Blog - Carpenter Smith Consulting, LLC

It’s About Team Work

August 18, 2014

While personal talents and individual contribution are important in the new economy, the ability to engage collaboratively on a team and contribute to a successful team outcome is equally, if not more, important. In today’s economy sharing information in a team setting is vital to generating new ideas and solving complex problems. Organizations want to make the best use of their resources and so they are asking employees to not only do their individual jobs effectively but also to join…

Career Leadership: How Do You Like to Get Paid?

August 11, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Over the past few weeks we’ve been writing about pursuing work that you love, showing up effectively, and assessing what makes you unhappy in your work life. In this fourth and final post about creating a rich and satisfying work life, we want to get you thinking about how you get paid. Often when we ask this question, our coaching clients look at us like we’re a bit crazy. “What do you mean?” they ask, “Do you mean how often?…

Career Leadership: Understanding What You Feel

August 4, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Last week we talked about the importance of your Career Leadership to creating a life of meaning and satisfaction. This week, our Director of Career Services, Jill Banks, has developed a post to help you to understand and address some of your feelings about your work. Understanding What You Feel by Jill Banks The statistics are stunning – a recent Gallup poll reported that 70% of Americans range from feeling “blah” to totally hating their jobs. As coaches, a…

Career Leadership

July 28, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

The past two weeks we have been talking about Jim Carrey’s commencement speech at Maharishi University of Management. During that speech, he made two statements that spoke to us and clearly to many of you (based on your notes to us): You can fail at what you don’t want to do so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. AND The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there…

Your Most Valuable Currency

July 21, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Last week, we described Jim Carrey’s commencement speech at the Maharishi University. In that post, we described Mr. Carrey’s wise words for the Class of 2014, “Remember, you can fail at what you don’t want to do, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” In that same speech, Mr. Carrey described the importance of being aware of how you show up in the world, saying: The effect you have on others is…

You Might As Well Do What You Love

July 14, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

During this season of graduations, we were recently encouraged to watch a commencement speech by Jim Carrey. He was speaking at Maharishi University of Management and the audience of young people seemed absolutely thrilled to have him there. We watched the video expecting the typical Jim Carrey humor and little depth. Much to our surprise, we walked away with two thought-provoking nuggets that we will be speaking about this week and next week. Go Jim Carrey! In talking about his…

Power: Holding Two Opposing Feelings

July 7, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Since we’ve been talking about Emotional Drama and Emotional Data, we wanted to spend this week talking about one of the ways that we have defined adulthood over the years: Adulthood is the ability to hold two opposing ideas or feelings at the same time. The ability to hold two opposing ideas or feelings simultaneously is especially important when managing or leading others. In our work as coaches and consultants, we have seen that individuals who have the ability to…

Time to Test your Assumptions

July 1, 2014

Career Tips

My message today is a simple one. Test your assumptions before you take them in and operate as if they are fact. Human beings always make assumptions. That’s how we create order and logic in our world. Sometimes, however, the assumptions are not accurate and can hold us back from taking positive action. Below are a few of the assumptions that I hear most often from my clients who are looking for a job: There are no jobs. Everyone knows…

Emotional Data

June 30, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

Last week we talked about the difference between using your emotional response to gather data about what is going on for you and creating emotional drama. We defined drama as the uncontrolled or unconscious expression of emotions, often in ways that exaggerate the importance of what has happened. Drama is the antithesis of healthy emotional expression; it’s the seeping of emotions into the workplace, through covert means, as a result of people not believing they have been heard or understood…

Emotion vs. Drama

June 23, 2014

Monday Morning Business Coach

From time to time, an executive will come to us saying that they are working to create an environment of logic and reason but despite their best efforts they are failing. Unfortunately, the fact that they are failing makes sense. Business is and always will be an enterprise where feelings and emotions are a central part of the environment because of the simple fact that businesses are made up of people. It’s a package deal; people bring the whole of…