LH145 — Life and Career Lessons
In this episode, Karel shares his career and life lessons after retiring from a successful 36-year career at IBM and co-founding the Habits for a Better World nonprofit. Before leaving IBM, Karel went on a global nine design studio tour during which he met with staff one-on-one and in groups and he also reflected on his career and shared his life and career lessons. The staff and others on LinkedIn who heard about the presentation encouraged him to share his reflection and insights on the podcast. This episode was the result. Enjoy!
Quotes from this episode:
Stephen R Covey — "Begin With the End in Mind" and he explains further that "you should start with a clear understanding of your destination. You need to know where you are going in order to better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction."
Ralph Waldo Emerson — “Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Or my version of that, is others often say, "somebody should" while I say, "why not me".
Steve Jobs — "The only way to do great work is to love what you do".
Key Takeaways:
Understand the business you work for and how it creates value
Find purpose in your role and focus on making a positive impact
Pay attention to how you show up on video calls and use appropriate equipment
Practice authentic listening and truly understand others' perspectives
Champion diversity and inclusion to create more innovative and representative teams
Be a lifelong learner and share your knowledge with others
Future-proof your career by staying aware of trends and continuously improving
Feed your soul by pursuing passions outside of work and taking breaks to unplug
Please note: This podcast does not provide medical advice, only personal experiences, so please consult your doctor.
LH114 — Coping with Adversity
My guest for this episode is Paige Heron. I’ve tried to get her on this podcast for a long time to discuss a number of different topics but we landed on a topic that has been and continues to be central to her life, chronic illness, and it’s something that many people don’t understand, especially what is essentially an invisible illness. I too knew very little about the experience of dealing with a chronic illness initially but accompanying Paige to various medical appointments, reading about her conditions, and most importantly listening to her provided me a deeper insight into her experiences and how best to support her. That’s what we discussed during this episode.
We delve into Paige’s early life, the physical changes she experienced, her experiences with the medical profession, and we discuss what to do if you have similar experiences or if someone you love does, making sure to seek out appropriate medical expertise and guidance.
Quotes from this episode:
“No other disease in the history of modern medicine, has been neglected in such a was as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome” — Professor Rodney Grahame
“Every EDS patient knows that one of the hardest parts of our day is the moment we open our eyes and waken into the reality of our bodies, stirred from dreams of ourselves as we used to be, and the futures we imagined we’d have.” ― Michael Bihovsky
“When you are frustrated with me because of the things I can not do…
…Just imagine how frustrated I must be because I’m not able.” — Count My Spoons
Links from this episode:
LH113 — Career Transitions: Part 3
Karel continues on with his leveling up series focussing on career transitions. He is again joined by Renee Albert and Herman Colquhoun. In Part 1 of the interview in the LH111, Renee and Herman describe their early lives and their educational journeys together with the pivots each took and the insights they gleaned from the experience. This Part 2 gets into their actual career trajectories and also their involvement in the IBM Racial Equity in Design movement. In this Part 3 we get into what sorts of things talented and successful professionals like Renee and Herman do in addition to their days jobs.
LH112 — Career Transitions: Part 2
Karel continues on with his leveling up series focussing on career transitions. He is again joined by Renee Albert and Herman Colquhoun. In Part 1 of the interview in the LH111, Renee and Herman describe their early lives and their educational journeys together with the pivots each took and the insights they gleaned from the experience. This Part 2 gets into their actual career trajectories and also their involvement in the IBM Racial Equity in Design movement. We’re planning a Part 3 which will get into what sorts of things talented and successful professionals like Renee and Herman do in addition to their days jobs.
LH111 — Career Transitions: Part 1
Karel continues on with his leveling up series and this time focusses on career transitions. He is joined by Renee Albert and Herman Colquhoun discussing their fascinating and successful careers. We had so much to talk about so this episode, Part 1, focusses on the education journey. Part 2 will dig into the working journey and additional topics too.
LH110 — Leveling Up: The Connections Cure
Karel is again joined by popular guest Marie-Josėe Shaar (MJ) for this the second instalment in the Leveling Up series with this episode focusing on The Connections Cure.
LH109 — Leveling Up
Karel’s back with more episodes! In fact, he has a whole new series called Leveling Up. The series takes the topics you’ve learned to date to a whole new level and a set of new topics too.
LH108 — Checking-in to Stay the Course
This is the third episode in the “Checking-in” series focused on coping during the pandemic. Karel devotes this episode on providing ideas to help you stay the course during this long-running pandemic.
LH107 — Checking-in on Mental Health
Karel is joined by UK Psychologist Mandy Kloppers to discuss mental health during this difficult period of a pandemic and social unrest and to discuss a variety of approaches to coping given different situations and circumstances.
LH106 — Check-in - Working from Home
With the overall series tagline for all these years being “staying sane in a crazy world”, Karel was inspired to start record episodes again with a collection of Check-in episodes to help listeners deal with and cope during the Coronavirus pandemic. This, the first in the collection, provides advice on working from home.
LH105 — Exploring the World
Karel continues his occasional series of episodes on major life changes, this time focusing on exploring the world. His guest is Kate Paddison who is currently in Melbourne, Australia. She describes her decision to buy a one-way ticket and explore the world.
LH104 — Innovation by Design
Karel devotes this episode to the design methods and tools now available to everyone in order to innovate on products, services, and really anything anyone wants to improve. He summarizes his seven habits of highly effective design thinkers.
LH103 — Career Pivots
Here’s another in the occasional series of episodes on major life changes. This episode focusses on career pivots, that is major career changes, and discusses insights, lessons learned, and advice from someone who has recently gone through this. Karel is joined by Lendy Krantz who is currently Director of Operations and Strategy at WeWork in New York City.
LH102 — All You Need is Love
Karel is again joined by Marie-Josée Shaar as they both explore an extension to Marie-Josée's Sleep, Food, Mood, and Exercise theme by focusing on mood and the quality of relationships yielding love, caring, and connectedness.
LH101 — Creating Your Own Job
This is the first of an occasional series of episodes on major life changes. This episode Karel deals with the topic of creating your own job and he's joined by Chui Chui Tan from Bristol, England who details her story of quitting her job of many years to start her own company.
LH100 — Celebration & Review
Karel celebrates the 100th episode of the podcast series by thanking his listeners and his guests and then reviewing briefly each of the episodes in the series.
LH99 — Diversity & Inclusion
Karel's back with a podcast episode dealing with the important topic of diversity and inclusion. In addition to reviewing previous episodes related to the topic and providing some inspirational quotes, Karel focuses on three habits: Recognizing and eliminating bias, understanding and empathizing, and championing and celebrating. He finishes up the episode talking about the episodes to come which will focus on insights from people who have gone through significant life changes.
LH98 — Career Workouts
Karel expands on his previous episodes dealing with career advice to make the case for approaching career health much like we know how to deal with physical health by doing workouts, journals, and checkups.
LH97 — Having Personal Impact
Many parts of the world are experiencing unprecedented levels of uncertainty due to political, economic, and religious types of instability. This episode will give you ways of dealing with uncertainty, becoming an agent of change, and having personal impact.
LH96 — Mindful Meditation
The results of a listener poll led to a request for an episode on Mindful Meditation and Karel delivered on that request in this episode. Karel talks about the research evidence for the benefits and then provides guidance of practicing mindfulness and meditation.