Career Development Archives - Decision Coaching – Ursina Teuscher, PhD

Blog Archives

Event Series: Procrastination and ADHD Follow-Through

Free webinar series with Vicki Lind (MS) and Ursina Teuscher (PhD) on Procrastination and ADHD.

Do you procrastinate? Do you have ADHD? Stalled on a project?

Start 2023 with a clear plan and support by joining my colleague Vicki Lind and me in a webinar series and support hub. Do you struggle with procrastination or ADHD, or know someone who does? Learn more about procrastination and how to beat it, and get the support you need to follow through on your plans.

Vicki and I will teach three free interactive webinars together in January. Each week has a different focus:

Tue Jan 10, 9-10am PST: Support from Your Heart & Head
Tue Jan 17, 9-10am PST: Support from Others: Co-working, Bookending & Rewards
Tue Jan 24, 9-10am PST: Support from Your Tools: Your Calendar,

…

When should you quit your job?

Fortune Cookies: A new job is in your future

What can poker teach you about when to quit your job?

– You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em –
– Know when to walk away and know when to run –
Kenny Rogers “The Gambler”.

Here’s a surprising fact about professional poker players: they quit – or fold – much more often than amateurs. Amateur poker players play over 50% of the hands they’re dealt, while great players play only between 15% and 25%.

Our natural intuitions about when to quit are flawed

According to Annie Duke, former poker champion and best-selling author of Thinking in Bets, these numbers illustrate just how poor people’s natural intuitions are about when to quit.

In her latest book,

…

Performing under Pressure

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.

…

Interview: How to Beat Job Search Procrastination

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

Mac’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?

…

Summer Reading List 2021: Five Books that Changed my Mind

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,

…

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

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,

…

Berry Kruijning Interviewing Ursina on Decision Making

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

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.

…

Career Counseling Update: How Does Online Coaching Work?

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,

…

How Does Career Decision Coaching Work?

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.

…

Summer Reading List 2019

Summer Reading List: Ursina's Book Recommendations on Creative Decision Making and Goal Achievement Somehow it became a summer tradition of this blog: here’s my latest list of book recommendations (you can see the lists from previous years here). As usual, they all have something to do with creative decision making and goal achievement. The first is a novel, the rest is non-fiction:

Wood, Benjamin (2016). The Ecliptic. A Novel.

More than the plot, it was the premise and setting that had me hooked from the start: an isolated artists’ colony on a small island – its anonymous residents lingering for years, all expenses paid. Relieved of their own ego and the burdens of everyday life, they should be free to create their next masterpieces. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out quite so smoothly for everyone. You can start reading here.

Two excerpts highlight why this book fits this particular reading list and the topic of my blog.

…

Should You Become an Intrapreneur?

Could you make your job better by becoming an intrapreneur? Intrapreneurship means to think and work like entrepreneur, even though you are still a part of a large organization.

For example, you might have an idea of how to improve a product, and suggest those changes to your boss. Or, you might look for ways to make a specific service more profitable for your company. Maybe you discover a new opportunity to market a product or a service. You might find ways to communicate better within your team, and with that, speed up the workflow. Or you might go the extra mile to increase customer satisfaction. In other words: whatever your role within the organization, you actively drive innovation and keep looking for opportunities to improve your company.

Good employers realize how valuable intrapreneurs are to their organization, and a lot of research is being done in the attempt to understand how different leadership styles and company cultures can encourage intrapreneurship among employees.

…

Ask Three Questions to Refine Your Career Decisions

[Guest post by Bruce Hazen.]

Whether a career transition is one of your own choosing or one that is done to you, beware of a premature rush to job search tactics. For most people this premature rush means updating their resume and starting to patrol the internet job sites. If they’re a bit more extraverted, they may start to network with colleagues, friends and acquaintances. But this is when they start to realize something strategic is missing.
No, it’s not the fact that they haven’t defined the bulls-eye that they’re targeting, although this step is going to be crucial. With a defined target they can move to the next critical step in a well designed search – the personal marketing plan. But it’s not yet time for that either.

There are three career questions that must be addressed first.

…

Summer Reading List 2018

New Summer Readings: Books on Decision Making and Goal Achievement Another hopefully long and beautiful summer is coming up, and my intention is to spend a lot of it productively: reading. Preferably in a hammock. If you feel the same, here comes my new list of book recommendations about decision-making and goal achievement.

Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler (2017). Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter. I’ve always enjoyed Dan Ariely’s self-deprecating sense of humor, and in this collaboration he found a great match in Jeff Kreisler. Even though I was familiar with most of the concepts they discuss, this book not only kept me entertained, but also highlighted very clearly (and sometimes painfully) the irrationalities around money that I still allow into my life. Read a sample here.

Chris Guillebeau (2017). Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days.

…

Employee Coaching ROI: Is It Worth It?

What is the return on investment (ROI) of employee coaching for an organization?

Offering coaching for employees – especially at the executive level – has become a widespread management tool. Companies often hire coaches with the goal to improve performance and develop talents, but also to keep high-performing people within an organization.

However, coaching is an expensive intervention: aside from the fees of the coach, there’s also the opportunity cost of the employee’s time spent with the coach during working hours. Therefore, companies who are paying for coaching for their employees will want to know whether it is a good investment. Does it improve the company’s bottom line enough to be worth the cost?

A look at the evidence

What effects does coaching have? I put together a selection of research articles investigating this question, including all the meta-analyses I could find that have been conducted in the past two decades.

…

Career Decisions Are Complex: How to Organize Your Thoughts

This is a guest contribution I’ve been invited to write for the Portland career counseling blog “Career Transition: The Inside Job – Insights from Portland, Oregon Career Counselors”.

How can you tell when you’re oversimplifying your career decision because of information overload? And what to do about it? Read the full article here.

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

…

Workshop: Job Stress Management

Wednesday August 16, 11am-1pm (Portland, OR).

Is your job causing you a lot of unhealthy stress? In my last post, I wrote about the “Sort and Tackle” Technique, and how and why it can improve your stress levels at work. You can now give this technique a try in a guided setting and start sorting out and tackling some of your own biggest challenges at work. In this interactive workshop, I’ll help you prioritize which stressors to tackle first, and design a plan with specific next steps. Find more information and register here.

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

…

How to Manage Stress at Work

If your job is causing you a lot of stress, you’re not alone. In a 2014 survey in the US, almost a third (31%) of the workers reported that they typically feel tense or stressed out during the work day. This number is even higher among millenials (18-34 year old workers) than among any of the older generations.

What are the most common causes for stress at work?

So many issues can cause stress at work. The survey lists the following, with the most commonly experienced stressors on top:

Low salaries
Lack of opportunity for growth and development
Uncertain or undefined job expectations
Job insecurity
Long hours
Too heavy of a workload
Unrealistic job expectations
Work interfering during personal or family time
Lack of participation in decision making
Inflexible hours
Problems with my supervisor
Commuting
Physical illnesses and ailments
Problems with my co-workers
Unpleasant or dangerous physical conditions
Personal life interfering during work hours

Does any of this sound familiar when you think or your own job?

…

New Productivity Coaching Group

Time is our most precious resource – are you getting the most out of yours? Or are you ready for a change?

My next productivity coaching group will come in a new format, starting with one-on-one sessions and an in-depth assessment before the group meetings.

It is a 3-month package that includes:

Two individual coaching sessions of 50 min each and an initial in-depth assessment of your goals, your individual style, your situation, and your personality along the Five Factor Model (FFM). A part of the assessment will happen during our sessions together, and a part of it will be homework for you in between our meetings.
A copy of the workbook: “Increasing Personal Productivity in Healthy and Sustainable Ways” by Ursina Teuscher.

…

Where Can You Be Generous?

A Different Way to Look at Your “Unique Value Contribution”

In an interview with Chase Jarvis, Seth Godin gave me a lot of food for thought when he suggested that we all ourselves this question:

“Where are you being generous – completely selfless and generous – so that an organization or person is changed for the better? Can you do that again and again and again?” (44m 10s)

The question is big, and it is very relevant for career coaching and business development. Even without the – perhaps too high – standard of being “completely selfless”, it gives a beautiful angle to the classic and essential question of: “How can you contribute value?”

For example, with a career-coaching client we might explore the question:
“What skills do you already have,

…

Top