88. On the Agency to Define Your Own Ambitions & Success with Al Dea

Overview

Today I’m joined again by Al Dea, the founder of Betterwork Labs, an organization focused on helping companies create cultures where their people can thrive. Al is an author, speaker, podcast host, and researcher on workplace trends and talent development.

I had Al back for a second episode so we could go deeper and get Al’s perspective on Sustainable Ambition. I love how Sustainable Ambition takes on different meanings for different people, and Al shares that for him it’s about having the autonomy and agency to define how and where one wants to be ambitious, defining one’s own success. This aligns with the long-term view of Sustainable Ambition that we talk about and managing one’s life and work from decade to decade aligned with their own desires and sense of fulfillment.

In this conversation, we also talk about how the work world historically hasn’t armed people with alternative ways to think about and manage their careers and define their own success, how some companies and thought leaders are innovating to create these new norms, and Al’s counsel for stepping into agency to proactively stay on top of one’s career.

Al - This was another great conversation! Thanks for coming back and sharing your career management wisdom with us.

More About Our Guest

Al Dea is the Founder of Betterwork Labs, an organization focused on helping companies create cultures where their people can thrive. He is an author, speaker, podcast host, and researcher on workplace trends and talent development. Al is passionate about helping individuals and organizations flourish in the changing world of work and in unlocking individual purpose and potential to achieve organizational performance. Al researches, writes, and publishes on leadership development, workplace trends, and company culture, and his thinking and insights have been published in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, MIT Sloan Management Review, Business Insider, The World Economic Forum, Inc, Fast Company, and Time Magazine. Al previously worked at Salesforce as a Product Marketer, helping launch products and features that touched thousands of customers. Before that, he also worked as a management consultant at Deloitte Consulting LLP, where he advised Fortune 500 companies on developing and executing digital transformation. Al received his Bachelor’s Degree in Business and Theology from Boston College and his Master’s in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina Chapel-Hill.

Topics Covered

  • Al Dea is back for a second episode, and we start with diving more into Sustainable Ambition and what that means from Al’s point-of-view. What I’ve loved about Sustainable Ambition is how it is multi-faceted, and while I may be defining it one way, others find additional meaning in it, too. I wanted to get Al’s take. He shares his thoughts based on his personal experience.

  • “So when I think about Sustainable Ambition, what really comes to mind is this idea of having the autonomy, as well as the agency, to define on your terms how you want to be ambitious and where you want to be ambitious. And I think that opened up… a whole new aperture for me of thinking about what does success actually mean to me?”

  • I love how Al shares that in the moment his manager asked him what he wanted and how he defined success for himself that he felt seen. Imagine asking that of others and allowing them to feel seen.

  • I appreciate how Al says that we haven’t armed people well to be able to manage their careers in a self-directed way. That’s where some of the work that Al is doing and the work of others he often features is so important, to give people the tools.

  • To normalize, Al and I both share how we hit moments in our career where we were not quite sure what to do with our careers, despite our planning and thoughtfulness. We discuss if there might be normal arcs or horizons to these inflection points.

  • It’s great that Al brings up how we change and our lives change, and because of that we’ll question what we want from our career different stages. As Al says, your career operating system might need an upgrade.

  • I asked Al’s perspective if today he thinks people are doing a better job of staying on top of their career management and thinking about their upgrades on a regular basis.

  • We talk about what the concept of Sustainable Ambition means when someone is working in a high performance environment. Al shares how we need to broaden our view of what success looks like and how we can get there. We go on to discuss whether or not employers are broadening their view of success given the “talent war” and how hard it apparently is to hire talent today.

  • Al shares some of the cool start-ups and innovators in the work space today. One such company I’ll call out is called Role Share that partners with companies to post jobs that can be shared. Love this!

  • I ask Al for some tips on how we can all stay on top of our career operating system. He offers some inner and outer work to take on.

  • Al and I are passionate about making work better for all, and I ask him to give his thoughts on those out there who might think that we’re wrong to have this narrative around career focus given all the talk of burnout today.

  • Al shares his thoughts on stepping into agency and how to do that while working within the structures that exist in the world.

  • Finally, we close with a lightning round and a final tip from Al!

Resources Mentioned

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88. On the Agency to Define Your Own Ambitions & Success with Al Dea

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2022-2Kathy OnetoRight Success