Snooze Alarm: It's Time to Wake Up to a New Workplace Reality

The Workplace is changing and unless you are prepared to change your perceptions about the nature of work and about yourself at work, you will feel lost, dispirited and unable to ride the wave of workplace change successfully.

While we can point to endless examples of rapid change from the Internet, globalization, outsourcing, mergers and mass retailing, what I think we need to pay attention to is how to prepare ourselves and our children to interact, respond to and add value within the new realities of work.

Preparing yourself for a new job or a first job requires introspection, self-appraisal, research, preparation, dedication and discipline. Success in the new marketplace requires you to give thought to what makes you Who You Are? What is your Behavioral Style? What do you value? What is your vision of what is possible for you? What are your internal obstacles? How comfortable are you interpersonally? How do you present visually, verbally and non-verbally? Once you get a clear picture of these specific issues, and only then, should you begin to assess your skills, abilities, experiences, education and other more standard components that are engaged in a job search.

For a number of years I was a senior Outplacement Counselor at a "boutique" outplacement firm in New York City. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term outplacement,it is a coaching and advisory service provided to individuals (by their employers) who have been severed from their jobs for any number of reasons: fired, downsized, mergers, relocation, outsourcing, and voluntary severance.

My job was to help them work through their next career step, be it to another job, transitioning into a new industry or into the non-profit arena, into entrepreneurship, or even retirement.

We began our work from the "inside out".

What that means is that we started our work together by discovering what "made them tick". Using a variety of well crafted assessments, we explored what were their preferences in terms of how they operated in the world. Were they outgoing, forceful, introverted, perfectionistic, spontaneous or deliberate as well as a host of other aspects. What was important to them in their lives? Was it community involvement, the arts, financial arenas, theoretical and knowledge acquisition or something else?

Why is this inside-out approach so important? Because a successful career path demands that you bring your full self to any endeavor and you can't achieve that if you haven't gotten a clear picture of who you are, both strengths and opportunities for development.

Today "lack of time