Lessons Learned

This week I wrap up almost 23 years as an employee of a company I love. I have held a few different titles during my tenure, but my primary focus has been on sales training and development with an emphasis on leadership development, management training and professional development. As I prepare to close this chapter and begin an exciting new one, I have been reflecting on some of the many lessons I have learned or been strongly reminded of over the last two-plus decades. Here are a few of those lessons:

Life is an individual journey that cannot be taken alone. Like every professional, my work often requires that I go into “my cave” to read, write, research, strategize, create content, etc. Just as your career and your life are yours, my career and my life are my individual journey but I cannot and do not go it alone. The key is to surround yourself with good people. In that context, I define good people as:

People who have integrity and strong values to which they adhere
People who are respectful of others but who are not afraid to offer different ideas and/or challenge my ideas
People who are not only open to but are committed to continuous learning and growing

Learn from your mistakes and recognize that not all advice is good. Years ago, I scheduled a prep call with a Vice-President who I had invited to speak to the participants of a leadership development program I lead. As I was sharing with her the list of questions I planned to ask her during the call, I told her that I would ask her to highlight some of her greatest successes and to share the best career advice she had ever gotten. She laughed and said, “You can ask me about my successes but if you want the good stuff ask me about my mistakes and the worst advice I’ve ever gotten.” I appreciated her transparency regarding the worst career advice she had been given and even more so her willingness to share the biggest mistakes she had made and what she had learned from them.

The worst career advice I ever got was from one of the law partners for whom I worked. When I went into his office to tell him I had accepted another job (with the company I’ve now been with for almost 23 years) he told me I was making the biggest mistake of my professional life. He could not fathom that I or anyone who had gone to law school could have a successful, fulfilling career outside of the traditional practice of law. I smiled, looked him in the eye and said, “It’s my career and my mistake to make.” More than two decades later I am proud to say my decision to leave the practice of law and go to Corporate America in a Sales consultant role that eventually lead me into training and development was the opposite of a mistake – that decision lead me to find my purpose and in doing so I found fulfillment.

Be willing to take a calculated leap of faith. We’ve all heard the saying “leap and a net will appear” or as my friend Kathy Marrero heard it growing up “Leap and Annette will appear” – as she tells the story she spent much of her childhood wondering who the magic woman named Annette was who was going to swoop in and catch her when she took whatever leap her mother was encouraging her to take. I’ve taken a couple of big leaps of faith in life. The first was almost 23 years ago when I left the practice of law after 4 years and went to work in Corporate America. The second was when I moved from Chicago to San Francisco because I felt something drawing me there. My company did not ask me to move but my job was flexible and my company was supportive of me making the move. I promised myself I’d give it 2 years and if it did not work out I could always move back to Chicago, which will forever be my second home. Within a month of arriving in San Francisco, I met the man who became my husband.

You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution. It’s been a long while since this happened but back in the day (I just had to say “back in the day” at least once) it happened often that through some computer glitch or human error an email would be sent to a much larger distribution list than intended – sometimes to the entire organization. Inevitably that would start a ridiculous number of people who chose to reply to all with comments like “STOP REPLYING TO ALL!!" and “Take me off this distribution list” – each email exacerbating the problem. In every situation you get to choose whether you are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Seek to improve. Giving feedback is a gift. Shortly after moving into training and development I created a leadership development program and as part of that program I invited leaders at all levels of the organization to speak to my class of participants. Our CEO at the time approached me after speaking to the class and he asked me, “What could I have done better?” He had exceeded my expectations, so nothing jumped to mind plus at that point in my career I thought offering the CEO constructive feedback was one of the CLMs (career limiting moves) that I heard people more senior than me joke about. Nevertheless, this CEO repeated those 6 words - “What could I have done better?” – and it was clear he wanted an answer. While he was committed to investing in our people, it was as if I owed him that feedback in exchange for accepting my invitation to speak to my leadership class.

As I progressed in my career I observed two important lessons:

Every one of the top people in their respective roles from business leaders in the C-suite to Sales professionals in my organization continually seek feedback in their quest to grow.
I realized that giving constructive feedback in an appropriate way was the opposite of a career limiting move. In my experience, people not only appreciate but value and seek out people who are willing to give them feedback in an appropriate way.

Nothing changes if nothing changes. I love the simplicity of this quote. You probably know its first cousin “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” Whatever words you choose to say it, it is true. Yesterday I crossed paths with someone who told me for the last year she has been working out 6 days a week and “makes fairly healthy eating choices” and yet she shared with me her weight and body shape has not changed during that year. Think it’s time for her to change something in her workout and/or take a new look at the “fairly healthy eating choices” she is making? People do it in business too. Of course, you must give your efforts time to take effect but if you are not seeing the progress you desire you need to step back and make some changes. This is why it is critical that you identify at the outset what time frame is reasonable and how you will measure your success. What needs to change will vary from situation to situation but often the first thing that needs to change is the way you are looking at your situation, which leads to the next lesson.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” I always give Wayne Dyer credit for this quote, but if I had to pay a dollar every time I say it I’d owe in the thousands because I say it at work and home almost every day. It applies to so many situations. For instance, consider the story I shared about the law firm partner who told me I was making the biggest mistake of my career by leaving the traditional practice of law. He had a very black and white way of looking at career success – one that was built around a title that you incorporate every time you introduce yourself and people thinking of you with a certain prestige. I look at career success and success in life differently. I went to law school because I wanted to help people. What I find most fulfilling about my role in training and development and as a coach is helping people stop settling for what is and creating the career and the life they want to experience. While I did enjoy certain aspects of practicing law, I have helped so many more people over the last 20+ years than I would have practicing law and I plan to use the next 20+ years helping more people because it fulfills me and that is my definition of success.

Life is too short to do a job that does not fulfill you. After a couple of years practicing law, I found that I dreaded Sunday night. The problem was that I didn’t realize it at the time. I always made plans with friends and then I would come home and watch TV or read until the wee hours of the morning, which translated into me being exhausted on Monday morning as I trudged to my office in downtown Chicago. When I finally realized that the issue was while I liked certain aspects of practicing law it was not as fulfilling for me as I wanted and needed it to be. I now know that this is the “Sunday night test” - are you excited to go to bed because you get to get up and go to work the next day or do you put off going to bed because you dread Monday morning?

I could keep going because I love this stuff. While these lessons are simple they can have a profound impact on your life when you apply them. If you like these types of lessons or if you are open to changing the way you look at them, I invite you to check out the Life1440™ Blog where I share more life and career lessons.

Seek to help people. Life is precious and short. There are only 1,440 minutes in each day and once they are gone they are gone. The common motivating factor throughout my career as an attorney, then as a sales consultant and for the last almost 20 years as a training and development leader has been my mission to help people. It is that mission that lead me to create Life1440 a few years ago. At the time I was coaching people both at work and informally outside of work and at the same time my family and I were battling Alzheimer’s as it stole my step-mother from us. She had early onset Alzheimer’s and her symptoms became noticeable in her late 50s. She was only 22 years older than me and it was a powerful reminder that none of us has an unlimited time on Earth, so I approached my employer and shared that I wanted to create a company that would help people create the positive change they desire in all aspects of their professional and personal lives. Thankfully my company did not see it as a conflict and were supportive of my vision. The more people I helped and the more calls, texts and emails that I got thanking me the more I wanted to help more people.

Here’s how Life1440 can help you and others: Just as I realized when I was practicing law, I can only help so many clients working with them one-on-one, so I created an affordable self-paced program that guides people through the same work through which I lead my individual clients.

Each of us is the CEO of our life so I came up with a way to use what I learned in business over the years to help people stop settling for what is and create the life they dream of experiencing. I call the program the Life1440 CEO Program™. The process involves defining what success in life means (note: that’s a personal decision for each of us), evaluating the current state of your life in each area without judging yourself if you are not where you want to be and creating the positive change you desire in one or more areas of your life – the methodology is powerful because once you understand it and apply it to one area of your life you can apply it to other areas of your life. By using business strategy and techniques it allows you to change the way you look at your life, set emotion aside and create the positive change you desire.

I encourage people to look at each area of their lives because too often people focus on one area that is going well and they settle in other areas of their lives. Some people enjoy fulfilling work, but their personal relationships are less than what they would like or perhaps they neglect their physical health and self-care. Other people are fulfilled in those areas, but they work at a job that drains them of energy rather than putting energy in their tank.

I would be honored to help you. If you are not open to or ready for this type of help, perhaps you know someone who is living below their potential in one or more areas of their life, if so please share this with them and encourage them to let me help.

The clock keeps running for each of us. Remember nothing changes if nothing changes. Will you settle for what is or allow me to help you create the life you dream of living?

If you’d like to learn more, Life1440 is based on 7 Truths™ – seven simple yet profound ideas that have the potential to change your life. I’m honored to share them with you. Click here to watch the FREE 7 Truths video.

- Lisa Johnson, Founder of Life1440