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Performing under Pressure

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Book Recommendations, Career Development, Coaching Practice, Neuroscience, Performance, Academic Achievement, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Stress Management
Have you ever choked when you needed to perform under pressure?

We all know what it feels like: you’ve been building your skill – whether it’s in academics, in your career, in sports, in performing arts – but when the big moment arrives, nothing seems to work. You hit the wrong note, drop the ball, get stumped by a simple question. In other words, you choke under the pressure.

Here, I will review a book by Sian Beilock about this topic, along with additional research, and I’ll highlight some findings that can help you perform at your own very best, even under pressure.

A book review and practical applications

Dr. Sian Beilock, an expert on performance and brain science, examines in her book “Choke” why we sometimes blunder and perform at our worst precisely when the stakes are highest. What happens in our brain and body when we experience the dreaded performance anxiety? And what are we doing differently when everything magically clicks into place?

[👆TED Talk by Sian Beilock, author of “Choke: The Secret to Performing Under Pressure.”]

Beilock reveals surprising similarities among the ways students, athletes, performance artists, and business people choke. She examines how attention and working memory guide human performance, how experience and brain development interact to create our abilities, and how stress affects all these factors. The findings she present give us helpful pointers to how we can overcome debilitating performance anxiety, and how to succeed despite the pressure.

What does it mean to “choke” under pressure?
Choking under pressure is poor performance that occurs in response to the perceived stress of a situation. In other words, choking is not simply poor performance. Choking is suboptimal performance. It means that that you perform worse than expected given what you are capable of doing, and worse than you have in the past. It also doesn’t merely reflect a random fluctuation – we all have performance ups and downs. Choking occurs specifically in response to a highly stressful situation.
What are the reasons we choke? Why do we sometimes perform worst in precisely the moment when we care most about a top performance? 
Beilock writes a lot about the effects of an overloaded working memory on performance. While she doesn’t make the following distinction in her book, the findings she presents make more sense to me if we acknowledge that there are two types of performances:
1) There are some skills we have practiced so well that we don’t have a conscious understanding anymore of what we are doing.

The skills of top athletes or musicians are obvious examples here, but we all experience this for skills that require no conscious attention from us, such as running down a flight of stairs. If you suddenly direct explicit attention to exactly what you’re doing with your feet while running, chances are it won’t go so well anymore. This sudden focus on your own movements can happen during a peak performance, and is a well-documented reason for choking. For example, athletes’ tendency to overthink their performance is one big predictor of whether they will choke in important games or matches. In those situations, it helps to add an unrelated thinking task (such as counting backwards) that will distract the performer just enough so that they can’t overthink their performance anymore.

2) On the other hand, there are skills that will always require our full attention, no matter how practiced we are: solving math problems is such an example.

For this type of skill, our performance suffers if we get distracted, because we do need our working memory at its full capacity in order to perform at our best. Worrying about your performance is precisely such a distraction: it takes up precious resources of your usual brain power. When math-anxious people do math, all their worries – about the math, about their performance, about looking stupid – capture a big part of their working-memory, and they are left with less brainpower to focus on the math itself.

When you worry while doing math, something gets sacrificed.
Unfortunately it’s not the worries, but the math.

This is also a well-documented phenomenon. An example of this is the performance hit that is often observed when people are aware of a “stereotype threat”. Namely, bringing up negative stereotypes about how your sex or racial group should perform can be enough to send people into a spiral of self-doubt that uses up valuable brain resources that could otherwise work on the task at hand – resources that are already scarce in high-stakes situations. The mere awareness of these stereotypes can lead to choking under pressure.

So how can you prevent choking, and instead perform at your best when you’re under pressure?

Here are my top five practical tips, based on the science I’ve seen so far (the research findings are taken mostly from Beilock’s book, but see a list of additional references below).

1. Know whether your task requires your full attention or not, and “load” or “unload” your working memory capacity accordingly:

If your task involves fully automated “muscle memory” skills, such as an athletic or musical performance, it may help you if you can distract yourself, in order to avoid focusing your attention on your own movements and getting – perhaps literally – tripped up by your unhelpful focus.

If, on the other hand, your task does require your full attention, such as an academic test, try to “unload” your worries in order to free up working memory. For example, writing about the stressful events in your life on a regular basis can decrease the occurrence of intrusive thoughts and worries. This can bolster your cognitive horsepower. Think of a computer analogy: if a computer is running several programs at once, each one of these programs will run that much slower and be more prone to crash. Getting your worries out on paper eliminates the unnecessary programs from running and helps you focus on the task at hand.

2. Practice under the gun:

Of course, practice makes everything easier, but in particular, make your practice situation as similar as possible to the performance situation. For example, if you need to give a presentation, practice it in front of people, or in front of a camera. Different studies, one with golfers and one with with musicians, showed a very similar effect of this kind of practice: those who had practiced while being video-taped performed better in front of an audience than those who had practiced in isolation.

3. Prepare, don’t worry:

Preparing is not the same as worrying! People thinking about an upcoming presentation while lying in a brain scanner got more nervous, the longer they spent anticipating the stressful event. So, prepare well, but don’t keep thinking about the stressful event more than necessary. Once you are well-prepared, it may serve you better to focus your attention on something other than the upcoming performance.

4. Social support – a mixed bag:

Men who were able to spend time with their spouses before having to prepare their speech showed less of a stress response (cortisol increase) in anticipation of a stressful public speaking assessment than those who didn’t spend time with their spouse. However, the same was not the case (in a different study, but with the same stressful public speaking test) with women: women’s cortisol levels went up when their boyfriends were present beforehand. Before generalizing this finding too much, I would like to emphasize that these were different studies and may have included people in different stages of their relationships.

So then, what to conclude from these mixed findings? Of course, you know it: surround yourself with the kinds of people who make you feel calmer, rather than adding more pressure, when you’re stressed out.

5. Focus on values (not goals):

Interventions that asked students to write a paragraph about their values before a task performed better and were less affected by stereotype threats. This may sound like a weird intervention, but it does make sense. Focusing on values may re-affirm your self-worth and integrity, and direct your focus away from your own flaws and onto the bigger picture.

Note that values are not the same as goals: several studies showed that focusing on goals had no effect on performance, for example in soccer players and race car drivers. This is also not too surprising, since goal setting is a motivational technique, rather than one one that optimizes attention, and motivation is already high enough, if not too high, when we choke under pressure.

What next?

Do you need help with your own performance under pressure?

Are you, or is someone you love, struggling with performance anxiety? Would you like to try some of the here discussed or other evidence-based interventions? I would love to help you think about how to apply these and other ideas to your specific situation. Here you can schedule a coaching session or a phone call to discuss options.

Set up an appointment with Ursina Teuscher to discuss Performance Coaching
I look forward to talking to you!

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


References:

J. Aronson et al., “When white men can’t do math: Necessary and sufficient factors in stereotype threat,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35 (1999), 29–46.
M. H. Ashcraft and E. P. Kirk, “The relationships among working memory, math anxiety, and performance,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130 (2001), 224–37.
S. Beilock. Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To. Atria Books.
S. L. Beilock and T. H. Carr, “On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure?” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130 (2001), 701–25.
G. L. Cohen, J. Garcia, N. Apfel, and A. Master, “Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention,” Science, 313 (2006), 1307–10.
B. Ditzen et al., “Adult attachment and social support interact to reduce psychological but not cortisol responses to stress,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 64:5 (2008), 479–86.
A. J. Fiocco, R. Joober, and S. J. Lupien, “Education modulates cortisol reactivity to the Trier Social Stress Test in middle-aged adults,” Psychoneuroendocrinology 32 (2007), 1158–63.
P. Gröpel & C. Mesagno (2019) Choking interventions in sports: A systematic review, International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 12:1, 176-201
C. Kirschbaum et al., “Sex-specific effects of social support on cortisol and subjective responses to acute psychological stress,” Psychosomatic Medicine, 57 (1995), 23–31.
K. Klein and A. Boals, “Expressive writing can increase working memory capacity,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130 (2001), 520–33.
E. H. McKinney and K. J. Davis, “Effects of deliberate practice on crisis decision performance,” Human Factors, 45 (2003), 436–44.
C. M. Steele and J. Aronson, “Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African-Americans,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69 (1995), 797–811.
T. D. Wager et al., “Brain mediators of cardiovascular responses to social threat: Part II: Prefrontal-subcortical pathways and relationship with anxiety,” Neuroimage, 47 (2009), 836–51.
C. Y. Wan and G. F. Huon, “Performance degradation under pressure in music: An examination of attentional processes,” Psychology of Music, 33 (2005), 155–72.


Interview: How to Beat Job Search Procrastination

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Career Development, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management

Interview by Mac Prichard: How to Beat Procrastination in Your Job Search, with Ursina Teuscher

Podcast Interview: How to Beat Procrastination in Your Job SearchMac’s List is a Pacific Northwest job board and “career hub”, driven by the mission to make the hiring process more human. In addition to local job listings, it offers an abundance of educational resources and community-building activities. I’ve been using it for my own education, and have been recommending it as a resource to my clients for years. Its founder Mac Prichard hosts the weekly podcast Find Your Dream Job and has interviewed me on how to beat procrastination in your job search.

Listen to it or find the transcript here:

How to Beat Procrastination in Your Job Search, with Ursina Teuscher

Summary by Mac’s List:

“Do you know it’s time to look for a new job but you keep putting it off? Maybe it seems overwhelming or you don’t know where to begin. The way to beat job search procrastination is to figure out exactly what you’re avoiding. Find Your Dream Job guest Dr. Ursina Teuscher suggests deciding what your next step should be and focusing on one step at a time. Dr. Teuscher also recommends treating a job search like a job. Most of us can do something fairly unpleasant if it’s for work. Finally, create rewards for yourself for completing the tasks you’ve been avoiding.”

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


What Is Procrastination and How Can We Overcome It?

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management

What counts as procrastination?

According to Wikipedia, procrastination means to “unnecessarily and voluntarily delay something, despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so.”

What Is Procrastination? Latin origin: “Pro”: Forward/For “Crastinus”: Tomorrow

There are productive ways of delaying tasks, as well as inevitable delays, outside of one’s control. Those don’t typically fall under the term “procrastination”. While not all researchers draw the same lines when defining procrastination, I found Jason Wessel‘s definition and Venn diagram convincing and helpful in distinguishing procrastination from other types of delays. According to that, you are procrastination if you (1) intend to complete the task, (2) delay acting on the intention, (3) have voluntary control to do the task, and (4) an expectation of harm, or things being worse off, if you delay.

What Is Procrastination? Venn Diagram

Can procrastination be a good thing?

“I do my best work under pressure!” – Anonymous Greek Philosopher

What about the claim that procrastination improves performance, because the imminent deadline creates excitement and pressure that allow for peak performance? Do you sometimes feel that you work best under pressure? I certainly hear that from a lot of people. Surprisingly enough though, one study found that chronic procrastinators actually work worse under pressure than non-procrastinators. So the popular notion of “I work best under pressure” may be true for some people, however – tragically enough – it seems to be least true for those people who would most need it to be true. Frequent procrastinators seem on the contrary to be more likely to choke than to thrive under pressure.

But of course there could still be benefits to procrastination. For example, could the enjoyment of carefree times earlier offset the stress and poor performance later on? Unfortunately, that does not usually seem to be the case either. One study found that while procrastinating students did indeed report lower stress and less illness than non-procrastinators early in the semester, they reported not only higher stress and more illness late in the term, but were overall sicker. They also received lower grades on all assignments.

Since we should always be wary about relying on individual studies, I searched for meta-analyses¹ on procrastination. I found a recent one that included at 22 studies conducted between the years 2000 and 2020, and which found a robust relationship² between more procrastination and poorer academic achievement.

Overall, it seems safe to say that procrastination comes along with long-term costs – both to wellbeing and performance – that outweigh the short-term benefits.

How can we overcome procrastination?

While we all struggle with procrastination in one way or another, the struggles come in many shapes and have many different causes. Understanding what leads you to procrastinate on any particular task can be an important first step to help you fix the problem. For example, if distractions are causing you to procrastinate, your best bet is to limit those, whereas if the task itself feels overwhelming, you need to get clarity on the task. This article gives a you a list of frequent procrastination triggers and some suggestions on how you could tackle any one of them. If you find a trigger on that list that seems to ring true, give one of those suggestions a try! Let me know how it worked out for you.

What if nothing on that list resonates and you’re not sure what’s causing you to procrastinate? Here’s a more involved method, but still one you can try by yourself. It’s a three-step intervention designed to help you self-diagnose and treat some of your most persistent procrastination habits. Heads-up: this is not an easy process to go through by yourself, so I would suggest finding a buddy to work with.

I would be excited to work with you on this. With the articles I linked here, you can already get a good sense of my coaching approach. I’d first help you figure out what keeps holding you back from doing what you really want to do. Then we’d explore together which simple and practical changes could make your life easier and better. If you’d like my help, you can schedule your first online coaching session or a brief phone call to discuss options.

Set up an appointment with Ursina Teuscher
I look forward to talking to you!

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

Footnotes:

¹ Meta-analyses are studies that analyze the results of a large number of studies. I generally recommend searching for meta-analyses about any topic you really care about. Google Scholar is a neat search tool if you want to find scientific papers, rather than random websites.

² All included studies were correlational, not experimental, which means we can’t truly draw any conclusions about cause vs effect. It is possible, for example, that an unidentified third variable, such as anxiety, or poor self-regulation, might be the cause of both poor performance and procrastination. However, to me, the more intuitive causal direction of procrastination directly causing poor performance does seem quite plausible in this case, for at least two reasons. First, delaying a task, especially a bigger project, can naturally affect the outcomes of the task. Second, at least for chronic procrastinators, we have seen in experiments that more pressure directly causes poorer performance. In any case, most people I talk to do seem to think of procrastination as a problem that causes poor performance and stress for them, so as a coach, it makes sense to me to go with that assumption.

References:

Akpur, U. (2020). The Effect of Procrastination on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis Study. International Journal of Educational Methodology, 6(4), 681–690.
Ferrari, J. R. (2001). Procrastination as self-regulation failure of performance: Effects of cognitive load, self-awareness, and time limits on ‘working best under pressure.’ European Journal of Personality, 15(5), 391–406.
Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Longitudinal Study of Procrastination, Performance, Stress, and Health: The Costs and Benefits of Dawdling. Psychological Science, 8(6), 454–458.
Wessel, J. (2021, July 12-13). Defining Procrastination: A Venn diagram to consider. [Conference presentation]. International Procrastination Research Workshop. Hosted online by Tim Pychyl (Carleton University) and Joel Anderson (Utrecht University).

Picture Credits:

[1] Thomas Couture (1815–1879): Les romains de la décadence, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Modified by UT.
[2] Jason Wessel, reshared with permission from https://www.unpackpsychology.com.au/post/what-is-procrastination. Wessel, J. (2021, July 12-13). Defining Procrastination: A Venn diagram to consider. [Conference presentation]. International Procratination Research Workshop. 


Summer Reading List 2021: Five Books that Changed my Mind

Posted on by by Posted in Book Recommendations, Career Development, Coaching Practice, Creative Thinking, Intuition, Leadership, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management

This past year gave me a fair amount of time to read and listen to audiobooks. Here are five books I found truly impactful, in that they managed to change some of my fundamental previous assumptions and opinions.

Steven Pinker (2018). Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

Steven Pinker presents a passionate and persuasive defense of reason, science and progress. He shows with an abundance of data how a commitment to humanitarian values has kept winning – in the long run – dramatically and consistently over the destruction and chaos that would be the easier and more natural course. It is an uplifting as well as urgent perspective that challenges lazy dogmas from both the left and the right of the political spectrum.

To get a first impression and hear his own voice, here’s Steven Pinker in an interview with Shankar Vedantam on the “Hidden Brain” podcast:

Beyond Doomscrolling

Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, & Ola Rosling (2018).  Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. 

You may know Hans Rosling from his classic and widely shared 2006 TED talk:

This book offers explanations of why people – including highly educated people – are shockingly and systematically wrong about global trends and facts. Our instincts dramatically distort our perspective: from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them; e.g., poor vs rich etc) to the way we consume media (where fear rules), to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

The two books above share a similar perspective, but they are different enough (and counterintuitive enough!) that I found it very worthwhile to read both. In fact, I suspect I should read them both again in the near future, lest I forget.

Malcolm Gladwell (2019). Talking to Strangers. 

I’ve often found Malcolm Gladwells’s books worth reading, but hard to summarize. This one is no exception. If I had to summarize my take-home, it would be: “stop assuming”. I might be very wrong about other people, no matter how great I think my intuition is. (This past year I’ve listen to both “Talking to Strangers” and his older “David and Goliath” as audiobooks in short succession, and found them both similarly entertaining, informative, relevant for race politics, and thought-provoking, but only half satisfying.)

Sharna Fabiano (2021). Lead and Follow. 

Much has been written about leadership, but very little about followership in organizations (in fact, my spellchecker doesn’t even recognize “followership” as a word). As an internationally recognized dance artist and teacher, Sharna Fabiano has a deep understanding of the complementary nature of those roles in Argentine tango.

In her words: “To a dancer, improvisation does not mean “winging it” or making it up as you go along. Rather, it implies a highly refined system of communication built through specific methods of training. Improvisation for dancers is a synergy between leading and following actions that is greater than the sum of its parts. We already know a lot about leading at work, but not many of us understand how to follow with intelligence, power, and grace, as dancers do. It’s time we learned.”

Sharna Fabiano presents a coaching model that helps us think about those roles and the skills they require through three phases of increasing sophistication: 1. Connection, 2. Collaboration, and 3. Co-creation. It’s a very practical and well written book. As a reader, you don’t need to know anything about tango to understand the metaphors and their applicability to specific challenges in the workplace.

Steve Dalton (2020). The 2-Hour Job Search. 

What I liked least about this book was its title. I took me a while to figure out what exactly the two hours refer to, and I found the best explanation – and indeed the best book summary – here. The book’s focus is on how to get you interviews as efficiently and quickly as possible, without all the emotional investment that comes with a lot of other career advice. One reason I’ve already recommended it to several clients is that it has very useful templates and easy-to-follow guidelines for requesting and conducting informational interviews.

Steven Dalton’ approach circumvents the online job application process altogether. His approach takes into account the fact that many smaller companies never post their jobs online at all (and did you know that almost 99% of US employers have fewer than 100 employees?*), as well as that the odds for online applications are quite terrible, especially for people without very clearly defined and sought-after skills.

* According to 2016 data from the Census Bureau, firms with fewer than 500 workers accounted for 99.7 percent of businesses, and firms with fewer than 100 workers accounted for 98.2 percent.

Ursina reading an entirely different book from the ones on her Summer Reading List

What have you all read or listened to recently? As always, please let me know your favorites! Contrary to what this post might suggest, I also enjoy fiction, escapism, and otherwise simply pleasurable entertainment. Would love to hear your recommendations!

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Decision Support Tool: Instructions for Creating a “Value Tree”

Posted on by by Posted in Career Development, Group/Interactive Decisions, Conflict Resolution, Resources, tools, Strategic Planning, Business Decisions, Organizational Development

Part of a value tree of one of my clients

Whenever you have a really big decision to make, the best place to start thinking about it is by identifying what really matters – that is, by clarifying your goals and values. To help with that, the exercise of constructing a “Value Tree” is a great decision support tool. Here you can download a set of instructions on how to create your very own value tree (written by myself and Barry Anderson).

The Research

Value trees (also known as “goal hierarchies” in decision theory) are an established method to support decision-making. Their effectiveness has been evaluated by several independent researchers with real career decisions. Those studies have shown that constructing a goal hierarchy leads people to process more information (Aschenbrenner et al., 1980, Paul, 1984), come up with more specific, rather than generic, goals (Teuscher, 2003), and be more satisfied with their decisions (Paul, 1984).

The Practice

It’s easy to do this exercise by yourself, but the value tree is also great decision support tool to use in a coaching setting. Therefore, a part of our instructions are addressed to counselors, coaches and facilitators who may want to start using this method. A value tree can be especially helpful for couples or groups who are tackling decisions together.

Below are a few examples of value trees that my clients or students created. While you probably won’t be able to read the content in these images, I hope the examples will encourage you to grab your own block of sticky notes and get started – and don’t hesitate to personalize this exercise.

Value Tree as a Decision Support Tool - Client Example

Value Tree Exercise (Workshop on Decision Support Tools by Ursina Teuscher)

Value Tree Exercise (Workshop on Decision Support Tools by Ursina Teuscher)

Value Tree Exercise (Student Example)

Value Tree Exercise (Student Example)

References:
Aschenbrenner, K. M., Jaus, D., and Villani, C. (1980). Hierarchical goal structuring and pupils’ job choices: testing a decision aid in the field. Acta Psychologica, 45:35–49.
Paul, G. (1984). Entscheidungshilfen im Studien- und Berufswahlprozess. Peter Lang, Frankfurt.
Teuscher, U. (2003). Evaluation of a decision training program for vocational guidance. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 3:177–192.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Who Should Make Which Decisions in Your Team?

Posted on by by Posted in Coaching Practice, Group/Interactive Decisions, Conflict Resolution, Leadership, Resources, tools

A practical tool and downloadable template to help determine decision authority.

For the most part, my work focuses on helping people figure out HOW to make good decisions. However, in an organization (or family! or any other group of people), the more urgent and conflict-prone question is often WHO should make which types of decisions, rather than how they should make them.

During a conversation with a client lately, I realized that this, too, is a decision that we can approach with the same frameworks and questions that are helpful for other decisions. In this case, the “alternatives” are people within the organization. In other words, each potential decision-maker is one option, and the main challenge is to define which criteria the decision-maker should fulfill in order to bear that responsibility. Once you have defined those criteria, it becomes much more straightforward to assign the right person the responsibility for any type of decision.

Who should decide? How to determine decision authority in your team

I’ve created a template to illustrate and support this process. You can download it here. The spreadsheet as it is here may be too sophisticated for many situations, but you can adapt that general idea, and use it in any way you choose to guide this process within your team. (You should also adapt the set of criteria and their importance weights as you see fit, but the example may help you get started. It was among others inspired by this article.)

 

Who should decide? How to determine decision authority in your team

 

Things to consider when you use this approach to determine who gets to make which decisions in your team:

If there are no trade-offs (i.e., some people score higher than others on all criteria), the decision authority can simply go to the person with the highest total score (Column G). However, if there are trade-offs (as in the example), don’t look only at the totals. Trade-offs between criteria often suggest a way to share the decision.

For this example, given these particular criteria:

  • People with high expertise, but who are not affected by the decision (Team Member 2 in this example) could be advisors to the decision-maker.
  • People who are not affected by the decision in their regular work, if all goes well, but who might be affected by fallout of negative consequences (Team Member 3 in the example), could get a veto role. In other words, the person higher in the chain of command/responsibility might want to let someone else, who is closer to the decision, develop and propose a solution, but they might want to reserve the right to approve it before it is implemented. Criterion 3 here would justify this kind of overseeing role for Team Member 3 for this particular decision (clearly distinguishing this case from a micro-managing leadership style in general).

A possible practical solution for this example:
Team Member 1 could create a proposal, advised by Team Member 2. Team Member 3 would have to approve the proposed solution before it is implemented.

If you have faced the question of “who should make which decisions” in your team, please let me know what you think about this process. I’d love to hear about your experience!

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Berry Kruijning Interviewing Ursina on Decision Making

Posted on by by Posted in Career Development, Risk and Uncertainty

Berry Kruijning, JD, LL.M is a leadership coach and much admired colleague of mine. She works internationally but is based here in Portland, where I initially met her. She is an expert on communication and conflict resolution. One of her specialties is to help introverts become impactful and confident leaders. Here is an interview she did with me about decision making.

 

 

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Summer Reading List 2020 – Book Recommendations on Leadership and Career Development

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Book Recommendations, Career Development, Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Strategic Planning, Business Decisions, Organizational Development

Here are a few books about decision making and leadership that I found worth reading and still very relevant, regardless of how things have changed since they were written.

The first two are not only interesting if you’re leading other people, but also if you are running your own business as a solopreneur. Both books talk about value-driven business models, although in very different ways. I found Simon Sinek’s particularly inspiring:

Simon Sinek (2013). Infinite Game. 

Seth Godin (2018). This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See. 

Aaron Dignan (2019). Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

Brené Brown (2018). Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. 

My last recommendation is a good basic reference if you’re looking for a job. It offers detailed advice and examples on how to write your resumes and cover letters, and how to tailor them to your desired position. As much as I recommend it though: given how quickly the job market and its challenges are changing, I would recommend any book (regardless of how recently published) only as a starting point, and as one reference. Always do a detailed search online for specific advice about your desired position and industry, and get personal advice from people who are working and hiring in that field – or better yet, at that company. In addition, make sure your resume has a chance to get past automated Applicant Tracking Systems and in front of human eyes at all. (This is not a topic the book talks about, but it is absolutely essential in any resume you submit online).

Patricia K. Criscito (2013). How to Write Better Résumés and Cover Letters.

Book recommendation: resume writing

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Career Counseling Update: How Does Online Coaching Work?

Posted on by by Posted in Career Development, Coaching Practice

This is an update to my earlier post, where I described my career coaching process in detail. While I have always offered and enjoyed online coaching via phone or video, I used to meet most clients in my office. I had therefore written my earlier post assuming a regular in-person setting. Some of the coaching methods I described there, especially exercises giving the client physical cards to sort and lay out, are of course not available in a remote setting. To replace those, I have in the meantime created additional resources and career counseling tools for a remote coaching setting that I am happy to share here.

I have revised the pdf that I’ve shared before to include links to all those online coaching tools and resources. Some of the links are external resources, such as a free assessment of career values that I really like, provided by Career Services Group, Inc. Others are tools I created or adapted from card sort tasks, such as a skills matrix in a Google Spreadsheet.

Career counseling: online resources to guide your career decision

So here’s my revised outline of the coaching process and tools I like to use to help people with a career decision.

Career Counseling Update: How Does Online Coaching Work?

 

What if I can’t afford career counseling? Can I do all this by myself, without a career counselor?

Yes, in the sense that you have here all the resources I typically use. I can think of three things that may be difficult to do by yourself, but for all of those, working with a trusted friend instead of a coach can help:

  1. Clarifying criteria. When I work with a clients on a career decision, the part that usually takes up most time during our meetings is the second part (what’s summarized on Page 2 of the pdf): the clarification of criteria. Reflecting deeply on what matters most to you, and what to prioritize, is a hard task. Most of us find that difficult to do by ourselves, so my recommendation is that you find someone you can talk to. For this part, I recommend finding someone who can listen well, and who is kind and non-judgmental, because you’ll want to be honest with yourself, and possibly open to discussing vulnerable aspects of yourself.
  2. Exploring options. Our abilities to think creatively are severely limited if we think by ourselves. Creative conversations with an open-minded person are a very powerful tool to disrupt and enrich your thought patterns. Ideally, find someone smart and creative to talk to while you explore options! I always recommend that anyway as homework between sessions.
  3. Doing the homework. A coaching setting with weekly sessions provides very natural deadlines for homework to be completed every week. Without any such structure and accountability, some people find it difficult to go through this entire process. Here too though, a friend can help: schedule regular chats or check-ins with someone who can help you take the next steps.

Share the online resources

Please feel free to share this pdf, including any of the linked documents, with anyone you think might benefit! I hope this will be a useful resource to you, whether you use by yourself, or with a friend, or wether it helps you decide to work with a coach on some of the questions. I am also happy to answer questions about it. You can schedule a chat or meeting here.

 

Set up an appointment with Ursina Teuscher

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


How Does Career Decision Coaching Work?

Posted on by by Posted in Achieving Goals, Career Development, Coaching Practice, Self-Assessments

If you’re considering getting help for a career decision, you may wonder what exactly it would look like to work with a career counselor or coach. Here’s a description of the coaching process and tools I often use when I work with clients on a career decision.

Career Decision Coaching:

1. Defining the Problem

The first step for me is to make sure I understand exactly what your needs are, and what you’re hoping to achieve by working with me. For example, you may look for a change in your career, and for help figuring out which direction to take. If you’re hoping to get clarity in a career decision, we’re on a good track and I’ll be confident that my process can help you.

(If you’re looking for something else, I might be able to refer you to one of my colleagues. For example, if you need help searching for specific jobs, tailoring your resume, or improving your interviewing skills, I’m happy to connect you with someone else on our team).

2. Clarifying Criteria

If you want to take your career in a new direction, we usually start with an in-depth clarification of your personal criteria. Career CounselingWhat matters most to you for your next career move? Partly, this will be an open conversation. Sometimes I use image cards to draw out more information about your core values and issues that matter to you personally. Letting you pick images and talk about them can illuminate your values in a way that words alone may not. Then, we may dig into different aspects with several standardized assessments. For example:

  • An assessment of your skills, including those with growth vs. burn-out potential, with the Motivated Skills Card Sort Matrix
  • An assessment of your career-relevant values with the Knowdell Career Values Card Sort task
  • A personality assessment, based on the five factor model of personality with 30 subscales (IPIP-NEO 300: International Personality Item Pool Representation of the NEO Personality Inventory – Revised: NEO PI-R)

How does career decision coaching work?

3. Exploring Options and Strategies

Each of these steps and assessments usually takes at least one session to complete. At the end of each session though, we will always think about possible homework for you, if you’re up for that, so that you can drive the process forward as much as possible in between sessions, if and as much as you choose to. For example:

  • After the Skills Assessment we may think of new search terms you could use when looking for careers. We’ll discuss search strategies for you, such using O*NET or LinkedIn as sources for information (each very limited in their own way, but valuable and complementary).
  • The results of the Skills Assessment can be a terrific starting point to re-think your work history and accomplishments. You can do exercises at home that will help you later craft your resume and talk naturally about your skills and strengths in an interview. You’ll find ways to highlight the skills you most enjoy using and would like to grow more in your future.
  • The Career Values Assessment, as well as the Personality Assessment, can give us new ideas about employers and work environments that would be a good fit for you. You might want to set up informational interviews between sessions, so that you can come back in with new information and new ideas. For most people (not just introverts!) asking someone for an informational interview is not easy. I can help you think about how to reach out and what questions to ask, based on where you’re at in your decision process.

How does career decision coaching work?

4. Deciding on Your Best Strategies and Planning Next Steps

Once we have the results of all the assessments, we will look through all that information and distill your very personal set of your most important criteria. We will use this set of criteria to guide your search for options and information, and to evaluate specific career paths. Visual tools, such as decision tables and trees, can help us determine which strategies are your winners. We can even evaluate your options with weights and numerical ratings, if the decision is still difficult at that point. Or, I can help you think about particularly uncertain options with risk analysis tools, such as scenario trees. Oftentimes however, these formal tools are not even necessary in the end. You’ll probably have gained enough clarity about what direction you want to take, and about your best strategies to pursue that direction.

Once you have decided on a strategy (or on several you want to keep pursuing), I can help you plan your next steps. At that point you’re probably well on your way. Our coaching process could end there, or you might like to get some continued help and guidance from me, as you take next steps and work towards your next goals. Either way, the clarity you’ll have gained from this process, and the knowledge that you’re making the best possible decision, will help you fully commit and take action.

I hope this description gives you a better idea how career decision coaching could work for you! If you’re interested in coaching, here’s more information about the typical setting and fees to work with me. If you want to talk to me on the phone or are ready to come in for a first session, you can schedule a chat or meeting here.

Set up an appointment with Ursina Teuscher

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


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