Becoming You - What we learned from Suzy Welch

Judy Oskam: 0:02

Hey, welcome back everyone. I'm Judy Oskam and in this solo episode of Stories of Change and Creativity, I want to share an experience that I had recently that had a big impact on me and maybe you might find it interesting. As a professor at Texas State, learning is part of my daily life. I think that's maybe why I became a professor, so I could just keep learning forever. I did that as my job as a journalist, where I was learning and interviewing people, and then in public relations, but maybe that's really why I kind of got into academia. I really enjoy working with smart students and faculty. My main goal with students is to help them master the course content and prepare them for a career. But that's just the beginning. What matters maybe even more is learning about yourself. What makes you tick, how you learn, where your strengths and talents show up. That kind of self-knowledge really becomes the foundation for everything else and it helps you design your life. It puts you in the driver's seat.

Earlier this month, my daughter Danielle and I attended the Becoming You three-day intensive at NYU Stern with Dr Suzy Welch. She directs the Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing at the NYU Stern School of Business. She created the Becoming You methodology as part of her doctoral research. The program and the three-day workshop, if you will, was full of lectures, exercises and assessments. Dr Welch challenged us to think deeply about who we are and what we value and how we live our lives around those values, and one of the most fascinating tools was the values bridge assessment. By answering questions, the assessment ranks your values, but it also shows the variance or how far your current life is from your ideal life.

For me, that part of the assessment was eye-opening. For me, my top value was what's called beholderism, and what that means is that aesthetics are important to me. They matter how places, spaces and objects and people look and feel. But my variance was high. It showed I needed and I crave more beauty, more order and more design in my world, and I can relate to that because at this point in my life I can see that I really do. It would benefit from that. My second value was what Susie calls eudaimonia, and that's all about fun, enjoyment and well-being. My variance was high there too, which makes sense. I'm always looking for ways to add joy to my life and make things more fun.

But we didn't stop there. We also explored the Enneagram, the PIE 360, and an aptitude test and a megatrends assessment. Each one gave us another layer of data and another layer of insight about how we show up in the world, and what struck me the most especially sharing it with Danny is that self-discovery isn't a one-time thing. It's really an ongoing journey, and at this workshop there were people from all ages and all careers and all stages of their life. It was fascinating, and I was excited to grab a quick soundbite with Suzy Welch about graduating seniors and what advice she has for students that are just about to launch their career.

I think you have to know your values. You have to. You can't be guessing and you can't be changing them for what you're being told you should do. You need to dig deep and do the testing and know your aptitudes and then figure out what work calls you emotionally and intellectually and do the synthesis of that and start your job journey there.

And I love the four horsemen, is that a good place to start for them too.

It's very important to find out which horseman is getting in the way of you living your values. Is it expectations, is it expedience, is it events, or is it economic security? Get to the bottom of that before you go anywhere. This has been great, great for me.

I've enjoyed it a lot. If you had to do this over knowing now what you know now, where would you start?

What would you do differently, and that's a big question. That is a big question. I'm happy where I ended up. I probably just would have started this work earlier and just gone faster, but I got here.

When the workshop ended, dani and I headed to LaGuardia Airport, and while we waited for our flight, I asked her to share a couple of reflections, and I wanted you to hear her perspective as well.

Personally, I've done kind of extensive research before on my aptitudes, career and personal related, but it was cool to have that reaffirming data as well as some new information points that I hadn't really dug as deep into before. Like my values, I thought that was super super cool and the Enneagram that was interesting, that was. Enneagram was very interesting as well, that was right on target for me.

I don't know about you, but that was right on target for me. Mine was also right on target as well, yeah yeah, it was interesting. Well, it was intensive, it was three days. Oh, and now we go back and put it all together.

Figure out what to do with, and for me it was like a true north. It gave me some good direction and some affirmation, but a little bit of superpower, right? Well, that's good. Well, I'm so glad that you came along for the ride, and I didn't know if you'd want to do this when I pitched it to you, but I'm glad that you came.

Thank you for having me. I really wanted to do this because I feel like the more you know about yourself, the better that you are able to help yourself and navigate through some maybe unsaid things or undiscovered things. I love that. It's just a way for you to put words to this information.

It does kind of create a language around what you value and how you spend your time and your money and your life and your emotion and your energy. It was so pretty extensive. I thought it was very extensive but it was cool.

That's great. Well, honey, thank you, love you, babe, thank you, I love you too, love you, love you. Well, you can tell, we had a great time together and we learned a lot about each other, but mainly we learned about ourselves, and that was the whole point, right? And I want to encourage you guys to keep learning and growing and you're listening to this podcast because you already have a growth mindset. I mean, that's sort of the profile of my listeners is you want to learn and grow, and hopefully we give you some nuggets every month that help you do that.

But I will list some of the resources from Suzy's initiative and I'll list the free quiz, which is the Four Horsemen quiz. It's just really a quick, easy way to reflect on your patterns and and your framework in life. So just keep learning and growing, and it's not just about your career but it's about how to design your life, a life that feels true to you and that you'll be happy with, and that's that's the goal, right? I love it. Well, if you've got a story to share or know someone who does reach out to me, judyoskam. com. And thanks for listening.