A little introduction

Hello! And thanks for reading.

Around 5 years ago I wrote a blog charting the search for my first real job (you can still read that blog at sweetlyindecisive.wordpress.com). 5 years later, and a few jobs down the line, I thought I might return to writing to now document the progress of my career.

It’s hard starting out, working out what you want, building your confidence and making decisions that will shape your future career. Decision making has never been my strong point, but I’ve somehow managed to make enough of the right choices to lead me to somewhere I’m currently very happy.

I work as a project manager at a small technology company, having worked my way through jobs in software development, operations and marketing to get here. It’s a male dominated field (I’m one of just two women in the office), but also a creative and interesting one that has real impact on the world.

I care about equality, mental health, and modernising politics and organisations. I have relatively liberal views, though come from a more conservative religious background. I’m interested in psychology, personal and professional development and philosophy, and I suffer from anxiety.

Why compromise doesn’t work

You are heading out of the front door with your partner / family member / friend, but you hesitate.

You: “You can’t wear those shoes – they’re AWFUL. I’m not being seen out with you in those. Put these on.”

Them: “I LOVE these shoes. The ones you’re suggesting are dull and old. There’s no way I’m wearing THOSE.”

Traditional compromise means meeting in the middle. In the case of the shoes? Yes, that’s right. One of each on each foot. But does that actually make anyone happy? Wouldn’t either pair have been a better option to both parties than “meeting in the middle”?

Sometimes compromise is more complex than “a bit of both”

Let’s take Brexit.

Had the referendum choices been:

• Hard Brexit
• Soft Brexit
• No Brexit

And had the voting been AV (Alternative Vote) or STV (Single Transferable Vote) or some similar variation of PR (Proportional Representation), with second as well as first choices taken, then wouldn’t the “compromise” have looked very different to the argument currently playing out?

In my experience, those who support Brexit would cast their votes in this order:

1. Hard Brexit
2. No Brexit
3. Soft Brexit

Whereas those who are against Brexit would cast their votes in this order:

1. No Brexit
2. Soft Brexit
3. Hard Brexit

Few appear to be on board with the compromise. Soft Brexit isn’t good for anyone.

If top choice = 3 points, second choice = 2 points, and third choice = 1 point:

Hard Brexit = 3 + 1 = 4

Soft Brexit = 1 + 2 = 3

No Brexit = 2 + 3 = 5

So on balance, it’s one of the extremes that wins.

Interesting, huh?

 

Equal opportunities vs positive discrimination

“Privilege is invisible to those who have it”

My boss doesn’t believe in positive discrimination. That’s what he always tells me when I suggest ways of getting more women into our office. “We hire the best people for the job”

I don’t agree with positive discrimination either. But the playing field isn’t level, and a more diverse workforce benefits everyone, so I believe sometimes we do need to make adjustments that take that into account. We don’t all start from the same point, as this video illustrates so well.

We need to compensate for both this unequal starting point and the unconscious biases we all carry (covered in more depth in my previous post on Why diversity matters).

Here’s a trivial example for you. We’ve sponsored an outdoor sculpture at work – it’s an animal. We wanted to give it a female name, as a way to counter the male dominance of the industry we work in. Our boss didn’t like that. He said it shouldn’t have a gender. But what happens is that the animal is constantly referred to not as “it” but as “he”, because that’s the norm and the dominant gender in our society. In order to raise awareness and change the automatic language we use to describe things, we’d need to make that animal female.

So this got me thinking, are there less trivial examples and ways of making this same point that sometimes over compensation is needed to make change happen?

How to get a fair deal

I’m currently looking to buy a house. If the fair price of a house is £200k, the advantaged party (in this case the seller) will go for as much as they can get and put it on the market at £210k. If the disadvantaged party (in this case the potential buyer) offered the fair price, they would end up over paying. Instead they must compensate by going further in the other direction and offering £190k, so that eventually both parties can meet in the middle.

My goal is always equality. But we’re not getting there fast enough.

Going to extremes

What about an extreme. What about the abolition of slavery, or giving women the vote.

If the white slave traders only gave paid employment to “the best people”, the black slaves are unlikely to have been seen as “the best people”. Through no fault of their own. They would need to have been given a special outsiders chance to catch up on the education they had missed, both intellectually and culturally for a white workplace.

If the male aristocracy only gave the vote to “the best people”, the women of the time are unlikely to have been seen as “the best people”. Again, they had received poorer education than the men of the time, and were culturally and socially seen as designed only for the purpose of raising children.

How does this relate to diversity in tech?

I can blank out all the CVs we receive, I can re-write our job ads in an attempt to appeal more to a wider range of people, I can spread the word further afield. But to make real change, we need to target specific groups, we need to recognise and acknowledge privilege and give people from under-represented groups a chance.

We need to be intentional in our efforts. We can’t just wait for people to come to us, we need to get out there and support and encourage them to enter into an environment dominated by those who may be very different to them. Change takes work.

It’s good to talk (and even better to listen)

One of my male colleagues recently had to take time off due to burn out from the project he was working on. He could have kept it quiet, but instead chose to change our whole company by being open about it. We now have a mental health channel on Slack, he’s leading the conversation, and he’ll be giving a talk on burnout and depression/anxiety at an upcoming tech meetup.

It’s amazing what one voice can do. He said that during his first conversations on the subject it was hard to even get the words out. Now he’s bringing it up in team meetings.

It triggered me to start getting one to one feedback from our team – armed with a list of simple metrics to gather, I’m trying to gain as much information as I can on how people at work are feeling about the way we do things as a company.

People’s views can be so different. For some of the team, the lack of regular feedback is a huge problem in the company, for others, it’s barely on their radar. Some people like our slightly unstructured approach, while others find it frustrating.

I’m trying to focus on listening. In my role, there’s a delicate balance between listening – letting people say all they have to say – and making suggestions and keeping things moving. It can be a tricky tightrope to walk. I’m part traditional project manager (tasks, timelines and budgets), part agile coach (continuous improvement and facilitation).

I’ve reached out to another agile coach to practice my listening skills while giving and receiving feedback and advice, and I’m always on the look out for new people to learn from. We all need to be heard in order to grow as people, both professionally and personally.

 

How do I know if I’m any good?

I’ve always struggled to get valuable and much needed feedback in my current role. After a motivating conversation with an inspiring agile coach, it’s got me thinking about how I can get the feedback – both positive and constructive – that I need to improve.

The agile coach I met with (a young female of about my age) came across as confident and driven, and was full of ideas. I think we all need conversations with people like her every now and again. I guess that’s what coaching and mentoring are all about.

Impact assessments

It’s not just getting feedback that’s important, it’s giving it too. This is a great simple way of keeping feedback objective:

1. Describe the situation (“In the finance meeting last Wednesday…”)
2. Describe the behaviour (“…you folded your arms and looked away while I was speaking…”)
3. Describe the impact: how it made you feel (“…and that made me feel like you didn’t care about what I was saying.”)

This opens up the way for a constructive conversation that gets to real intentions and positive changes going forward, rather than defensiveness, arguments and bad feelings.

Skills evaluation

When it comes to agile coaching, there’s a nice model by Lyssa Adkins that helps agile coaches to think about where their skills lie. The concept of self-evaluation can be applied to any role.

Encouraging feedback

There have been times where my colleagues have given me feedback, and I’ve tried to take it well, but I think I can take it even better. There’s always a momentary disappointment that I’ve done (or am regularly doing) something wrong, but once that’s passed, I hugely value the input. I need to remember to always thank my colleagues when they do this. I want to encourage a culture of feedback, even when it’s constructive – especially when it’s constructive.

Quick health checks

I often worry about taking up too much of my colleagues’ time, especially when it comes to asking for subjective feedback. Conversations about improvements, whether individual or as a team, can easily turn into long discussions.

I’m now armed with a great idea which I’m keen to try out at the next opportunity:

1. List areas of the business that most affect team members
2. Ask each individual to rate their view of each area currently: 🙂 😐 😦
3. Then get an improvement indicator (i.e. do they feel that the area has improved, remained the same, or got worse): /\ <> \/
4. Get a rating out of 10 for how important each area is to the individual
5. Note down any comments or discussion points that come out of this

And there you have it – a super simple method for health checking individuals and teams, in order to work out which areas are best to focus on for improvement.

Are annual reviews enough?

Personally I’d love a monthly one-to-one, but in the absence of management time, I’m going to keep working on ideas for other ways we as a team can give each other honest feedback.

 

Who am I? And how can I be better?

I go through phases of feeling completely lost about who I am. Of not knowing what is authentic and true about me. Of wondering if the direction I’m heading in might be completely the wrong one.

In the past I’ve found solace in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. I like it’s surface level simplicity, and the fact that it holds meaning in a more complex sense as well.

But a personality type doesn’t define any of us, and our values, strengths and struggles can be hard to define.

At work I am grateful for the advice I receive, for suggestions about how to do things better. Managing projects is all about people and processes, and how you can continually improve the way you communicate and the way things are done.

I once asked those closest to me to describe me using 3 positive words and 3 negative words. I wrote down their answers in a small notebook which I still have somewhere. I like to feel defined – like I am someone and like there are things about me that are unchanging.

But I’m rambling. We can all be defined in many different ways by many different people, and sometimes it becomes hard to work out what’s real for us.

 

Here are some things I do to help myself

1. Record my successes

I have a “Done” list. It’s super simple. I write down anything and everything, big to small, that I have “done” ever (or since I can remember). Anything that meant something to me and felt like a small win or achievement. It helps me see how I’m stretching myself, and allows me to look back on experiences I may otherwise forget. This encourages me to experiment further to work out who I am and what I most enjoy and/or find most value in doing. It also helps when updating my CV. Try it.

2. Look at how I spend my time

I recently did an analysis of my calendar from the past year. I wrote down every event (that was in my calendar) that I’d attended, then categorised similar events together (like catching up with a certain friend, or attending a certain group) in order to make things more manageable. I rated each event type by how inspiring I found it and how it contributed to my sense of balance, contentment and stability (on average, if I’d done something multiple times). Finally, I colour coded the whole thing based on the number of times I’d attended certain types of event, and how they made me feel. The aim? To make sure that the things I do the most are the things that make me feel most fulfilled.

3. Go back to my values

I have a list of 5 core values that I created a number of years ago with the help of a career coach. I go back to this list whenever I’m feeling lost, and compare how I’m spending my time with the values that are most important to me.

It’s also interesting to ask a good friend to list the things they think you are good at and the words they’d use to describe you. See if it fits with your values and who you really want to be.

Acceptance (and karma)

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Acceptance. Probably my biggest struggle.

Life is imperfect – frustratingly so, and to fully enjoy, appreciate and be grateful for it, we have to accept some things that are far less than ideal.

Some of these things are products of our own mistakes, for to fully live life, we will make mistakes. Others are outside of our control. Both must be accepted.

Accepting our own mistakes

I work as an agile project manager. Agile is a lean way of working that focuses on continuous improvement and learning from mistakes without placing blame.

When taking an agile approach, we are encouraged to follow The Prime Directive when running retrospectives (meetings to look back at how projects have gone):

“You did the best you could, given what you knew at the time, your skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand”

And I’ve come to find this a very useful tool in my personal life as well. We must believe that each and every one of us is doing the best we can, with what we know at the time. It’s the only way to accept and forgive mistakes.

When I find myself agonising over past regrets, I try to remind myself of this – I did the best I could, given what I knew at the time. My intention is always to do the best I can, and I must accept mistakes and choose to forgive myself.

Accepting external circumstances

While my regrets can cause me extreme personal anxiety, my struggle to accept external things can affect my relationships with others.

Sometimes in life we find ourselves in scenarios that we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves, but that seem to have chosen us. We may be able to take action to change things, but often we cannot. Acceptance is the only thing that brings peace.

And the same applies to people. We can love and care for people, yet have a desire to change them. This subtle pressure and dissatisfaction that we put on others can cause damage. I know I need to learn to better accept those I love for who they are and for all the good things about them. We cannot change others, they can only choose to change themselves.

Karma

Sometimes for me, it’s superstition that gets in the way of acceptance – believing that certain thoughts and superstitious actions will affect outcomes. And this ties in with my anxiety. Often I feel that worry prevents bad things from happening to me, and that if I become complacent and stop worrying, then bad things will happen. I know this is irrational and unhealthy, but it’s a belief that’s hard to change.

My other unhealthy belief or worry is that we “get what we deserve” (whatever that happens to mean in any given scenario). I stress about the impact unintentional poor choices in the past could have on me in the future due to this idea of karma.

Maybe part of the solution is in the Serenity Prayer (first quote above). The key few words being “accept the things I cannot change’ – accepting that my superstitious thoughts and actions won’t bring about any change in outcome.

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

Why I’d prefer to be a father

I often feel the need to tone down my feminism, especially at work. My male colleagues are all (well, mostly) lovely, but they just (for obvious reasons) don’t connect with female issues. I don’t want to become known as the office feminist who’s always “banging on about gender equality”. But we do have to talk about this stuff, and fight inequality.

I had to catch my own thinking the other day, when a non-binary person was continually posting in a women’s tech Slack group I’m a member of. I caught myself thinking, “isn’t this a bit much”. It’s really not a bit much. All issues of inequality need to be discussed and dealt with. Until we are all truly equal and non-judgemental, the fight must be continuous to the point of irritating. Subtley of course. Getting people’s backs up does no one and no issue any good.

I’m fortunate enough to work with a strong lady who shares many of my views. With an empowering personal story, and an openness and honesty about issues in her own life, she’s always an ally.

Something hit me today. I’d much rather be a stereotypical father than a stereotypical mother in today’s society. I think that really sums up how much further we have to go with gender equality.

I’d love to continue to work and develop my career, uninterrupted by children. To be able to go home to a loving partner who takes care of the children and the house while I do work I enjoy. To have the joy of putting the kids to bed, weekend outings and the occasional evening of “baby sitting” while the partner is out. To not have to worry about what my bosses would think if I told them myself and my partner were expecting a child. To not have to stress about maternity payments and breastfeeding. To not have to choose between purpose in work and at home. 

But while a rare and fortunate few women do have stay at home husbands (or wives), for the most part, with male salaries higher and none of the complications of carrying and feeding a very young child, it’s men who are able to continue with their careers (albeit a little sleepier than usual).

I’m not one for problems without solutions. So what needs to change?

• Shared parental leave

While this does exist in the UK, it’s rarely taken advantage of. If both men and women had equal chance of taking extensive time off after having a child, then employers would be unable to discriminate (consciously or unconsciously).

• Accessible, affordable childcare

If couples could afford high quality childcare options, they could choose how to share the load of bringing up children, without having to make any either/or choices when it came to each of their careers.

• Increased progression and success of women in the workplace

Reducing the gender pay gap means a much higher chance that couples could choose for the female to return to work as the breadwinner (or for both partners to continue to work equally), without an impact on household income.

I hope they surprise me, but I honestly can’t imagine any of my 20-something and 30-something male colleagues taking extensive parental leave or taking on a large share of childcare responsibilities. While I worry about the impact having a child would have on the business I work for and the way I’m viewed by male management and colleagues, they have none of these worries, despite having women in their lives (in fact, they have none of these worries exactly because of having women in their lives).

Things need to change.

Now that’s my kind of anxiety

When people used to talk about anxiety, I always jumped straight to social anxiety. Apart from being a bit of an introvert who’s drained by the presence of other people, I don’t really have any issues with social occasions. So I couldn’t have anxiety, I thought.

It turns out there are many different kinds of anxiety, here’s a handy rundown.

• Generalised anxiety disorder
• Social phobia
• Panic disorder
• Agoraphobia
• Other phobias
• Post traumatic stress disorder
• Obsessive compulsive disorder

It’s generalised anxiety disorder that seems to be my issue. And I was only able to put this label to it recently, when I finally realised that my worrying and overthinking was out of control.

Anxiety is an overestimation of threat.

Here are 5 causes (taken from this useful summary):

1. The need for control, and intolerance of uncertainty
2. Confusing worry with productive problem solving
3. Catastrophic thinking
4. Avoidance of deep emotions
5. Attending too much to physical symptoms of anxiety

And here are 5 solutions to try (taken from this helpful video):

1. Acknowledge and accept (mindful acceptance, not tolerance)
2. Positive self talk (don’t accept own thoughts as facts)
3. Distract yourself and focus your mind on something else (effective in short term)
4. Reduce avoidance (in long term)
5. Practice relaxation

All I’ve read suggests stopping the bad stories, shifting to gratitude instead, and generally just being aware of the thoughts you’re having. Of course it’s never as simple to action these steps as it is to write them, but I have managed to distract myself in a healthy way as I begin to understand what anxiety is and how to deal with it.

Making a difference: is it worth it?

There are some big problems to solve in the world. Huge tasks requiring hundreds of thousands of people over generations. Sometimes it’s hard to feel like you’re making any kind of difference.

When it comes to the big issues, I often struggle with the idea of working so hard for such small gains. It’s finding the continual motivation and sense of purpose needed to work towards the solutions for these huge problems that can be overwhelming.

Generally I like to follow this process:

1. Uncover a problem that needs to be solved
2. Do lots of research to find out all the facts
3. Make a plan and take action
4. Reach a measurable outcome and conclusion I can prove was successful

That’s not always easy when you’re fighting a huge issue like inequality. But I’ve learnt to look for and record the small wins, the minor gains, and even the little changes in other people’s mindsets. Tracking these small successes keeps me going.

A journey of a thousand steps begins with just one.
It’s better to be moving slowly than standing still.

At work I keep a list of all my achievements on the job, however small. And I track other personal targets too. Managers always want proof of outcomes in business, whether it’s unit tests to prove sections of code work as required, or marketing KPI targets met.

A career coach I used to work with once asked me, “Are you ok with addressing such a huge issue that you can’t solve alone?”. At the time it seemed like an odd question. Maybe she was simply trying to encourage me to break down my goals into more manageable chunks (one of the things I care about most is helping people to not feel alone – but I’ve not yet been able to narrow this down).

So, one step at a time, I move forward with the causes I care about.

Purpose – you’ve got to love the process

Every so often my mind wanders back to the idea of purpose. I regularly consider whether the things I choose to do day to day are things that I class as meaningful and important. It’s so easy to get so caught up in your day to day that you stop seeing the bigger picture.

The words “passion” and “purpose” and “meaning” are thrown around a lot. For me, all it really comes down to is, “Am I spending my time doing things that I believe are important?”. That’s not always an easy question to answer. We’re all trying to find that perfect intersection of: things we enjoy + things we are skilled at + things the world needs. That’s the magic formula.

But how to reach that intersection?

• You’ve got to love the process. As a child, I loved drawing. At least I thought I did. I’ve since realised that what I actually love is having a finished picture that I’m proud of. The process of drawing itself I find tedious.
• But it does help if the outcome is of interest. Working as a project manager, I like being part of the process of making things happen. That’s the bit I enjoy. I’m less concerned about the product. But my job is made a whole lot more interesting when I understand and value the product we’re trying to produce.
• You’ve got to love how you’re fighting for the cause you love. It’s easy to know what we care about – what makes us angry and what we’d fight to change. It’s less easy to work out our role in the process of bringing about change. And if you don’t enjoy the action you’re taking and the part you’re playing, then you’re not going to reach the outcome and win for the cause.

So I guess for me, that’s actually the combination I’m looking for:

1. An outcome/cause that’s meaningful to me (like a finished drawing was to me as a child, and a cause like equality is to me now). What the world needs.
2. A process that I can get into and enjoy (and do successfully), like organising things, communicating with people, making things happen. What I enjoy and am skilled at.