This is because it entails considerable specific and sustained effort to do something that you can't already do well. One tactic that works well is to keep a journal of your progress somewhere where you're writing this down in a consistent way. 3 Key Points: Sheila talks about a few successful people who even in their moments of setback or even feeling a little bit devastated kept going because there's one thing that they all have in common which is Grit. She refers to this concept of grit as a leading force behind what it takes to stick to it. Grit is the quality that allows an individual to work hard and maintain focus and this is not just for weeks, or months, but for years. It's that will, it's that commitment, and it's that perseverance to keep pursuing excellence at something even in the face of multiple setbacks. By developing an ability to commit and persevere, starts with our motivation to do this. We have to begin with something that we care about improving. When we talk about developing Grit, it means practicing something that you're striving for. We have a chance to improve Grit, so what you want to do is look for the people around you who can cheer you on, because the power of that collective can help us to all standpoints. Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/22141463

How to be an Intrapreneur 02/09/2022

How to be an Intrapreneur In today´s episode of the ‘Professional Success Podcast’, your host Sheila Boysen-Rotelli, a Master Certified Career Coach, Recruiter, and Talent Development Leader talks about ‘Intrapreneurship’. She discusses what is intrapreneurship and why should we consider it. Episode Highlights: MIT Sloan School of Management defines ‘Intrapreneurship’ as acting like an Entrepreneur within an established company. You might consider ‘Intrapreneurship’ if you feel like you have an untapped level of talent or passion that you could use to make an impact at work. Begin with the problem and then set out to solve it, seeing the pain point within your organization. Intrapreneurs don't wait for invitations, they make things happen. 3 Key Points: Intrapreneurs develop new programs, products, services, or innovations within an existing organization. However, both use many of the same skills, things as creativity, agility, leadership, and persistence. So it's like behaving like an entrepreneur but within the safety of an established company. Before you start duct-taping widgets or switches together, begin by defining an outcome you want to deliver, or a problem that you specifically plan to solve. So to do that, look around, see what challenges exist right now, and what needs to be solved where you can make a big impact something you'd be excited about working on. As an Intrapreneur, you want to socialize your ideas. So once you've got this idea, you've maybe thought there are some solutions or possibilities. It's almost time to kind of move into that sales mode that's selling. Unlike entrepreneurs who have no choice but to pound the pavement and find clients or customers for their business. Tweetable Quotes: “When you show members of leadership that you have an entrepreneurial drive, that's appealing to companies.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli “But the thing is we want to solve an actual problem.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli “Now you can apply existing solutions to new problems.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli “This idea of intrapreneurship could be a really good fit to take a look around.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/22073120

Successfully Transitioning from a Peer to a Manager 02/02/2022

Successfully Transitioning from a Peer to a Manager In today´s episode of Professional Success Podcast, Sheila talks about the transition from team member to manager. Sheila gives a few tips and ideas to get you started, go ahead, and make this transition a big success. Episode Highlights: The transition situation at work is not uncommon, but that doesn't mean that it isn't or can’t be awkward. The worst thing that you can try to do is ignore that reality. Give your team the space and some ideas to help get them started and then just listen. Also, let the teams’ enthusiasm open the door to further conversation. We all know that trust is what's going to be the foundation for high-performing teams. There is no one right way for a team to be a team but you can work towards finding that level of norms and how you're going to work together. As you step into this new leadership role, hit that pause button. Take a look at what's going on and what could shift in a way that's going to serve everyone. 3 Key Points: Think about what you are most uncertain about. Maybe you're worried you don't think you're ready for the job or that maybe friendships will be challenged or fade. Let them know what's on your mind and invite them to take that opportunity to do the same. Next, consider inviting feedback, the great thing about moving into a leadership role is that you can ask for feedback. Ask your team and then listen to them, process that information and respond in some way where you're considering that and making adjustments. The key is to understand which norms serve your team and which might have the wrong impact. So you want to have an open and honest conversation with the team early on, about how they want to work together as a team. Tweetable Quotes: “So start by just simply putting it out there.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli “Think about moving on towards trying to tap into and harness a collective level of incitement.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli “These small but early wins can help you to earn trust with your team.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli “You want to try to establish shared norms.” - Sheila Boysen–Rotelli Resources Mentioned: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: Sheila Boysen-Rotelli: /episode/index/show/professionalsuccesscoaching/id/21950165