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Episode 0016 Shownotes
How to tame your fears before leaping into business (part 1:2)
Do you fear the unknown world outside of academia? Does fear of failure ring a bell? Is starting from scratch making you freeze? In this episode you'll learn in part 1 of 2, how to tame your fears before leaping into business. Maybe you fear missing intellectual stimulation, or not utilizing acquired skills or you feel being professionally isolated as the only PhD in (blank) or being undervalued. Maybe you heard rumors about bad work-life-challenges in business. Or you are anxious about mundane rejection or competition.
Listen to Prof. Dr. Eleonore Soei-Winkels as she shares actionable tips in this episode of the weekly PostdocTransformation show.
Subscribe to our weekly show on your favorite podcast platforms: Why? Postdoc scientists & PhD students / candidates will learn the basics for their career transition from research into business & industries AND will get to know a company that hires early career scientists!
Enroll in your free email course for your career transition into business! Especially emails no 2 & 3 focus on creating a LinkedIn profile and using LinkedIn to network for your career transition!
Fear of the unkown
How to tame your fears before leaping into business. This is a question [00:01:00] that I was inspired to create an episode for my weekly PostdocTransformation show because of the live Q&As I had just had. And to be honest, because I'm a mom, I always see leadership and development opportunities in all walks of life, right?
So, my youngest kid is about to learn to swim he's still fearful of, you know, not being in the water. That's fine. He plays a lot in the water, but he is still fearful of trusting himself that he is able to swim. So right now, he's just learning how to use his legs, but he's still assisted front wise so that he still has his pool noodle, so to speak, right?
Now he has to find out how he can combine his legwork and also his arm work so that he is able [00:02:00] to swim without any assistance.
So, welcome to the weekly PostdocTransformation Show episode: How to tame your fears before leaping into business? I think that this is a great episode, and actually it's absolutely needed because if you cannot tame your fears or manage your expectations towards them, then you won't leave. And I want you to live your life to the fullest. I want you to reach your whole vision of life.
And if business is on your bucket list, then this episode is for you. All right, so just in case you are new to us, my name is Professor Dr. Eleonore Soei-Winkels. I'm a psychologist, trained leadership coach, and I'm a professor for industrial and occupation psychology. And that's why I maybe have some different point of views on the different aspects that I'm talking about.
[00:03:00] But essentially, I want to support you, if you are a scientist leaping into business. And for that you should check out our instant check on your readiness to leap into business. You can see that on the, on the website, www.postdoctransformation.com. But if you already are keen on leaping into business, you are beyond the readiness check, then I urge you to enroll in your free email course with up to 10 emails where I share a lot of things that you need to do before you leave so that you can land the job in business that you want, and that is according to your vision of life.
So, check out my free career resources and let's dive right into fear number one.
And that is the fear of the unknown, right? So that is the uncertainty about what lies ahead in the business world. And [00:04:00] usually those fears are bigger than they are. More negative than they need to be because it could be that it's quite easy for you to leave or it's, it's different, yes. But you enjoy that because I had some misconceptions and prejudices about the unknown because I had no idea what was waiting ahead and, if I had known that I would've leap probably much earlier.
I would've probably done a PhD, but maybe I would've just you, you know, speed up the process because for whatever career I was doing in IT, three publications were not needed. Two would've been okay. So, I could have speed up the process, right. So, I urge you to embrace the possibility that the unknown could also be positive. I had a [00:05:00] prejudice about that's being capitalistic and you know, too calculative and something like that. But it's not at all. Or, but it's not just like that.
How can you tame those fears of the unknown? Well, for one, you could think of asking people, you know, you trust who leaped into business. And the different industries actually do have different outlooks. Do some research. Ask people who are in business, try to find out whether you can shadow them. Maybe it's, it doesn't have to be internship, but you can shadow someone online when they are working online anyway.
So, remote workers so that you understand how it's like to be working in business.
Fear of failure & starting from scratch
So, number two, fear of failure. Well, yeah, maybe you've been someone who has always been successful [00:06:00] by now, right? So, you've probably had some trouping colors, when you left high school, then you proceeded with the bachelor's, the masters, the PhD at the moment.
So, maybe this is something where you say, I've always been a straight A student. At least a good student. Everyone was always proud of me. And now when you leap into business, it's important to manage your expectations. If you expect to be as successful from the get-go, to hit the ground running, that's probably an expectation that is hard to fulfill, right?
So, instead I expected myself to be mediocre at best and more realistically to be a bloody beginner. So, yes, I was more mature in my personality through whatever I have learned in my [00:07:00] life until then. Because all my colleagues right and left were 20 years just, and, and I was like 28 or so.
There were worlds apart between them and me because they were so young and still I thought that, okay, so we all start from the same point in terms of knowledge. It's only my capacity to be resilient and to work out solutions and that will help me to maybe solve that in less time. And it was that case.
So, number three is related to that. [00:10:00] That's the fear of starting from scratch. If you don't expect yourself to be superior always also in your new venue, then I think you are setting up yourself at least for success in the terms of being humble and to learn and to show everyone that you are teachable, that you are keen on learning something new.
And I mean, we are learning experts, right? PhDs are learning experts. We have learned how we can learn better. During my PhD, I was better than in my master and in my bachelor or the comparable thing is diploma in Germany. And I think that you could also confirm that for yourself, that you have become more proficient, more efficient in your learning.
Maybe you are also a teacher already. I mean, maybe you are a teaching assistant, [00:11:00] so you lead your bachelor & master students in learning something new. So yeah, fear of starting from scratch. If you expect yourself to be a great learner and to be humble, then maybe that's even a great asset in the sense of, yeah, you are well aware that you'll be starting from scratch and you will make the best out of that.
Fear of missing out on intellectual stimulation and of not utilizing your acquired skills
All right, and then number four is the fear of losing intellectual stimulation. Well, that's a common misconception, every once in a while someone is asking this, and I get that. We are PhD students and we talk about the grand and the unresolved questions and something like that.
So it is, we are curious minds. I understand this. Absolutely. And these aren't the questions that are asked in business, but instead [00:12:00] it's, it's always a why. It's always what's in it for me? What's in it for us? What's in it, in it for the company? How we can we achieve the business objectives? And maybe some, you know, mundane questions.
So, the intellectual stimulation is different and has a different impact, but that doesn't mean it's less interesting. So, because maybe it's also related to this fear of the unknown in the sense of “we have never been exposed in academia to these other kinds of questions”. So, maybe these are also interesting just because you haven't been exposed to that, doesn't, it would mean that it's boring.
And did you know that I offer deep dive E-course workshops and memberships at graduate schools, maybe also at yours in the future as your graduate school coordinator, whether they want to book my services so that I can deliver them to you [00:13:00] 24 7 365 on your mobile device.
Fear number five, that's the fear of not utilizing acquired skills, and that feels like you've been investing so many years. Your bachelor, your master's, a PhD. That's like a third of your years in life, right? So, you've invested so many years in developing skills that are suddenly irrelevant without value in business and.
You cannot start something new without letting go, okay? Don't see this as waste, but instead it's a weight that you need to let go in order to be able to lift to a new level of yourself, of your professional identity, right? [00:14:00] So this is more like when you have a hot air balloon. If you want go up in the sky, you have to let go of the weights that kept you on the ground, right?
They had their purpose, they were important, but now, for the next step, for the next iteration of your career, they're not needed anymore. You still know what a weight is. You still know where you can get this weight for the next time you may need them (again in a new context).
Isolation
And then number six, that is the fear number six, fear of professional isolation. And that is you maybe are worried about having not the same level of collaboration and community as in academia. And I also get that point because I was working in interdisciplinary teams and I was always so inspired and excited to work with a neuro computational team.
And I think that when you are in consulting and project management, you will also see this [00:15:00] vast interdisciplinary approach in business. So, I can assure you that you will have something similar like this in business as well. If you are working in a corporate situation, corporate role, where you are just working in the line of marketing or sales or something like that, it might be isolated, okay?
But if you are working at a hub position, hub role, then it will be absolutely not isolated, but instead you're going to be exposed to many different business units, and that will be stimulating as well.
Fear of being undervalued
Fear number seven is fear of being undervalued. And maybe that is because your self-worth is tied to the title that you hold. That means maybe it's so important for you that you have reached a bachelor and master and a PhD that, you want to be seen and recognized as the expert, as someone who knows a lot of information on that topic.
I've seen this kind of trait with [00:17:00] people who like, yes, I'm a university professor. I am a. Professor who has habilitation and everything like that. So, they do differentiate between the different professor titles, doctor titles and stuff like that.
But actually, in business, no one knows. No one cares and they don't care about whatever background you have. But instead, they care about the contributions that you are able to do towards the business objective. Towards the business goals, right?
So yeah, for this fear of being undervalued, I would suggest to you to think about who you are without the doctor title, who you are without the master and the bachelor. For me, it was a good thing to not use my PhD officially in the first couple of years in business because I wanted to be seen as [00:18:00] someone who is eager to learn to, who is humble and eager to learn new things. And I didn't want to intimidate my colleagues because I saw that some of them knew or saw that I have a doctor title and they treated me differently.
And my power of the role was in stark contrast to my doctor title, right? So, I had a role that was usually filled with people who are fresh from college. So even though I had a doctor title that didn't mean that I was the boss or the leader of the project. And I've seen colleague also started just like me, from academia right after the PhD. And that person really had trouble. She always stated that she's also a doctor. Why is only the leader of the unit is called a doctor, but she is not called a doctor. She introduced herself with the doctor title. And in business that felt [00:19:00] intimidating for most of the people that I knew. So, I urge you to think about how important it is for you to have reached the DR title and to be recognized by others. Or is your own recognition for your own achievements enough? And, that's an ego question, right?
Fear of overwork, rejections & competition
Fear number eight, which is the fear of work life balance challenges. So, in media, so in movies, there are more corporate bad examples than in academia. I only know one series on Netflix, the chair where someone, a professor is depicted. So, usually you see like the wolf of Wall Street or something like that. So that's usually something where you say, I don't know, that work life balance is really not what I want to have in my life, but instead, [00:20:00] you have to set your own boundaries.
And then it's possible, especially now when I see a lot of people during the Corona crisis, right after the Corona crisis, there is a human energy of crisis. There is a crisis of human energy at the moment. So many, many workers are absolutely focusing their mental health, taking more days of sickness than ever, and also just working like 80% or 90% instead of 100%.
At the moment, there is a shortage of workers, of experts and leaders. So, you are having a good chance to land a job in business and also to make sure that you are setting the boundaries as you want.
Fear number nine refers to the fear of rejection. Well, [00:22:00] rejection, I mean, rejection is my second name as a researcher, right? So, worrying about facing rejections about the job search, or when you're pitching business ideas. I think that we as scientists have built resilience, right?
So, we don't take it personally anymore. I mean, If I would, then I'd be crying on the dance floor. Right. So, so you have to be, you know, taking it not personally instead. I always tell my bachelor and master students and also my PhD students who are my coachees, to think of a rejection in business means that either your application wasn't right or your skillset wasn't right, or the job wasn't right for you.
But it's a good sign because probably it's harder to succeed in a role that was not assigned to you in the first place. So even if you could fight for that and ask them why didn't I get it? And then you [00:23:00] still get in, but there's still this, you know, you have to fight from an underdog position, right? Instead, use this as a learning curve. Use that as a learning experience to increase your competitiveness for the jobs that you want. And that's why you should also look into my free email course where I discussed the idea of applying to your favorite employers in a different than expected order.
And I'll put the link to the email course in the show notes. Okay.
So, fear number 10 is the fear of competition. Well, yeah, I understand that. I always tell my PhD students who are among my coachees, when you enter the job market, you will be competing with my master's students, for example, my master [00:24:00] students typically have solid, practical experience and they have an academic degree as a master.
So, when they enter the business market or when they reapply to the business market, then they have a lot of practical and theoretical sufficient information and knowledge and experience. So, what else do you bring to the table as a PhD? And that is leadership thought leadership, running experiments in a way that are sustainable and something like that.
So, these are things that you need to make shine in your applications so that you can compete.
Wow. So, after 10 fears and still 10 more to go, I'm suggesting that you think about which fears are yours. And how you can manage their expectations, whether they are misconceptions, prejudices. How you can prepare to deal with them beforehand so that you can tame your fears before you leap into to business. And if you are interested in more fears, please check out the next episode. Part two, because honestly I have 10 (more) fears, but I didn't want to bother with a one hour episode. So, I split them up into two halves.
Untill the next episode,
Cheers,
Eleonore & Team PostdocTransformation
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