David Rock, author of Your Brain At Work, believes that there are five particular qualities that we as human beings crave – Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness – the absence of which tends to make people crazy. In the case of someone being laid off, all of these qualities are under attack at once. These five qualities seem to be very important to the brain and they form the basis of a framework he calls the SCARF model.

If your job involves communicating with people (whether as a leader, parent, manager, friend) this is very useful to keep in mind.

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When I work with my clients, I often refer to myself as their “accountability” or “sparring” partner. As a coach, I connect on a weekly basis with individuals as a means to ensure that they have acted on their good intentions as they plot a course toward future goals. Holding them responsible for the completion of an action step is only a small part of the value of following up.

The main reason I check on my tribe is to support the creation of new long-term habits that will ultimately improve their performance. One way that I do this is through the FEELING model as coined by author David Rock in his book Quiet Leadership. David’s FEELING acronym stands for Facts, Emotions, Encouragement, Learning, Implications, and New Goals.

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In his wonderful book The Element, Sir Ken Robinson tells a story that I’m sure many people can relate to. In it, a young girl named Gillian is having trouble concentrating at school. The school – suspecting a learning disability – asks her mother to take 8-year-old Gillian to see a psychiatrist for evaluation. After hearing from the girl’s mother how the girl is always disturbing her classmates, her homework is sloppy and always late – the doctor asks to speak with Gillian alone. Before escorting the mother outside for a private conference, the doctor turns on the radio in the room to occupy Gillian.

As soon as the music began to play, the girl was on her feet. From outside the room, Gillian’s mother and the doctor observed for a few minutes as she moved beautifully to the music, dancing around the room, lost in a childlike trance. Then, with a sudden burst of insight, the doctor turned to the girl’s mother and said: “Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick; she is a dancer. She likes to move. My advice? Take her to a dance school.”

Happily for Gillian, that is exactly what happened.

She eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School in London where she was surrounded by other people who also “liked to move”. She graduated, founded her own Dance Company – the Gillian Lynne Dance Company – and soon thereafter met Andrew Lloyd Weber. The rest is history.  As a dancer and choreographer, Gillian has been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in history (Cats, Phantom of the Opera, anyone?). She’s given pleasure to millions of people and become a multimillionaire in the process. Isn’t it fascinating – and terrifying– to think that somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down?

How many of us know people like Gillian? People who are full of energy and wit and drive. People who fidget and can’t sit still. People for whom the world is an ill-fitting jacket. As a career coach, I meet these people all the time, though sometimes a lot further downstream than in the above story. Maybe they’re out of college a few years and searching for that next big thing. Some of them have been in industry for 20-30 years, doing work for which they seem to have little interest or aptitude. While the verses of individual circumstances are always different, the refrain is all too common.

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The more you want to accomplish, the more help you’ll need. Successful people don’t get there all by themselves. If you are doing something big, it requires loads of support, advice and encouragement. More and more, young innovative businesses get this. They are moving away from a personal accomplishments mentality to a new collaborative paradigm.

Donna Fenn highlights this trend of buddying up in her latest book, Upstarts, How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business. Within the first chapter, Donna writes “today, an increasingly complex, competitive, and global business environment makes it virtually impossible, not to mention foolish, for any entrepreneur to cultivate a lone-wolf mentality.”

Through case studies, Upstarts reveals that working in teams is second nature to members of GenY as they change and re-define the very definition of teamwork. I recently asked Donna (DF) about this new idea of community and how the buddy system helps her in her work:

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“Make new friends, but keep the old…one is silver, the other gold.” If you've ever pledged Scouts, you will recognize this little ditty.  I have certainly committed it to memory. It came up for me recently when I reminded a client about the importance of maintaining positive references. As a former executive search agent, I sometimes marvel at how often this basic principal gets overlooked. Before forging ahead, it is absolutely vital for candidates to secure good references from their old employers. It is an integral part of the hiring process and doing so will only make the candidate look more professional.

Consider the following scenario:  You are a clean-cut, well-dressed, mature, driven and intelligent individual. You have followed all the rules in climbing the corporate ladder. Chances are, you graduated with a finance degree from an Ivy League School in less than four years and thereafter with an MBA from one of the finest institutions on the East Coast. Indeed, your resume shines with perfection. You interview for a position that fits you like a glove.  During the final round of interviews, you are asked for a list of your job references and you are told that the firm “will be back in touch shortly.”  Days and weeks go by without any news.  Although you trust there is a logical reason for the radio silence, there’s a very good chance that a reference came back with negative feedback. In most instances, even the smallest hint of a “red flag” for the company profiling you, is alarming enough to prevent an offer being made. What to do?

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