This week I am joined by bestselling author and speaker Christine Perakis. Christine talks about her experience with Hurricane Irma and how it shaped her leadership and business skills.

On today’s podcast:

• Leadership lessons to be learned
• We should never be complacent
• Mistakes are made for learning
• Learn to have tolerance for uncertainty
• The four roles of leadership

Links:

• Christine Perakis

Leadership lessons to be learned

In everything we do, there are leadership lessons to be learned. More often than not it’s the failures and the mistakes that really help polish us.

On September 6th, 2017, Christine was alone in her home in the British Virgin Islands, which got hit by the biggest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic base. It was the second largest weather event in the history of recorded weather and it destroyed everything around and left them without infrastructure, running water, electricity, you name it.

Christine had done all the preparations from her training before the hurricane, and she discovered she felt a sense of complacency. She had weathered other hurricane seasons before and her home, in particular, was very well protected. She thought that she was so well protected, that she spent the day before helping others.

We should never be complacent

Her mentality in approaching preparation was the mentality of a boat captain going offshore who has to be fully functioning and self-sustaining.

She soon learned the things she didn’t do well. She didn’t have a satellite tracker nearby that would have allowed her to communicate by text and email, and she didn’t have her VHS radio close, which used to be her main source of communication with the community when the telecoms were down.

Despite her initial sense of security, she soon found out that complacency can kill. That’s also true in business and leadership. We should never allow ourselves to become complacent.

Mistakes are made for learning

When all hell broke loose, she was alone in her home. She didn’t know anyone else on the island who was alone during this hurricane. Two weeks later when they were hit again, she made sure that she was with her community. You learn from these experiences.

In conflict and in disaster, it’s important to be with your team, and not just by yourself.

Christine had to be mindful during the whole time while she was stuck in her house because she didn’t have anyone to talk to and there was no distraction. She spent a lot of hours writing down what she was learning every moment in order to make sure that she would never go through this experience the same way again.

Learn to have tolerance for uncertainty

Christine discovered seven key leadership skills through her experience. The most important of them is tolerance for uncertainty and adversity. That’s being able to view challenges as opportunities.

This is a critical cornerstone to coping with any situation: learning how to live in a rhythm that you can’t control, which is pretty much every day when you’re an entrepreneur.

Christine chose to commit and devote everything she had to the community’s greater good. This sense of purpose helped her move in a direction. She had a vision for what needed to be done and then started doing it.

The four roles of leadership

She really learned how to best use her resources. It’s a skill set that most of us don’t ever have to think about, unless we’re starting a business or if our survival needs aren’t met.

She realized that there are four roles of leadership:

• The passive role: that’s people who expect a designated leader to take over and give them what they need. They usually sit back and hope for the best, and are unwilling to assume a leadership role of their own.
• Active leadership.
• Peer leadership: being able to help your friends and your community in what they need.
• Self-leadership. What in me has to grow so that I can be a functioning member of this team, culture, society, or business?

Exercising flexibility and being willing to step into each of this roles is critical to survival, to thriving, and to having a successful business.

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My guest this week is Career Coach Angela Copeland. Join us for an episode filled with useful information about how you can land your dream job and advance in your professional career.

On today’s podcast:

• Try continuous interviewing
• Networking trumps everything
• Keep your resume updated
• How to prepare for an interview
• Should you follow up after the interview?
• What’s the biggest misconception about the job search process?

Links:

• Copeland Coaching Podcast

Try continuous interviewing

We don’t usually spend so much time thinking about the next level of our career. Should we be doing this regularly instead? Yes, we shouldn’t wait to be in a painful situation and then desire change.

Angela believes in “continuous interviewing” aka always networking, always keeping your eyes open, always thinking about the next step.

We have to be our own CEOs and constantly be looking for new opportunities if we want to successfully advance in our career.

Networking trumps everything

What’s the first thing to do when you want to switch jobs? You should study what people in your industry whom you admire are doing.

A common problem a lot of job seekers face is that companies normally say “Apply on our website, and if you are a good fit, we’ll call you.” It sounds so easy, and you just assume that someone will call you and it’s going to be great.

But the thing is that when a hiring agent is looking for someone to hire, they don’t think “I’m going to get some Internet resumes from strangers and look through them”. Instead, they think “Do I know anybody for this job or do I know someone who knows someone?”

Networking trumps everything. Knowing the right person will almost always get you further.

Keep your resume updated

Our resume is our snapshot of who we are as professionals. You should get someone to proofread it, but don’t hire a resume writer, because you need to work on it yourself. It helps you think of the message you are putting out there.

You should carry copies of your resume, either on your phone as a PDF, or as a piece of paper. Your resume should be one or two pages long, ideally.

Be careful to include things that reflect your real experience and your achievements. Interviewing is a little bit like going to a dinner party, and there are certain things you should leave out. For instance, things related to money, or your religious or political views. You can also leave out your references and your GPA.

You shouldn’t dust off your resume when you need it, you should look at it on a regular basis because you never know when the opportunity could knock.

How to prepare for an interview

First off, get some good rest and then go and have a fun time. A lot of interview decisions are based on “Do we like this person? Do we want to spend time with them?”

Another idea to take time to really write your elevator pitch. You can go through and practice other tricky questions, like “What’s your greatest weakness?”

You also have to do your homework in terms of researching the company.

Should you follow up after the interview?

Yes. You should send a thank you email and a thank you card.

Why do both? Because very often the company will decide that day or the next day who they want to give the job offer to. If you only send the handwritten card, they may have already made the decision, and you’re too late.

You do want to send the card though because if you do you’ll probably be the only person who does it. And that really helps to make you stand out. You can throw in your business card along with your handwritten note.

What’s the biggest misconception about the job search process?

When you’re looking for a job, and you find a job description, very often that job description will have a “Requirements” part. So often the biggest reason people are not applying for jobs is because they assume that they are not qualified.

Very often the companies are willing to talk to people who don’t meet all the requirements. Maybe they are actually having a tough time finding good candidates.

If you think that you can do a job, apply and let the company decide.

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When we think about consensus, persuasion, and delivering the very best message, it all starts with communication. My guest this week, Keynote speaker and award-winning journalist Eleanor Beaton shares a wealth of practical knowledge and inspiration on how to be the best leader you can be.

On today’s podcast:

• Communicate incisively and on point
• Learn how to position your ideas
• The challenge of leadership
• Constantly reinvent yourself if you want to succeed
• Want more of Eleanor?

Links:

• Eleanor’s Website
• Fierce Feminine Leadership: the Success Podcast for Ambitious Women

Communicate incisively and on point

We know that communication is important. It should be at the foundation of our leadership toolbox. So how do we take the jump from being a good communicator to being a good persuader?

It all comes down to a critical skill that we will see again and again and again in the world’s most successful leaders. To Eleanor, a successful leader is someone who can drive the business outcomes in a way that is also driving happiness, performance, fulfillment both for themselves and for their team.

There are two components you should keep in mind:

• Stop explaining your ideas, and rather position them. Don’t talk vaguely about your ideas. You want your communication to be incisive and on point.
• Really dial up how you perform in meetings. Meetings are the critical unit of performance inside any organization. Every important thing gets decided or undone in a meeting.

Learn how to position your ideas

When it comes to positioning your ideas, there are some things you should pay attention to:

• A controlling idea. Rather than just talking generally, take a position and share a controlling idea: your opinion on where things need to be.
• Give people the details: the who, what, where, when. Offer them some stories or some examples that drive the controlling idea home.
• Own the promise. When this group of people follows you, what will be possible?

Where does the confidence come from? Practice, practice, practice.

The challenge of leadership

As a leader, it’s important to be humble, authentic and transparent, but it is also important to have excitement. If you can’t get excited enough to say “This is where we’re going, this is what’s possible for us.”, if you can’t courageously own that, who can? That is the challenge of leadership.

The reality is that the majority of our waking hours are spent at work. We give so much of our time, energy, attention, blood, sweat and tears to our organizations. As leaders, let’s make that count for something.

You have to have the courage to move from being a student to being a teacher. You have to recognize that your insight and your experience have value.

Constantly reinvent yourself if you want to succeed

The leaders who always seem to get the most traction, the ones who are able to tap into the most endless stream of opportunities are those who have taken control of their personal brand, who are contributing their thoughts and ideas in journals, conferences, on podcasts, who are really speaking their truth. You develop the courage to do it through the commitment to take action and to share what you know.

You should be able to reinvent yourself in order to stay relevant. It doesn’t matter how old you are. You can do that in a couple of ways:

• By making sure that you continue to build your network.
• By making sure that you are continuously taking on stretch assignments. Find new ways to cultivate your creativity.

Want more of Eleanor?

Check out her show, called “Fierce Feminine Leadership: the Success Podcast for Ambitious Women”. She is on a mission to help her listeners cultivate the courage, the skillset and the inspiration they need to bring the fullness of who they are to their professional world.

What can you expect from her show? Fierce, no holds barred, fun, direct content that gives you inspiration to absolutely be your best.

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