Cringe-worthy career moves
Episode 172 - I'm a career coach and these are the 7 things that make me cringe
Join me as I discuss the common mistakes that can harm your professional image. This podcast episode will help you avoid these cringe-worthy blunders, from unprofessional email addresses to strange LinkedIn connection requests. Get expert insights on how to elevate your online presence and make a lasting impression in the job market. Learn what not to do on LinkedIn, Zoom, and more. Listen to the full episode now for a wealth of career-boosting advice, and avoid falling for terrible career advice from the wrong sources.
If you're a long-time listener of The Job Hunting Podcast, and you have been following my advice from previous episodes, then this may be a satisfying episode to listen to; you will find that you are not doing any of the cringe-worthy examples I am sharing in this episode. If you are a long-time listener but have been procrastinating to start taking action, I hope this episode inspires you to start today. And finally, if you are new to this podcast, this episode will be an important eye-opener as you initiate your journey in taking control of your career outcome.
Most of the things I discuss I part of my daily routine. I encounter these issues frequently and always bring them up as I do consultations, design courses, and coach clients. The last one, number seven, is possibly the most serious and can negatively affect your understanding of how to change jobs and successfully advance your career. So, I urge you to please listen to the entire episode, even if you have to skip ahead when I am discussing issues that do not apply to you.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Other resources from RenataBernarde.com :
About the Host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I’m Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I’m also an executive coach, job hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach professionals (corporate, non-profit, and public) the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
If you are an ambitious professional who is keen to develop a robust career plan, if you are looking to find your next job or promotion, or if you want to keep a finger on the pulse of the job market so that when you are ready, and an opportunity arises, you can hit the ground running, then this podcast is for you.
In addition to The Job Hunting Podcast, on my website, I have developed a range of courses and services for professionals in career or job transition. And, of course, I also coach private clients
Timestamps to guide your listening
05:50 - #1 Terrible email addresses
11:33 - #2 Terrible photo profile on LinkedIn
16:12 - #3 When people send LinkedIn connection requests without a message
18:27 - #4 When people send LinkedIn connection requests with a weird message
21:15 - #5 An experienced, senior professional with an "Open to work" banner on Linkedin
25:46 - #6 Weird backgrounds on Zoom
29:37 - #7 Terrible advice, written by people and organizations who should know better.
Transcript of this episode
Hello everyone and welcome to yet another episode of the Job Hunting Podcast. This is episode 172, and it's a pleasure to be here. I'd like to thank everybody so much for following this podcast and subscribing, and I'm just so excited every time I look at my, insights and my data and how much it's grown in the past few weeks even, you know, so thank you so much for the new followers.
This episode will be dedicated to my husband. The day that it comes out is my husband's birthday, Andre. He never listens. Maybe this time he will. In fact, no one in my family listens to my podcast. My kids don't listen, and I have adult children and they don't listen. My mom and dad, as far as I know, don't listen.
My mom sometimes confuses podcasting with some live events that I do on Facebook. Facebook is as far as she would go in terms of social media or any interaction with things tech. And, yeah. So she would say, oh, I, just saw your podcast, and I'm like, mom, that's a two minute clip.
So it's really quite funny nobody really knows anything about what I do, Andre has recently started helping me on weekends with a few things to do with my business. So I will make him listen to this episode and it's dedicated to him because it's supposed to be light and funny. And he's the funniest person I know.
He says that I'm the funniest person he knows, but that's a lie, he's really funny. And I wanted this episode to be light. It will be about things that make me cringe, but I hope that we can all have a laugh about it and not take it too seriously. I don't want anybody to be upset if they're currently doing one of the cringey things that I'll be talking about.
Okay. And look, if you're a long-time listener and you follow my advice, This will be a satisfying episode for you to listen to. It will go tick, tick, tick. I've done all of these things. They're not cringing to me because I've overcome some of these things and I've been following Renata's advice. So these are not new things to you or to people that have followed me and know the backlog of episodes on this podcast.
Some of them aren't you, but most of them, I'm sure you're not doing it anymore. And if you're a long time listener, but you've been procrastinating, then maybe listening to this episode will be a good time for you to start looking at, not just listening to me, but following some of my advice. I know that there are lots of you out there, that, listen to me and tell me, oh, you know, I still need to do this.
I still need to do that. And those are some of the things that we are going to be talking about today. And if you are new here, then isn't this a great episode to start? Please subscribe and keep listening. And I have a newsletter as well, so you might want to, click on the episode, show notes and subscribe to that, and of course, check the backlog of episodes.
I mean, this is 1 72. You have a lot to catch up on if you're interested in job hunting and career design and career advance. Look, a lot of things make me cringe, not just seven , but I chose this because they've been top of mind recently and I've been meaning to make an episode about some of them individually, but I don't think any one of them is worthy of an entire episode.
But I think this will be a nice long episode for us to talk about. 171 was a very short one. I explained I had roadworks happening just outside my door today. However, we are embracing the imperfections of this podcast recording. I don't know if you can hear, but my earrings are dangling and making a noise.
If you're watching a clip on YouTube or, a reel on TikTok or Instagram, then you will see I have very big designer earrings. It's, in homage of someone I'll be talking about later when I discuss item number seven, somebody that I really love and admire and I decided to dress up designer, to talk about her.
And there are still, some world works happening outside my door, but you know what? I think you don't care, right? What you want to know is how to get your new job and how to do it in a way that is efficient and it doesn't waste your time. So, Let's talk about the seven, cringey things that have been bothering me of late.
Look, most of them are really funny. Number seven is quite serious and can really negatively affect your understanding of how to successfully change jobs and advance your career. So that one, we're gonna dive a bit deeper and I'm going to, yeah, complain a little bit more about that one. So stick around to number seven and tell me what you think, you know, if you're getting my newsletter, reply back and, tell me did you like this episode?
Are there other cringey things that you would like me to talk about in the future? I love getting advice from my listeners, to come up with topics in the future.
Okay, so number one, terrible email addresses. Terrible email addresses make me cringe. So I get to see a lot of them because, just to give you an idea, on my website between the newsletter subscriptions and, waitlist for the group coaching and the optimized job search schedule, which you can download for free.
I get between 300 to 400 new subscribers every month, So it's a lot of emails. I sometimes have a laugh, and when I see them, and if that's you, look, it's a good time for you to pay attention now and see if you can correct because it's so easy to correct a bad email address. Okay. So some of the emails are super, super cringey and I can't of course share the exact emails with you because of course I can't do that. That will be a bridge of confidentiality. I don't wanna lose my subscribers and have any issues with them. But here are some of the issues that I see, that I kind of put into buckets so that you can then think about your own email address and if you have any of these issues, maybe you can fix them.
The first problem I see with cringey email addresses is that some of them are very show off-ish and they include things, or words, sorry, words like smart, like thought leader, executive, and sometimes things that you know, may not seem like too problematic, but for me they still are, like the word MBA, PhD doctor or professor.
Ideally, you don't want to have those in your email address. Another cringeworthy, addition to your email is your age. It sometimes has, the exact, year you were born. So an example for me would be renatabernarde1972. Okay, that's the year I was born. You want to avoid that. Nobody needs to know when you were born.
Ageism is really problematic in recruitment. It still is. We're still dealing with it. So why would you want people to know the year you were born? And there's a lot of emails that include that. So there are usually people that were born in the sixties, seventies and eighties. I see that a lot, I know sometimes people have names that are difficult to create an email for because they already have been taken by someone else.
But you need to find different ways, and age is not a good way of doing that. And of course the most problematic of all would be the funny ones, right? And I see some that I really can't share with you, but I've made some up that were inspired by the ones that I see on my subscriber's list. So one that I made up is therealgoat at gmail dot com. I made that up. I'm not sure if anyone has that. I hope not. But, another one that I made up doesn't exist as far as I know, is uptosomething at yahoo dot com. So this is the sort of thing that I see all the time in my subscriber's list, and it makes me giggle. And I think it's funny, but it's not a good one to use if you're job hunting.
If you're sending it with your resume and you are sending an email to a recruiter, right? Sometimes I didn't include here, but now that I think of it sometimes, your nickname can be inappropriate as well. So think about that. And of course, a combination of all of the above. I often see that as well.
so for example, smartass therealgoat. You think I'm kidding? I am not, you know, with 400 new people every month on my subscriber's list. Yes, I do get some funny ones. Okay, so if you're listening, this is what I think you should be aiming towards. So how should it be done? So instead of, those cringy things I've just mentioned to you, how about just the symbol, name and surname? That would be ideal. You know, if you can do that, that would be ideal.
Also, the name of your business, if you are consulting. So for example, I get a lot of those people that are probably freelancers or contractors or consultants want to have a portfolio career and it would be something like, renata.consulting at gmail dot com and that's fine. I think that that would be okay if you're not looking for a permanent role, if you are really freelancing and building a portfolio of opportunity.
So that would be fine. Another thing that you can do that I have done a long time ago is to have my own url. You know what? Many, many years ago when we moved to Australia, so that was the late nineties, we had I you not australia dot com dot br. I don't know, something like that. And that was our email for a long time.
And unfortunately we let that go. I don't know why it was a big mistake. But nobody bought it from us. We just decided we shouldn't use it anymore. But that was a good one. And now of course I have my name renatabernarde dot com. If you haven't yet, captured your URL with your name for yourself, consider doing that.
Go to godaddy dot com, and you can figure out if your name is still available and purchase it. And it's usually not that expensive.
All right, moving on to number two. Number two things that make me cringe. A terrible photo profile on LinkedIn. A terrible photo profile on LinkedIn is really, really cringey, isn't it? So photos that really, Annoy me are especially the ones with, people wearing sunglasses, either wearing them or them on your head.
Not good. Okay. So you have two options. If you have a photo on LinkedIn with sunglasses, you have two options. As of right now, you can either change your photo immediately or you have to stop following. It is my biggest nightmare. I'll tell you what the situation would be for my biggest nightmare is somebody who has a photo on LinkedIn wearing sunglasses and then saying to a recruiter that they've been following me, you know, I've been working with Renata or following Renata's advice, I've done her course, and here's my new resume and my new LinkedIn profile and the recruiter will say, what?? What is Renata teaching these people. So no sunglasses. And you would think, oh, you know, of course nobody wears sunglasses on LinkedIn, but you would be mistaken. There are lots of people wearing sunglasses on LinkedIn profile photos.
Not good, right? So that's one thing that makes me cringe with the profile photos. Another one is the photo is from your wedding. And it's very clear it's a wedding photo. Sometimes it's your wedding or sometimes it's someone else's wedding, but you are wearing a flower on your suit pocket. Or if you are a woman, you have flowers on your hair or tiara.
It's just so obvious that it's a wedding photo. Please don't use wedding photos on LinkedIn profiles. Also photos that are very old, and you can tell that sometimes because of the quality of the photo. It's like the photo was scanned. It was scanned, and then now you know you're using it on your LinkedIn and it looks very old.
Passport photos. you know, you can see because it's a circle and a photo is kind of rectangular and the borders don't match. So I see that as well. And finally, and probably the worst of always what I call the vogue photo. They are too stylized. You've worked with the photographer, and the photographer made you pose in very weird ways, sometimes too much to the side and twisting your head, or, you know, using your hands in weird ways, touching your face, for example. Look, you should be very careful with the LinkedIn profile photos. We're now a hybrid, most of us, most of us hybrid remote workforce, right? So LinkedIn has become your main. street Your city, cbd your, you know, center of business. So that first impression that comes from your photo is really important.
So be careful with photographers if you decide to work with a professional photographer because not all of them understand how professional photos for LinkedIn should be done and how to create a photo with the body language that generates trust and likability. So be careful with what photographers are trying to make you do.
I usually work with clients and photographers together when they're, booking photo shoots, and I send them a list of things and a list of photos to be inspired by, you know, from other people on LinkedIn to help them if you're doing it on your own. Take several photos. Take several photos.
That's what the best thing about iPhones is that you can take several, or not just iPhones, if you have a different phone, you know, they have good quality. You can take several photos and then see what works best for you. Work with inspiration from other people in your sector, industry, location, and demographic.
So for example, if you're an older professional, You know, don't take inspiration from a 20 year old up and coming graduate in the US If you are in the UK and you're older and more experienced, so different demographics, different locations, industries and sectors, they do have different ways of portraying, professionals on LinkedIn.
And, if you do a LinkedIn audit with me, for example, that's the sort of thing that we, analyse as well amongst many things. All right. Only number two.
Let's move on to number three. We have seven to go. So when people send connections on LinkedIn without a message, it makes me cringe. Sometimes I get that from other coaches.
I don't understand. You are a career coach or a leadership coach and you're not sending me a message. I just don't understand. And I think with every profession. Let's say, you know, you are a financial controller or if you are, a senior executive or a manager or a team leader and then some other person that could be your colleague and you don't know them.
They send you, a request to connect without any reason why, isn't that weird? Like I find it weird. Call me old fashioned. I do not accept, very rarely accept. Sometimes, I make exceptions. So if you're listening and I accepted you as a connection, you know, I kind of have a little I go through my mind through, you know, maybe this person knows that person.
I shouldn't say no, and then I accept, very rarely don't. , I think if it's not a personal note, if there isn't a personal note, I don't accept. You can follow me, and my feed will come to your feed on LinkedIn. If you follow me, you don't need to, connect with me if you don't want to interact with me.
But if you do, you know, I want you to send me, a nice note to say, I've been listening to your podcast really like what you do. I've been following your advice that's working for me. I'd love to be connected with you. How would I say no to someone like that? Or if it's a colleague, you know, like I'm a coach too.
I'd love to connect with you. So I recently had a conversation with a couple of coaches, two coaches indeed. And they, we met on LinkedIn and we booked to have a chat, you know, via Zoom and we are competitors, you know, I mean, coaches are great people. We love sharing ideas and collaborating.
So, we had this great conversation and it was all because of personal notes we sent to each other. So those things do work when they're done properly. So yeah, something that makes me cringe.
Number four is the kind of related to that and the last one to do with LinkedIn. Oh, actually no, the second last
There's one more, but number four is when people send connection requests with a weird message. Okay, so worse than not sending a message, in my view, is sending a message that is just plain weird, and I wish I had some better examples to give you. I just have one from this morning because I'm obsessive with keeping everything that I can control, tidy.
So I delete them all the time. Just like cleaned them up almost every morning and today I didn't, so I had, two new connection requests this morning. One was without A message, so I deleted it straight away and the other one had a weird message, and it also got deleted. So it went like this. Hi, Renata, some LinkedIn connections are stronger than others, but I couldn't help but notice that we have one mutual connections through such and such. So they mentioned the name, and I'm looking to build a network of quality people hence, the outreach. Please accept my invitation card regards, blah, blah, blah. It's not that bad, but why would I connect with you if we have one connection in common?
If he had said something like, we have one connection in common and they have recommended for me to be in touch with you and know more about your work I'm currently looking for work that would make sense, but this guy is like an investment advisor and I think as soon as I connect with him, he's going to shower me with questions about my investments, which I have none.
I don't want to talk about that. so yeah, but that's actually the best of the worst. Some of them are like, hi! It doesn't even include my name. And it says something along the lines of, we both have an interest in sustainable business. And I'm like, what? ? I kind of do, but that's not what I talk about on LinkedIn.
It would be sustainable sometimes it will be really weird stuff like agricultural engineering, like I kid you not, and I'm like, no, I have no interest whatsoever. Or maybe many years ago I did some AG tech, business development for Monarch University. Maybe that was picked up at some sort of scan that they do on my profile anyway, but it didn't make any sense to me anymore.
So I get a lot of those. Do you get those too? Let me know. I wonder, you know, if it's just me or if a lot of people do get weird messages all the time.
The final cringeworthy thing that I see on LinkedIn is number five of seven. We have two more to go, but they're not LinkedIn related. This one here is, it could be controversial, I think.
I think none of the others are as controversial as this one. This one is to do with the open to work banner on LinkedIn. So if you are an experienced senior professional and you have the Open to Work banner on LinkedIn, I find it cringey. You can be open to work for recruiters only. Did you know that?
I hope you know that, it still works very well if you're only open to work for recruiters only and no banner is showing, you still appear on their searches in the recruitment platform of LinkedIn. For example, I just saw a manager who follows me and is he still linked to a company?
He probably has left, I hope, but it looks like, you know, on LinkedIn he hasn't closed that work experience yet and he has the green open to work banner. That's not a vibe, right? So really, if you want to be open to work, at least close the job that you have.
And this person is not a contractor, at least it doesn't look like the person is a contractor or a freelancer or has their own business. So, it just doesn't gel well, I think recruiters wouldn't appreciate that. It just looks weird. But even if you end the work experience that you currently have, I would still not have a banner unless you are a very young professional, let's say a graduate, somebody within their first 10 years of professional experience.
Unless you are a contract worker who is always looking for work. And even that, you know, for specific sectors and professions. So for example, if you're a software developer and you're constantly looking for contract work, then yes. you can leave the banner on. But mostly, I mean, for all of the people that I've done LinkedIn, others, for the past two and a half years, there has not been one that I've recommended to keep the open to work.
Not a single person. And I think it has a lot to do with the demographic of clients that I get, which are usually, mid-thirties and older. Usually my clients are in their forties and fifties. I have clients as old as a 70 year old man. and I do have clients in their sixties as well. So it's a range, but they're more experienced.
They have, You know, real ambition to, either change careers or advance in their careers or have a very sustainable career. I don't recommend the open to Work banner to any of them, even if they're currently unemployed. In fact, this morning, just as an example, this is a great example. I didn't think of that when I was planning this podcast.
So this morning I got an email from one of my private clients. We had been working together for three months. He's a C level executive based in Australia, and he just found a job and he emailed me right when we were about to have our final session. So this. Perfect. You know, as a coach, it's all that you want.
You know, I told him. It could take longer than three months, and especially at the C level. And in Australia, the job market is small. You know it's C level, it's small as well. But he said, no, I, you know, I want to do three months. I'm unemployed. I have nothing else to do. I will job hunt all day every day.
And I'm like, okay, then let's do this. And he just got a job. in, you know, within those three months. And when we first started working, he had the green banner and the first thing that I asked him was to take that off, take that , remove the green banner. And I explained to him how LinkedIn worked. And we did a, a very good review of his LinkedIn.
His LinkedIn is so good. His resume, his cover letter, all of the things. , but also, you know, his understanding of what he wants to do in life and what next, you know? and the job that he told me, he just got really fits within that wish list that we did three months ago, that he did three months ago.
And I just gave him the tools to do it. So I'm super, super excited for him. in fact, I called him, he didn't answer. I hope he's celebrating and, we'll talk later. So, yeah, he removed the green banner, so there you go.
Alright, number six. We're almost at the end. number six. Oh my gosh, I hate number six so much.
I think, you know, if you've been listening to me for a while, I hate Zoom backgrounds, everybody. You know that right? By now, you know that. Especially the weird ones. I hate them so much. I can't tell you how much I hate them. Please, please remove the weird Zoom backgrounds from your Zoom or teams or whatever it is that you use.
It's not rocket science, right? It's not rocket science. It's an absolute necessity for you in this hybrid professional working from home or working remotely, world that we live in now. The best backgrounds for you are the real backgrounds. It adds trust, it adds confidence. It adds layers to your professionalism and your ability to represent the company that has hired you.
The company that is thinking of hiring you to speak to their clients. When you're working from home, when you are asking, everybody's asking to work from home, to have more flexibility to work in a hybrid way. , you have to show that you can do that, and do it well. You know, and there is really no excuse.
You can live in a shoebox. I have clients all over the world. I have clients in Asia. Usually they live in very small environments. I have clients in Japan. I've had clients in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Malaysia. I have clients in New York. There is no excuse. If you have a real background that can show a bit of personality, a bit of, executive presence.
It is important. People think it's comic, it's funny and, you know, make fun of it. But look, up until now we were all dressed in suits and ties, going to job interviews, so why not pay attention to your background If there is an emergency, okay, you can have a fake background, but please find one that's not too ridiculous.
Like, you know, I don't want you underwater or anything like that, unless you are a scuba diver and you took that picture and it's like a fun day at work. Like it's a Friday and everybody's asked to, you know, showcase something about themselves with their backgrounds. Like that would be the only reason why
You could be on the water. Okay. Or in Hawaii or something. have a background that you can use in case of an emergency. I personally cannot think of any, like I have spoken to clients in airports, in bedrooms, in hotels, and you know, all the houses that are not mine. And I have not used a fake background ever.
I explained to them where I am. I remember when I was in Brazil and I was in my parents' house, and in one of the bedrooms and my sister and I just sort of did a little bit of updating . We did the best we could with the background there and we added a plant and then my mom said, oh, you took this plant away from, its, you know, favorite spot.
You know, this plant is like 60 years old. . I had no idea. So, I put it back, of course. But, yeah, like I do this. It's lovely. And then we had things to talk about, oh, where are you? I'm in my parents' house. Isn't this pretty, you know, like I would show, some of the features of the house and yeah, I'm fine with that.
Even though it is a bedroom and people could see it was a bedroom, they understood that I was away from my office and, and that's, you know, part of the chit chat that happens at the beginning when it's just warming up and getting ready for a deeper, more serious conversation.
All right, so this is the final, final cringeworthy thing that I see all the time, and this is the one that I said was a bit more serious. It's in fact a terrible advice that I find online all the time, written by people and organizations who should know better. You know, they should know better, and we trust them and they are considered experts.
And, it makes me so sad because I know that you are reading these things and taking notes and it could lead you in the wrong direction sometimes. And in this case of this first example, it was quite out. In fact, when I got the link to this Instagram that was posted by Harvard Business Review a few weeks ago, I thought maybe it's not even there because the commentary was, awful.
Like, you know, people complaining about the, tips and the advice that they had in the carousel of, posts and, you know, sometimes it gets picked up and they're not trolling Harvard Business Review. They're just saying, look, this is wrong. . I'm an expert in this. I do this all the time. And that's not right.
You know, you shouldn't be offering this advice. It's incorrect. And it was, a post, I will link it in the description below. Tell me about a time you failed, how to answer job interview questions about, tell me, you know, tell me about a time you failed, It's such a difficult question to answer, and I usually have whole consultations, you know, with people preparing for job interviews and making sure that we nail this and we get this right. And, the feedback from the comments. I think if people took time to read not only the carousel of posts, but the feedback, they will quickly realize that there was something wrong with the advice provided there.
But I went. Into an investigatory journey with this post, because I wanted to understand why Harvard Business Review got it so wrong, and look, it's important for us to do this research and find out who we are getting advice from. So,
there was an article that was, published by Harvard Business Review with the same title,
"Tell me about a time you failed" and it was written by somebody who they probably outsourced. So not somebody who is a researcher at Harvard, or a professor, at Harvard. And they, outsourced it to this, gentleman who is a, a professional speaker and professional speakers are fantastic people at understanding the topics that are going to attract a lot of interest, right?
This person particularly had, also a background in content creation for tv, for example, for TV shows, and that is exactly what they did. They found a topic that they know that there will be a lot of interest. They wrote, about it and b
By reading the article on Harvard Business Review. I didn't get the feeling that the tips that he provided in that article had been research driven, that he, you know, had picked it up from, peer reviewed research that had identified, the best ways to answer those, tricky questions in interviews.
So these were really his opinions, you know, this person's opinions about how to answer a very difficult question. And he got it wrong. He really did. and it's not just me saying it, you know, there are lots of people in that, Instagram comment. there are lots of people on Instagram that have commented and said, look, I am an HR executive.
I'm a recruiter. This is wrong . So I'm glad that it was picked up, but sometimes there are other, advice given and it doesn't get picked up, and there's nothing you can do. So there was this, advice that was written recently by another very successful coach, who has a very, very big following way bigger than mine, and it read like this.
The foundation for success in any area of life is confidence. Clarity is the source. Courage is the outcome. I read this and I was so confused because this is terrible , and I thought, was this like AI generated? Does somebody that works for this person, you know, used AI and just generated like a completely disjointed.
advice, you know, it, but no, the caption just really went forward, and, and described it even further, and the caption for this Instagram post said, we need confidence to help us start. Well, that's wrong. I'll talk about it in a minute. But it's said that, and then it's a, to start to practice, to perform, to achieve, to get back up, to reinvent ourselves, to love to forgive, and to be who we were born to be.
Clarity leads to confidence. In confidence leads to courage. I'm here to help you get clear, blah, blah, blah. So then you know he's trying to sell his thing. Oh, I was so upset to see that this is somebody who I follow and I usually comment and I agree. I have shared his posts in the past with my followers on Instagram and on Twitter.
I don't know how he got this so wrong because courage should come fir every single time. Confidence is something we build over time. We don't have confidence, and if we don't have confidence and then we get courage. You know, courage is what makes us start something that we don't know if it's gonna work or not.
And then the repetition and the consistency of the work that we do. Think about it from the athlete's perspective, or musicians or anybody that has to practice over and over and over to gain a skill, they are not confident when they start. They need courage first, and then they become confident in their skills.
We tend to use these words interchangeably, but there is an important distinction here. When we say confidence, we usually mean courage. I think that's what he meant. But the reason why it makes me cringe so much. It is because I strongly believe, and you know, there's a lot of research that shows that confidence is an outcome.
It is a result of constant practice and it, you know, once you practice something over and over again, you hone your skills. So when people come to me and say, oh, you need, I need a coach because I need to become more confident, I usually explain to them that I'm not confidence coach. I'm a strength space coach.
We are going to find out what you are good at, what your talents are, what your strengths are, and then we're going to work on those two so that you feel confident because you know what they are. and we're gonna work on you overcoming your procrastination and your fear of failure. To have the courage to just go out there without clarity, clarity is another part of that statement that I disagree, so that you can become clear because you don't get clear inside your head.
You get clear when you talk to people, when you understand, you know?
different professionals work and how different sectors work. And it's through those, vulnerable conversations that you become clearer and clearer about what you want to do. So that familiarity with things, whatever they are, that consistency of engaging and going out there courageously out there is what makes you.
clear and makes you more confident about what you want to do. Does that make sense? The other thing that makes me very upset about that comment and it makes me cringe, is because it's gendered.
So self-doubt, lack of confidence is very, much impacting women's career more than men. , it is a, a paralyzing concern that a lot of women have towards advancing in their careers that they don't feel confident enough. So I, I don't want people to read that and think, oh, that's why I'm never going to have a big career is because I'm not confident.
So I spend so much of my time teaching my clients and my students to be more courageous and confidence will. , so don't underestimate the impact of courage, right. And practice courage in your day-to-day. Don't be afraid of failure. Failure is nothing. Failure is what makes us learn, right?
and then do it over and over again, and you will become clearer and you will become more confident over time. The reason why I said I was wearing my earrings, which are fancy and very stylish. So have a look on YouTube or on Instagram or on TikTok . There will be little shorts, of me wearing, my fancy earrings
is because I wanted to talk about Debbie Milman. So Debbie Milman is a one of the most creative people in the world according to Fast Company. And she's a designer, she's an author, she's an educator. So she teaches at University New York. She has a wonderful podcast called Design Matters that I, I'm very jealous about because the.
That introduces her podcast is one of my favorite soundtracks from a movie called Wimbledon. You know, I love tennis, so I love that movie. It's one of my favorite romcoms. And when I was thinking about my podcast, I had never listened to Debbie's podcast. I kept thinking, that's the music I want. Like a music like that is what I want to have, as an intro for mine.
But of course, I can't afford . I can't afford a fancy music, like the soundtrack of. You know, a big movie, but she has it. So I'm very, I'm very jealous. And when I found her podcast and I, saw that she had that, music, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna love this . And I've been following her since I saw her Ted Talk many years ago, and then I realized she had the podcast.
And she has written a lot and spoken a lot and taught her students on the importance of courage and how confidence is overrated. I use a lot of her work in my coaching and when I teach my master's students and you know, I don't know if you know this, I, taught, a elected at Monash University last year to over 160 students that were doing Masters in, a range of subjects.
And, they've renewed my contract, so I'm gonna teach again this year. I'm so excited. And in one of the workshops that I do with my students, We discussed, and we will discuss again, some of Debbie Millman's,
views on, confidence and how it's overrated and how courage is way more important.
So I have, of course, below links to everything I've mentioned, you know, the, articles, about, confidence from Debbie Millman. the articles
From Harvard Business Review. So don't forget to look at the blog and the episode show notes to get all of that information and subscribe to my newsletter because then I will send you, a new episode of the Job Hunting podcast every week.
And I usually add a few interesting reads as well. And, Insight on what's going on with me, and we call it timeout, you know, the sort of music that I'm listening or TV shows that I'm watching. And, yeah. So, it's, it's a lovely podcast for job hunters and people that are interested in, in their careers.
Have a look and I hope that you subscribe and I hope that when you subscribe, you have a great email, All right everyone, I'll see you next time. It was lovely spending time here with you talking about this issue, and I can't wait for us to talk about something else next week. Bye for now. Ciao.