Stuck? Define, learn, plan, reframe.
Who hasn’t ever felt stuck. Especially in our career. We talk with Chuck Papandrea in this episode about how to move, even when in a great career track, to find satisfaction and growth. Initial steps to start when you are looking to get unstuck. And, how to leverage continuous improvement through professional and personal development to achieve your goals.
Guest: Chuck Papandrea
Business Coach & Consultant
Corporate, Personal & Financial Development
But Chuck felt stuck – and he was stuck – in his career, his finances and his life. In 2003, Chuck’s world was transformed through exposure to the power of a self-directed education. Chuck aggressively pursued personal and professional development, which continues to this day, and he’s never looked back! This growth and expanded perspective enabled Chuck to establish an international consulting company in 2006, providing leadership and personal development, executive mentoring, process transformation, and enhanced business performance and growth. His satisfied clients include one of the Big 4 accounting firms, two Top 30 international banks, and countless organizations of all sizes – as well as the teams and individuals therein. In 2011, Chuck was introduced to LIFE, a company that delivers life-changing information and services in the areas of financial, professional and personal development. In LIFE, Chuck found a principle-centered leadership and personal development program to enable his professional clients to achieve extraordinary results in both their business and personal lives. Further, he recognized an opportunity to build into the lives of others outside of the business environment, promoting financial, professional and personal development and the life-changing impact they could have. In this, Chuck realized he had discovered his lifetime passion.
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Welcome to the Generation Open podcast with LDR21. a podcast about workplace culture and leadership that leads to transparency and an open organization. Today we are joined by business consultant Chuck Papandrea to discuss career development and mindsets. Here’s your host the founder and CEO of LDR21 Jen Kelchner. Jen Kelchner: [00:00:28] So Chuck, thank you so much for being with us today on the podcast. I kind of want to get started. You and I have met through our local chamber which is, the Cobb County Chamber, here in the Atlanta metro area. And we really had great conversation talking about mindsets, personal development, what happens when you get stuck in your career. Jen Kelchner: [00:00:47] And so I really wanted to have you on to talk people through that. So let’s kind of get started a little bit with what happens when we get stuck in our career. So we choose these paths, we’re there, maybe we’ve been very successful for a time, and we feel like we’re stuck. Let’s start with a little bit of your story. Chuck Papandrea: [00:01:05] OK. Thank you. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here today. In terms of being stuck, in terms of my background of my career, I had what everybody would look at as just this this perfect track. Educational, you know education wise, in terms of the schools and I was able to go and degrees I was able to get. And did very well, and all of that. Went into a corporate environment with General Electric and just had some awesome jobs that I was able to do. And I was able to really ascend into a number of different positions early on in my career that people, my peers, weren’t getting until further on in life. Chuck Papandrea: [00:01:48] Through that through that track though, I got to a point in my career where I really started to get introspective and I started to ask those vital questions about – you know, how did I get here, you know what’s next for me. You know things like that. And as I took that inventory of myself all of a sudden I realized that I’m stuck. You know what I mean? I’m stuck. I’m stuck personally. I’m stuck professionally. I’m stuck financially. I’m on a track that is not necessarily leading me to where I thought it would lead me. It’s not leading me to where I am sure I want to go. And and the way I really analyze that for myself was – number one I looked at where people five years down the road were compared to where I was and it didn’t look so bright for me. Jen Kelchner: [00:05:49] Such a dangerous state when you start expanding your mind. It’s a beautiful dangerous, not a bad dangerous. But it’s like just throwing you know gasoline on the fire – it just explodes rapidly. That’s been my personal experience too. It’s like this a new taste for life, a new taste for learning, a taste for just new experiences, and figuring out new ways to do things so it’s interesting. Jen Kelchner: [00:06:13] So what were some of the first steps that you took. You know finding yourself in a great job, in a great field, doing really well, realizing that you’re not fulfilled and satisfied where you are. So nothing to say was wrong with where you where but you recognized for yourself you’re not there. What where some of the first steps that you took that you start kind of discovering what path to go down, how to do the development. Chuck Papandrea: [00:06:39] Right. That’s a great question. The one of the first one of the first things I did is I took stock of where I was. So I was taught within this continuous improvement mindset that number one you have to define a problem and you have to measure where you are. So that’s what I that’s where I started. I tried to understand how I got to where I was, what I was already learning from. Again at General Electric (GE), we had a phenomenal in-house courses. We had Crotonville and all of these different areas that we were able to go in and learn. But it was a lot of it for me in my experience was just towards that job or just towards that environment. It wasn’t really expanding me outside of that. Jen Kelchner: [00:09:49] It’s interesting you and I have a very similar methodology. My approach to how I solve problems, or if I coaching somebody or figuring anything out. You take basic process map, like flow maps for workflow – but to figure out and define where we are and knowing where we’re trying to go and looking at roadblocks in between and redesigning that to get there. Chuck Papandrea: [00:10:30] Right. There’s a there’s a principle around that. It’s a financial principle, it’s also a principle outside of that. From a financial perspective don’t take financial advice from broke people. Take advice from people with financial success that you would like to emulate. The same concept goes into the leaders that we follow. Seek out somebody that has done what you’re looking to do. Seek out somebody that has the results in the area that you’re trying to learn. Don’t take advice from people that don’t have the success results that you’re looking for yourself in your own life. And that that allows you that opportunity to duplicate what they have done from an experience base. Jen Kelchner: [00:11:18] Absolutely. You know one thing that we find, and I’m sure you’ve seen this in the course of your career too. When we talk to organizations about developing people – whether it’s you know executive coaching for their leadership, or you know the scope of development, whether it’s your coursework or internal coaching program. But we often find that there are some, not all, but some leaders and business owners that are still very stuck in that fear based mentality that if I develop my people they will steal all of my information and leave. Why do I want to spend the time and money to invest in people if they may not stick around? I’m sure you’ve seen this as well. I have my own theory on how to overcome that but I’d love to hear your point on why we want to do that. Chuck Papandrea: [00:12:05] Right. That actually to me goes into two different tracks. The first one exactly what you’re talking about is that fear that you will develop somebody and they’ll leave your company. The mindset that I feel around that is…that you in this environment that we’re in right now, most people are not going to be with you and with your company for the long haul. Jen Kelchner: [00:14:49] I think that’s an important part of mindset shifting for people to understand. While changing our mindsets and reframing the way we think is hard work, it’s not easy…it is very simple steps, very simple routines to do that right. But it’s a lot of repetition, changing the way we think. A lot of re-affirming things, of telling ourselves you know differently than we’ve ever learned before. But part of that is focusing on that success point for ourselves that we are going be OK. Chuck Papandrea: [00:16:10] Right. When I learned about fear and tried to get a better understanding of what fear is, what I learned is (and I might be misquoting this a little bit) but the only two innate fears that we have as humans. Number one, is fear of falling. Number two, is fear of loud noises. Just everything else is learned fear. So if they’re learned fears, we have to understand why we’ve learned them. But we can also understand that if it’s a learned fear, we can also unlearn that fear. And there is a concept that I learned from the company that I engage in, in terms of my own professional development, is that courage is earned. You’re not necessarily going to have courage to the end point of courage. But if you have courage enough to take that first step, and have success in that first step, you earn an element of courage within yourself to take that second step and third step. And sometimes overcoming fear is not all that you know taking one bite and getting it all. But just those daily disciplines of working yourself up to the point of being able to master the entire you know source of that fear. Jen Kelchner: [00:17:27] Absolutely I think that’s a great way to look at it. I want to talk about you and I also have very different definitions on failure. Different in the way that we discuss it with people but not the end meaning of it. And I’d love for you to share with our audience about failure and our narrative too. Chuck Papandrea: [00:17:46] Right. I love that because I actually grew up in an environment where failure was a negative. You didn’t fail. Whether it was your grades, whether it was in sports, whatever. Failure was final. Failure was something that was going to stick with you and was going to be part of your permanent record throughout your entire life. And I learned more recently, a completely different perspective on failure. When we talk about failure a lot of times it is associated with an event, something happens in your life, and it’s the mindset of you know a failure. That event in and of itself is a neutral, one time event. It’s something that happened. It’s how we view that event, it’s our perspective on that event that determines whether or not we see it as positive. We can grow from it we can learn from it. It’s something that was just a step along the way. Or we can view it and say you know from a negative perspective and say you know that was a failure. My gosh I can’t believe that. You know I would have done something like that. And what happens though is that story – positive or negative – becomes a repeated story. An event happened once. It was neutral. What really guides us, what really determines our mindsets afterwards, is that repetitive story that we tell ourselves over and over again afterwards. And we can tell ourselves a very positive story about that over and over and we will reinforce and we will grow. And it can truly be a pivotal moment for us. Jen Kelchner: [00:20:00] Absolutely. Chuck Papandrea: [00:20:01] I know you have a great perspective on that as well. Jen Kelchner: [00:20:04] I do. You know failure…so a lot of this comes from history, our story. And that’s where we all come from with this, right. That the work that we do with developing people often comes from a deeper set of experience that we personally have had in addition to whatever training we had. For me, if I were to be just the average person looking at a piece of paper, my rap sheet so to speak, from my adulthood it would look like a litany of failures. Just a lot of wrong turns, and a lot of missteps. And you know both of you know personally -not as much professionally – mostly personally. But when I was doing a lot of my own work in the last seven years, that really changed how I think and reaffirming positive mindsets, and also this work…was I kind of had this visual in my head. That it’s just like driving down the road and going to the grocery store and I take the same route I always go. And for whatever reason, I have a little moment in my head, and I forgot to take a right at the intersection and instead I went through. You know the first thing that we do if you’re driving to the grocery store and miss the turn is, oh no big deal. I mean kind of spaced out for a second and missed my turn but I’m just going to turn right here at the gas station and get right back on the road. And I thought that’s really what “failure” is from my perspective. I just missed my turn. It’s OK. I came down here, I’m turning around and getting right back on track. Chuck Papandrea: [00:22:56] When you had said a minute ago about if someone looked at your rap sheets and looked at your experiences. My perspective on that – faith is very important to me it’s integral to who I am and in how I you know how I live my life. There’s a book by Mark Batterson that is called In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day. And in that he talks about God being in the resume building business. And everything that has happened to you up to this point in your life you now have a set of experiences you have now a set of roles, positions. Failures are not whatever they were the way you perceive them. All those experiences all come together for you in this moment to do what you are now being called to do in this moment. Chuck Papandrea: [00:23:47] And no one has had those experiences except for you. And they’re unique to you and your unique to you for a reason for a purpose. So when you look back at all of those you know however you judge them all those events in your lives you know that you probably draw from each of those to be successful in this conversation. To be successful in what you’re doing right now with LDR21. It’s everything up to this point has made you who you are uniquely to be able to succeed and thrive where you are right now. Jen Kelchner: [00:24:22] Hundred percent. I completely completely agree with you on that. As we move in to kind of wrapping up. I want to talk about a little bit more about creating a well-rounded approach to our development. Chuck Papandrea: [00:25:22] Right. Right. That’s a great question. And I remember in my in my career with GE where there was a lot of conversation around work life balance. And that was when that just seemed to come into vogue. And it truly wasn’t what I would now envision as work life balance. I would say from a development perspective, first of all, the company Life is a company that provides information, developing information, in three main areas: financial, professional, and personal development. And it’s important to be well-rounded in all those different areas. Jen Kelchner: [00:32:19] I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Because I love hearing that. It gets me excited. Well folks that is all the time for today. I want to thank Chuck for being a part of this conversation, starting a conversation, and really helping us think about simple steps to start addressing what changes we might need, or where we could start if we’re feeling a little stuck in life, in your career. Remember that it’s all one in the same. So helping you find that place where you can become passionate and feel sustained and satisfied at the end of every day. That’s a very important part of our human existence. Remember that failure is a fixed event and that it is the story you tell yourself after that fact that will help you in that mindset changes as well. And to take a well-rounded approach to your personal career and financial development to be able to succeed and find out where you want to be in life. So Chuck thank you very much. Chuck Papandrea: [00:33:15] Thank you.