Episode Four - Conquering Career Transitions: Growth Mindset Hacks for Beating Corporate Chaos

In this episode, Mary and Katie discuss the concept of growth mindset and its implications for individuals in the corporate world. They explore how the definition of growth mindset can vary depending on one's role and context, and how it relates to the changing landscape of employment. They also discuss the challenges faced by employees in adapting to new roles and acquiring new skills, as well as the importance of self-reflection and personal growth in navigating career transitions. The conversation highlights the need for individuals to continuously assess their value in the workforce and take ownership of their learning and development. In this conversation, Katie and Mary reflect on the episode they just recorded and discuss their process and growth. They talk about the importance of being mindful and empathetic when hiring and firing employees, the challenges of workforce management, and the differences in labor laws between the US and Europe. They also touch on the complexities of taxes and the need for self-care and self-awareness in their work. Overall, they express excitement and pride in their podcast and the progress they have made.

Takeaways

• Growth mindset is the belief that a person's abilities can be improved through effort, learning, and persistence.
• The concept of growth mindset can vary depending on one's role and context in the corporate world.
• Employees are accountable for continually assessing their value in the workforce and acquiring the skills necessary to adapt to changing market needs.
• Career transitions require self-reflection, curiosity, and a willingness to challenge prior ways of thinking.
• Personal growth and professional growth are intertwined, and individuals should focus on what brings out the best version of themselves. Being mindful and empathetic when hiring and firing employees is crucial
• Workforce management is often overlooked and can lead to challenges
• Labor laws differ between the US and Europe, impacting hiring and firing practices
• Taxes can be complex and require careful planning and management
• Self-care and self-awareness are important in the workplace
• The hosts are proud of their podcast and the progress they have made

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Excitement about Podcast Launch
• 12:29 The Evolution of Company Culture and Innovation
• 25:00 Opportunities for Personal and Professional Growth in Times of Disruption
• 34:00 The Impact of Firing

Transcript

Mary (00:02.731)
Psycho's podcast where we discuss how to navigate the complexity of corporate culture and modern life without becoming a psycho. I'm Mary.

Katie (00:11.44)
And I'm Katie.

Mary (00:13.531)
and we are the business psychos.

Mary (00:18.484)
Hey, Katie.

Katie (00:20.13)
Hey Mary, how's it going?

Mary (00:25.187)
I have a little prompt on my script that says bullshit and playful banter, so that's what I'm going to do right now.

Katie (00:30.142)
I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Mary (00:35.207)
No, there is actually really important news, right? We dropped our first episode today and that's just so exciting. I'm really excited.

Katie (00:42.462)
Yeah, we have, we have a podcast. We have a podcast. We are officially podcasters. That is, that can't be taken away from us. We are podcasters now. Yeah.

Mary (00:45.191)
We have a podcast. We're doing it.

Mary (00:52.811)
It's out there, it's out there forever. And I'm looking forward to today. As always, we have another juicy topic.

Katie (01:01.555)
We do have a juicy topic.

Mary (01:03.591)
And like some of our other topics, we're starting with a term which is frequently parlayed around the halls of corporate America and LinkedIn. When we come back, we're going to talk about the growth mindset and what it means for you. We'll be right back.

Mary (01:22.507)
Katie, I want to first unpack what is meant by growth mindset. It can feel to me that this can mean something different if you are an employer versus an employee. It may even mean something entirely different outside of the business world. I'm thinking, for example, the head of a department at a private university may use the term growth mindset very differently from the head of HR at a major corporation.

Katie (01:49.938)
Yeah, so we need to unpack what we're talking about here. This is another example where corporate jargon is used in a vague and unhealthy, or actually in a vague and unhelpful way, or it is to cover a less appealing reality together. The differences for this episode, the differences in our background will give this discussion a lot of dimension.

You come from enterprise corporate, and I come from high growth tech. I think it's important for this discussion because tech culture and innovation and air quotes along with its pace has informed a lot of what corporate environments are now experiencing. This is where the rugged individualism has been justified and the pace of the market has been sped up.

leading to what is, you know, I guess ubiquitously called, you know, growth mindset. So what does the term mean?

Mary (02:57.675)
So the generic definition online is, a growth mindset is the belief that a person's abilities can be improved through effort, learning, and persistence. It's about how a person approaches challenges, processes failures, and adapts as a result. People with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be developed and improved over time. So I don't disagree with this definition.

but it feels to me, Katie, that there's some missing subtext. And for me, coming again from bigger corporate, three things come to mind when I hear growth mindset. I hear no more jobs for life, and I hear employees are accountable for continually assessing their value in the workforce. And I hear employees are responsible for acquiring the skills necessary to remediate any gap between their value

and current market needs.

Katie (03:58.062)
Two and three kind of break my heart. I've been seeing the shift in personal responsibility for development shift to the employee in the 30 years I've been working. And combine this with the unpredictable shifting of needs for skills and their current pace of innovation. This is so.

punishing to people. And this feels maybe a little early to be getting into something as dry as employment law, but here we are. I mean, this is, you know, in the US with at-will employment, this puts employees in such a position where they're always walking on eggshells to a certain extent. And most countries in the world require employers to dismiss employees only for cause.

in the US at will means that an employer can change the terms of the employment relationship with no notice, no consequences. Even jobs typically covered under union contracts like those in manufacturing have seen US jobs transition overseas for years now. So with the technological innovation of the last 20 years, we now see white collar jobs for life going away, if not completely.

Mary (05:21.267)
I'm thinking as AI progresses, this is going to affect every single job. Right now, I personally see two groups affected, the jobs which oversee the manual processes, and then the middle layer supervisory roles, which are purely managerial.

Katie (05:43.658)
I use AI for a lot of things and I love it. I see it a little differently. The skill with AI as I see it is the ability to create the commands that you input into the system that will yield the best output. It reminds me of having super smart people who work for you. You give them a directive and they return with really good work.

Mary (05:47.7)
Me too.

Katie (06:11.082)
and you fine tune it with them to make it excellent. Now with AI, the turnaround time is minutes versus days. The detail of the work is excellent. And most of what you tune for is stylistic and tone-based. So the first group you mentioned that oversees manual processes is going to be seriously impacted with the advancement in AI. Tech is already citing cost savings, usually meaning layoffs.

as one of AI's benefits. So for example, if you've been say like a procurement manager for the last 10 years and now systems and tools can do your job, you're going to be stuck in a difficult position.

Mary (06:54.983)
I'm going to imagine that there's a woman named Agnes, and she's a manager in procurement at a mid to large size company. And then Katie, of course, if you have a different parallel for your experience, I think that'd be interesting. But I'd like to envision Agnes because she's created her job. She's been there for a while. She knows how to navigate all the various policies and manual procedures that no one understands. And she also knows how to use and help others use.

the company's probably user unfriendly procurement platform, which isn't integrated with any other system. And I'm imagining when this company hired Agnes, they were not advertising for someone with a growth mindset in the job spectrum.

Katie (07:43.338)
Yeah, back then they wouldn't have been able to imagine what the technical landscape would be like in 10 years or so. They'd want, but they'd want somebody with attention to detail, knowledge of procurement and the personality to do that kind of job. But let's talk about the personality. The mindset is mechanical. You wanted someone who is functional, reliable, consistent, didn't make mistakes. You...

didn't want someone interested in disruption of any kind, you wanted the function to produce a predictable output.

Mary (08:18.571)
Absolutely, they're not looking to pay someone with the aptitude and interest to make the entire procurement function more efficient Because that in effect would result in fixing yourself right out of a job

Katie (08:31.51)
Right, right. Ideally, you'd have a company culture where they look for talented people with the ability to improve each area of the company and the person is working in. But as you say, if the role is highly manual, bureaucratic and low paying, that's not what's happening. Flash forward 10 years and the same company is now talking about being growth minded, which.

You know, means you like, which means Agnes needs to figure out what, what she's going to do next. And so since, and since we're ultimately talking about shaping your career in this episode, or at least thinking about it, I'll talk briefly about the stages of a company and the personality characteristics that can be helpful for folks trying to navigate.

decision-making processes in their career transitions. I'm not going to emphasize the economics and the funding stages, rather the stage of growth and the personalities that tend to be well-suited. So in tech, you have early stage, it's sometimes called seed. And this is the proof of concept stage of a company where it is super high risk tolerance.

The rule of thumb, it's usually about 50 people. And the people who are in the company are really averse to like highly structured environments. They're really creative, they're swashbucklers, they're mavericks. In fact, one of the things that happens is that as the company grows and succeeds, these are people that will fight the progress of.

creating process that's necessary for the actual scaling of the company. So when you are part of these early seed stages, one of the most challenging things is some of the beloved people in the company. When you're transitioning up into a larger and a grander stage of your growth is that these people have to kind of be worked with in a way that can be really honestly sad.

Katie (10:45.242)
It's kind of, it's a tough one because they're so important for growing the company. But, um, you know, once again, like we're talking about shifting stages of like ultimate, I guess, like appropriateness for an employee. Um, the next is growth. And this is often called venture funded in the tech world.

And this is mid-risk tolerance. This is usually 70 to about 500 people for like the earlier stage of growth, later stages, like getting into the thousands. And this is, so it's often called venture funded because it means it's taking on money to hire more people. But ultimately the reason it's venture funded is that there are folks that want to invest in the potential future.

of the company as being a profitable exit. And what that means is they want the company to work and they want the company to actually have scalable processes that make it like market suitable and market ready. And so for people that really like taking chaos and starting to form some order, but can function in chaos, but have a proclivity for creating order, I am one of those people.

that this is a really ideal stage for a company. And then, you know, then of course, after this, you've got the late stage of mature company that is a lower risk tolerance profile. But this is where process has been refined to the point that you get, you know, some of the matters of bureaucracy and the lunacy of everything being handled.

but what people tend to not understand is that it's kind of like the more people you bring into the group, the more people you have to account for. So, you know, so your efficiency goes down, but it's just how it works. There's, so I'd almost say there's kind of a, I'm not gonna say it, it's a judgment, but you know, one, and one example I have about the difference between like a mature company,

Mary (12:47.092)
Hahaha.

Katie (12:55.61)
and a seed or startup companies, like the earlier stages of companies, is how rough and tumble it is. My first job out of college was for Eli Lilly, which was a Fortune 100, blue chip company. I was a new kid right out of college, and they had a relocation department that sent me a preloaded credit card for expenses.

arranged for moving, had all of these functions that were designed to onboard me too. So I guess there was also onboarding. And so I just did nothing and I was a kid and I had just gotten a job. So I got this red carpet moving van that came and packed my boxes as a college kid and moved me to Boston. And by the way, the things they packed in, when I arrived in Boston and opened the boxes up, it was just a bunch of...

Mary (13:43.307)
Wow.

Katie (13:54.414)
college kitchen junk. You don't really, I was like, whoops. Yeah, it was a couple old crusty ramen noodles, but that was like, yeah, it was really, it was so, it was like, whoa, and there's no room, it's a city apartment from coming from New Hampshire. So it was a big pile of garbage that basically they'd moved from one location to another that found its way to the curb in Boston.

Mary (13:58.987)
It's like plastic plates they're wrapping in to newspaper and stuff.

Mary (14:07.039)
Solo cups.

Katie (14:23.43)
So it got a little adventure of its own, but it was just white glove. And how exciting that was for me. Compare that to a company, a software company I worked for that we were. You know, my first year there, we were the Inc 500s top growth software company. Uh, and I was relocating to Europe, to England.

And not only, and this is, I was director level at this point, not only did I have to fulfill my job function, I also had to do all of the visa processing and figure out how to do all of the paperwork.

Mary (15:04.767)
Wow.

Katie (15:08.85)
and understand all the legal implications of moving to another country. Do all of my relocation, do all of my finding a place to live, do all of my sort of offloading. I had to negotiate the package in terms of like my relocation compensation. I had to negotiate the terms of my contract in terms of my return package and tax equalization. And I had to learn about all that stuff and actually like, you know, fend for myself while doing my job.

So when you're talking about company size, and that's a mid-size company, and I would say seed stage definitely would, that would be on steroids, but just in terms of the comparison about the different types of experiences and relative strengths and benefits of each of them that they provide, I'd say I kind of preferred the White Club version, to be honest.

Mary (15:38.431)
That's insane.

Mary (16:00.007)
Yes, same.

Katie (16:02.854)
So yeah, so, and also one thing I would mention is that as it relates to corporate companies, you know, the writing has been on the wall when we're talking about Agnes, the writing has been on the wall about adopting these high speed innovation notions into large corporations, you know, the introduction of innovation hubs, where they're bringing these kind of like they're creating these

sort of siloed organizations that are culturally completely differentiated. And by the way, how those innovations integrate with a larger company is a whole other story, which winds up being, um, you know, highly politicized and rendering the innovation hub ineffective is that, you know, the introduction of the idea that this early stage style of growth is supposed to be adopted.

by people who are fitting in and like really adapted, adapted and better suited for large company life.

Mary (17:05.839)
It feels like adapt and survive, like capitalism's second commandment, beyond profit. And I expect all of us will need to adapt sooner or later, meaning none of us are going to be able to stay in a job that doesn't require some ongoing learning of some kind. I think the other group which has been impacted by the No Jobs for Life tenant are what I call the pure middle managers. And I've seen this in

Katie (17:09.974)
Right.

Mary (17:35.295)
probably the last 10 years, as organizations shift to player coach models or agile teams, they start to make better use of technology which monitors, manages, and extracts performance metrics for their employees. And all of those things used to be done with those traditional middle managers. I think these folks are going to have a greater challenge ahead of them than Agnes.

because they've been focused on supervising the doers versus being a doer.

Katie (18:09.194)
Yeah, absolutely. So, okay, what about everyone else?

Mary (18:14.959)
I mean, you said it earlier, technology is just steaming ahead. I don't know if we even have the capacity to really understand what's in store. What isn't new, of course, are needing fewer people to run things as you optimize processes. It reminds me of the childhood game of musical chairs. Just like so stressful as organizations evolve and become less manual. There are just fewer jobs.

And so for sake of argument, let's say Agnes's company doesn't yet have the technology to remove all humans from procurement, but they have made some digital advancements to where they only need two Agnes's instead of six.

Katie (18:58.974)
Oh my God, musical chairs. It's an analogy that's used, but when you really take yourself back to that feeling of the anxiety of like, who's gonna get a seat? It's, it's such, oh my God.

Mary (19:08.327)
Yes.

Mary (19:13.563)
It's a terrible game, by the way. Can we just say that that's a really horrible childhood game? It's just like, there's like some music and everyone's kind of like crouching. And then they're like, and then what happens as soon as the music stops, you elbow the two people nearest you out of the way, you scoot yourself under, you push them out of the chair. It's horrible.

Katie (19:32.45)
Remember that the whole game that while you're circling, it's turning everyone into this like adversarial vulture that would just like eat the young of the other kids that you're playing with because it's like, you're, you're just looking at, you know, you're like, like you're, you're listening to music and you're looking at open chairs and you're calculating all that. It's like, what, what are we training? What were we being trained for with that?

Mary (19:44.251)
Yes!

Mary (19:53.716)
Yeah.

Katie (19:57.138)
I definitely don't think it like maybe it got me ready for anything other than just, you know, sort of maybe hard coding a little sort of low grade anxiety into me. But yeah, so well, so when you're mentioning when you're talking about this downsizing where a company needs two of the Agnes's, you know, not the six previously required, which Agnes's do they get to keep their jobs?

Mary (20:23.611)
Yeah, this is a complicated one. It's probably worth its own episode at some point. But the concept up or out comes to mind here. In fact, sometimes up or out can even be associated with high performing cultures.

Katie (20:40.702)
Yeah, quick plug, if you haven't seen it yet, please check out our episode on high performing cultures number episode number three.

Mary (20:47.015)
Yes, absolutely. So the company has six Agnes's, but it only needs two. So unless there were some really clear cut and dry performance issues across those six employees, most likely the company would do a reduction in force and they would need to define the go-forward criteria for the new procurement role. And then they would need to assess those six Agnes's against that and determine who had the skills which better matched the new role.

Katie (21:19.542)
Yeah. So many years ago, I joined a company to optimize a team and I could take this in the direction of talking about employment law, but I have something else I want to highlight. So in, so in the interview process, I was sold a really sunny outlook of the organization. But when I started, I was presented with a very different proposition, a dramatic restructuring.

Mary (21:47.467)
I'm gonna go to bed.

Katie (21:48.386)
And so, yeah, so I bring this up because the CEO gave me his philosophy on the approach he wanted to me, the CEO gave me his philosophy on the approach he wanted me to take and it stayed with me forever. So he said, assess each person as follows.

If they have skills and are performing, but are not a culture fit, if they have skills and are performing, but not a culture fit, keep them until their performance slips. If they're a culture fit and performing, no brainer, keep them. But culture fit and non-performing,

and find another place for them in the organization. Now, reminder of the nod to employment law at the top of this anecdote, which is why I'll end the story here. But the thing that I took away from that and why that meeting left my jaw smacking the floor was the realization that in this discussion, this kind of, what would you call it?

Mary (22:57.514)
Yeah.

Katie (23:19.29)
Yeah, in this discussion, he clearly outlined that culture fit is culture fit over everything. And that for me, especially, you know, especially at that point in my career, where I had absolutely ravaged myself to be high performing, even to the expense of my ability to show up.

Mary (23:30.922)
Yeah.

Katie (23:46.938)
and be have cultural and political acumen, that shocked me. And that realization just came, it was like a collision. But so the thing is with that, is that what was this culture fit? I remember noticing, what is this culture fit and why are all the people he presented as an example of not having it?

Why were they old or uncool? And in my experience, the ones which don't make the cut can sometimes be the oldest. I think it's fair to say that ageism can come into play here. I think there is another point to make and we'll come back to it. But all this time, the company may not be preparing.

Mary (24:15.902)
Oh.

Katie (24:35.146)
rewind, and we'll come back to it. But all this time, the company may not be preparing Agnes for the shift. So recall the notion of, you know, the rugged individualism where it's on her to be prepared for shifts that she can't predict and at a pace with the market moving so fast, it would be really impossible to expect her to. And meeting, this meeting.

she can be at it doing a great job for 15 years and then suddenly boom we need somebody with different skills if there isn't a proactive retraining program or even a heads up Agnes could be completely caught off guard and often is.

Mary (25:18.439)
Oh my goodness, we definitely, I think we do have an episode on ageism scheduled. And I think you made some really interesting points. And I think if these kinds of exercises that we're talking about, if they're not done with consistent guidelines, and HR is usually involved in the process to ensure that it is for obvious reasons, then I think ageism can absolutely exist. And as far as Agnes being caught off guard, I mean, you mentioned heart breaking at the top of the episode,

I'm kind of slipping into my intellectual mode of doing the podcast, but this is a very emotional topic. And there are a lot of people out there who are scared, who are struggling. And I wanna often come back in the podcast to that, cause I get into my head a lot and I wanna talk about, the experience of Agnes and others like her out there. While some organizations do have formal job transition programs, others do not. If you're lucky,

You might be in a large organization that has almost like a university platform. And they will, they will preload that platform with skills and curriculum that they know that they need to start to proactively transition employees over. You see this in spaces like agile data, cyber engineering roles, but if a company doesn't have something like this and no one hints or even has a very quiet, informal

off the record word with Agnes, and she can really be caught off guard. So in my mind, the term growth mindset can be used to convey to employees that the responsibility is on them to continually adapt and survive in a constantly changing market.

Katie (27:03.91)
Yeah. And as somebody who has built teams from the ground up, one of the things that I can speak to personally.

Katie (27:17.806)
doing is that you're figuring out what you need. And I think that when innovation in larger companies is starting to match this rapid adaptation to a market that's constantly changing, it's this disadvantage of nobody being able to really prepare for this shift. And the fact that this

current climate that we're in always puts the onus on the employee and takes them at face value about whether they can fulfill the need, the current need without a larger context has to do with historical service and long-term responsibility for their wellbeing. So it's, you know, so this exists is, you know, I can't help but imagine that this is something that, that

I understand and it's why when I build teams, I'm very lean early on until I figure out what should be scaled because also from the other side of this, a very practical end of this is that if you're building an organization and you over hire in the early stages where you're establishing culture and morale, and then you have to cut people, it's just, it really puts back the momentum and the progress understandably

as it should. So being really mindful of like who you're bringing on when you're building a team. But the fact that kind of culture has infiltrated like all the way through the ranks, all the way up to large corporations. So switching gears here, so for the employer's perspective, they're gonna use the exercises to release people whose values

who's are they are going to use these exercise like exercises to release people whose value has not kept pace with change. It's a reduction in headcount, but it's also a culling to address talent stagnation or what is uncharitably referred to as cutting dead wood.

Mary (29:35.563)
Absolutely. When we come back, we're going to talk about being accountable for assessing your value.

Katie (29:47.102)
So we are talking about growth mindset. We have established that most jobs in the US are at will and there are few to no jobs for life anymore. Because of this, having growth mindset means you understand that you alone are accountable for continuously assessing your value relative to a company's needs. I

cringe as I say this because I don't believe people's value is based on how they can serve a company's bottom line. But that is the hard reality.

Mary (30:22.055)
Yes, adapt and survive. It's sort of nature, right? At its best. I think honesty and self-reflection are critical here. Maybe Agnes reads an article on LinkedIn about the high demand for cyber jobs. And it's like, okay, but Agnes is going to need to sit and assess whether she has the skills, interest, and mindset to transition into a cyber retake.

to transition to be successful in a cyber job. She may be a great match. She's detail oriented. She likes to read and take in information and organize it. So possibly Agnes enrolls in a certification course or attends night school, and that's awesome. But I can't help but think I would personally advise Agnes not to start with the jobs which are in demand, but to start with her own strengths, skill sets, interests and work style, and then look at jobs.

which align to those.

Katie (31:25.334)
Let's talk about it. So back in the day, this is a passion. So back in the day, there was a book, What Color Is Your Parachute? Which helped young people figure out what they should do for a living. True story, someone gave me a copy when I was burning out from working a hundred hour work weeks in tech. And as I was reading it,

Mary (31:27.231)
Hahaha.

Katie (31:54.082)
It started pointing me in the direction of becoming a teacher. And at the time a pay cut was so revolting to me that I considered the book an existential threat and hit it somewhere out of view. So, you know, it can, so literally, um, yeah, the, uh, to make a cartoon of it, it would be me like throwing it in the trash, but I did keep the book. It was given by, uh, you know,

beloved colleague, but you know, but it can also, it can be helpful to uncouple meaning and purpose from livelihood. And what I mean by this is to consider that you can work a job that bankrolls a passion. And this is something Mary you've spoken to in an earlier episode, which is it's not really necessary for every employee to be completely tied in.

and finding their meaning directly from the company's objectives. You have people who are supporting families and that has that helps them show up and give, you know, 100% every day and bring their A game. Some of the best professionals with the most consistent attitudes and performance have been people who are doing it because they're supporting families. And so, you know, I think it's important to like uncouple some of the stuff.

And also consider, you know, you can have a passion that is not revenue generating. It's a thing. So there's also the process for figuring out the type of problems your brain likes to solve. This is something I had worked on and certainly not perfected with thousands of people in a previous role. So consider the types of challenges your brain finds satisfying. Maybe like math and logic problems.

that don't involve a lot of human psychology. So certain engineering and coding work could be great. You're competitive and you like psychology. So sales, you like decorating aesthetics and making things functional for people to use. So maybe UX and UI for web properties. I mean, this is grazing the tip of the iceberg, but hopefully paints a picture. Some folks like the book, the Bill Burnett and Dave Evans book,

Katie (34:22.326)
design your life for kind of working through some of this stuff. But I do like the Japanese concept of Ikigai. Is that how you say it? I've only seen it written. Ikigai, got it. Got it. Nailed it. That's not nailing. There's the first person that knows what that word actually is, is like eyes are like.

Mary (34:33.615)
I think it's Ikegai. Yeah, I think that's right. Yep.

Mary (34:45.895)
They'll tell us. Yeah, we'll get comments.

Katie (34:47.362)
Their eyes have circled the globe. Yeah, so it translates to reason for being. It's a method for determining the work that will fulfill you. So the vocational guidance model has the four circles. And maybe you've seen it, the Venn diagram where you have four circles. One is what you love, what the world needs, your skills.

and what you can be paid for. And the cross section of the three would be your Ithaca.

Mary (35:23.775)
So cat cuddler is probably not something I can be paid for. I guess that's, I'm just going through the math as you were going through.

Katie (35:29.014)
That's the, that's the, you bet. You're bankrolling. That's a passion. You're bankrolling with a soul sucking job.

Mary (35:35.)
Yeah.

love this concept. And I almost feel like it's related to some of why I'm doing this podcast, Katie, it's, you know, thinking about how to bridge these different things. And thinking about your passions and missions, along with what's practical for getting paid and supporting yourself. I wish I saw something like that when I was starting off. I actually didn't have the parachute book when I was starting off at all. I don't know what was going on with my career, career counseling at

Katie (36:06.986)
I think I just, I think I, honestly, I think I just looked so desperate that people were like, how do we help this woman? There's gotta be something.

Mary (36:07.163)
I wish I saw it.

Mary (36:12.051)
I'm giving you bucks.

Mary (36:16.583)
I'm wondering if like Icky Guy's like a, it's a bridge between, we just did this episode on mental health in the workplace and says, I like thinking about Icky Guy as a bridge between that episode and mental wellness and then this one on growth mindset. So, you know, if you're the person who loves nature and working with your hands and designing and creating, then maybe an office job isn't right for you and pushing yourself into a life which is greatly misaligned from who you really are.

is probably going to be detrimental to your mental health over time. I'd argue that person might struggle to be successful in that office job anyway. So why stay there and double down on training and rediscovering yourself in that environment?

Katie (36:48.726)
Yeah, that's it.

Katie (37:04.03)
Yeah. Well, and while the disruptions we're talking about in the business world are scary, they can seem scary. Maybe they also present an opportunity for employees to move to a better job, a job better suited to them. I say do your research. I'd advise Agnes to use her LinkedIn network and ask for some introductions to people.

doing like to people doing jobs she wants. There's something I call inspiration hunting, which is to find and talk to people who love what they do without needing this to be a transaction, without needing to get something directly out of it, an introduction, a job opportunity, talk with people who inspire you and look for the applicable insights. Because...

because getting the energy and excitement is essential for this kind of process. So it can be really challenging and emotionally demanding. So finding inspiration for the path ahead is so important. So activate your curiosity, ask a lot of questions and take time before committing going in a new direction.

Mary (38:25.307)
I love that. That's a great quote. Uh, and then once you know what you want to do, commit by developing a roadmap to get from where you are to where you want to go, which brings us to the third area of growth mindset, which is employee driven learning and development. And in my mind, and you just said it, Katie is this step. It's critical to be curious and have an enthusiastic mindset because

you're probably going to be learning something completely different from anything you've done before. If you're transitioning in midlife or even maybe before midlife, this can be a very daunting process. You're most likely going to feel nervous and vulnerable, which is normal and very okay.

Katie (39:11.594)
Yeah, great strategy in terms of approaching almost anything is to start with the end is to be and to cultivate the notion and the idea of what could be possible. And if in your current life and the people that are surrounding you don't really represent that as possibilities going into a process of change is really going.

to become a really mentally and emotionally disruptive process more so than if you have a sense of optimism for the direction that you're headed in. And that's something that really needs to be actively cultivated. And when you're talking about the surge of emotion and anxiety,

and interpretation. I say use these feelings to your advantage. Let them soften you and make you more open to the process. It's a quality that will also make you more appealing from an interpersonal point of view. People will be more likely to help you and give you a break if you're humble and open-minded and eager to challenge your prior ways of thinking. Eager to challenge your prior ways of thinking.

You know, one of the things I think that is really understandable when we are in a vulnerable state with our career, especially when if we are in a role that is being down regulated, we'll call it. It can really undermine a person's sense of confidence that something that they're good at is now being considered.

especially as you're getting older, the idea that the things you're really proud about are now considered to be outdated and not as useful and meaningful for people. So, I think that when we're talking about this process, one of the things that can happen is people can get really defensive, understandably. And I've met with people who are at later stages

Mary (41:05.212)
Mm.

Katie (41:34.638)
career who are in need of making some pretty significant transitions and they're really fortified and defensive and it really and this is one of the things that really doubles down on ageism when there's this sense that you're not going to be adaptable and you're not going to you know back to this like are you

cool and uncool, which is this incredibly unfair and unjust assessment. But it is one of these factors that when we're talking about like really like increasing your vulnerability and softening yourself to the like to new possibilities is really being able to show up in a way that make people see what's possible for you, not have them looking back at your future. So

there is that, because we're looking at the future. So when we come back, we will share our final thoughts on the growth mindset.

Mary (42:28.485)
Awesome.


Mary (42:41.771)
Katie, I like talking about this topic today. I like that we evolved to talking about an individual's life purpose, which can sometimes run the risk of seeming romantic and impractical. I think each one of us would love to be paid to do the things we care about and enjoy doing. I'm not sure any of this is integrated into career service models in schools and universities, but it should be.

Katie (43:10.57)
Yeah, which is a shame. It really should be. I agree. People shouldn't underestimate the personal growth process either. Growth mindset is about staying relevant to change, but also the process of truly knowing who we are and what inspires us and gives us a sense of accomplishment. And you know, one thing too is, you know, that isn't there another

notion of like crisis is opportunity is like another in there. I don't want to miss. But, but the thing. Yeah. And the thing is, is that in these times where, you know, you know, going back to my oft quoted Thomas Merton, which is getting older is getting to the top of the ladder and realizing you climbed the wrong one is that these disruptions offer a chance.

Mary (43:43.804)
Yeah, no, there's, yeah.

Katie (44:05.814)
for us to potentially course correct out of a path of regret, which is, you know, it's kind of tough to look at it that way. But ultimately, looking at this is like, where do you find the opportunity? And Mary, you were just talking about some of the statistics now, as far as like self-employment and alternative working models and ways of making money.

Mary (44:35.795)
I think I saw, and don't quote me, we'll do it on our fact checking episode, but I saw a statistic, it was like 73% of the population now works for a company with fewer than eight people, which assumes a lot of gig work. It assumes some work around passive incomes, like setting up LLCs for real estate and small construction businesses and trade. But I think what we've been talking about...

people reconciling who they are, what makes them happy with how do they survive. And some people are starting to look at completely new models.

Katie (45:14.174)
I think it's really important to look at the dehumanization impacts are that human nature is in my opinion, ultimately resilient and seeks its integrity. So when organizations are doing these forcing functions of like dehumanizing people, that the counter force is that folks are actually starting to create some really interesting

and quite frankly amazing options and solutions for themselves.

Mary (45:46.547)
Yeah, maybe I had a friend of mine who was at a, he was at a nonprofit for 22 years and was let go. And it was a culture and a company where people typically had retired there. And he was so personally devastated. He was really hurt. He was really sad and felt almost like a betrayal. And I remember saying to him, and I tried not to say it in an unempathetic way, but like, what is...

you know, is the universe telling you that there's something even better out there for you? This is because he had been talking about leaving this place for some time, and it was just so comfortable that I thought, well, maybe this is just the little nudge out to get out of that comfort zone that is going to bring you something really magical that you never would have had the belief in yourself to go out on your own to get, which is why I think that the personal growth process and the professional one is so.

so entwined and depending on which one maybe starts first and then pushes the other one ahead. Hopefully we talked about this on our mental health episode is that people are talking about what makes them happy and what serves them and what brings out the best version of themselves. And so maybe a lot of the things that we're talking about, I think are dehumanizing and are cold and cruel and difficult. And I'm trying to believe that maybe it's an opportunity for

for all of us to then focus a little bit more on other things that might matter more.

Katie (47:21.548)
Indeed.

Katie (47:26.278)
Yeah. Well, you know, and I think putting thought into this, especially if you're psychologically, like really understandably dysregulated in these times where you're feeling you're, you know, the meaning of your work questioned and the meaning of your career questioned, it's really understandable to get

kind of got into a mindset where you're like urgently trying to just find a replacement. And this is often where you're, you know, you find yourself going from, you know, one bad situation to a worse one out of desperation.

Mary (48:13.007)
Right, yes, so self-awareness and honesty, and if these things aren't calibrated, you're gonna find it hard to adapt with your best interests at heart.

Well, this was fun. Thank you, Katie.

Katie (48:28.846)
This was a great show. Thank you, Mary. Bye everyone.

Mary (48:32.382)
Bye.

Katie (48:37.143)
That was a fun one.

Mary (48:39.147)
That was good. Yeah, you had a lot of good stories. Yeah, this is...

Katie (48:40.723)
Yeah, that was a fun one.