Maggie Craddock - Lifeboat: Navigating Unexpected Career Change and Disruption

Contents

Praise for Lifeboat

Lifeboat is a joy to read, applying a story we all know to life challenges we will all face. It is an instruction manual on how to become accountable for your own journey that also reminds leaders of their duty to enable a culture that empowers people to become their best selves. Be wary of the Big Ship mentality, whatever size boat you get on! This is a book every up-and-coming executive should read and one every CEO should have already read.

Eric Elliott, Board Chair of Volantis S.A., Private Equity Operating Executive, and former CEO of Prime Therapeutics

Maggie Craddocks Lifeboat Process for tapping into your authentic strengths when facing unexpected change is valuable for us all during turbulent times. She uses the Titanic metaphor beautifully to help us envision challenges we all face through the eyes of others, beat the odds, and thrive in our lives and careers.

Dr. Doris Day, acclaimed aesthetic dermatologist and author of Beyond Beautiful

Maggie Craddock is to careers what the Carpathia was to survivors of the Titanic disaster. In Lifeboat, she takes all the wisdom shes gleaned coaching hundreds of executives and puts it into a great self-help guide to saving ones professional and personal self. Whether you are just about to jump off the dock to begin your journey or have been afloat for years, Lifeboat offers an excellent process to ensure a successful trip.

Kenneth Moore, Chief Operating Officer at Jennison Associates

Lifes a gift and I dont intend on wasting it. This classic line from the movie Titanic, delivered by Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, is followed by these words: You never know what hand youre gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you...to make each day count. Lifeboat is a practical manual for making the most of the gift of life, whatever comes your way. Maggie Craddock poses eight critical questions that guide readers to think the unthinkable in order to become unsinkable.

Michael J. Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci and The Art of Connection

After decades of being a chief risk officer at major financial institutions, I was adept at dealing with crisis. But when I faced a personal situation that shook my world, suddenly the tools that had been effective navigating markets didnt work. I was lucky to have had the opportunity to work one-on-one with Maggie Craddock. Now her practical advice on how to deal with unexpected change is told in a book I couldnt put down. Using the story of a catastrophe the size of the Titanic, she gives us practical tools to master a transformative mindset in an unforgettable story!

Lisa Polsky, Board Member of Deutsche Bank US, the Guardian Life VP, and MFA Financial

Lifeboat is an important read for anyone trying to make sense of the ever-changing world of work and their part in it. As usual, Maggie Craddock manages to combine a powerful theoretical framework with a combination of storytelling and practical solutions. The outcome is a book you cant put down and advice you can readily put to use.

Amanda Pullinger, CEO of 100 Women in Finance

Maggie Craddock has a wonderful way of taking the complexities of life and simplifying the message. Life is about relationships, and the most important thing we can do for ourselves is to value, care for, respect, and empower others. Lifeboat values means realizing that collaboration and teamwork arent just words.

Brian Hull, Executive Vice Chairman of UBS Americas

Drawing on the purpose-driven and collective spirit of Titanic survivors, Maggie Craddock has composed a compelling playbook for life and career success one that helps us navigate the turbulent future unfolding before us and that acknowledges: yes, we are indeed all in this together.

Keith Green, consultant for Society for Human Resource Management

Also by Maggie Craddock

The Authentic Career: Following the Path of Self-Discovery to Professional Fulfillment (New World Library, 2004)

Power Genes: Understanding Your Power Persona and How to Wield It at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011)

Copyright 2020 by Maggie Craddock

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner or therapist. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

First printing, May 2020

ISBN 978-1-60868-684-1

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-685-8

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10987654321

To my husband, best friend, and partner, Charles Schneider, whose presence makes the journey of life a source of infinite joy

CONTENTS

W e all like to think we are prepared for the unexpected. When it comes to our professional self-image, most of us strive to be adaptable, collaborative, and resilient. Yet in my work as an executive coach, Ive listened to many people describe professional situations where they were caught off guard and discovered that their reactions under pressure surprised them.

Whether its a thought leader who gets tongue-tied at a critical moment or a manager who loses his or her temper during a staff meeting, many people are bewildered by their own conduct when the stakes are high.

These eye-opening gaps between how people hope they will respond and how they actually react are symptomatic of a breakdown in trust. This may start as a breakdown in trust between organizations and their employees, but it can gradually evolve into a breakdown in trust within individuals themselves.

Here are just a few of the professional challenges people have shared with me and the questions these situations have prompted. Circumstances such as these leave many hardworking people feeling emotionally paralyzed, tempted to make impulsive decisions, and striving to please external authority figures at precisely the moment they should be listening to their authentic inner voice: