Editor’s Note: This is the first article of a series about “What’s at Stake When Looking for Work.” We know job searching is hard and it is important you are equipped well because there is a lot at stake. If you are looking for a job or need career clarity, check out the Career Navigator, career coaching program offered in individual or group settings. I asked her where she was headed.  She said, “well that’s what you’re supposed to tell... Read more

  The Year of Stretching 2020 has been a year of unprecedented stretching.  We feel the constant pull of uncertainty, change, and challenge. The COVID shut down makes the disruptions of the last 40 years seem like minor inconveniences.  We are swimming in a sea of dark ambiguity, not sure how long it will last, not sure what plans we can make for the future, not sure about ourselves or loved ones’ health and security. Americans can’t travel overseas. Most... Read more

This is the final post in the Anchors of Calling Series.  COVID-19 may have changed your job.  But the power of a God-shaped sense of vocation still provides the clarity you need to push forward with confidence and hope. In the first post, a multi-faceted sense of calling gives us the agility to find God’s purpose in the shifting demands of the post-Pandemic landscape. In the second post, a four-part grid provides a road map to meaning in our work... Read more

If you’re working on planet earth these days, your vocational reality has been changed by COVID-19. While much has shifted, some things have not. These truths provide an unshakable foundation upon which we can fasten our sense of purpose in the storm. I call them anchors of calling. In this post, we unpack the anchor of meaning. God offers us a lens through which our work always has meaning. Anchor #2: Embracing the Meaning of Your Work This is good... Read more

In the last post, I made the case that there is a clear career and business case for ever-expanding networking—most positions are filled, most sales contacts are found, through networks of relationship. I also argued that there is an ancient, biblical framework for networking: Intention: there is a clear purpose. Focus: based on the purpose, a networking target or focus is decided. Action: a deliberate course of action is bourn of numbers 1 and 2. Connection and Celebration: the sought-after connections are made and... Read more

Networking Despised “I hate networking, I even hate the idea of networking.”  “It’s so sleazy, so artificial, so, so, transactional.”  I hear these comments all the time from clients when I suggest that an expanding web of connections is their key to finding a new job and thriving in one’s career. My clients and friends think of awkward cocktail parties, that give them flashbacks to middle school dances.   They get flashbacks to the uber-aggressive guy on campus who joined... Read more

  How much effort is too much? When does our lack of effort set us up for second-best or worse? And where is God in all these questions about effort? Who has the better take on life, the “let go and let God” types or “God helps those who help themselves” types? In our last post, we took a deep dive into the problem: sometimes our intensified efforts to perform, achieve and improve do not produce results other than leaving... Read more

“You try-hard.” This was the label given one of my daughters in high school after she received yet another near-perfect score in one of her ATP classes. Some of her peers thought she should relax and coast and not make every effort to learn as much as possible. Little did they know the truth. She was not trying hard: not grinding through her studies in a taxing, driven manner. But she wasn’t coasting either. Mysterious forces were working together as... Read more