Building an inspiring career and being a great manager is an appealing combo, yet complex to figure our and sustain! Add raising a family and financial security into this equation, and it gets even more complex!
Maybe you are at an intersection of life, figuring out if your current way of life fulfils you and gives you joy or whether there is something that needs changing. The older we get, the more clearly we can see what makes us happy and what doesn’t.
But what if we were able to understand our needs, desires, strengths and weaknesses better already in our 20s and 30s and reaching your dream life way before your middle age?
My guest Suzy Welch has created a methodology called Becoming You, and today she shares with us her key thoughts and ideas on figuring out life, career and being a great boss.
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Suzy Welch and Susanna Rantanen about life, career and being a great boss
Suzy and I are going to go heart-to-heart about this thing called life and how we can get it all: a successful career, being a great boss, raising a loving family, and losing those fears we often used to build a block between our hopes and desires for our lives.
At the time of recording and publishing this episode, many people in my audience, especially those of you working in talent acquisition, are either experiencing career struggles and layoffs or working overtime trying to find the talents your employers or clients need to hire.
In both cases, the idea of a life, career and trying to be a great boss can be overwhelming. It is easy to forget about You and your long-term needs when in survival mode.
Suzy’s experiences as a mom and developing a decision making process “10-10-10”
At 20:40, Suzy talks about her own experiences as a mom and how she developed a decision-making process she calls 10-10-10 to help you to make your decisions proactively. Becoming You methodology followed up 10-10-10. That’s about what you want to do about your life instead of letting experience, momentum, optics, other people and financial security drive what happens in your life.
“Area of Destiny” in figuring out your career and life
At 21:25, Suzy talks about the Area of Destiny she developed to “avoid life crisis’ taking over as an outcome of ending up with a life that is not your own desire or design”.
This suggests that the place you should live your life is a wonderful piece of real estate that exists at the intersection of your most deeply held personal values. What you truly believe in, how you want to live, the things that matter the most to you, that bring you joy, make you feel like the most authentic version of yourself.
The place you should live your life is a wonderful piece of real estate that exists at the intersection of your most deeply held personal values. What you truly believe in, how you want to live, the things that matter the most to you, that bring you joy, make you feel like the most authentic version of yourself.
Suzy Welch about Area of Destiny
The second sphere is what you are actually good at. She says: “Lot of us end up doing stuff we are not writing with our dominant hand. We are somewhat good at it, and we’re doing it because all of those reasons I mentioned.”
All of us have these inborn skills, aptitudes and gifts. Some people are good at some things and choose some subset of them that is not actually what they are best at. Finding your Area of Destiny is about identifying what you truly are good at.
“Finding your Area of Destiny is about identifying what you truly are good at.”
Suzy Welch
And the third area is the areas of economy that call you intellectually or emotionally and is growing because growth is the elixir of life, and you should always try to find your way into an area of work that lets you grow.
The third area is the areas of economy that call you intellectually or emotionally and is growing because growth is the elixir of life, and you should always try to find your way into an area of work that lets you grow.
Suzy Welch
These three areas construct the Area of Destiny. If you could find a career or a vocation at the intersection of your true values, core competencies and the work that fascinates and moves you, that would be your Area of Destiny.
How the Area of Destiny ties up with the Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️
Some of you listeners may wonder what this has to do with building the modern employer brand.
Funnily enough, I did a very similar thing in my first company, a startup called Heebo. Heebo was a recruitment platform matching job seekers with employers based on values, preferred ways of work and company culture. In addition, job seekers were able to figure out their core skills and areas of strength based on their hobbies, life experiences and voluntary work. Not just work experience.
Job seekers loved Heebo! Unfortunately, at the time (this was between 2010-2016), I had more challenges with employers and their capabilities of figuring out the dominant characteristics of their actual organizational behaviour and company culture.
I went on to develop a tool for employers to assist them in recognizing their strategic company culture. This would have been a success based on early indicators, but I failed in convincing my investors to change the strategy, nearly ran out of money and only managed to save us from bankruptcy with the decision of closing the entire business and letting my staff go.
This was the most painful business decision and period in my life, leading me to burn out. However, I took the key learnings and findings to Employer Branding Agency Emine’s business and carried them on to this modern employer branding method I developed: The Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️
The construct of “A Strategic Company Culture” I worked with and developed at Heebo continues to live within the Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️ and contribute to employee and job seeker careers in multiple ways by becoming more clear about which employers are likely to support me in figuring out my life, career and being a great boss myself if that’s what I go for.
Since 2017, at Emine, we have been helping employers to recognize, develop and communicate similar elements and information in their employer brand to their current and future employees that Suzy has in her “Area of Destiny” for us in the roles of employees and job seekers.
Being a Great Boss
At 31:40, I share my key instrument in developing myself as a boss, the mirror. And, not just to put on lipstick but to reflect on my behaviour, decision-making, insecurities, fears and how I have communicated or failed to communicate with my team.
Being a great boss has always been my key goal as an employer. Each failure in being a great boss leads me to a reflection process during which I try to figure out what went wrong and why. This process has also taught me to accept that sometimes you have to make those decisions as a boss that lead to you not being seen as a great boss at that particular moment, but some other circumstances force you to take that call. And that is also part of being a great boss. You must be able to prioritise what matters the most at any given time. Being a great boss sometimes leads to conflicts.
At 35:29, I ask Suzy’s thoughts on how to be a better boss. She tells me she learned a lot from Jack but also from trial and error. We laugh at how we both share the experience of making 101 mistakes as a startup founder and manager and most importantly, learning from those mistakes.
Suzy uses the term “lanager” for a leader manager (37:19). Because as a boss, you have to do both. It’s a hard job to make hard decisions and inspire people at the same time. Understanding who you indeed are as a manager is key. Your real personality is not who you say you are but how others experience you.
I go on talking about how, as a leader manager, you also have to be honest about to whom you can be an ideal boss and to whom not (44:02). The more well known the employer is, the more likely lots of people are going to be infatuated with the idea of working for the company or a certain boss, yet not know whether that company and boss belong within their Area of Destiny.
Matching talents and employers
My biggest driver in my work as an employer branding expert has been helping employers and job seekers find each other based on shared values, philosophies on life, purpose, mission and shared ways of work. This, to me, means “feeling at home in your place of work”.
My biggest driver in my work as an employer branding expert has been helping employers and job seekers find each other based on shared values, philosophies on life, purpose, mission and shared ways of work. This, to me, means “feeling at home in your place of work”.
Susanna Rantanen
With Heebo, I pursued this with software and a talent pool. Now with Emine, we pursue this with the Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️ giving employers the support and a system to identify, clarify and consistently communicate their strategic employer brand and desired employer brand perceptions internally and externally to match with what we call their ideal talents and vice versa.
At 43:56, we talk about how the lack of compatibility in employment relationships does not automatically make you or the employer or the boss bad. You are just not an ideal match together.
Knowing how to evaluate that and how to communicate that as a job seeker and as the employer, I think, is vitally important. The Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️ is something that I have developed to help employers succeed in that. And Heebo was that for job seekers, but unfortunately, it no longer exists, but Suzy’s Area of Destin, fortunately, does.
Ok, that’s all for this week, my friends!
If you loved this episode and would like to have more inspiring guests (like Suzy) on my podcast, comment on this episode and suggest whom you want me to talk to on future episodes and about what! Let’s see how we can make that happen!
About Suzy Welch
If you don’t know Suzy, she is a professor of management at NYU Stern School of Business, where she teaches two classes: How to Be a Great Boss and Becoming You.
Suzy is also an author and a writer by trade. She has had a career in journalism and has been a reporter on TV, but one of the highlights of her career was helping start and run a music tech company Quadio that she recently sold. And if this wasn’t a lot, she is also a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal.
In addition to Suzy sharing her wisdom on finding the Areas of Destiny and Becoming a Great Boss, you also get to hear our funny back story on how we met and became friends ten years ago, what Suzy has in common with my native Finland and Alvar Aalto and who connected us in the first place.
Suzy Welch on LinkedIn | Suzy Welch on Instagram | Suzy’s website
About me, Susanna Rantanen and Building a Modern Employer Brand Podcast
For those who are new to my podcast and have no idea who I am, my name is Susanna Rantanen. I developed the employer brand marketing industry in my native Finland. My husband and I own the only Finnish employer branding agency listed as one of Europe’s Top 10 employer branding agencies.
In addition to us helping businesses to overcome the challenge of getting and retaining the talents they need, I am a podcaster, author and keynote speaker, and teach communication and marketing online for both in-house and freelancing recruiting and employer branding professionals and career coaches.
Susanna Rantanen on LinkedIn | Susanna Rantanen on Instagram | Susanna Rantanen on TikTok | Susanna Rantanen on YouTube