About the Authors

BEV

If anyone had told me that I would probably go down in history for just the six words that headline this book, I would never, ever have smiled. Now, I’m smiling. For those of you for whom the title sounds familiar (I know how old you are!), that book (1982, 1997) was based on my doctoral dissertation (UCLA) and presented a systems approach to career development. There was only one chapter that actually talked about this subject.

This is a totally different book. I’ve learned that my real skill is not in the academics of career development (though all of our work is research based) but in making the complex simple for managers and individuals. In this fast-moving world, the easier we can make our teaching, the more effective we can be.

If luck is where planning meets opportunity, then I’ve had some great luck. I realized, early on, that I do my best work in collaboration with others—and I found some wonderful and amazing “others” to work with me. I love learning and love finding ways to make that learning easy to remember. I’ve had the good fortune to build a nourishing network as founder of Career Systems International. Together we turn ideas into practical and engaging learning solutions that have stood the test of time.

I was honored (and tickled) to be awarded the 2010 Distinguished Contribution for Workplace Learning and Performance Award by the Association for Talent Development. (And I was glad to be alive to receive it!) The designation is given to pioneers and prophets who have had enduring impact and influence, originality of ideas, a substantive body of published work, and a contribution that raises the visibility, credibility, and stature of the field.

I do my best writing on airplanes. (My husband offered to buy me a seat belt for my office chair, but that wouldn’t be the same!) Love ’Em or Lose ’Em; Love It, Don’t Leave It; Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go; and Hello Stay Interviews, Goodbye Talent Loss were all done with brilliant and creative coauthors who partnered in every step. I gain my inspiration thanks to decades of work in organizations. In the beginning, I taught workshops in our specialty areas of engagement, development, and retention. Lately, my main work is delivering keynote speeches to client organizations and large conferences around the globe. Every presentation makes me nervous, but every experience provides opportunities for new creative outlets.

The book you hold in your hands builds on thirty-five years of the work of hundreds who have stood before classrooms, and now computer screens. We look forward to adding your insights to this ongoing work.

LINDY

“Never stop learning,” a mentor told me, quite a few years ago. I listened. And I am still learning every single day. My career pattern has included all six of the experiences we write about in Up. I stepped up and back and over and, at times, chose to grow right where I was. Some experiences surprised me with how amazing they turned out to be. Others that I expected to learn little from—What on earth could I learn from being a management intern for a finance company, anyway?—became turning points that led me to twist that kaleidoscope again and again.

I believe that careers don’t stop and start. For me, a career is a lifelong journey that may include wildly different types of roles but, in the end, becomes a unique and individual mark on the organizations and people you work with along the way. My journey has taken me inside corporate walls as manager, trainer, human resources professional, and director. From operations roles, I added financial forecasting and budgeting to my skills list, along with change leadership and performance management. When my teaching credentials and deep interest in the learning process led me to the world of employee development, I dived eagerly into instructional design and training delivery. My time as Director of Worldwide Career Development for the American Express Company confirmed my passion for the topic of careers. That role also led me to Bev Kaye—an introduction that evolved into a decades-long friendship and amazing professional adventures. When Bev asked me one of her favorite questions—“What’s the one thing you can’t not do?”—I discovered that my answer was “Career development.”

As a Senior Consultant for Career Systems International, I’ve worked with government agencies committed to their missions and nonprofits devoted to their purposes. I’ve partnered with leaders to design and implement award-winning programs and initiatives focused on career development and employee engagement. My work has taken me to boardrooms filled with senior teams committed to designing powerful engagement strategies, hospital kitchens to meet with employees whose development and engagement is essential to patients as well as the organizations they work for, and to roundtables with military officers focused on coaching and professional growth. I’ve learned that people around the globe, whether on the manufacturing floor, in an IT think tank, on an aircraft carrier, or at a desk in a corner office, share the desire to have rewarding and meaningful careers. Each experience presented perspectives I may not have considered before and resulted in insights that I could carry to my next assignment.

The opportunity to write this book with colleagues I respect and enjoy was one of those pattern pieces that sparkled when it appeared. Yes, it was work. Yes, it stretched my thinking and sometimes made me wish for more hours in the day. But it has been a labor of love. In the introduction to his book Your Signature Path, Geoff Bellman wrote, “Thousands of people have walked this same ground before us, but we each walk it in our own way.” My hope is that readers of Up will discover ways to make their walks as rewarding and meaningful as possible.

Best wishes for a wonderful career journey!

LYNN

Little did I realize that I would find myself at this place. After many years in the corporate world (GE Capital, GE Aerospace, Martin Marietta, and Lockheed Martin), I have lived the very same career mobility experiences that we talk about in Up, without the benefit of the titles or the descriptors that we expand upon here. Although my career began at Capital as a financial analyst for planes, trains, and ships, my passion was always around the human capital side of the equation. My interests, values, and maybe even skills seemed to shine a little brighter around those experiences. At the time, I did not know what to attribute it to; the moves just happened, and they “felt right.” Random, or so I thought. Later in my career, my work with Career Systems International as a Senior Consultant took me across the globe, consulting on those similar career development and engagement strategies. Maybe that career pattern was not so random after all. Fast-forward nine years: I loved this work so much that I was honored when asked to come on full time as the Vice President of Quality Delivery, coaching our thirty-plus consultants across the globe, working with their own passions in our space. (The truth is that I learn more from these talented, gifted, inspiring individuals every day than I can ever give back. Thank you!)

Now, as a result of my experiences, I am living that authentic calling: helping others to realize their full potential through our work in coaching and consulting around career development and employee engagement. To write a book on these same subjects, with colleagues whom I admire and respect more than they will ever know, was beyond my wildest dreams. Thank you!

I have been fortunate to work with many great leaders throughout my journey—some who called me a zealot at times (meant as a compliment, I am sure) but, all in all, leaders who were not afraid to tell me the straight truth in the interest of consistently raising my own standard bar. “For that which does not destroy us, makes us stronger” (even if it stings a little). Okay. . . . If they said so, I believed them, and I am grateful—now that I look back.

While traveling through the experiences and patterns we write about in the book, I thought it was just plain luck. However, now that we reflect, it was much more than that. . . . It was willingness to take risks and be flexible, coupled with the safety net of those around me who saw a much bigger picture than I ever could have imagined at the time. The encouragement of one leader to “get that MBA and I will see to it that you get your coveted human resources role” was all that I needed to follow my heart. That one conversation led to a twenty-year “experience” in the HR field, allowing me to partner with some of the best leaders in the business world, seeing them through mergers, acquisitions, business closings, and many human capital transitions that literally changed lives. Now that is the beauty of support, mentorship, and true career advocacy: lifting others up as a result of our own experiences, and paying it forward for the benefit of someone, or something, else. Now I realize that it was a combination of things—diverse opportunities, supportive leaders, well-placed conversations (and feedback), and the willingness to “step out of the box” in order to grow. Now that the descriptors exist in this book, I hope many readers will realize their own potential and passion and give themselves permission to live their wildest dreams.

My best in your kaleidoscope efforts.