Peggy Klaus (15 page)

I asked her what her passion in life was at the moment. She said, “Other than my son, I have to say it’s my garden: At first, working in it was just therapeutic, a way of getting myself out in the sun and fresh air. But now I find that I have a green thumb.” I asked her if this could possibly become her next career, and she said that she wasn’t really sure, though the thought of perhaps working for a nursery had crossed her mind. Robin’s biggest problem, however, continued to be her fear of saying anything of significance about herself to anyone, given her complete lack of clarity about what she wanted to do next with her life. And she wasn’t actively working on making any plans, just hoping that maybe something would pop up.

I asked her if she had ever heard Yogi Berra’s famous line, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” She laughed, smiling for the first time in the conversation. I told Robin that it was time to throw away her old gloomologue. She needed to replace it by casting a wide net and by devising a proactive bragologue that bridged bookkeeping to gardening. Who knew what might result, but at least it was a start. She could use the new and improved Robin story to engage others in social situations, getting them interested in who she is and what she’s about. Her bragologue turned into this:

I was a bookkeeper for ten years and took time off to deal with some health problems, which fortunately have been resolved. Although I’m not sure what I want to do next, whether to go back to bookkeeping or consider other possibilities, it’s been great having this time off. I’ve been able to really throw myself more than ever into my true passion, which is gardening. I’m even thinking about ideas for combining my love of plants with a new career.

A pretty simple fix, huh? Sometimes the best way out of a “what should I do next” quandary is to begin by just saying
something
. Often when our thoughts become words, our words become deeds. The more you say something, the more you start to believe it, and the more likely it is to become a reality. And what did Robin end up doing next? She was hired to work for a family-owned landscape design company, but not to do the books. She’s the operations manager and second in command.

ALWAYS A WORK IN PROGRESS

“I may be retired, but don’t count me out!”

The days of withdrawing to the sidelines and watching the parade go by from your rocking chair or golf cart when you hit your sixties are fading. With people maintaining their health and vitality well into their senior years, many who retire find themselves beating back the boredom blues by going on to second careers or working part time. Even if you’ve relinquished your career or an impressive job title, don’t be so quick to toss out your brag bag. You never know when you might want to do a little—or a lot of—work again.

June, who was in her seventies, had a three-decade career in the incentive travel industry and had recently retired to enjoy time with her grandchildren, remodel her home, and “finally catch up on all the things I wanted to catch up on for the last thirty years.” Initially she thought her working days were over. But less than eighteen months into her retirement, a company where she had once been employed ten years before contacted her about doing some consulting work to help restructure their in-house incentive travel department. In early contacts with the firm, she was ambivalent about getting involved and initially played down her value to them. When Hank, the company president, first contacted her, she said that she was enjoying her retirement and not sure if an “old granny” like herself had the energy to keep up. Besides, weren’t some of the people who were already working at the firm as qualified for the role as she was?

Hank wasn’t put off so easily, and June soon realized that she might enjoy this part-time assignment after all. “I remodeled the kitchen. We traveled for a while. I got caught up on all those things I never used to get to, and then life felt a little humdrum. Full retirement is not what I thought it would be,” she said. But in further talks with the firm, she discovered that they were expecting to be able to compensate her far below the going rate. Now that she was interested, she had to dig herself out of the hole she had put herself in by being so self-deprecating in the previous conversations, and make sure that she was not only given the consulting position but also paid appropriately. Once she decided to pursue the job, June switched gears and developed a persuasive bragologue to present her accomplishments and qualifications in a more compelling way. She wrote the president this e-mail:

Hank, my true value to the company far exceeds my experience in simply arranging travel. I have a reputation with those in the field based on thirty-plus years in the industry, during which time I’ve consistently been in tune with the needs of the sales force. In addition, as you know, I served for many years on the board of our international trade organization and have contacts worldwide. I am certain my expertise will enable you to not only successfully restructure, but also help you to stretch the dollars in your program budget. Given the value of my reputation, my experience, and my connections, I anticipate being compensated for my services at an industry-standard rate. Besides, I am truly enjoying my retirement, and you are going to need to entice me out of it!

June landed the consulting position and at the rate she wanted. From that time on, she never let her bragologues get sloppy again. Remember, even if you think you’re calling it quits you might be back in the game sooner than anticipated, so keep your bragologues current and crisp.

BRAG ANYWAY

“The truth is, I’m not doing anything that would impress anyone.”

I met Lonnie when we were thrown together as co-chairwomen of a committee for a women’s trade group in San Francisco. For our first meeting, she invited me to lunch at a private club atop one of the city’s most beautiful skyscrapers. While the view was dazzling and the decor impeccable, I was even more impressed with Lonnie. She had a genuine ease about her, gliding through the room, talking with other members seated at the tables. As we ate, she told me the story of her career rise. She knew all the power brokers in the financial community. After our stint as co-chairs, our paths diverged for the next year or so as we plunged back into our routines. About five months ago, wanting to check in with her and see how she was doing, I sent an e-mail to her office. It bounced back. When I called, the number had been disconnected. I started asking around, but no one seemed to know where she had gone. Hmm, curious.

Two weeks later I was racing through my local Barnes & Noble on a weekday afternoon, when I spotted a Lonnie lookalike. The woman was wearing old blue jeans and sneakers while drinking coffee and flipping through a book, a far cry from the Lonnie I knew, always decked out in an elegant power suit, rushing madly but purposefully from meeting to meeting. Maybe Lonnie had a twin. I inched a little closer to get a better look and then called out her name. She looked up and we squealed with delight at having discovered one another in this unlikely place. As we spent the next hour catching up, she explained why I hadn’t been able to reach her at her work number. “Last November I was sitting in a meeting with my boss discussing our strategy for the upcoming year when something very strange came over me. I don’t know what triggered it,” she said, adding, “I was pretty happy with my life, although I was always looking for ways to have more balance. Suddenly I had the most incredible sense of clarity and realized that I did not want to be working at my job anymore. I was done. I wanted out.”

“But … I had thirteen years of Catholic-school education, so I am irreversibly humble”

Hmm. You know, you’re not the only one who has given me that excuse. You’ve got lots of company, and they’re not all Catholics.

She didn’t tell her boss right away, waiting a few weeks to see if her feelings would change. They didn’t, even after she bounced the idea off some of her more cautious and conservative friends, who asked, “Are you crazy? Leaving at the height of your career in your mid-forties? In the middle of a recession? Bad idea.” Despite the warnings, Lonnie announced her resignation, much to the surprise of her bank colleagues, and has been without a job for over nine months. Although she is increasingly anxious about her situation, she finds herself saying no to the various and sundry headhunters who call trying to lure her back to the old life. So when I asked her, “What are you doing now?” she stammered, replying, “Nothing that would impress you, I am sorry to say.” She continued on about how she had the hardest time answering that question, telling me that as a banker she used to have her story down pat, knowing exactly what she did and what she could do for others. It was easy to talk about. But since quitting, she had spent her time doing nothing particularly exciting to the outside world and found the whole process of explaining herself rather challenging, if not exhausting.

I told her that her current story, in fact, revealed something quite positive: courage. Although the whole notion of dropping out has lost some of its stigma as the workplace has become more humanized thanks to women, most people only dream of doing what she had done. Further, I loved hearing her tell me about the supposedly mundane activities she had been up to. Knowing about them gave me a much deeper sense of who Lonnie really is as a person outside of her expertise in the financial world. I told her that, as she slowly moved back into the world of networking, she needed to create a bragologue.

A few days later Lonnie and I met again, this time for dinner. She said, “Peggy, ask me again: ‘What are you doing now?’ “ When I did she surprised me with her new bragologue, which went something like this:

If anyone had told me this time last year that I would no longer be a banker, and not working in the job I had done for twenty years, I would have said they were nuts. But that’s exactly what happened. Everything was going well in my career—high-end clients, a great boss, fabulous bonuses—but about a year ago, I woke up one day and realized that this part of my life was done. It was so strange because I’ve always been so practical and directed. I went to college, got my MBA, entered the financial world with gusto, worked like crazy, and climbed my way up the ladder. I couldn’t think of doing anything else. Until, however, I experienced a real gut feeling that I was ready to move on. I tinkered with the idea for a while, although at the time I wasn’t sure what I wanted, just that I knew I didn’t want to do my job any longer. So I resigned! This past year I’ve been doing all the things I’ve wanted to do but couldn’t because of my eighty-hour workweeks. And you know, even on days when I think, “What have I done?” I know I did the right thing and I am grateful that I’ve been able to take this time off. I’ve gone rock climbing, re-landscaped my garden, painted my entire downstairs, taught myself how to reupholster a couch, audited two art history courses, and had lots of meetings with headhunters. I have finally narrowed the field of choice for my next career, and I know I want it to be related to women’s issues, in either the for-profit or nonprofit sector. Right now I’m looking at CEO, COO, or director-of-development positions.

Of course, this was Lonnie’s full-blown base bragologue. She was planning to adjust it according to whom she was talking to, pulling out bits and pieces here and there, depending on the situation. When she was finished with her bragologue, she looked at me straight in the eye, took a deep breath, and said, “God, I feel better already. I don’t feel like such a shlump!”

GO BEYOND JUST THE KIDS

“I had a hard time getting her past the cupcakes.”

There is not a job on this planet that is harder, demands more talent, or is more important than raising kids. Although only an aunt, both by blood and as a surrogate, I’ve watched and helped as my sisters and friends have raised their kids into extraordinary human beings. And yet many of those who leave the workforce to raise a family often feel like second-class citizens, especially at cocktail parties when people are tooting about their seemingly more exciting endeavors. The cute thing that Johnny said at breakfast or the trip to the emergency room to extract the Cheerio stuck up his nose seems to pale in comparison to an enviable new job, the company’s business win, or the partner’s latest African safari. So what are the bragging basics for today’s “domestic engineers,” especially those who plan on entering the workforce again? Well, you need to go beyond Johnny and talk about yourself: your background, any plans that you have, what you are learning from your stay-at-home position, or other things you might be involved in (community service, hobbies) that make you interesting and memorable. Create a bragologue reflecting what’s so good about your past, present, and future that has less to do with your children and more to do with you.

Wendy, a high-level client of mine, came to me recently with a problem. One of her firm’s most important customers, Robert, had asked for a favor. His wife had taken time off to care for the children, but was looking for a part-time paid position in the nonprofit world now that her youngest had started school. Robert asked Wendy if she would sit with his wife, Cheryl, at an upcoming corporate dinner they were all going to be attending next month and discuss her qualifications. He was hoping Wendy could recommend her to a few of her contacts in the foundation world. She agreed to talk with Cheryl, and just before the dinner, Robert sent her a recent newspaper article about his wife’s involvement with a group who put together a hospital reading program for children with chronic illnesses.

The evening of the dinner, Wendy made sure she was seated next to Cheryl, who started the conversation by talking about her day baking cupcakes for her son’s class. She was very proud that, although she was far from being an expert baker, she had done everything from scratch, using only healthy ingredients. Wendy heard about the cupcakes in excruciating detail: how Cheryl had bought organic flour, used pink dye made from beets for the frosting, and decorated the goodies with all-natural miniature marshmallows, which were better than those hard red candies that the little ones might choke on. When Wendy asked her about herself, Cheryl’s response was the equivalent of a footnote: “I grew up in the South, went to a small women’s college in North Carolina, then worked in merchandising in the handbag department of a large department store in Dallas. Before my kids were born, I did some volunteer work with the local hospitals.” It was all so understated that Wendy began to wonder whether she had misheard her client’s request. Cheryl didn’t sound like someone who wanted a job.