It’s a Book! Free Copies to Celebrate Its Birth.

I am delighted to announce the upcoming release of my new book, Setting Sail: Selected Ports of Call on the Voyage of Art Life Connection, that is due out on November 2, 2015. As a huge Thank You to my loyal readers who have made this book possible, I have made free, advanced copies available until the book becomes available for pre-order on Monday October 5th.

To download your gift copy, click the button below, then enter the coupon code CR85F at checkout. 

Click this button to receive your gift copy of Setting Sail: Selected Ports of Call on the Art Life Connection Journey

Taking Your Career to a Whole Nother Level

Taking Your Career to a Whole Nother Level

by Cathleen Elise Rossiter

“It’s not what you achieve, it’s what you overcome. That’s what defines your
career.” (Carlton Fisk)

In my travels I meet so many talented people who have a great deal to contribute yet they just can’t seem to be taken seriously in their respective jobs and by the companies for whom they work.

Maeve, for instance, is a bright, enthusiastic assistant to the head of Human Resources at a local company. She has been in the position for several years. Although she likes the work, she feels it is time to move on in her career, to take on more responsibilities, to be more than an assistant. Maeve wants to be an integral part of the team and she has some great ideas to boost morale and employee ownership of the direction the company is headed – hence the need for a boost in morale. Sadly, Maeve cannot get anyone to listen to her in spite of her e-mails to all the right people. In their eyes, she is just an assistant and a stupid one at that.

Fontaine is another example of a talented individual who remains invisible in the eyes of her co-workers. In her position as store manager for a high-end clothing chain in the city, she has sent e-mails and letters to various members of upper management with ideas on how to improve traffic and influence the purchasing decisions of those coming into the store. Invariably, she receives the standard “thanks but no thanks aren’t you cute for trying” response to her input.

They asked me to look at their letters to see if it was something they said that turned people off. Their ideas were great. Knowing Maeve and Fontaine and the infectious optimism and vision they bring to their work, I would listen carefully to their thoughts, observations, and ideas. After reading their letters, putting aside what I know of them – my personal experience working with them – I saw what the problem was.

The letters and e-mails I read were written from the point of view of an amateur in the language of the street. Therefore, the e-mails and letters told the recipients that the authors were equally as amateur and unfamiliar with the business world. As a business owner, I would never take these suggestions seriously – as is. To follow are my suggestions to Maeve and Fontaine.

1. It is perfectly fine to free-write your thoughts in the form of a letter in order to get the thoughts out. The key is not to think that you are finished. You are only beginning. Once the thoughts are on paper, you have to edit several times for several aspects – logical progression, complete thoughts, thoroughness of information, style, grammar and punctuation, jargon and street slang. For example, the phrase “a whole nother [level, thing, issue]” is a dead give-away that you are not ready to move up to the next level. The correct phrase, the one that shows you pay attention is either “an entirely different [level, thing, issue]” or “another [level, thing, issue] entirely”. “Nother” is not a word.
2. Write your letter or e-mail in Word or some program outside of your e-mail platform. Edit it to within an inch of its life so that what remains is the core message with nothing extraneous to distract from this core message. Again, edit in several rounds for the following:
   1. logical progression
   2. complete thought
   3. thoroughness of information
   4. style
   5. grammar and punctuation
   6. jargon and street slang
3. When writing business correspondence, act like you’ve been there before, not like a rookie NFL player doing the Chicken Dance in the end zone after his first touchdown. Write for the position you want to hold, then, write as if you hold a position two places higher.

Regardless of your level of education, or of the quality of that education, you can always elevate the impression you leave on your co-workers and superiors simply by paying attention to what you say and how you say it, making the necessary corrections (or tweakings as I like to call them) as you move forward.

Sounding Smarter Can Make You Look Stupid: 8 of the Most Overused Words to Stop Using if You want to Prove You Actually Are Smart

In my days working customer service from behind the scenes managing the administrative needs of clients’ portfolios, my days were filled with managers and minions trying desperately to show how valuable they were to the organization by how knowledgeable they were and how well they fit in with the upper echelon. Looking smart was the order of the day. In order to do so all and sundry felt compelled to hold meetings of all levels of formality and flood said meetings with every form of corporate jargon then known to mankind. Invariably, all meeting attendants would mock and snicker at the stupidity of the meeting and the presenter, “Can’t he think of anything else to say? He just wasted an hour of our time and didn’t say anything”. Yet when their time came for their meeting, the same jargon reappeared with a vengeance.

Since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the mechanization of the workforce, jargon has been a part of Corporate America (a great article here about it in The Atlantic magazine).  Those who coined the word usages or phrases that we bandy about today did so as a means to dehumanize the workforce and find ways to make it more efficient, read profitable. Those who clamor to use these coined words and phrases today do so in order to make themselves appear smart and in the circle of industry-leading thinking. What people just do not seem to realize is that the people who use jargon tend to be those with nothing to say or those who do not have a handle on the topic of discussion. To put it bluntly, the extent to which you employ jargon in your speech reveals the level of stupidity and laziness on which you have settled.

To help you move to a higher level on the smartness ladder, I have put together a list of eight overused terms that really hit a nerve with me, sending my innards into convulsions every time their wavelengths reverberate against my eardrums.

1. Actionable – a legal term meaning “giving cause for a lawsuit”. Actionable items are not ideas to be acted upon or tasks to do.

2. Empower – to authorize (again a legal term) or enable (in the sense of providing the means or ability to do something that on one’s own would not be possible). Empower does not mean to unleash an individual’s creativity or full potential simply by giving him or her greater autonomy in his or her job.

3. Grow – although, technically, this word is used correctly in the business world since one of the many definitions means “to increase in size”, this has been taken out of context and always sounds ridiculous when I hear it because the word refers to maturing and biological processes. One builds a business, develops business relationships, and increases sales. Please, leave growing to the vegetation.

4. Impactful – another word that, technically, is used correctly this word is overused to the point that it is losing its impact. Choose words that have power and provide the punch you desire. Steering away from overused words will give you that punch.

5.  Learnings – learning is a noun meaning the collective knowledge gained from study. Learning is not a proper noun, nor does it have a plural since the word itself implies plurality.

6. Leverage – again, technically this word is used correctly in the business world since of its many meanings two of them are “to provide or supplement with leverage – to use for gain”. This is high on my list of pet peeves mainly because it is such an aggressive term with unsavory connotations (exploit, pimp, and abuse among a few of its synonyms). Is that really the image you want to convey?

7. Overwhelm – a verb meaning to cover completely, or to defeat. Overwhelm is not a noun. It is not something you possess. You my feel overwhelmed but you do not have overwhelm.

8. Scalable – also on the list of words that have evolved into correct usage, scales really should be left on the reptiles and fish where they originated. Scalable is so overused that your using other words with more power and relevance will make people sit up and take notice of you and your intelligence.

Do yourself, and your career, a favor – stop using these words, think for yourself, and find other ways to express your thoughts. The more you do this, the more your brain will kick in and start asserting itself thereby proving how smart you are by example, not rhetoric.

Three Lessons I Learned About My Business from Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl

Three Lessons I Learned About My Business from Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl

by Cathleen Elise Rossiter

“I am like a TV antenna. I catch everything that is in the air, and then I do it my way.”

Karl Lagerfeld

Last night, while browsing through my video collection for something to watch, I came across Toy Story 2. Since I haven’t seen it in a long time, I popped it into my trusty VHS player (that’s right, folks, I said VHS) and settled in for a bit of classic Disney-Pixar fun. By the end of the movie, I saw my own struggle in my business as it relates to Jessie’s struggle to find the place where she belongs, outside of the manufacturer’s mass-produced packaging, suffocating behind the cellophane. Thankfully, I also saw my victories and successes mirrored in Jessie’s successes and growth. Here’s what I learned:

1. In a business that is grounded in your particular gifts, skills, and unconventional approach to solving certain problems, success will never come if you remain sealed behind the cellophane in a mass-produced representation of who you are and what makes you special. You have to have the courage to break out of the box and show the world the real You, because it is the “you” in You that sets You apart and attracts the clients who need your particular gifts, skills, and unconventional approach that will solve their problem.
2. You have to be willing to step out beyond the fear of rejection to make new
   connections. In doing so, you show yourself that you are more than the sum of your fears, that you have the strength to accomplish anything to which you set your mind regardless of whether you feel up to the task or not. Learning to trust is a key component to success in business. Trust your instincts. Trust your judgment. Trust your team. Without trust, you paralyze yourself and your team. Not trusting is another form of fear. Remember, you are more than the sum of your fears.
3. Being open to learning from and experiencing every situation, regardless of whether or not you want to be where you are, will take you on a journey of discovery about yourself as well as what you want from and for yourself and your business. Keeping optimism front and center as well as asking for directions along the way makes the journey easier, less stressful, and far more enjoyable than trying to figure everything out on your own. In business, there are so many imponderables and unknowns that even with a standard business map, you will get lost without help from experienced guides, those who have been down the road you are on.

Advice abounds in today’s ultra-connected world for how to run your business. This advice covers all aspects of business development and management, from the general, broad strokes topics to minutiae of which only a rare few are aware. With so many voices talking at you constantly, it is difficult to hear the message that suits you and the vision you have for your business. In the event that the box you are in is not the right fit for you, it can be scary to break out of the box and walk away from the current trends in running a business, the approaches that seem to work well for everyone else. Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl has shown me the joys of and value in leaving the protected environment of the store packaging to find the path that is right for me and the vision I have for my business, taking with me the lessons from the past to help me chart my course for the future.

(All photos are courtesy of Disney-Pixar)

Faking Elegance

Faking Elegance

by Cathleen E. Rossiter

“We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.”  -Yves Saint Laurent –

Many years ago, I worked in a call center. The center spread out over half of the entire fifth floor of a twenty-five story building on Park Street in Boston, MA – a veritable sea of low-walled cubicles filled with eager young Customer Service Representatives. One lovely spring day, we were introduced to a new recruit, a regular occurrence in those days. This was her first day out of training and taking official calls. This girl knew her stuff as far as products, regulations, and customer service principles were concerned.  We were all expecting great things. Then, the fateful moment arrived; her first official call. Over the din of 100 other representatives, all handling calls of their own, came the cringe-inducing sound of this new recruit crashing and burning in her handling of the call.

“What happened?” echoed throughout the center. As this Rookie Rep was stationed across from me, I was privy to the whole episode. In her attempt to sound refined and more experienced than she was, she inadvertently insulted the caller in her condescending tone and defensive attitude. It was clear to me that she was trying so hard be a shining star, perfect. Her attempts at elegance and refinement, at a level of experience she had not attained came across as snobbery, condescension, and phony.

Sadly, with all the talent and natural ability this new recruit had, she could not let herself be herself, which was the person who scored so highly and competently during training. Sadly, she carried this attitude into her written correspondence as well, thereby causing a great deal of consternation on the part of the clients, her managers, and for her career.

Fear not, Dear Reader. All is not lost for her. I caught up with her the other day and she has happily let go of the need to project any image other than her true self, to try to be an image of elegant that does not suit her. She has discovered that her elegance comes from her efforts at being her genuine self, adapting what works for others to her style thereby elevating her character along the way.