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“The #1 way to bounce back with power from a painful performance review and win the support and respect you crave from your tough boss.”

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Nothing seems to feel worse than getting a tough message from your boss about your performance.  If you have been there, you know how it feels to hear things like…

“Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a change in your behavior that’s creating problems within our team…”

“Lately, your metrics are falling short of our goals…”

“You’ve had a few customer complaints I’d like to talk with you about…”

“Your attendance issues have become a concern…”

And if you have a “tough-minded” or all-out “drop and give my 20” kinda boss, the discussions will probably start out even worse than my somewhat tender-hearted examples.

As a former head of HR who specialized in performance management strategy and counseling – lemme share a secret with you…

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Want to feel like you “belong” and are valued at work? Take 3 simple steps to improve your relationships at work.

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

In a recent blog (What can employees do for themselves to improve their job satisfaction and engagement?) I summarized 3 conditions that employees feel matter for job engagement.  They are:

  1. Relationship with co-workers
  2. Opportunities to use skills/abilities
  3. Relationship with immediate supervisor

Of these results, 2 of them point to relationships are work as mattering.  So in this blog, let’s look at our relationships with our work “family”.  Why does it matter so much for our engagement?  Well, for all 168 hours in a week, we hang out with our work “family” for  about 25% of that time – that’s a lot of our time!  So, it’s easy to see why nurturing these relationships is really a smart investment of our time and energy.

What can you do to improve work relationships? Here are 3 simple steps to improve your relationships at work …

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Exhausted? Tired of the daily grind? Find out the #1 thing successful people do to be their best

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Do you feel exhausted every day?  Overwhelmed and tired because it feels like there’s way too much to deal with in your life? 

 

There is an unspoken secret used by all successful people to deal with the craziness of their lives and create balance, and this great new book will show you how you can use it to get into the flow of your own life.

 

Discover the Pathway to Flow – Your Copy is Waiting!

http://www.thepassiontest.com/af.htm?p=gcalvano&w=yhrbook

 

Written by the NY Times bestselling authors of The Passion Test, Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood, this book has been praised by people like Paulo Coelho, Jack Canfield, Brendon Burchard, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Don Miguel Ruiz and many others (see below for what they said about it).

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What can employees do for themselves to improve their job satisfaction and engagement?

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

In May of this year, The Society for HR Management released findings from the Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement: The Road to Economic Recovery research report which conducted a study of 600 randomly selected employees and assessed differences in responses related to the following demographics:

  • age (Millennials – generally refers to those born in the ‘80s/‘90s, Generation X – generally refers to those born in the ‘60s/‘70s, Baby Boomers – generally refers to those born in the ‘40s/‘50s, and Veterans – generally refers to those born in the ‘20s/‘30s)
  • gender
  • job levels (non-management, professional non-management, middle management and executive management)

The study looked at 3 things:

  1. job satisfaction
  2. engagement conditions
  3. engagement opinions and behaviors

Job satisfaction refers to how much study participants are satisfied with their job. Job engagement is defined in the report as “…employees’ connection and commitment to their particular organization”. Engagement is looked at in 2 components:

  1. conditions in the workplace (“the environment and the work itself”)
  2. workers’ opinions and behaviors (“how the employees perceive their relationship with their work, as well as how they view others around them”)

The report included suggestions on what organizations could do to address the findings and close some of the more significant satisfaction gaps. Organizations will ultimately do what they will do to address these findings (or not). Corporate efforts however will never be more powerful than what employees can do for themselves to become satisfied or engaged.

This data can be an inspiration for workers to protect themselves from loss of satisfaction and engagement no matter what their employer ultimately does. Why do it?

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Disengaged at your job? You CAN turn that around – starting today!

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

Have you lost interest in your job?  Did the daily butterflies you once had in your stomach for your job (back when it was shiny and new) morph into a Sunday night pit in your stomach that lasts until Friday afternoon?

This feeling is a way of life for about 70% of Americans according to Gallup.  A lot of information and research has been released about this study which includes what employers can do to change these alarming numbers.  If you are interested, you can check out that study here.  (http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/163007/state-american-workplace.aspx)

For nearly 20 years I was an HR executive and part of my job was to come up with creative ideas about what the employer could do to improve employee moral.  The only type of program that I never designed was one where employees could acknowledge themselves for their own great behaviors and contributions.  Thankfully, I believe I have been able to do that through my approach to career coaching.

It seems to me that what employers can do is not where our power lies to make a lasting and substantial change in the data.  Could the real power to turnaround these statistics be within ourselves?

So what can employees do for themselves to turnaround their disengagement?  Yes YOU – what can YOU do to join – to grow – the 30% group that is engaged (dare I even say – happy on some level)?  The truth is, that the US workforce as never been reported to be more than 30% engaged since Gallup began tracking the employee engagement levels of the U.S. working population in 2000.  So you might say we are at an all time high – but are we really happy as a nation with a workforce where only 30% of us are engaged?  Imagine a world where these statistics were turned around (70% engaged)?!

You can easily start on this turnaround movement by answering 2 questions for yourself:

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The Career Choice Mistake Solution – To Serve

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

For finding love in a relationship this might look like – always looking out for others and their best interests – doing everything you can to demonstrate your intentions for their well being.

For finding love with your work this might look like – always looking out for others and their best interests – doing everything you can to demonstrate your intentions for their well being. (yes, ditto!)

Did you make a career choice mistake?  Of course you can always get another job, but what can you do to cope with the job you have while you search for another job?  Plus, you certainly don’t want to make the same mistake again – right?  Start to fix this mistake and prevent it from happening again by asking yourself a couple of questions…

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3 Career Choice Mistakes – #1 To Sin

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

This past week at church our Pastor was speaking about committed relationships – and although it was useful wisdom for my marriage, it got me thinking about our commitments to our work. I typically listen to almost everything that resonates for me through a filter of “Wow – good points. How would this apply to how people approach their work?” Often I can easily bridge an analogy – so through this blog let me share an analogy of how challenges, rewards and possible pitfalls related to looking for love in a relationship are similar to looking for love with your job.

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7 Factors for Making a Successful Job or Career Change

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

My husband was recently asked to contribute a written perspective on his unique experience with deciding to make a job and industry change for a report on trends in the Creative Services industry (The BOSS Group, Cella Consulting, LLC and InSource, 2014 In-House Creative Services Industry Report, April 2014).

Of course, as his dutiful wife, I coached him through this decision (ahhh, the benefits of having a partner who is a Career Coach).  Although I am never really sure in the moment of our discussions if he is ever truly listening (I am usually competing for his attention along with 2 kids, 2 dogs, multiple electronic devices pinging away with texts and tweets and a TV tuned into some kind of sports programming), I must say that time and time again he always seems to apply what I teach and suggest flawlessly.

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Financing My Dream Job

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

This week was my 5 years old daughter’s dance recital – the song she danced to was entitled “Dancing Your Dreams” which got me thinking about working and financing my dream job.  This thinking started on Thursday afternoon which was her dress rehearsal day.  She had to be picked up from school, fed a snack, and helped into her costume with full hair and make-up complete and then wisked away to a regional high school where the performance would take place all within 60 minutes.  It wasn’t even close, I’m sure, to Honey Boo Boo’s schedule – but it was a lot to juggle – and we made it there just in time – costume, hair and makeup all done in the car when we arrived there – whew!

 

When I was working my corporate job, this a task that I would have lied to myself was appropriately handled by any care-giver.  But the truth was, I wanted to be there for my daughter for things like this.  Further to the truth, I also wanted to work a “dream job” that would have made it more than just possible that I could be there for her – I wanted a job where my Mommy role was a muse to my professional role and vice versa.  I feel so fortunate to have found that role as a Career Coach!  But walking away from my corporate salary and benefits seemed like a huge price to pay – but I did it anyway – and I vividly remembered why while helping her prepare for her dance recital…

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1 Thing You Can Do To Prevent Or Recover From Job Burnout

By Gina Calvano | Leave a Comment

I am so excited! Today I sent my first draft of a new ebook I am working on to my editor.  My new book doesn’t yet have a title but it was inspired by blogs that I wrote about factors related to work that can have health implications – so earlier this year I began writing about job burnout.  So my new ebook is about things we unwittingly do that can increase our risk for experiencing job burnout.

This ebook is not about what employers do or can do to help employees recover from job burnout – it’s about what YOU can do to help yourself – to become more aware of subtle behaviors that may diminish your connection with your work and with your confidence to give what you can do for others as fully as you can give it.  This ebook can help you to to understand these subtle behaviors and ways of thinking and therefore nip them in the bud.  It will also offer tips about how you can reduce your risk for experiencing job burnout or to cope with and recover from it if you think you are already experiencing it.

If you think you are burned out, the first and most important thing to do is to consult with a medical professional.  You want to be sure that any serious, physical health threats are under control.

In the meantime, I’d like to give you all a sneak peak into the #1 thing you can do to recover from or safeguard yourself from job burnout…

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