Bright & Wize is a Brize podcast dedicated to discussing timely topics that leads listeners to more career success and less stress. It starts with greater self-awareness.
Our guests share their career successes and failures to demonstrate how their commitment to strengthening their cognitive skills and mindsets helps them successfully maneuver career challenges and work more productively.
The 21-Century Career Profile
Brize CEO and host of the Bright & Wize podcast Leslie Ferry recently presented at a virtual tech conference where she shared her thoughts on what it takes to have a successful career in today’s digitally transformed work environment.
She illustrates how repetitive job tasks have been automated (think Grammarly), and new job growth is in non-routine positions, which require employees to expand their current skills and mindsets. Leslie talks about how AI and digital transformation has created a new career success profile, which she refers to as I3, that integrates our natural intelligence, intention, and interaction.
Listen to hear what it means to work with intention and positive interaction and how to leverage your natural intelligence to do so. It starts with Leslie sharing, “The opportunity to work on meaningful projects, conceptualize and develop creative solutions to problems, or create new products or services no one else has imaged yet has never been greater. We all have the opportunity to impact our organization positively and accomplish personal satisfaction. It is an exciting time to be in the workforce.”
How Mentors, Our Business Friends, Guide Us To Achieve Our Career Goals & Aspirations
Mentors are a great source of guidance and advice on navigating our careers to realize our goals. They are generous with their time to share their experiences and lessons to help us accelerate our growth and avoid missteps. These exceptional connections start slowly and blossom into valued, long-term relationships.
Leslie talks with Scott Montgomery on this topic. They discuss the seek-out versus attract mentor approach, the mentee’s and mentor’s responsibilities, and the benefits they’ve experienced, thanks to their mentors.
I Was Laid Off
My Daily Career Wellness Investment Led To A New Job Offer Just One Month Later.
After just buying her first home with her new husband, Leslie, Bright & Wize host and Brize Founder, was laid off. With a higher mortgage on top of car payments and other financial responsibilities, to say the stress and anxiety she was experiencing was extreme is an understatement.
But thanks to a commitment to her career growth and development, Leslie was able to land a new job within just about a month. You never know where a focus on career wellness will lead, but it is always worth the investment.
Listen to hear how Leslie’s investment quickly led to an unexpected career opportunity, further supporting her goal of learning as much as possible about other functional areas.
Don’t Overestimate Your Work Performance
It contributes to the great job performance opinion divide.
It is not a new phenomenon, but its reasons are evolving. There is a great job performance opinion divide. Many individuals can overestimate how well they are performing at work. They may believe they are producing superior quality, but their manager disagrees. This Bright & Wize podcast episode explores why many of us think we’re knocking it out of the park, on top of our game, or accomplishing great things when our manager or boss has a different opinion.
It is Not a Question of If, But When to Work With a Career Performance Coach
Professional athletes have performance coaches. So should corporate professionals. Coaches guide a self-discovery process, helping us understand how we show up for work and growth opportunities that lead to stronger job performance with less stress and anxiety.
In this Bright & Wize episode, Scott Montgomery joins Leslie again to share how career performance coaches significantly changed their careers and led to their passion for helping others experience the same benefits.
As they start, Scott clarifies the difference between a coach, mentor, and advisor. They then go on to discuss the benefits and some pitfalls of each.
A Pain Finder Tool For Improving Individual & Whole Organization Productivity
Talking about pain and healing in the workplace may seem out-of-place. But that is the point, to shift our thinking about how we think about our pain (stress, anxiety, hurt) at work to clarify how we can address and manage it.
In this episode, Dani Doucette, Modern Healing Artist at Healeology, joins Leslie to talk about pain and healing in the workplace. Dani shares his views on this unconventional but highly effective approach to work.
The evolution of how we show up for work has transitioned from showing no emotions to the opportunity to bring our whole selves. When we do, we demonstrate vulnerability, which is positive. But it also brings the chance of feeling hurt, aggrieved, or harmed.
In this episode, you’ll hear how healing, pain, and forgiveness lead to greater individual and organizational productivity. And with that higher quality output comes lower work-related stress and anxiety.
What you’ll hear:
- How to categorize pain (stress, anxiety, hurt, etc.)
- How to identify the true source of pain
- How to correct misunderstandings
The Importance of Setting Goals & Establishing Habits
Scott Montgomery, Chief Customer Officer at Worldgate, certified Leadership Coach, and author of a new book, How Did You Get Here? Lessons of Unconventional Success, joins Leslie again to discuss how setting goals contribute to attaining our personal definition of success and the need to establish positive habits to support their achievement.
Work Value (Success) Formula
This topic is so important and often misunderstood that we divided it into 3-episodes.
- Work Value (Success) Formula
- Dissecting the Formula Components
- Self-Evaluating Value – and actions to increase
Pamela Coleman-Davis, a 25+ year corporate veteran and Leadership Coach, joins Leslie to remove the mystery around what it means to provide value at work.
#1 Work Value (Success) Formula
This first episode outlines the formula for being valuable.
Many of us get wrapped up, being very busy, in doing stuff to complete our job description responsibilities. We believe when we check things off of our to-do list, quickly react to requests, or attend meetings that, we will be essential at work. But that is not the case. Listen to hear what providing value at work really entails.
#2 Dissecting the Formula Components
To add value at work, we need to expand our skills to include problem-solving, effectively communicating, understanding co-workers’ work styles, and more. On the surface, these skills seem straightforward. In reality, they are much more involved.
In this episode of the Bright & Wize podcast, Pamela Coleman-Davis dissects the value formula components to reveal what they really are and their importance at work.
#3 Self-Evaluate Your Value Work
And actions to take to increase it
In this 3rd Bright & Wize podcast episode on Providing Value at Work, Pamela Coleman-Davis offers guidance on how to self-evaluate the value individuals bring to work and actions to take if they want to increase it.
Crazy, Unique Things Happen with a Positive Mindset
Storytelling is a powerful tool for understanding many aspects of life, including the essential work skills that power our best performance. This week’s guest, Scott Montgomery, does just that by sharing an incredibly disappointing experience that led to future, incredible experiences. The ingredient that turned the situation around? He decided to take a positive, learning mindset versus a victim, negative one. His story is an excellent example of how we can all take control of our destiny and achieve our life goals.
While building his IT consulting firm, Worldgate, Scott discovered his passion for helping individuals foster a continuous learner mindset to find their best selves. He obtained an ICF-ACC leadership coach certification to ensure he successfully develops and mentees his employees and others. He now serves as a strategic advisor on Brize’s board and is the author of the upcoming book, How Did You Get Here? Lessons of Unconventional Success, both of which enable him to achieve his goal of helping individuals perform at their best and live their happiest lives.
The Job Performance Syllabus is Opaque Compared to a College Course’s
In this episode, Brize’s founder, Leslie Ferry, reflects on how academic success differs fairly significantly from the approach to performing well in our jobs. Her unique analysis stems from not only her career and education but from her recent years instructing a strategic marketing class in a master’s program. Observing her students heightened her awareness of just how differently success is fueled between the two stages of our lives.
Leslie’s perspective is helpful to individuals who entered the workforce in the last several years and those who manage individuals who entered the workforce in the last five to seven years.
Knowing our Colleagues’ Work Styles is a Key Ingredient to Working Efficiently, Influencing Others, and Succeeding
Knowing our work style and that of your coworkers is a secret ingredient to working efficiently, influencing others, performing at your best, and lower work-related stress and anxiety. This super-power knowledge eliminates misunderstanding and misinterpretations of behaviors. It helps us determine how to best work with others to achieve our goals and influences progress.
Listen to hear more about the four high-level work styles and discover your own.
In 3 individual Bright & Wize episodes, Pamela Coleman-Davis joins Leslie Ferry to talk about the ever-present topic of stress.
Part 1: Defines stress and the different levels we can experience.
We all experience stress — there is no escaping it, but we can successfully manage it. But before Leslie and Pam jump to the punchline, they define what stress is compared to burnout in this first chat. They also explain how to recognize where we fall on the stress spectrum from positive, motivational stress to burnout and what lies in between.
Part 2: Reveals the actual sources of stress.
In this episode, Pamela Coleman-Davis and Leslie Ferry dig deep into the actual sources of stress, which go beyond having too much to do, too few resources, and unrealistic deadlines. Although, these can all be factors of stress. Listen to identify what might be your current core source of stress.
Part 3: Offers guidance on how to manage stress.
In this final episode on stress, Pamela Coleman—Davis shares with Leslie Ferry how we can effectively manage our stress to stay at the positive, motivational level.